> This isn't the only way to measure it, and IMO not appropriate right now. The real problem is the balance of political opinion taken as a whole; The percentage of the population that holds what one might call far-right fascist views seem to be higher than it's been in the last 50 years if you assume that voters' views are more or less aligned with the politicians they vote for. > > Assuming that just because Things Are Okay Now that there's no problem is exactly how we got Trump elected in 2016, and why Italy, Brazil, and the Philippines have all elected far-right or outright fascist leaders since then as well.

Maybe, just maybe, people are changing their views in part because of the constant push of the sort of shit PayPal is trying to push with this thumb on the discursive scale.

But fascism is when the people vote wrong and democracy is when they vote correctly, of course. Especially after the Irish are made to vote again.

So you're saying that an attempt to avoid fascism CAUSES fascism?

That is, quite frankly, a disgusting justification for reactionary politics.

If you treat any dissent as if it was Hitler, and start pushing policies people increasingly find insane or that make their living environments worse (eg. mass immigration in Sweden, soft on crime policies in blue cities in the U.S. where some practically decriminalized theft)? Yes.

You keep using the word fascism. I don't think you know what it means.

The fact you think half of the things you listed Republicans are doing are either fascist or fascist adjacent shows why this is such a bad idea. Most of those things are things every ruling party does or aren't fascist.

Not to mention, just calling Brazil, Italy and whoever else potentially fascist is ridiculous.

Fascism has no meaning anymore because people like you. If you want to actually fight against fascism don't call everybody fascists.

Looking through your comment history of defending Trump and trying to dilute arguments about police violence, it sounds like you're a big fan of fascism and think that being excessively pedantic and sealioning everybody who brings it up is a great way to spend your time. It's pretty transparent, though.

Seeing how you support suppressing speech it seems like you are a big fan of Nazism. It's pretty transparent, though.

See how stupid that is instead of just asking my views? You know what they say about assuming...

Fascism has a lot of mean, you trying to minimize it doesn’t change anything. The silver lining is the fascists in power are failing fast, hopefully before we fully end up in the fascist endgame of all out war.

Fascism doesn't have a lot of meanings. That is the problem I am trying to point out. When everyone who is right of center can be a fascist because they oppose abortion and whatever else the post was saying, it loses all meaning.

Do you take the same view when it comes to socialism or communism? Would it be fine to label the majority of the Democratic Party socialist?

> The percentage of the population that holds what one might call far-right fascist views seem to be higher than it's been in the last 50 years if you assume that voters' views are more or less aligned with the politicians they vote for.

My impression is this is a story being told by the media and seems true when you spend a lot of time on Twitter. If it weren't for 24 hour news telling me so, and occasionally spotting some weirdos like the "Patriot Guard" walking around a city, I don't think I'd have any sense of this being real in my day to day life.

> and are now proposing state-wide abortion bans, taking over school boards to ban books and alter health and science curricula, and more.

The abortion issue has been being battled forever now, and it's odd that one side is being seriously labeled "facist" all of a sudden, now that the tug of war game has pulled the flag a bit to their side. And I have seen books "banned" (i.e., excluded from small public school libraries) for one reason or another by "both sides" my entire life.

It's not sudden - Bush Jr. was called a christofascist back in the day. He's just been rehabilitated now that the press has a new, Cheeto-flavoured Hitler to scream about.

It's easy to think fascism is rising when you change the definition of fascism to mean "anything right of Lenin".

Straw man alert