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I suppose it's about abortion... yes, abortion debate is not between fascists and non-fascists. But plenty of political debates are, e.g. ones having to do with immigration, ones having to do with prohibition (in the past, of alcohol, now of other things), ones having to do with sentencing of criminals, and so on.
On the topic of fascism and the like, nobody really thought nazis would be the net utilitarian benefit; people thought the nazis were good for them. Same goes for most other such debates concerning the issues where voters are able to identify themselves as unaffected by the policy. Nobody actually thought it is net utilitarian benefit to throw people in concentration camps, nobody really thinks today it is a net utilitarian benefit to put people in prison for doing something where no party was harmed. People just know that they themselves get an advantage, if only relative, by voting in such laws which affect negatively other people.
Good for their tribe. There were large number of Nazis who thought they might be worse off (e.g., mowed down by machine gun fire) who were still supportive as they perceived a net benefit to their tribe.
Why do you believe this?
There was a competing party promising net utilitarian benefit. Communist/socialist party. The national-socialist party was different in the sense that it promised greater benefit to specifically aryans.
edit: by the way, I happen to live in a small eastern European country with strong nationalism and a significant neonazi population. Example of a big local policy debate: should a Polish community be allowed to keep street signs in both Polish and Lithuanian? Another policy debate: should Polish people be allowed to use the letter "w" in their names in the passport?
Literally, the vast majority of debates have actual fascists on one side. Nobody ever argues that it is a net social benefit to waste money replacing the street signs. Or that it is a net social benefit not letting the Polish use W in their names.
It's entirely possible for two conflicting groups to promise net utilitarian benefits by different means, or by different standards. In fact, I'd say this is the case for most political conflicts. It's somewhat rare for political groups to use utilitarian rhetoric on a broad scale, or to base ideology on utilitarian calculations -- certain strains of socialism are the only ones I can think of for the former, and I can't think of any prominent examples of the latter -- but if you ask an ideologue whether their ideology will lead to less overall happiness in the long run, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the answer will be "no". Fascists are no exception -- it's just that they happen to believe subordination to a state to be the highest expression of human values.
The NSDAP were an odd group even among fascists, though. I haven't read enough of their stuff to be certain that they're one of the exceptional cases, but I'm not confident that they're not, either.
I'm not speaking of the hypothetical of what happens if you ask someone. I'm saying that NSDAP did explicitly claim that their policies will benefit German people in such and such ways, using the phrase "German people" as often as they could, very openly saying that their allegiances lie with the German people, rather than people in general.
Now, let's model a voter as selfish. German voter (in the pre-war sense) can expect greater benefit with a leader that speaks of benefits to specifically German people, than with a leader that speaks of a benefit to the people in general. This gave an edge to NSDAP.
I don't think voters, even in Weimar Germany, are very well modeled as selfish agents. The NSDAP certainly benefited from proclaiming -- often and loudly, as you say -- their allegiance to the German volk, but I model that more as a way of positioning themselves as the party of German pride: a pretty clear political niche, at the time, and one that could easily be framed as promising restitution for perceived or actual wrongs rather than exploitation of others. (Though you don't need to be a Nazi to be excellent at rationalizing the latter as the former.)
After six years or so of Nazi rule, they did manage to finagle this into a justification for genocidal expansionism, but that isn't the choice that was presented to German voters in 1933.
I'm not saying a purely selfish agent. People are at least partially selfish, though, except for perhaps very few who are completely saintly. Let's consider the immigration debate. You will get nowhere by arguing that open borders are a benefit to the Mexicans, but you can get somewhere by arguing that open borders are good for US businesses, or by arguing that Americans lose their jobs.
So? Promising net utilitarian benefit is not the same as convincing people you will in fact deliver net utilitarian benefit.
The argument that there is a net social benefit to having a single culture.
Not at all. The argument is that Polish deserve this for having previously occupied the country. Or other nationalistic crap.
edit: just because you are accustomed to rationalizing actions as net benefit does not mean that other people do that. Most don't. Utilitarian arguments are quite rare. The proponents of said policies themselves never even claim them to be beneficial to anyone. They use other rhetorical tools.
If we throw the people with undesirable trait X into concentration camps, there will be fewer people with trait X in the future. If trait X is something that tends to contribute to negative utility, e.g., stupidity, propensity to lie, etc., this will increase utility.
If this is meant to be a reference to the war on drugs, then the net benefit is decreasing the availability and social acceptance of for Eliezer's argument for why "devil's offers" should not be legal.
Or decrease utility, if the decreased population results in lower utility. Or increase utility less than some alternatives.
Likewise with the other examples; while you can of course assert about any action, no matter how harmful, that it is a net benefit (in a far enough future), trying to achieve a net benefit leads to different actions than trying to achieve the benefit for the sake of the group(s) that you personally belong to, and this difference shows very clearly.
BTW, I at least partially agree with the argument against of drug legalization.
The arguments that were originally used are what I refer to, not really the recent debates where old choices are rationalized on different grounds.
Near as I can tell, this is very similar to the argument I made with some comments about how propensity to fall to said "devil's offers" was correlated with race.
I don't think this post applies to all policy debates, but I do think that very few policy debates are between fascists and non-fascists.
E.g. prohibition. I think there's an exception to permissiveness: "if a behaviour is sometimes harmful, and we can't easily permit only the non-harmful instances, then it may be okay to prohibit all instances of it". Now people can disagree about how harmful the behaviour is, how often it is harmful, how easy it is to permit only the non-harmful instances, how much people gain from the behaviour when it isn't harmful, and how much each of those factors should be weighed. Some people will think that the exception applies to drug use, and some people will disagree.
I agree there are people who have incentives to keep drugs criminalized even if they think society would be better off without prohibition, and even if they think society thinks society would be better off without prohibition, but I don't think they're the only reason prohibition exists.
I'm not speaking of the very principle, I am speaking of the implementation that leads to prison population 8x that of other countries of comparable wealth.
edit: just google about prison guard unions lobbying for harsher sentencing. Do they think harsher sentencing is a net social benefit? No they don't, they think it is a net benefit to prison guards.
A lot of debates boil down simply to different groups pushing for things that benefit said group at someone else's great expense.