It is a bit darker than that. Much of fascism’s horrors were cribbed from liberalism. Liberalism is itself just as horrible. Sometimes we look at the horrors and think they are a separate development that is opposed to liberalism. I will list an example.
Antisemitism in Europe surged long before fascism took root. Jewish people in Europe faced apartheid systems, pogroms, ethnic discrimination, forced migration. Many early Zionists tried to build their project using Europeans’ antisemitism, basically saying, “here we will deal with your ‘problem’ by moving the Jews over there instead”. These same groups worked with the Nazis to deport Jewish people and create financial incentives for Jewish people to leave Germany. Some of them created and maintained the false narrative that those who remained deserved the Holocaust. Nazis didn’t invent antisemitism from whole cloth, nor incredible mass violence towards Jewish people. They built on existing marginalization, a tried and true tactic of liberalism and its mercantile and agrarian precursors, and went ahead full bore with it as a solution for economic and social problems that had been caused by liberalism, not Jewish people. Their concentration camps were modeled after British camps in Africa, their Lebensraum concept was modeled on the US’ genocide of indigenous peoples. Their expansionist strategy was less effective in its horrors than Manifest Destiny. The US built itself on a thorough, near-complete genocide where the vast majoritu of those who were not killed (1-3%) had their cultures erased. Most of a continent depopulated and replaced.
And the liberal genocides are normalized and described as separate from those of fascists. No. They are part of the same continuum and very closely connected to one another.
Macron is a big standard liberal and he called elections because he thought the righter wing parties would advance and work with him against the left. This is why he has flouted norms and given power to a party that won a tiny minority in the election rather than the party with a plurality. Macrin understands who is closer to him politically. Who is on his team.
Those righter wing parties are reactionary and therefore share qualities with fascists, but to be honest they are just reactionary liberals. Their positions would’ve been mainstream liberalism just a few decades ago, just another one of the factions. Racism, chauvinism, imperialism were all implemented by these past liberals. The faux traditionalism that they harken back to is just an idealized version of the white supremacist experience their grandparents embraced. They have no plans to resolve liberalism’s failures and are not a group that will violently crush an ascendant left. It is just a degeneration of liberalism into a more reactionary state.
It is a bit darker than that. Much of fascism’s horrors were cribbed from liberalism. Liberalism is itself just as horrible. Sometimes we look at the horrors and think they are a separate development that is opposed to liberalism. I will list an example.
Antisemitism in Europe surged long before fascism took root. Jewish people in Europe faced apartheid systems, pogroms, ethnic discrimination, forced migration. Many early Zionists tried to build their project using Europeans’ antisemitism, basically saying, “here we will deal with your ‘problem’ by moving the Jews over there instead”. These same groups worked with the Nazis to deport Jewish people and create financial incentives for Jewish people to leave Germany. Some of them created and maintained the false narrative that those who remained deserved the Holocaust. Nazis didn’t invent antisemitism from whole cloth, nor incredible mass violence towards Jewish people. They built on existing marginalization, a tried and true tactic of liberalism and its mercantile and agrarian precursors, and went ahead full bore with it as a solution for economic and social problems that had been caused by liberalism, not Jewish people. Their concentration camps were modeled after British camps in Africa, their Lebensraum concept was modeled on the US’ genocide of indigenous peoples. Their expansionist strategy was less effective in its horrors than Manifest Destiny. The US built itself on a thorough, near-complete genocide where the vast majoritu of those who were not killed (1-3%) had their cultures erased. Most of a continent depopulated and replaced.
And the liberal genocides are normalized and described as separate from those of fascists. No. They are part of the same continuum and very closely connected to one another.
Macron is a big standard liberal and he called elections because he thought the righter wing parties would advance and work with him against the left. This is why he has flouted norms and given power to a party that won a tiny minority in the election rather than the party with a plurality. Macrin understands who is closer to him politically. Who is on his team.
Those righter wing parties are reactionary and therefore share qualities with fascists, but to be honest they are just reactionary liberals. Their positions would’ve been mainstream liberalism just a few decades ago, just another one of the factions. Racism, chauvinism, imperialism were all implemented by these past liberals. The faux traditionalism that they harken back to is just an idealized version of the white supremacist experience their grandparents embraced. They have no plans to resolve liberalism’s failures and are not a group that will violently crush an ascendant left. It is just a degeneration of liberalism into a more reactionary state.