They did use democratic means, such as elections and voting, at least until they achieved absolute power. — NOS4A2
Again, the point is to use it to service the state, and then perhaps be done with when it is no longer required. — NOS4A2
My point is that once they achieve absolute power, the use of democratic means necessarily weakens the fascist nature of the state. Conversely, it precipitates its transformation into a representative democracy. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You either have a fascist state or a democratic one.
I think you’re right that popular sovereignty would eventually be fascism’s downfall, but they literally did create a democratic fascist state in the form of the Italian Social Republic. You can read in their Manifesto of Verona that a leader would be chosen by citizens every 5 years, not to mention the adoption of plenty liberal and socialistic “devices” in order to further the fascist state. So fascism has veered into “left-wing populism”, after all. — NOS4A2
Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro also became the heads of state in Venezuela through democratic means. But once they got there, the democratic means that they used began to show their limits. — Arcane Sandwich
I guess we’ll have to see about all that. — NOS4A2
Argentina, was it? What do you think of Milei? I’m watching his rule with great interest. — NOS4A2
All I can say is I hope it awakens some private initiative instead of metastasizing a reliance on the corrupt and wasteful public initiative. — NOS4A2
The only ism Trump adheres to is opportunism. He believes in nothing except his own enrichment and aggrandizement. He's a grifter with a huge ego and unlimited spite.Trump is a right wing populist, as far as I'm concerned. He's not a fascist in the same sense that Mussolini was. — Arcane Sandwich
Wrecking the economy and shredding the constitution is a real danger?Yet there is a real danger (to my mind, at least) with some of the policies that his administration wishes to carry out. — Arcane Sandwich
Of-bloody-course it doesn't mean well! This is the end-times feeding frenzy.Even if I were to grant, for the sake of argument, that his administration "means well" — Arcane Sandwich
Fascist? Again an awkward use of the term fascism. It's basically eugenics and racist ideas, not fascism. Sweden or Norway (or Finland) weren't fascist states.Would it be fair to say that Norway and Sweden (and to a lesser extent, Finland) carried out fascist policies against the Sámi people? Maybe there's few native people today in Lapland because those are the ones that weren't forcefully assimilated. — Arcane Sandwich
First of all, with the Sámi, we are talking about really a small group of people. — ssu
Sámi became reindeer herders only in the Middle Ages. — ssu
But yes, the Sámi activists have to adapt to the dominant narrative of the indigenous/native people being the victims of the "white colonizers", because that's the only narrative which people use about these issues. Hence you end up with totally white Europeans calling other white Europeans "whities" and having to claim they aren't so white. Bit awkward when you have pale skin, blue eyes and blond hair. — ssu
You are wrong, at least in my opinion. The history wasn't like that. Believe or not, but Lapland was very much uninhabited and is still quite uninhabited. The population density is similar to Santa Cruz province in Argentina or to Alaska. The Sámi people have basically grown in size and actually the number of people speaking Sámi as mother tongue have increased.It seems to me that their small population is due to the fact that their ancestors were forcefully assimilated into the nation-states of Scandinavia, but I could be wrong. — Arcane Sandwich
Well, the domestication of the reindeer happen in historic times, in the late Middle Ages. I think it was first the Norwegians that domesticated mountain reindeer. The Sámi adapted to this, but also other Lapplanders too. Usually domestication of wild animals, if you can call that about herds that freely walk around tundra, has happened far more earlier.You say that as if it happened last Monday or something. — Arcane Sandwich
Well, racist ideologies don't need any logic and there isn't logic. Europeans have been racist towards each other, not only other people.It doesn't seem that the issue here is about having white skin, blond hair and blue eyes. — Arcane Sandwich
Yes. Indeed those kind of ideas were popular during the era of nationalism and the classic racism that eugenics promoted. Wildly popular in Sweden. Yet in fact the opposite happened what you think. This made Sámi identity more evident. In 1917 there was held the first congress of the Sami people in Norway because of the actions of the Norwegian government. Similar "national consciousness" didn't rise in Finland then, because there wasn't much if any tensions between Sámi and other Lapplanders. Or there simple wasn't enough activists.The Sámi have a culture that has been deemed primitive or inferior in some sense, in relation to the modern nation states of Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc., which is why those countries carried out policies to assimilate them in a cultural sense. — Arcane Sandwich
Eugenics and classic nationalism of the 19th Century went away in the Nordic countries quite quickly. — ssu
More like a tourist attraction nowdays when you have Europe's "only indigenous people" around. — ssu
That's a bit of a strange thing to say. Aren't Germans indigenous to Germany, the Irish indigenous to Ireland, and the French indigenous to France? Etc. — Arcane Sandwich
Depends upon how far back you go. — Paine
Nobody has agreed on a hard-and-fast definition, not even Hitler and Mussolini.Won't lie, haven't read the entire thread, but has anyone actually agreed on a definition of fascism? Because without that, debating whether the USA is heading in that direction seems pointless — ZisKnow
So, no one is really indigenous to anywhere except the African continent. — Arcane Sandwich
What about the warm little pond?? Where was that? :brow: — Wayfarer
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