Tag Archives: Politics

February 22, 2020

Why You Should Almost Never Use The Word, “Fascist.”

By wise sloth

Every year, I hear more American conservatives and liberals call each other Fascists. Each time it makes me lose more faith in humanity, because the more you understand what Fascism is, the less likely you’d be to call someone Fascist.

Recently, a 21 year old told me with righteous confidence that, “Socialism ALWAYS leads to Fascism!” I wasn’t surprised he believed this completely inaccurate statement because conservative pundits have been pushing this narrative for years.

If you don’t know what Socialism or Fascism are, the video above may seem very convincing…. and the video below, which claims Trump is a Fascist, should sound equally convincing.

If that video doesn’t convince you Trump is a Fascist, look at the following two infographics I found on the internet and draw the comparisons yourself:

These lists are pretty scary until you notice they’re made up of truths, half-truths, and falsehoods. Plus, they’re omitting a lot of important facts.

Here are two videos that do a much better job of explaining what Fascism really is:

As good as those videos are, in my opinion, they skim over some critical nuances that you need to understand before you go around calling anyone a Fascist.

There have been dozens of governments, politicians, and political movements who call/called themselves Fascist, but originally, Fascism wasn’t a general term for an authoritarian, ethnocentric type of government. It was the name of Benito Mussolini’s personal political party that he invented to bait-and-switch his way into becoming a dictator.

Strictly speaking, anyone who isn’t a card-carrying member of Benito Mussolini’s party, isn’t technically Fascist. They’re really just Fascist-esque. This may seem like anal retentive nitpicking, but I believe this distinction is important because every country that has copied Mussolini’s methods and policies have cherry-picked them and left just as many out.

It’s equally important to point out that Mussolini didn’t invent all the nefarious methods and policies we associate with Fascism. Dictatorships, theocracies, monarchies, and other forms of government have been using them for centuries.

To fully appreciate the gravity of what I’m getting at, you need to look at the two founding documents of Mussolini’s Fascist party: The Fascist Manifesto and The Doctrine of Fascism.

They’re both surprisingly short. The Fascist Manifesto is a one-page bullet point list that was printed in Mussolini’s personal political newspaper:

Translated to English, it says:

“Italians! Here is the program of a genuinely Italian movement. It is revolutionary because it is anti-dogmatic, strongly innovative and against prejudice.

For the political problem: We demand:

  • a) Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women.
  • b) A minimum age for the voting electorate of 18 years; that for the office holders at 25 years.
  • c) The abolition of the Senate.
  • d) The convocation of a National Assembly for a three-years duration, for which its primary responsibility will be to form a constitution of the State.
  • e) The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers.

For the social problems: We demand:

  • a) The quick enactment of a law of the State that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers.
  • b) A minimum wage.
  • c) The participation of workers’ representatives in the functions of industry commissions.
  • d) To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants.
  • e) The rapid and complete systemization of the railways and of all the transport industries.
  • f) A necessary modification of the insurance laws to invalidate the minimum retirement age; we propose to lower it from 65 to 55 years of age.

For the military problem: We demand:

  • a) The institution of a national militia with a short period of service for training and exclusively defensive responsibilities.
  • b) The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.
  • c) A national policy intended to peacefully further the Italian national culture in the world.

For the financial problem: We demand:

  • a) A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.
  • b) The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.
  • c) The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.”

This is what the Fascist party ostensibly stood for. So when you accuse someone of being Fascist, technically, you’re accusing them of (among other things), abolishing the Senate, raising taxes on the rich, giving women the right to vote, establishing a minimum wage, lowering the retirement age to 55, making military service mandatory, nationalizing the weapons industry, and spreading Italian culture around the world.

Have you ever heard Donald Trump advocate any of those policies? If not, then, strictly speaking, he’s not a Fascist. He may have some other Fascist-esque tendencies… that aren’t uniquely Fascist… but why call him a Fascist when it would be more accurate to just describe his negative tendencies? I don’t like Trump, but calling him a Fascist would require cherry-picking what it means to be one, and that would be intellectually lazy at best and intellectually dishonest at worse.

As much as you can use The Fascist Manifesto to argue that Trump isn’t really Fascist, you can also use The Doctrine of Fascism to argue liberals, socialists, Marxists, and Communists aren’t either. I’m not going to copy/past the whole document here because it’s 3-4 pages long, but I’ll summarize its 13 main sections.

Before I do that though, it may be worth noting that half of The Doctrine of Fascism is philosophical gibberish that barely means anything, like:

“To know men one must know man; and to know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws. There can be no conception of the State which is not fundamentally a conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas evolving within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith, but always, at least potentially, an organic conception of the world.“

Whatever. That kind of self-indulgent rambling makes me question how seriously Mussolini and his co-author of The Doctrine of Fascism, Giovanni Gentile, believed their own propaganda. If they were just talking out of their asses to justify a dictatorship, that’s all the more reason we shouldn’t use the term “Fascism” too seriously.

Anyway, below are the 13 sections of the The Doctrine of Fascism. The bold/black headings are Giovani’s and Mussolini’s. They rest are my summaries:

“SPIRITUAL VIEW OF LIFE

  • Men should live with purpose and strive to be their best for the sake of the greater good. Being idle and happy for your own sake is weakness, but working for the greater good is strength.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION

  • A man’s life is meaningless if he doesn’t contribute to the advancement of society.

REJECTION OF INDIVIDUALISM AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STATE

  • A man’s life is meaningless if he doesn’t contribute to the advancement of the state.

FASCIST STATE AS A SPIRITUAL FORCE

  • You should devote your mind, body, and soul to serving the state… and the state will enforce this standard by using force.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE – EVOLUTION FROM SOCIALISM

  • I (Geovani Gentile) used to be a socialist, but then I realized Socialism sucks because managing a company is hard. Therefore, there should be class division between workers and upper management. Also, Fascism used to be poorly defined, but now it has a set doctrine.

REJECTION OF PACIFISM

  • Pacifism is bad. War is good.

REJECTION OF MARXISM

  • Poor, exploited people shouldn’t fight against rich, exploitative people. And nobody should work towards their own interest because ‘well-being does not equal happiness.’ The end-goal of working should be to support the state.

REJECTION OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY AS A SHAM AND A FRAUD

  • Fascism rejects democracy because the will of the majority isn’t important. Only the health of the state is important.

REJECTION OF EGALITARIANISM

  • Fascism rejects the idea that everyone deserves equal political representation.

DEFINITION OF FASCISM AS REAL DEMOCRACY

  • A dictatorship is the only true democracy because it’s the best form of government for the people.

REJECTION OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM – ADMIRATION OF BISMARCK

  • Fascism rejects the idea that the goal of the state should be to give people power and happiness. The goal of the people should be to give the state power and health.

THE FASCIST TOTALITARIAN VISION OF THE FUTURE

  • Fascism isn’t going to be a dystopian dictatorship. It’s going to be a great dictatorship. Trust us. You’ve never seen anything like this before.

THE ABSOLUTE PRIMACY OF THE STATE

  • A man’s life is meaningless if he doesn’t contribute to the advancement of the state. Fascism isn’t going to be a dystopian dictatorship. It’s going to be a great dictatorship. Trust us. You’ve never seen anything like this before.“

This political philosophy is blatantly incompatible with the goals and values of Donald Trump, American conservatives, American liberals, socialists, Marxists, and Communists. Despite their differences, all of these movements believe in the mantra, “Power to the individual.” Fascism fundamentally rejects this philosophy and specifically denounces Socialism, Marxism, and Communism. So anyone who says, “Socialism always leads to Fascism,” has no idea what Socialism or Fascism is.

Trump only cares about making himself and his rich friends richer and more powerful. They don’t want the sole focus of their businesses to be supporting the government. Trump has already lowered taxes on the rich. If he were a true Fascist, he would raise taxes on corporations and insert government officials into the executive boards of his best friends’ companies.

If you look at all the countries that have called themselves Fascist, they never adopted all the tenets of Fascism either. Some of them supported workers’ unions. Others embraced religion. None of them tried to spread Italian culture by the sword. They just used national pride and the promise of strength and stability to intoxicate the masses long enough to establish a self-serving dictatorship… exactly like how every Eastern European dictatorship promised their citizens Socialism and Communism long enough to win the popular support they needed to pull off their bait-and-switch scheme.

Even in Italy, Mussolini was notoriously vague about what Fascism really meant, and like all politicians, he didn’t religiously stick to his campaign promises. For example, he didn’t seize all the Catholic Church’s assets like he promised in his manifesto. He ended up making a neutral alliance with them.

So if you want to call someone Fascist, you’d have to specify whether or not they’re guilty of doing what the Italian Fascist party (or any other self-proclaimed Fascist party) promised or what they actually did. Even if you’re right about one point, I can guarantee, the person you’re accusing of being Fascist doesn’t follow all the tenets of every self-proclaimed Fascist institution, because that would be impossible.

If, after reading this far, you still don’t understand what Fascism is, then congratulations. You’re probably more correct than at least 99% of the people who have ever said the word, “Fascism,” including Benito Mussolini, since he was full of shit.

The most reliable way to use the term “Fascism” is to not use it at all, since, at this point in history, it has become basically meaningless. If a government, politician, or political group is behaving overly authoritarian, then describe them as being “overly authoritarian,” not “Fascist.” If they have the audacity to insist they really are Fascists, then ask them what the ideal retirement age should be. If they say, “55,” then respond, “Well, at least you got that much right.”

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February 19, 2020

A Brief History Of The Israel VS Palestine Conflict

By wise sloth

In America, the most common explanation for the conflict between Israel and Palestine is that Jews used to own Israel. Therefore, it’s their land by birthright, and Palestinians are terrorists who launch missile attacks on civilian market places. So it’s only fair that Israelis defend themselves.

You don’t need to take too many history classes (or even read more than a few Wikipedia articles) to discover why this explanation is oversimplified to the point of being misleading.

To understand the whole truth, you need to begin by reading the Torah’s history of Israel. According to the Bible, the Israelites escaped from Egypt, wandered in the desert for 40 years. Then, one day, Abraham was wandering around looking for a place to raise his goats, when, according to Genesis 13:14-17, this happened, :

“The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

Then Abraham kills a few people and sacrifices a goat and two birds to God. Then, in Genesis 15: 18-21, “… the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

Over the course of the Bible, the Israelis slaughtered, enslaved, or drove out everyone living in The Promised Land. It’s debatable how many events in the Torah actually happened, but even if Israel’s bloody conquest of the Middle East is a total myth, it still sends a strong message to those who believe it’s the unerring word of God.

Israel grew and prospered until it was conquered by the Babylonian Empire in the 7th century BC. Not only did the Babylonians destroy the Temple in Jerusalem, they also exiled the Jewish people across the Middle East.

200 years later, Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to Israel. So a lot of them came back and built a second temple in Jerusalem.

Israel had a lot of internal conflicts over the next three hundred years until Rome conquered it in the 1st century BC. At first, the Romans let the Jews keep most of their religious institutions and traditions, but Judaism was simply incompatible with Roman authority. The Jewish people revolted the entire time they were under Roman control. Eventually, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, sold a lot of the Jews into slavery, and (possibly) invented Christianity.

Ultimately, the Jews weren’t able to defeat Rome. Many did stay in Israel, but they weren’t allowed to have their own government. Rome finally fell 400 years later, but by that time many large Jewish communities had established themselves across the Middle East, Europe, and Northern Africa.

After the fall of Rome, Isreal became the Christian nation of Byzantia until the 6th century. Then it became a Muslim province of the Arab Empire until the 10th century. Then it bounced back and forth between Catholics and Muslims during the Crusades. Eventually the Mamluks (Syrians) got ahold of it. Napoleon held it for a second. Then the Ottomans (Turks) took it until WW1, when they lost it to Britain.

Britain didn’t really want it though. So they made it a temporary state that would allow the Jews to have some kind of “national home” in Palestine, but they didn’t specify exactly what that meant.

Throughout the rest of this post, I’m going to refer to the non-Jews living in Israel as Palestinians or Arabs. But in a sense, those labels are arbitrary. For most of these people’s history, they were neither Palestinian, Arab, or even Muslim. They were Philistine, Canaanite, Babylonian, Roman, Byzantium, Ottoman, etc., etc., and over the centuries, they followed a slew of other religions, sects, and cults.

The vast majority of them didn’t have any involvement in exiling the Jews. They were just farmers making a living in the land their ancestors were born in.

If we’re going to honor the argument that Jews deserve to own/rule Israel because their ancestors were there first, then the descendents of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites have a stronger claim of birthright. Inevitably, there must be some modern day Palestinians who can trace their blood line back to the original inhabitants of Israel.

It’s also worth acknowledging that the Jews who had been living in the Middle East for generations look more Middle Eastern than those living in Europe. This is obviously due to a certain amount of cross-breeding. So the difference between an ethnic Jew and an ethnic Arab is a matter of degrees, not black and white.

Getting back to the history lesson, in the late-1800’s, during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, a movement called Zionism was gaining popularity among Jews around the world. Its goal was simple and inevitable: Jews should return to Israel and create a new Jewish state just like they’d done after the Babylonian exile.

Even before WWII, Jews were already migrating to Israel in droves. The Holocaust gave them even more motivation to have their own state, and loose British control of the region gave them the freedom to do so.

In an alternate universe, the Jews could have just bought land in Israel and lived there under a secular, democratic government, sharing power with their Muslim neighbors. But, per the commandments of God in the Torah, the goal of Zionism was to create a Jewish Theocracy.

In 1945, Zionists began attacking British personnel in Israel, attempting to drive the foreign ruler out of the Promised Land. Between 1945-1947, Zionists killed 103 British law enforcement officers. Wanting a quick way out of this quagmire, the United Nations passed a new resolution to split Israel into two states and let Britain step off the stage.

The Zionist leadership accepted the proposal, admitting that is was a temporary first step towards total control of Israel. The Palestinians rejected it for that reason, and also because the proposal would give their best farm lands to Israel and force over 200,000 Arabs to move from high income areas to low income areas.

In the weeks following the vote on the proposed partition, Arabs protested across the country and workers went on a three-day strike. Tensions escalated and quickly turned into violence.

Neither side had a full-fledged government at this point, so this wasn’t officially a war yet. It was civilians killing each other with rifles and improvised explosives. By all accounts that I could find, the Arabs fired the first shots, but innocent men, women, and children were killed by both sides on a weekly basis.

Foreign sympathizers sent weapons and troops to both sides of the conflict, escalating the informal skirmishes and pop-shots into regulated military operations.

As the death toll rose, the Zionists held their ground, committed to their cause, and in 1948, Israel officially declared itself an independent nation.

That same year, Palestinians began fleeing the conflict zones en mass. Some left because it’s common sense to get out of a war zone. The Arab leadership also ordered many evacuations, and Zionist troops were destroying entire towns and forcing people to flee their homes.

It’s debatable but likely that the Israeli leadership wanted to remove as many Arabs from Jewish-controlled territory as possible, and the exodus wasn’t just a collateral consequence of war, but a premeditated campaign of ethnic cleansing. By 1949, 700,000 Palestinians would become refugees.

At least 10,000 Jews also fled their homes in Palestinian-controlled war zones, and many more living in other Arab nations chose to immigrate to Israel because they were being harassed by local Muslims sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

In 1949, Israel defeated the Egyptian and Yemen forces aiding the Palestinians, ending the war, but this wasn’t the end of the conflict. It was more like a never-ending truce that neither side completely honored.

Since then, Israel has continued whittling away Palestinian territory and absorbing it, destroying homes, and replacing them with Jewish settlements.

Between 1994-1996, Israel constructed a wall around the portion of Palestine bordering the Mediterranean Sea, known as, Gaza. The official reason was to stop weapons from being smuggled into Gaza, but it has effectively turned the area into the world’s second largest open-air prison (North Korea being the largest). In 2008, Israel established a mile-wide no-go zone around the fence and shoots-to-kill anyone attempting to escape.

Life inside Gaza is a living hell comparable to the Jewish ghettos in Nazi Germany. According to Wikipedia, “In January 2018, it was reported that 97% of the territory’s tap water was undrinkable because of sewage pollution or high salinity levels, forcing Gazans to purchase water from local desalination facilities at excessive prices. The Palestinians are unable to pay Israel for the electricity it provides and, as a result, Gazans receive electricity for roughly four hours a day, as of 2017, which impairs the functioning of Gaza’s health services. The Gaza Strip’s unemployment rate reached 44% in 2017 (71% for women, 36% for men). It is reported that 40% of Gazan children suffer from anemia and malnutrition.”

That’s just scratching the surface. There have been countless documentaries and news clips made about life in Gaza that you can find on Youtube.

Israel justifies its harsh actions towards Gaza as necessary and justified to protect Israeli citizens from rocket attacks by Palestinian terrorists. It’s true that Palestinians have been guilty of killing Israeli citizens for decades by lobbing rockets over the border. While I absolutely can not condone these attacks, Israel can’t feign surprise or claim the moral high ground after taking away almost everything the Palestinians have to lose.

It’s also oversimplifying the situation to say Israel is merely attacking Palestinian military units in retaliation for military actions. Israel has a long history of shooting unarmed protesters and continuing to destroy Palestinian homes.

Israel could end the violence by tearing down the prison walls, allowing Palestinians to return to their ancestral homes, and sharing political representation with non-Jews. But that’s never going to happen, because the goal of Zionism has always been complete control of Israel in accordance with God’s commandments in the Torah and its clear precedent of using murder and intimidation to ethnically cleanse The Promised Land.

This conflict can only end one of three ways:

  1. The State of Israel is dissolved and the Jewish people share their land.
  2. The majority of Palestinians are killed
  3. The majority of Palestinians leave

In this context, the best solution is the lesser of three evils, which is for other Arab nations to open their borders to Palestinians and allow them to relocate to their countries. I know this is literally supporting ethnic cleansing, but it’s the only option that doesn’t include mass murder.

This may not even be the best option for Israel. Once it becomes a total Jewish state, then Israel’s enemies will have less reason to withhold their anger towards a government that has been persecuting Muslims for almost 100 years now. If Israel ever loses America’s military protection, those countries may invade anyway… assuming America’s military actions around the Middle East have left any countries stable enough to fight a war against Israel.

I believe Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is ethnic cleansing, and I believe the Torah is mythology, but I don’t hate Jews. It’s common in America to label anyone who criticizes Israel as being anti-Semitic, but the two positions are not mutually exclusive. I believe every major religion is mythology, but I don’t hate Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Scientologists, or Hindus. You don’t believe in all of those religions either, and you don’t hate everyone who is different than you. It’s like that.

I wish Jews and Palestinians could agree on a two-state solution, but that’s not possible until one side lowers their weapons. The Palestinians have crimes to answer for, but the side that should stand down first is the one running a concentration camp.

If you believe Palestinians deserve to continue to endure the conditions they’ve been living under, then you could be accused of being prejudice against Palestinians, and isn’t that morally equal to being anti-Semitic?

One thing I’m certain of, is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won’t end until the rest of the world takes a louder and more objective stance on the issue.

However you felt about this post, you’ll probably feel the same way about these:

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Politics, religion