Same as above, do you mean we shouldn’t harm them or we shouldn’t acknowledge how they are harming us?
We should not harm people or jail them for their vote. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging their vote is harming people. It is a factually correct statement that their vote is harming people.
A fascist that does not vote can be stopped by the force of law. A fascist that does vote decides what the law is. That is far more dangerous.
A person knowingly voting for the fascist takeover, but doing nothing else is a fascist. In the event of a successful fascist takeover they will be far outnumbered by people who do not realize what they are voting for. So, yes, fascists deciding the law is more dangerous than domestic terrorism. However, my issue is with the people who implement the fascist laws.
The legislatures who write the laws, the police who arrest the out-groups, the courts who sentence them to the camps, assuming people even get a trial, and the executioners at the camp who detain the out-groups and participate in the firing squads. All the people who are implementing fascism and those who are just following orders. If none of these people made the choices that they did, in this hypothetical, then the fascists could vote all they want, but it would get them nothing.
I’ve brought this up in my argument because the people who know they are voting for the fascist takeover when they vote are the ones who could qualify as doing something morally wrong to me. This is of course subjective. A lot of them would be invisible to scrutiny if all they did was vote. Which in theory, could be a majority of fascists.
While these people have broken the social contract of tolerance, the social contract of tolerance is not a law that carries a death penalty for breaking it. Nor is it worth punishing tens of millions of ignorant people, who did something harmful, but didn’t do it knowingly. These tens of millions of people have not broken the social contract of tolerance. Also, I would argue tolerance is an objective measurable binary. Either someone is tolerating a group or they aren’t.
Preemptive political violence is undesirable only because you lose some justification. It is often the theoretically correct move to prevent a fascist takeover, but cannot be implemented because not everyone is convinced that it is justified yet or ever. See eg. Germany, which can dismantle entire political parties if they threaten the democratic order.
Political violence destabilizes democracy, our most effective tool for resisting fascism. It undermines the peaceful transfer of power which is a cornerstone of our democracy. Germany dismantling political parties isn’t political violence, although it is a preemptive action, so the peaceful transfer of power is preserved. The dismantled political parties had broken the social contract of tolerance.
Violence after a hostile takeover is not only revenge, but also necessary to retake control. I see no issue with this whatsoever; the revenge is a bonus to the necessity.
I am not arguing this is an issue. I am arguing this is not an example of resisting fascism. This is an example of defeating a fascist dictatorship militarily. I bring up resisting fascism, as in preventing the fascist takeover, because that is what the meme refers to. Acting retroactively by definition does not prevent the fascist takeover.
The death penalty may not prevent violent crime, but education, assistance, and sanctions are much more effective.
My point being that these alternative methods are also much more effective at preventing fascism from spreading as well.
I think we’re on the same page here in terms of the appropriate response to the rise of fascism and similar ideologies. The difference is that I view it as morally wrong to fall for the grift and/or to vote for bad policies.
When we argue about morality we end up getting into philosophy which is subjective. I’m of the opinion that if a person doesn’t know what they are doing then they did nothing morally wrong. There’s no math we can use to back up our opinions. They exist purely as subjective views on life. This to me is unproductive discourse because we can argue about this topic in this way endlessly and never be able to draw any actionable conclusions.
Instead I prefer to argue about utility. Utility can be measured and thus we can harness math as part of our arguments. This is useful discourse because we can arrive at the same conclusions about a variety of topics. The disagreements we are left with become a discussion of optimal strategies which we can easily compare and contrast. We can in theory, reach a consensus about what we should do to solve problems.
You’ve said this a few times and I’m beginning to believe we might not be on the same page here. I’m not necessarily advocating for violence (although it would be valid IMO to claim that it would be justified).
This meme is about the use of violence in the context of preventing a fascist takeover. This entire comment section is glowier than a platypus under a black light. I think the feds didn’t even have to post or comment here, this is the state of left-wing discourse on lemmy. If you’re not arguing for violence then say that up front. I think violence based on voting history is actively detrimental to resisting the fascist takeover, so I argue against that. Whether or not violence based on voting history is justified is subjective and does nothing to ascertain its viability as a solution. My opinion is that violence based on voting history is not justified. And yeah, I could have used ‘it’s’ instead of ‘violence based on voting history is’ two extra times, but I decided it wasn’t clear enough, feds.
Fascism is a collective puzzle that has to be solved collectively. Humans are not necessarily predisposed to fail or succeed this puzzle. Fascism takes advantage of human tribalism, but any person is still capable of rationalizing that fascism is not in either their self-interest or a larger collective self-interest. Fascism is self-destructive.
Fascists have to make good on their promise to eliminate the out-groups they demonize. In order to stay in power, the fascists have to keep dividing a country’s population into new in-groups and out-groups. The subjective hierarchies they construct and adhere to are based on unattainable ideals. If this process is not stopped externally, the fascists eventually have to kill everyone. This includes the fascists drinking the flavor-aid.
The only way for humanity to survive fascism is to educate ourselves and each other about these self-destructive ideologies. That everyone is imperfect and everyone deserves to live no matter where they fall on subject hierarchies. Anyone who is seriously considering fascism as means of self-preservation can conclude that this ideology will lead to their own destruction and the destruction of the people they care about. Fascism logically contradicts it’s own false promises of security and prosperity. Once people understand this, people will then be open to other ideologies to solve their problems that do not involve demonizing groups of people.
People of course have to be given complete information as part of their education on fascism and other self-destructive ideologies. If all a person gets is fascist propaganda, as is happening in the US, then it shouldn’t be surprising when people stuck in echo chambers become fascists.
Ideologies can work as far as convincing people to adopt the ideology. However fascism does not work as far as solving the economic problems that drive people to look for solutions in the first place. No amount of genocide of a society’s existing population improves a person’s material conditions in that society. That kind of genocide is likely to eventually destabilize the society that is committing the genocide. The human psychology that can make us all susceptible to fascism does not prevent us from seeing it for what it is, inherently self-destructive. The human population destroys itself as part of implementing fascism.
There will always be con artists that try to demonize people to get what they want. But if people know that not no amount of demonizing can put food on the table or keep people safe they aren’t going to fall for it.
Not to blow you off, but maybe create a new post to continue this discussion and send me a link if you want my thoughts specifically. This post’s comment section got glowy.