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Sean's avatar

Dare you to offer this take on fascism to a World War II veteran.

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publius_x's avatar

Those guys who beat Hitler spent the next 30 years fighting against the guys who *really* beat Hitler. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

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Koshmarov's avatar

Only 30? I take your point that everybody felt the Cold War was getting kind of stale c. 1975. Took Reagan to rejuvenate it.

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HBI's avatar

That all totalitarians suck? My grandfather, did ETO from 1942-45, Tunisia, Anvil, ended up in the Czech Republic in 1945. He was the one who told ME this.

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Aug 25, 2021
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Sean's avatar

The Nazis used to be a pathetic bunch of losers who started fights in bars too. Beer Hall Putsch = 1923. HitlerтАЩs ascension to power = 1933. Broad toleration for fascism, as in endemic among MattтАЩs subscriber base for instance, allows this to happen

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DNY's avatar

We won't have ex-loser fascism here because we already have masters-of-the-universe fascism. The professional managerial class inside and outside of government are implementing Mussolini's playbook of uniting corporate and state power (if you have any doubt, remember the destruction of Parler by Amazon, Apple and Google at the behest of Democrats in Congress ostensibly for "fomenting insurrection", which "insurrection" was actually fomented on Facebook and Twitter, and consider the Biden administration's cozy relationship with Facebook on content moderation matters).

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HBI's avatar

Nope. People who 'tolerate fascism' don't have the same values you do and don't think of it as 'tolerating fascism'. Not everyone is going to think like you, and even if they did, it'd be YA totalitarian state.

Nazi Germany happened because the state was destabilized and the Nazis were better led. That's all. If the KPD had been better led, we might be talking about a Soviet Germany in 1933. But they had people like Walter Ulbricht in charge. They didn't even have a plan for taking over.

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Aug 25, 2021
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Sean's avatar

IтАЩm settled. But ordinary conservatives are drastically underestimating the danger of throwing in their lot with hard-right paramilitaries

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