The Guardian has identified a trainee nurse and reported US air force reservist called Bailey Ross as the proprietor of a white nationalist publisher in South Dakota.
Ross was also a paid-up member of a white nationalist organization that marched at Charlottesville while enlisted in the United States Coast Guard.
Ross’s company, Agartha Publishing, is part of a wave of extremist publishers using mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Amazon to sell lavishly repackaged fascist and anti-communist books.
This is how you end up with political dissidents taking one way helicopter rides, or being raped to death in a gulag, or being rounded up and forcibly sterilized in an interment camp. No one should be denied their rights under the law. Ever.
I’ll be even more clear. Just so you understand where I stand here. I generally want democracy, but I also don’t want even the most subtle of routes open for fascism to worm its way back into political discourse like it is now.
Free speech and free forms of expression have long been historically shown to be abused by disingenuous bad actors.
These rights have been utilized as a back door for fascists to overtake Democratic institutions by invoking these rights while simultaneously infringing on these same rights for immigrants, people of color, and those within the LGBTQ community.
So no. If you want fundamental change in the world, then you need to change the fundamental foundations of how the entire societal structure is conceived, and that starts with explicitly hard red lining any and all fascist speech and fascist rights. I have no illusions that this will happen any time soon. But I stand by this belief.
I’m 50 and I’ve watched as the term “Fasciscm” has been redefined over the years. The difference between this wiki page from 2004 and today’s is eyebrow raising. In less than 20 years the definition has been expanded to the point where it arguably includes, via “subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation”, nearly the entirety of the modern day Democratic Party!
If declaring someone to be “fascist” allowed the Government to declare them an Outlaw then it will be weaponized to remove political opposition. Examples abound; China, Venezuela, Cuba, the USSR then Russia, Chile and a whole pile more. The instant that a Government gets the power to declare people Outlaws based on their beliefs they eliminate them, brutally.
I shudder every time I see someone spout off about “banning the republican party” for this very reason.
I believe that you are pushing this in good faith but I also have no, and I mean absolutely none, faith that such ability wouldn’t be massively misused. You don’t solve Authoritarian-ism by paving the way for Totalitarianism.
Yes. I am only 10 years younger than you, but a decade’s more experience is not to be discounted by any means.
I’ll push back on this and say that scholars and historians have struggled with the exact definition of fascism, but it is in my personal opinion that said scholars are MUCH closer to defining fascism today than they have even a decade ago, to the point where I actually do believe we have come to a concrete definition today.
Even your comparison of the two Wikipedia articles exemplifies this imho, although it is apparent you and I differ on our raising of the eyebrows. As the article from 2004 mainly points more to the history of fascism than the current article which, given the benefit of more data, has more data to draw from further defining fascism and how it has been expressed today.
I actually share your skepticism that this power could be wielded responsibly, which is why I’m generally not surprised nor upset at it not being a popular opinion.
In short, I am skeptical of my own beliefs, yes. And perhaps I lack your foresight, but I generally hold the belief that there aren’t other legitimate likely solutions to the eradication of fascism that exist within the current frameworks of societal public discourse, and am unwilling to relent, throw up my hands, and give up.