Lady of the Land @Lady@cat.family

@gaditb i think there is truth in that, but i’m not sure i fully believe it without qualifications

specifically, i think fascism or something like it is the end state you eventually wind up in when a society always chooses politically convenient lies over politically inconvenient truths. it has a foundation of misinformation.

the line between people actually believing misinformation and pretending to is (i think) pretty fuzzy. but what makes truth politically inconvenient is precisely the consequences it would have within people's ideologies: people are lied to BECAUSE they have ideologies which would not tolerate the current situation if they were told the truth. if people's ideologies were content with fascism, there would be no need for misinformation

this is an aside though, because my actual question is more along the lines of “is eliminating fascists enough to eliminate fascism?” i’m not convinced it is, and if fascists are the symptom and not the cause, then maybe the suffix -ist is doing something different than we might usually expect

@monorail @aescling that's the same time period as legends: arceus

@monorail @aescling nothing is confirmed and some fans are like “it's in the future!!” but nah i’m pretty sure it’s just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Paris

@gaditb (can’t say i agree it works when i go to the grocery store and nobody is wearing a mask, but there’s no need to delve deeply there)

(i’m asking questions because my background is in literary criticism and social constructionism, and i acknowledge that those aren’t always the best tools for analysing these things, they’re just the ones i’m familiar with. i think you have different tools and value your opinions)

(but if a guy gets appointed CEO of CNN and decides to publicly air a promotional interview with a fascist on primetime television, that doesn’t require “having a strong opinion” but also it is a fascist act (and one he couldn’t have performed without being so positioned). people aren’t motivated along a single axis of ideology; they are also motivated by profit and personal history and cultural values and emotion. i think it’s reasonable to ask how people might change in a situation where, say, enabling fascism is profitable even if you don’t agree with it. and since we live in a world where enabling fascism often IS profitable, does fascism even require actual fascists besides?)

@gaditb i guess my hesitation with the last point is whether people not having an opinion is just a function of them not having power, because the people with power tend to need to have an opinion

having power can happen to anyone so figuring out what they will do when they have it is important even when they don't have it presently

@gaditb right the train of thought playing out in my mind is:

(first thought) there is definitely a difference between {someone who is willing to commit a genocide because they believe in an ideology} and {those who are willing to commit a genocide because of an ideology they don’t believe in}. the first group is a more immediate threat but also, maybe you can break them of that ideology someday. the latter group seems a lot more difficult to get a handle on

(second thought) but, is the existence of the first group actually a prerequisite for nazi·ism?

(further pondering) is the point of the quote maybe in fact that {our tendency to treat fascism as an ideology which people do or don’t have} causes us to miss how it actually functions?

idk here. if the difference between the nazi and the not-nazi is just that the nazi finds violence politically expedient in the short term while the not-nazi doesn’t (yet), that's less a difference in the quality of the person themselves and more just one of their current political situation

which is still important to measure but less essentialist

@gaditb do you think nazi·ism is a coherent ideology which it is possible for a person to have? i think my analysis of the hypothetical changes depending on whether it is or isn’t and i don’t know which is true

@aescling if meow had a mega evolution what would it look like