Well, Godwin's Law has been invoked, but I'm sure his apologists would insist he, too, was acting for some "greater good," and fascism was the style of the day. How could he have known better? Every Jew, Slav, Gypsy, homosexual, communist, and political dissident who was slain or forced into hiding was just a big "oopsie" at worst in a well-meaning struggle to emerge from an economic depression and crippling burdens imposed after WW1. We just need to shrug and let it go instead of entering a doom loop of worrying about the mistakes of the past.
But seriously, people probably do need to stop this habit of comparing everyone they dislike to Hitler. It's like the boy who cried, "wolf." When real fascism needs to be condemned, people are too numb to pointless labels and posturing to take heed. People also tend to cheer on authoritarianism and militarism if they like the flag waved by the tyrant. Nationalism and partisanship are blinders.
The only thing where Hitler really helped me is in understanding that everybody does their best, and nobody (almost) is consciously evil.
I think this is key to understanding the present.
And I agree with you, if 'evil' is only measured through fascism, one is wide open for a bad surprise. Maybe totalitarianism would describes better what has happened and what is happening.
I would argue we do have a form of fascism now. Hitler's Germany wasn't even a good example of that ideology. Look more to Franco and Mussolini. Maybe even FDR, although it would be vehemently denied today.
People try to create checklists of symptoms to define fascism instead of exploring the core political and economic concepts which bring about those symptoms. Doug Casey described it as nominal private ownership of both the means of production and consumer goods, but with heavy state control behind the scenes: subsidies, quotas, price controls, trade regulation, surveillance, taxation, etc.
Regardless, totalitarianism and authoritarianism come in many flavors and degrees of de facto control, but the core of coercion is always the same.
I've got the impression that most concepts share quite many great core-principals, be it fascism, democracy, anarchy... and in theory they all could work very well.
But they also seem to share the same deficiancies in the ways they are practised; they all tend towards becoming totalitarian and/or authoritarian. Simply speaking: It's all about power, and that corrupts.
People also attach strong values to these words, like democracy is the best, anarchy is chaos, communism is BAD, without realizing that in our reality they are not such different concepts at all.
Ok, not much anarchism does actually exist, but I guess with today's actors it wouldn't turn out much different.
I argue anarchy exists all around us every day. The government enforcers aren't everywhere. Society functions in spite of the State, not because of it. The fundamental question is one of consent versus coercion, not how coercion should be applied. The latter is the root of most political discourse, including many self-professed ansrchists.
Well, Godwin's Law has been invoked, but I'm sure his apologists would insist he, too, was acting for some "greater good," and fascism was the style of the day. How could he have known better? Every Jew, Slav, Gypsy, homosexual, communist, and political dissident who was slain or forced into hiding was just a big "oopsie" at worst in a well-meaning struggle to emerge from an economic depression and crippling burdens imposed after WW1. We just need to shrug and let it go instead of entering a doom loop of worrying about the mistakes of the past.
But seriously, people probably do need to stop this habit of comparing everyone they dislike to Hitler. It's like the boy who cried, "wolf." When real fascism needs to be condemned, people are too numb to pointless labels and posturing to take heed. People also tend to cheer on authoritarianism and militarism if they like the flag waved by the tyrant. Nationalism and partisanship are blinders.
The only thing where Hitler really helped me is in understanding that everybody does their best, and nobody (almost) is consciously evil.
I think this is key to understanding the present.
And I agree with you, if 'evil' is only measured through fascism, one is wide open for a bad surprise. Maybe totalitarianism would describes better what has happened and what is happening.
I would argue we do have a form of fascism now. Hitler's Germany wasn't even a good example of that ideology. Look more to Franco and Mussolini. Maybe even FDR, although it would be vehemently denied today.
People try to create checklists of symptoms to define fascism instead of exploring the core political and economic concepts which bring about those symptoms. Doug Casey described it as nominal private ownership of both the means of production and consumer goods, but with heavy state control behind the scenes: subsidies, quotas, price controls, trade regulation, surveillance, taxation, etc.
Regardless, totalitarianism and authoritarianism come in many flavors and degrees of de facto control, but the core of coercion is always the same.
I've got the impression that most concepts share quite many great core-principals, be it fascism, democracy, anarchy... and in theory they all could work very well.
But they also seem to share the same deficiancies in the ways they are practised; they all tend towards becoming totalitarian and/or authoritarian. Simply speaking: It's all about power, and that corrupts.
People also attach strong values to these words, like democracy is the best, anarchy is chaos, communism is BAD, without realizing that in our reality they are not such different concepts at all.
Ok, not much anarchism does actually exist, but I guess with today's actors it wouldn't turn out much different.
I argue anarchy exists all around us every day. The government enforcers aren't everywhere. Society functions in spite of the State, not because of it. The fundamental question is one of consent versus coercion, not how coercion should be applied. The latter is the root of most political discourse, including many self-professed ansrchists.
I couldn't agree more.