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VoiceOfRa comments on [Link] A rational response to the Paris attacks and ISIS - Less Wrong Discussion
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Except as a useful boogeyman for those currently in power, yes.
You're kidding yourself.
Or trying to kid others.
When people say "fascism" they're usually actually thinking of Nazism. Now, what was Nazism? It was a movement that stressed the need for intense loyalty to a strong Fatherland, that worried about pollution of that Fatherland by inferior races, that was contemptuous of democracy, that appealed to the glorious cultural traditions of the Fatherland, that lamented that the political Left was treacherously weakening the nation, that held that women should stick to traditional gender roles, that made much of the value of traditional religion without actually embracing it and being religious ...
Gosh, it's hard to see what possible motive a neoreactionary could have for making light of the idea that anything like that might still be around today.
So by your definition nearly everyone before the 19th century was a "fascist"?
Only in the same way as everyone in mediaeval times was a reenactment enthusiast.
So you admit your definition of "fascism" is time dependent? So why is this definition useful, are you saying that the laws of nature (or at least human nature) aren't uniform across time?
One element of fascism is a desire to restore (alleged) past glories.
(I am not in fact convinced that "nearly everyone before the 19th century" has the characteristics I described. Some of them don't even make much sense before the 19th century; e.g., the sort of leftism Hitler worried about, or the sort neoreactionaries worry about, didn't exist in that form before the 19th century. But that's a separate argument, and for now I'm happy to stick with this one.)
I don't understand the "So". Lots of time-dependent things are useful.
What someone's opinions tell you about that person depends on the context they're in. Suppose I tell you someone believes that the earth is at the centre of the universe, and ask you for a probability distribution on their IQ. Then I ask you the same about someone 1000 years ago. You may very well give different answers. Suppose I tell you someone thinks democracy is a terrible idea. Again, any guesses you might make about their character or about other things they believe may be different depending on whether they're in present-day England or present-day North Korea or revolutionary France or Periclean Athens.
Depends on what you count as a law of human nature, and what timescale you're interested in. Human biology probably doesn't change much on (merely) historical timescales, but human societies certainly do and human brains are pretty malleable. Human biology probably does change enough to matter on, say, 20k-year timescales, and maybe there are places and times when it changes much faster (e.g., consider the debatable but not obviously crazy suggestion that Ashkenazy Jews are exceptionally smart but extra-susceptible to various interesting diseases because of strong selection for intelligence over the last millennium or three).
So you're arguing not wanting to live under a leftist totalitarian dictatorship with an economy based on a delusional economic theory makes one a fascist?
No.
Then what were you trying to say when you wrote that clause?
Yes, and Hitler ate sugar.
Except we're talking about human political philosophies, not individual people. Thus it makes no sense to consider political philosophies and societies as extrinsic to our model.
I am not arguing that everything backward-looking is bad because Hitler was bad. (Though, actually, most of us would do well to eat less sugar.)
For that matter, in this thread I haven't been arguing even that Nazism is bad, though as it happens I'm not a fan. Merely observing that there's a considerable overlap between the backward-looking things neoreactionaries advocate and the backward-looking things the Nazis were keen on.
And, as it happens, I am quite comfortable saying that in many respects "nearly everyone before the 19th century" had views and attitudes that I dislike and disapprove of; if I make a list of Things I Dislike About Nazism and it turns out that they're mostly also things I dislike about the fifteenth century, my conclusion will be "so much the worse for the fifteenth century". I already know I wouldn't want to live there; I already know that "nearly everyone" in the past was wrong about huge swathes of how-the-world-works stuff that we've discovered since; why should I be discomfited to find their values also meeting with my disapproval?
(One possible reason: "That would imply that almost everyone until recently was a Bad Person, but that lots of people now are not Bad People, which would mean a bigger faster change in human nature than is plausible." But people's values aren't in fact mere manifestations of their genes, they also come from the surrounding society, and societies can change quickly. It could be that most people would be (what I would consider) Bad if brought up in one society and (what I would consider) Not So Bad if brought up in a different one.)
My apologies for being dim, but I'm not sure what it is you think I'm doing that I shouldn't. What model am I treating what as extrinsic to?
You may want to look at how this thread started.
IIRC ethnic nationalism wasn't even much of a thing until around 1800, and I doubt many people "lamented that the political Left was treacherously weakening the nation" a few centuries ago.
*cough*Old Testament*cough*
That hardly counts as stressing the need for intense loyalty to a strong Fatherland (before Zionism became widespread) or worrying about pollution of that Fatherland by inferior races (?).
A Jewish woman is prohibited from marrying a non-Jew (that's why Jewishness is determined matrilineally), but in any case I'm objecting to "ethnic nationalism wasn't even much of a thing". It most certainly was.
NRx people should know the difference between fascism and nazism, given how they pay great attention to history.
But there also might be a bit of miscommunication. I suspect VoiceOfRa thinks about far-right parties in Europe which are often tagged with the neo-Nazi label. That wasn't what I actually had I mind. I was thinking of people like Mr.Putin.
And you think it's reasonable to call him "fascist"?
Calling someone a fascist nowadays is just an insult, there is rarely much meaning behind it.
But you might think about important elements of fascism, the ones that distinguish it from, say, liberal democracies or communist countries or even just plain-vanilla dictatorships, and check how current Russia compares...