this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I heard some PhD types who had written papers on Hitlers rise one time explain it that even though we can draw parallels to Hitler's rise. It in no way means we should expect another group like the Nazi's to rise to power. They were saying hindsight can say Hitler rose to power because X,Y and Z. But it in no way means that X,Y and Z are what create a Nazi power or means another one is going to show up. That it's wrong to take something like lists that detail the things that contribute to fascism and say its happening now so therefore the other party are the next Nazi power.
I think what the message was that X,Y and Z only shows what could have contributed to Nazi's seizing power but when used with foresight its not accurate.
He's not wrong, but he's not right either. Those lists are meant to be paired with deep analysis of the ideology and an academic understanding of the terms used. When used correctly they are absolutely useful for predicting oppressive authoritarian regimes. Can they predict the second coming of Nazis? No, because that was a unique moment in history.
Political scientists who write their papers and books on ideology have been sounding the alarm bells about conservative and fundamentalist Christianity since the 2000's. There's been papers about wealth ministry and the GOP since at least the 90's.
So yeah, the brief lists on the Internet are about as effective as a Hogwarts personality test, but that doesn't mean the watchers aren't screaming at you to pay attention.
See I don't really follow this stuff to hard. But that's what I found funny was what you said sort of. These guys were the guys who write papers and study the rise of fascists and especially a focus on the Nazi's and their opinion the were bringing up was that its not a predictive tool. Its something that is useful to look backwards and hypothesis what lead to a rise but it doesn't work looking forward as well and can often be used to be a pretty big political hammer regardless of accuracy and that we should be more careful with it.
That's what I was saying. I guarantee you they keep a list as a reference. But they aren't just xeroxing the list with checked boxes for their writing. Throwing the lists onto the Internet is the same thing as putting Fascist on a sign whenever the government installs a new traffic camera. That's what has them upset.
And if they're telling you there's nothing to worry about with the current conservative movement they're either bad at their job or part of the problem. Because every political science professor I know, even the conservative and libertarian ones, are telling anyone who will listen that we are dangerously close to voting ourselves out of a democracy.
Right, fascism molds itself to a particular condition and ground truth. There's actually a decent body of work which holds that it is a historical form of autocratic politics, and that searching for it in modernity is problematic because of how fungible the core ideology is. You can always stop fascism by stopping autocracy, regardless of whether you positively identify it as such, so all autocratic movements should be treated with the same level of urgency as Nazis. Easy peasy, okie dokie.
The biggest problem with this is that a lot of leftists like autocracy as well. And I am convinced that's where a lot of this rhetorical pearl clutching really comes from. A whole generation of left wing opposition is effectively null and void because it reduces to a very inconvenient "well our autocracy is different..."