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Conservatism is Brain Damage
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Social conservatism is, at best, fascist-adjacent. Singling out social minorities for harassment and legal persecution is very closely akin to fascist scapegoating.
Oh it's certainly not a pretty picture. But if we go around attributing everything to fascism then that's what we'll end up with because nobody will be able to see it coming. And they're always trying. Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that's inherent to it but because of the American experience with it and the modern reaction to most of it's ideas being debunked by science. We tied it up with the civil rights movement and weaponized it. But it spent something like 300 years happily living within the realm of liberalism. So while I don't like it, it is not in and of itself fascism.
Please cite your sources because I have never seen a scrap of evidence that social conservatism is anything but thinly disguised hate and fear of the other weaponized into political ideologies.
Cite what? The entire existence of modern political philosophy? Look nobody is denying that it gets misused. Nobody is denying that it's thoroughly debunked. Nobody is denying that Republicans are using it exactly as you say.
But if you want to deny that a sizeable portion of Democrats are conservatives who have beliefs about traditional family homes because they believe it's better for the people involved then you're ignoring an entire demographic just to paint something as purely far right. Going straight to the extremes is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.
I was not trying to dispute that Democrats are the “good cops” to the Republican “bad cops” and often implement just as draconian and cruel policies in the name of austerity of whatever dumb bullshit as do Republicans.
I consider centrist democrats conservative, especially from a perspective of leftism that is bigger than the US both in geography and time.
Then why are you only talking about the most extreme parts?
When people talk about a cannonball causing destruction, they often don’t focus on describing the gunpowder and wad loaded into the firing chamber, just the cannonball.
There are a few problems with that. If you "other" people who aren't already fascist then you're likely to push them straight into it. You also run the risk of losing your legitimacy. People will think Anti Fascists just call everything fascism. And finally, that leaves no path back for fascists. If they're either fascist or progressive then they'll stay where they are. You defeat an idea by giving its people a path to come back to mainstream society.
So you can't just describe the entirety of conservatism as part of a fascist mechanism and get a good result. It's not true and it will back fire.
Why not?
It is evidently true that conservatism usually leads to fascism, the ideologies share essential elements.
I would say treating conservative snowflakes with kid gloves is what has backfired.
Shame them for hiding behind hateful and cruel ideologies, point out their ideologies are childish and have been tried repeatedly over history never to the benefit of the average person, and don’t let them ever say they’re dumb bullshit unchallenged.
“Reaching across the isle” doesn’t work (Do you need MORE proof of that?), these people don’t want to have a conversation, they want to take away my healthcare so I die, they want to take away my girlfriends birth control and abortion access so she dies in a child birth complication, they want to take environmental protections away so they can poison the land and destroy the nature that supports us all, they want to destroy clean air and water, they want to give all the power to the rich, they want to hurt trans people they have never even met, they tend to be racist af in the policies they support if not the flags they fly… need I go on?
Sorry I don’t respect conservatism, it is and will always be the gateway drug to fascism.
Liberalism shares essential elements too. Like nationalism, corporatism, and a fetish for crime and punishment. Should we call them fascist too?
Oh and there's people on the far left who think Stalin was right.
The seeds of Fascism are everywhere. That's why it's a dangerous ideology. You can come to it from any angle. Ironically your take on conservatives fulfills the requirement for a chosen enemy of the people.
This argument of yours is ridiculous and again leans on only the most extreme of conservatives.