Policy is not to arm countries blocking humanitarian aid - this is just sparkling aiding genocide.

What confident ignorance that would be overcome with any research whatsoever. This is clear enough that I don’t need to bother with an explanation - Here’s 3 search terms for you:

Company town

Pullman

Monopoly

When very charitably, at least 12 of Eco’s 14 signs of Ur fascism has been checked off along with the dictionary definition, this is a pretty weak argument - Where do you get your meaning of words if it’s not based on the dictionary or on something’s traits?

Deregulation and the outsourcing of state power to complicit, newly empowered commercial interests is standard within fascism, and pushing that power from notionally democratic direct government control to undemocratic businesses that have an interest in preserving the government that removed their guardrails and handed them all that power is undeniably authoritarian. Would you make the argument that company towns aren’t authoritarian or centralised because it’s not government power?

Excessive debt is indeed a driver of authoritatian policy for better or worse, but fascism isn’t the only flavour of authoritarianism. Similarly, company towns tend to thrive in small government environments, and are historically incredibly authoritarian. That’s not a good thing.

Oh - my mistake - you think you’re not supporting fascism… It’d be quaint if it weren’t for the consequences.

Fascism is characterised by the merging of state and commercial interests, not a strong centralised authority in a beuracratic sense. Let’s run the list, shall we?

“The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

Check.

“The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

Check.

“The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

Check.

“Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

Big check.

“Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

That couldn’t be Trum- CHECK.

“Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

Check.

“Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

Check.

Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

Check.

“Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

Ukraine/Palestine - soft check.

“Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

Check.

“Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

Soft check, but that’s clearly firming up.

“Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.

Check.

“Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.

Check.

“Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

Check.

I’ve got bad news for you…

Your defence of your fascist alignment is to concede it’s always ended terribly, then point to an anarcho-capitalist example where the goal is to collapse the government because Milei hasn’t finished the job after checks watch less than a year?

I get that he’s done a fairly commendable job with the economic tailspin so-far, but I’m not sure I see the relevance.

As an example, the IRS returns $6 for every dollar spent on it, and absolutely all available evidence shows that if you remove all the guardrails, things get far worse almost immediately.

Can you point to an example of fascism working? Every example I’ve seen ended with massive decline in quality of life, rampant waste, and both economic and government collapse - usually with a dead leader through suicide or execution, generally with their corpse being dragged through the streets by an understandably furious populace. It’ll all work out this time, though… right?

Yeah - it’s the FDA and CDC that are the true money pits in the US government… Let’s eliminate the IRS and EPA while we’re at it - really smash those guardrails and let the altruistic market fix it - that always works…

Ohhh look - we’re cutting taxes for those that need it least again - but that’s responsible spending - it’s all been accumulating for over half a century, so it’s got to start trickling down any day now, guys.

If you can avoid the dark ages, you should probably consider that a win right now…

Had a friend that took the conspiracist road to Nazism, and this isn’t an exaggeration - the dictionary is a Jewish plot, so is any empirical evidence, the existence of qualified experts, observable phenomena…

The small mercy is that the idiots and monsters that voted for Trump and the dipshits that couldn’t be bothered to vote to stave off fascism will drown in the river of shit alongside the well-meaning folk that did their best (or anything at all) to stop this.

Christ - because it’s not as though the media contributes massively to voter suppression.

Journalistic malpractice is one of the main causes - if not the main cause of this result.

Hooray for courts stacked with sycophants and partisans, and liberals enabling fascism because meaningfully opposing it would be uncivil.

There’s slim hope that Trump losing the election along with his viability as president or leader of the GOP would see his protections make way for consequences, but even that seems unlikely.

Cultural Bolshevism > cultural Marxism / post-modern neo-Marxists.

Immigrants polluting the blood of the nation > immigrants polluting the blood of the nation.

unified Reich > unified Reich.

Hooray for populists that aggressively fight against anything resembling worker solidarity, planning to end democracy, convincing people that it’s for their own good, and bumbling their way into Nazism.

It shouldn’t need to be explained why you shouldn’t help a state murder journalists, but based on the downvotes we can already see in this thread, the genocide enjoying cowards and bots are doing their thing.

Political violence is an inevitability. It’s up to us to ensure we get the best possible type of violence.

Other than giving him an excuse when he inevitably skips out on the cheque? No.

I think it’s more that he doesn’t like reality, so it’s simply not true to him… but he’s not shy about lying, and is clearly losing his mind - ladies and gentlemen, I give you the disaster that’s a coin flip away from running the global hegemon …again.

Fucking over more that 345 million people to reduce his tax bill.

…now, forget what a cunt Musk is (we know that already) and ask yourself what made it possible for a person to do that, and why those choices were made. Repeal Citizens United.

I think Giuliani is Trump’s portrait of Dorian Grey… but Giuliani has hit his limit, and it’s showing in Trump.

That was a hard, bizarre watch - and from Fox no less. They’re not beating the weird allegations, and they’re not sending their best.

If it’s of any consolation, there’s some joy to be found in watching him utterly degrade himself in service of the even bigger piece of shit that made an absolute mockery of both Cruz and his family.