I think when people trade on the negative connotations of "fascism" and then turn around and go "oh i mean this..." they're being duplicitous and alarmist.
The antifa lot essentially define fascism as an eternal set of human psychological impulses: nostalgia, in-group preference, desire for cultural homogenity, etc.
These did not lead to Fascism, the "obviously bad thing" which they are being alarmist about. Fascism was a direct result of, and contingent upon, the mass death and poverty caused by WWI.
Words do have meaning, and it is precisely the negative connotations of fascism that are being appealed to in the accusation. Absent these connotations, almost everyone is fascist some of the time.
Half a million Italians died in WW1. And as many again from the spanish flu. And all of Europe was in a permanent condition of poverty until way into the 20th C. 80% of the population was poor working class even in 1970.
You do not get Russian communism without the prolonged period of slavery called "serfdom" which persisted into the late 19th C. in russia.
The Italian deaths in WW1 were overwhelmingly soldier deaths, as the fighting on Italian soil was limited to north-east border of the country (where incidentally I am from). The civilian population was largely unaffected by the war.
> And as many again from the spanish flu.
Who talked about flu? You were talking about WW1, now you are pivoting to the flu?
> And all of Europe was in a permanent condition of poverty until way into the 20th C. 80% of the population was poor working class even in 1970.
This is also grossly wrong. I suggest you better inform yourself about the 20-th century history of European societies before spouting more nonsense.
WW1 was a total war. Fascism was a response to total war which conscripted every civilian into the military. Italy did not have an army of 500,000 soliders before WW1, no country did. The british empire's armed force was 80,000 -- and was one of the largest in the world. Where do you think 500,000 "soliders" came from? They were drafted from the population.
It's literally in the first paragraph in the wikipedia article on fascism...
> Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war.
> I suggest you better inform yourself about the 20-th century history of European societies before spouting more nonsense.
I'm British and I know my own history very well. Read any book of the time, "Road to Wigan Peer" will give you the quality of poverty.. and any graph by any serious economic study of human history will give you the actual level of wealth.
> WW1 was a total war. Fascism was a response to total war which conscripted every civilian into the military.
WWI was a contributing factor to the rise of fascism, which is a complex phenomenon whose roots date back at least to the late 1800s with the rise of nationalism throughout Europe, the unification of Germany, the growing distrust of liberal democracies at the turn of the century, etc. It was not a "direct result" of WWI.
> Italy did not have an army of 500,000 soliders before WW1, no country did. The british empire's armed force was 80,000 -- and was one of the largest in the world. Where do you think 500,000 "soliders" came from? They were drafted from the population.
WWI was unparalleled in magnitude with respect to previous wars, but, as far as Italy is concerned, it did not involve directly the vast majority of the civilian population (around 34M at the time), which was never in a war zone or at risk of atrocities from the opposing force. The fighting was confined to the northeastern Alpine regions of Trentino, Veneto and Friuli. The Austrians made a small advance into the Italian territory before being decisively defeated on the Piave river. The industrial and agricultural heartlands of the country were largely intact at the end of the war, no major urban centres were captured or destroyed, and important land gains were made in the form of new territories formerly under Austrian control.
WWI was hell on Earth in the trenches, but no, Italy was not in disarray and did not experience mass death or poverty as a result of WWI.
(There were of course serious economic issues in the interwar period, but their genesis is in the great depression, not WWI)
> I'm British and I know my own history very well. Read any book of the time, "Road to Wigan Peer" will give you the quality of poverty.
Life has been shit for most people for millenia, in Europe and elsewhere. But just take a look at any graph of the life expectancy over time in Europe and you will see that is has been steadily improving throughout the 20th century (with a couple of big temporary down spikes for the flu and WW2 - not WW1).
Fascism was a direct result of social conflict and worker's movements in Italy after WWI. Check out the "biennio rosso" (two red years); "The revolutionary period was followed by the violent reaction of the Fascist blackshirts militia and eventually by the March on Rome of Benito Mussolini in 1922"[1].
> The antifa lot essentially define fascism as an eternal set of human psychological impulses: nostalgia, in-group preference, desire for cultural homogenity, etc.
Add authoritarianism and militarism to it and you have the definition used by historians and political scientists.
> Fascism was a direct result of, and contingent upon, the mass death and poverty caused by WWI.
"mass death and poverty" in Italy? This is plain false. But it's also besides the point:
The word "fascism" is used to describe any similar pattern of thought and behavior, just like "communism", "skepticism", "pacifism".
Then it is nearly meaningless and just a term of abuse. Fascism is not "skepticism".
By this definition of fascism, antifa are fascists and so are all governments and most people.
This may be how some use the term, just as some use "communism" to describe any use of the state. It's pseudo-political nonesense that's just a term of abuse.
Now you're just making words meaningless. Fascism is a reasonably well-defined ideology. Not every use of the word applies it correctly, and I've even seen convincing arguments that Nazism wasn't true fascism while Stalinism was, but this is what's generally meant by fascism: an ideology where everything revolves around a great leader, his inner circle, the party, the "true" people, and where every aspect of society serves this unity of concentric circles. It's explicitly totalitarian and doesn't tolerate dissent or different opinions; everybody needs to be loyal to the leader, or is considered an enemy of the people.
Antifa, by comparison, doesn't even have a leader. And doesn't want one either.
> it's explicitly totalitarian and doesn't tolerate dissent or different opinions; everybody needs to be loyal to the leader, or is considered an enemy of the people.
Right, which is most echo-chambres. Under a psychological definition, we're all fascists. An echo-chambre is totalizing (ie., everything is subsumed under the ideology), it has unimpeachable leadership, and no dissent is considered. Try r/feminism or r/conservatism.
Fascism isn't an ideology in the modern "world view" or psychological sense... that's the impact of psychoanalysts being, somehow, the main people humanities students turned towards for explanations of the 20th C.
The right people to turn to are political scientists, wherein fascism is an ideology in the sense of "state apparatuses, doctrines, institutions, practices, economic conditions", etc.
In which case Stalinism wasn't fascism, nor was Nazism. Nor were many things. Fascism quickly became a term of abuse in tabloids of the 40s, esp. in america. And here we are today with everybody being fascists.
There is no deep connection between the "psychological fascism" that is of rhetorical interest to the left, and the state apparatuses of fascist italy. This connection is a pseudo-scientific one from the psychoanalysis of the 50s and 60s; and it is a duplicitous and alarmist one from the left today.
Most people aren't going around calling people who disagree with them an "enemy of the people". Nor do they insist on loyalty to a great leader. Many Americans, for example, prefer loyalty to the Constitution or a set of principles over loyalty to the president himself.
Echo-chambers might have the feature that they don't like dissent, but that doesn't mean everybody prefers echo chambers over open discourse, nor does it mean people in an echo chamber want to apply their echo chamber to the entire country, with a great leader in charge that everybody needs to be loyal too.
So no, you're wrong about that. Not everybody is automatically a fascist, and the word does have meaning. There's a very clear difference between fascist leaders + followers, and the people who disagree with them.
And yes, there are differences between Nazism Stalinism and Italian Fascism, but they have a lot more in common with each other than with liberal ideologies. Not every liberal is liberal in the same way, not every environmentalist has exactly the same priorities, not every conservative is conservative about the same things. Similarly, it's not so strange for there to be multiple interpretations/implementations of fascism. They may differ in details, but they're clearly related.
Do you genuinely think symbolism and the meaning of words isn't plastic and contingent on context?