I am not trying to start a blog war. Yes, I know that means I’ve lost some of the fire in the belly. But look you, I’m recovering from severe illness, and we’re probably looking at another move this year, plus there’s a bunch of family stuff going on and…. I’m swamped. Also judging from the tone of this article, it would amount to wrestling with a pig. You just get muddy and the pig — being a stupid animal — likes it.
Anyway, since I don’t want to start a blog war, I’m not going to link the offending article, (UPDATE: After sleeping I realized I can do this (derp) with archive link. So if you want to enjoy the nonsense in its full glory https://archive.is/DSSRB) just quote bits of it. However, I daresay if you wish to find it, you can search. I mean, it’s called: Five Ways Fascist Culture Appears in Our Stories. Do you know how fascists see the world?
I actually DO know how fascists see the world. Fascism, classically, is a form of national socialism that relies on “state capitalism.” Which is to say, it relies on the state controlling every commercial and industrial concern in the country for the state’s business. However, since no one has made much of a paen to fascism in the modern world, at least since the Portuguese ancien regime (notably called Estado Novo) stopped cribbing FDR’s speeches and notes, this post seemed a little odd. What were they doing, really? The closest thing to a fascist regime (please don’t remind me we have a bit of that state/industry thing going on please. It’s mostly “environmental” regulations.) in the modern world is the PRC. Were they going to do a tour of Chinese real-politik writing? Sounded interesting.
So, I clicked through. Almost right away, I got a feeling the person writing this might not know fascism from a hole in the ground.
To someone on the left, fascist culture may seem bizarre. Why do they keep supporting a man who has violated all of their moral rules? Fascists don’t view this situation like we do; they have cultural propaganda that repackages repugnant things as attractive. If we want to push back against these ideas rather than spread them, we need to know what they are.
Wait what? Is this person under the impression that people not on the left are … fascists? And then he alludes to crazy ass stuff that implies he’s talking about America. We’ll leave aside the fact that he apparently shoots PBS straight into his veins bypassing his brain, and ask what in the effing hell he thinks the American right — mostly leave-me-alone freedom lovers — has to do with fascists, but the ride gets more bizarre. So put on your helmets, buckle your seat belts, keep hands and feet inside this flaming handbasket to hell at all times, and for the love of heaven stop giggling. We’re not responsible for damage done to your psyche by encounters with a parallel — ahem — differently-logical reality.
But What Is Fascist Culture?
Before we dig in, let’s examine what we’re looking for on a more conceptual level. What do fascists believe? To answer this, I’ve consulted good ol’ Wikipedia and the work of late psychologist Bob Altemeyer.
Altemeyer studied authoritarians for about 60 years before his death in 2023. His 2006 book The Authoritarians* predicted the rise of a fascist authoritarian leader in the US. I also gleaned information from his more recent book, written with John W Dean: Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.
Face-paw. In which we learn the late psychologist Bob Altemeyer was tripping balls and took his Columbian marching powder with no cutting, straight up. Children, babies and short tailed marmots: if you’re living in a totalitarian nightmare, you’re not publishing cutsey books about the totalitarians. At least not in that country. So to the qualifications of the late Bob and the author of this article we must add: Completely virgin of any even vague nodding acquaintance with historical totalitarianism. Or perhaps more germane: busy posturing for an audience even more clueless than they are, and capable of smarmy and bottomless self-delusion.
Blah blah blah about a group of “Trump followers” who are called “social dominators” (rolls eyes) who have made a conscious choice to work against equality and embrace bigotry. No support for how anyone on the right side of the aisle is actually a bigot or against equality (before the law) but I guess when you’re speaking to delusional ignoramuses, you can just make sh*t up. And they’ve been making sh*t up by the bucketful in the social “sciences” since Margaret Meade was hoaxed by a bunch of teens.
Then we get to the good part, where he examines the intellectual characteristics of what he thinks is the majority on our side. Cough. A moment please while I fetch and excerpt. I am sure all of you who know me and have read me for years will look at these characteristics and…. I won’t spoil it for you. Here:
Submissiveness towards authority. RWAs believe it is a moral duty not just to obey, but also to respect leaders and authority figures that they believe are legitimate. Conversely, they are extremely lenient about the behavior of authorities, believing it is a leader’s right to break the rules.
Conventionalism and conformity. RWAs believe that conforming to traditional social norms is a moral imperative. They want everyone to be the same and do not see value in diversity, bucking trends, or free thinking.
Aggression toward non-conformists and outsiders. RWAs are driven by fear that others will cause the “proper” social order to break down, and this makes them xenophobic and aggressive. In particular, they like to punch down at people who break norms. However, RWAs will show higher aggression toward any group when it is encouraged by their leaders.
Stop laughing! I can’t hear myself thinking for your guffaws. Decorum in the pews.
Look, it’s absolutely hilarious, I get that, to hear someone from what has been not only the dominant, but the overwhelmingly dominant and controlling side of the aisle for the last 100 years imagining that anyone who disagrees with them, that is anyone who has gone against schooling, indoctrination, “expert opinion” the industrial information/entertainment complex, is the “conformist” who hates free thinking. As for the hostility against outsiders, we recommend this fine gentleman buy a mirror. And the soonest the best. And let’s not get into the whole submissiveness to leaders when it comes to a leader who was supposed to be “a kind of god.” PFUI.
I’m running incredibly long, so I’ll just quote the title of his “characteristics” of what I must presume he thinks is OUR fiction.
1. Glorifying Loyalty to an Alpha Male
I have no clue what he’s talking about. Is Alpha Male a furry thing? Anyway, judging by what has gone before, I’m going to assume in his conception an “alpha male” is any man who doesn’t need mommy to tie his shoes, isn’t rendered impotent by the thought that all penetration is violation. If that’s the case, I must admit I often have alpha males in my stories, both villains and protagonists. Even my men who are… ahem fond of the company of men tend to be indeed more than piles of goo in the fetal position on the floor. (Even those who logically should be.) As for glorifying loyalty? What???? Look, my characters PRIZE loyalty to those who deserve it. That can be yes, male leaders, but also female leaders and much more often the weaker people — male, female, alien, raccoons — under their protection. I don’t know what the hell “glorifying” is this context, but I can tell you I’d rather fight by the side of people who prize loyalty than beside weasels who’ll betray you for the next hotness in critical theory.
2. Villainizing Rabble-Rousers
All I have to say is, of course, anyone who has read my books knows I villanize the rabble rousers. In fact, I’m sorry to tell you this everyone in this blog who writes, both commenters and main writers are guilty of this.
This is absolutely true if by “Rabble rousers” this speshul flower means “people who bellyache, smarm and whine about how others are better off while doing nothing to improve or fix the problems.”
At this point one begins to wonder if this wise poster has ever read a book by one of the people he villifies and, shall we say, villanizes.
3. The Man Who Does What It Takes
In which I find out that MacGyver, Simon Templar, and in fact Gilgamesh were all characters in fascist literature.
I don’t feel like reading, much less transcribing the pseudo-intellectual drivel in packed under this heading, but seriously…
Again, face-paw. Let me explain, very carefully how fiction-for-entertainment (as opposed to fiction for preaching, which no one reads, but every politically correct person claims to have read) works: the reader likes reading about a character who can get out of difficult situations in ways the reader himself isn’t sure he could. It’s called a vicarious cathartic experience and also fun. I’m not going to explain the concept of fun, though I think the gentleman poster would do well to study it.
Oh this also makes Captain Kirk a fascist character, something that would shock the heck out Roddenberry.
4. Stranger Danger
The what? No seriously, what the actual, what? I don’t read much on the left. I used to. But I really haven’t since I’ve had a lot more of the indie stuff to read. And this rubric leaves me utterly confused.
Oh, wait, I do read some leftist stuff, mostly young chicks writing JAFF. They’re more likely to have “stranger danger” than anyone else, in that anyone who doesn’t fit the in group they’re portraying as good is bad-evil.
Most of the stuff I read does not portray people who are not in the in-group as dangerous or evil. And in fact, in science fiction, the stranger tends to be far more interesting.
5. Poor Representation
Yes, here he is absolutely correct. Most of us do not represent!
On the serious side, I have to confess that I don’t go out of my way to have one each of any race, ethnicity or other minority I can think of.
This is on account of the fact that, unlike fascists or other leftists, I don’t think of people — and most of my characters are people — as broad categories of groups. I don’t lay awake at night wondering if I have enough pacific islanders in my Regency England romance, for instance.
As for the future, I have serious doubts they will still consider the same categories as categories or obsess about current issues. (Particularly since most of those issues are being kept issues by ideologues mostly interested in power.)
I don’t talk a lot about what color each character is because that absolutely doesn’t matter to me.
You know who was race obsessed? Fascists.
On the other hand we’ve already established the poster is not really cognizant of history or philosophy or much of anything.
I am very disappointed to find this article twaddle wrapped in pretentious academic speech.
I would caution any of you to ignore this stuff and write about real people living in the real world and not the phantasmagoria conjured by the minds of those who live in such an ideologically sealed bubble that they have no idea what is going on in the minds — or books! — of those they would claim as opponents.
NOW: Remember this is a writer’s blog, so confine your discussion to the writerly aspects. If you wish to discuss politics, go to accordingtohoyt.com, where you can pound on the politics to your heart’s content.
A note- This is a political and lifestyle blog, so to discuss such aspects of this post, do so here. If you want to discuss writing and possibly froth at the mouth about writing, head to madgenius.com.
According To Hoyt 
Omnia taedent
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To quote Bugs Bunny,
“… He don’t know me very well, do he?”
In their heads it’s still 1950 and Dad just said “No, you cannot borrow the car tonight, you busted up the last three cars we bought you!”
Which is, apparently, fascism or something, man….
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Yeah, I skimmed over the quoted bits.
I’m wildly annoyed by the general academic misconduct that purports to be able to show that society is facist going back to some specific time in recent prehistory. Like, I have the vague impression that ‘dawn of everything’ is pegging it ten k to forty k years back or so.
Most of the academic attempts to classify and sort political ideologies are themselves wacky. Especially the danger forecasts.
All of the problem behavior around ideology is academic trained people whose most important theory is not “humans are created in the image of God, so casual murder is blasphemous”. Or academic trained people who have that idea as their most important one, and who wish to be blasphemous, who wish to murder with impunity precisely because other people wish to forbid it as blasphemy.
Most people are simply not fundamentally rooting themselves in academia, and primarily perceiving the world through this one idea that they vaguely listened to someone saying one year. Most people are living in a fairly sensory world, and not just almost entirely obsessed with invisible abstractions.
Sensory world people who primarily prefer to be cruel to others do exist, and they do self select to murder-lots sorts of ideologies.
But, for a non-evil person, the actual trickery danger of evil ideology runs through being so oriented to an abstraction that one does not step back, and see individuals.
In the broader world of behavior outside academia, ideology is not particularly dangerous. If one is oriented to good and to evil, and if one is brave and willing to select good over evil, then an ordered sorting of goals and of means filters out a lot of the insane garbage.
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Character flaws, not a property of specific ideology that is inherent to the cosmetics.
The Jains are maybe pretty okay.
Murderous Jew haters, are more of a fundamentals test, not a cosmetic one. They are not well, and will not orient and navigate to very good places without first stopping and dropping garbage.
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Disappointed, perhaps, but I’m certainly not surprised.
I would expected it enrobed, thusly, as it were, like tin-foil wrapped, gay baked potato .
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Have I mentioned lately that I love you in a totally intellectual and platonic way? If not, take is as granted.
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It might have been funnier if I had found 8-bit big band’s model of a salarian scientist two weeks ago.
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…. There you are, Mrs. Scrint, I hope that answers some of your problems – have a nice trip. (more applause) Well now, the result of last week’s competition when we asked you to find a derogatory term for the Belgians. Well, the response was enormous and we took quite a long time sorting out the winners. There were some very clever entries. Mrs. Hatred of Leicester Said ‘let’s not call them anything, let’s just ignore them’ …
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:looks at the big quote:
That’s some impressive projection, isn’t it?
Literally each one is… actual fact for progressive activists, with the slightest of twitch; the author seems to be failing to demonstrate a theory of mind.
It’s a “leftwingers pretending to be on the right” thing of appearance and behavior that would align strongly with villains who are fond of the company of men. Right down to I kid you not making fun of a guy who ignores a sausage-fest to talk up a friendly supermodel who shows interest in him.
Even if you did, you’d be doing it wrong, because “representation” means they have to fit the box exactly. You are not allowed to deviate.
So the various, ahem, men who prefer the company of men, and the female characters, and such– they don’t do it correctly, so they’re not representation. Dyce isn’t a woman, although if she had a girlfriend she might be allowed under the “Geeky girls must be lesbian” representation rules. She’s probably have to have a lot of different girlfriends, though.
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Dyce, I swear just said “Ew” in my head and also that she’d be as likely to sleep with a girl as to sleep with Ben. Take that as you will.
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I don’t believe her, if she hasn’t fallen asleep leaning against Ben I’ll buy her a cake.
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Leaving aside the fact if she announced they were doing any such thing to Ben he’d ask so many questions as to why she’d STILL be explaining three days later. Or give up and go sand something.
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The bit about the guys and the model reminds me of something I read a few weeks ago. It didn’t go into detail, but apparently the person writing had spoken to a small group of college women (possibly a group of friends). Out of that group, only one woman was going on dates (no details about the dates). The young women hastened to add that she wasn’t a “pick-me girl”.
Presumably that means that in some circles, it’s the default assumption (though I don’t know how widespread that might be).
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fascist ought to mean something, and once did but we’ve gone from an actually existing political movement by way of Soviet propaganda through not Stalinist, to whatever the current left doesn’t like.
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Stalin did originate the ‘NSDAP is Right-Wing’ lie, which today’s Leftroids parrot mindlessly.
Closest thing we’ve had to a fascist lately was 0bama — or, more accurately, 0bama’s ventriloquists.
One of my characters is going to meet 0bama. “What have you ever accomplished? You recite words composed by other people, you sign papers written by other people, you spend money taken from other people.”
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Not a new definition. Instapundit (I think) recently put up a quote from Orwell in *1944* in which he noted that the insult “fascist” had devolved to mean someone or something that the insult giver didn’t like. And that was while the Allies were still fighting *actual fascists* (under German leadership, since Mr. Fascist himself was deposed at that point).
And, of course, there’s the very first instance of a Republican political candidate being called a Nazi clear back in the mid-’30s.
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This idiot is trying to define something that George Orwell was unable to define? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Of course, Orwell’s attempt involved listening to the people who called themselves Fascist.
This idiot is of the school of thought that goes “Anything I don’t like is Fascist”. 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
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Well, they’ve only been trying since 1950 to pathologize conservatism (Adorno F scale). They’re not very good at it (or anything else, really), so please be patient.
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A problem with Hitler’s NSDAP was in attempting to turn the sorts of men that the communists used to some other end.
If a fault is in the men themselves, then it can also be a fault to try to use them as those other masters would use them. (This is another formulation for ‘if goals are not symmetric, then strategies and tactics would also lack symmetry’.)
If someone thinks that the communists and their methods have a heap of powerful magic, then they could feel a need to have that magic for themselves. So it can be truth for a communist-adjacent that heresy means fascism.
Setting violent theory obsessives to run amok tends to not be really useful for peaceful civilized purposes. Setting violent theory obsessives to run amok ‘for our side’, is going to tend to develop in non-peaceful, non-civilized directions.
Note, I am not trying to give Hitler any credit for good intentions here. Explicitly, I do not think he did.
The first thing I described was a problem with Hitler’s NSDAP. It was far from being the only, or the most important, problem with Hitler, and problem with the NSDAP.
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I actually read that article. At the risk of being annoying (usually anytime I open my mouth), I’ll repeat what I wrote on Discord yesterday.
Most of it is hilarious projection. Yeah, those evil fascists insist on blindly obeying leaders. Funny So, it was all those fascists who insisted on masking everybody because Fauci said so. Good to know. They ignore the faults, weaknesses, and missteps of their leaders because they think their intentions are good. Right, and Joe Biden was the robust picture of health right up to the moment he wasn’t anymore. Good to know that all those Biden sycophants were fascists.
Also I’m thinking of teasing my friend Rebecca Yarros with the news that she’s a fascist because, aside from her main female character, a male character is the next best and actually makes decisions.
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I see. So they condemn our ‘submissiveness to authority’ while hating us for refusing to submit to their authority. 🤔
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[insert south park clip here] “Respect My Authoritay!”
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DIng Ding Ding Ding. Got it in one.
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Weak minds assume any position your characters take in a book reflect you personally. They don’t understand the whole concept of fiction. They write propaganda, not fiction, because any view not theirs is reduced to simplest caricature of evil. They are all fascists, and racists, and Hitler. It makes for pretty boring writing. Don’t take them too seriously. Some will grow out of it and the hopeless will get worse. They will alienate all their family by only wanting to talk about issues, and run for Congress.
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“That which opposes Worldwide Socialism is Fascist.”
“The Evil we do is actually done by our opponents, as we imagine ourselves doing, which is not of course Evil.”
and of course
“Power to the Party in the Name of the People. Shut up.”
“Slavery is Freedom”
…
Ever notice real “alphas” just lead and others follow? No talk, no drama. Just happens. Its the loud-mouthed Betas shrieking “NO! -I- am Alpha! -I- AM!” And yes, those sad creatures are ultimately a Furry thing.
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I’m going to go for another take, based on the excerpts here.
On one level, this looks like basic indoctrination; a primer on What the Bad People Believe (and therefore what you, boys and girls, as Good People, should not believe). Bad People are Fascists, because everybody knows Fascists are Bad People. It ought to be a clue that Hitler is the Ultimate Fascist, (possibly with dishonorable mentions to Franco and Pinochet for the slightly better historically informed). Hitler, to modern doctrine, is the personification of every evil, though that’s getting complicated: somehow, one must ignore the Holocaust, or focus on the non-Jewish victims, while maintaining one’s view of him as a bloodthirsty monster. The fact that so many of the peope putting out this stuff are obsessively focused on Hitler, without a thought for the equal and worse horrors of Uncle Joe, Comrade Mao, Pol Pot and King “Launch the Nukes if I’m killed,” Jun Eun, shows where their training came from. As if we didn’t know.
But I’m thinking this article may be meant more in the way of reassurance. “In these dark times, when the forces of Darkness seem ascendent, remember, Boys and Girls, that you are the Good People, and here’s how you can recognize the Bad People when you see them. Bad People -” followed by the list in the article.
Which suggests the nimrods who are trying to maintain their dominance are worried about doubts among their followers. It reminds me of one of Schmitz’s Agent of Vega stories (“The Illusionist,”) where one character is beginning to develop doubts about the (thoroughly wrongheaded) system she was brought up in and wonders if she needs a few weeks of re-indoctrination in the system. I suspect this article is part of that basic re-indoctrination for potential doubters.
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Have to ignore the killing off the disabled or costly to take care of folks, too.
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But…but that would mean the Glorious Socialist Paradise Of The Great White North, Canuckistan, is fascist and Eeevul! 😛
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I’m sure the ‘anti-fascists’ of the Democratic Party are all people of good will, excellent discernment, and are not at all rote cosmetic idjits or in the pay of the CCP.
Nope, no insecure psychopaths there whatsoever.
They definitely are not desperate.
They are not distressed, and if you drew an accurate fishbone diagram of why they are (not) distressed, it would not say that they fucked up by investing in ‘perfect-information zero-chaos’ plans, and by assuming that after ‘one smart guy’ waved his hands, everything afterwards would just happen for them.
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Most of us here write about realistic people living in imaginary worlds, solving problems more interesting and satisfying than dealing with credentialed left-wing lunatics or petty bureaucratic tyrants.
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well, yes. BUT I mean a world that obeys logic and physics oh, and human nature.
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Last time I saw this much projection going on, the Cinemark 24-plex theater was still in operation.
“Why do they keep supporting a man who has violated all of their moral rules?” Um, are we talking about the Maine Nazi, got an SS tattoo, says women are responsible for being raped, but we have to support him in order to defeat the evil that is Susan Collins?
“Conversely, they are extremely lenient about the behavior of authorities, believing it is a leader’s right to break the rules.” Bill Clinton, anyone? “A little sexual harassment is a small price to pay for keeping abortion legal.”
“In particular, they like to punch down at people who break norms.” From the people who brought us cancel culture. Remember the rodeo clown who dared to make fun of Obama, to give just one of many examples?
And yes, it’s very true that none of this would be written in a totalitarian culture. To quote a Hungarian thinker who actually lived under one, about his experiences under the Soviets.
“In the fifties, you didn’t try to fight it. You just kept your head down and hoped that no one would notice you. In the sixties, something shifted. You still couldn’t talk about IT—but you could talk about the fact that there was something that you weren’t allowed to talk about.”
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I got a little ways into the article’s comments, and was mildly disappointed to not see “Ha-ha-ha-ha! Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Breath. [Repeat]”
OTOH, my mind provided the appropriate response. Was not going to post in that Bloosky comment section, though.
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RWAs believe it is a moral duty not just to obey, but also to respect leaders and authority figures that they believe are legitimate.
There are a couple of caveats, but generally accurate.
Conversely, they are extremely lenient about the behavior of authorities, believing it is a leader’s right to break the rules
record scratch lolwut? A legitimate authority figure follows the rules, or if they’re terrible rules that never should have been rules int he first place, gets rid of them. That’s part of how you know they’re a legitimate authority.
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The biggest caveat is that we have a theory of what “legitimate authority” is, and the #1 way for someone to lose the title is to… exceed their authority, much less violate it.
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It’s mostly because Marxist-aligned types needed to have a new bogeyman to screech at, so they took the Nazi’s atrocities and decided “fascist” was the new one. Then they made a “list” they could use to make any potential opponent into a “fascist” they could justify opposing/destroying. I think there was an older list that had similar categories.
I use a summation attributed to Mussolini: “All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Then point out how well the ones screeching “FASCIST!1!!” are aligning with that.
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What’s a word for a bundle of sticks that starts with F and ends in T?
Fascist.
… what word did you think I was asking about?
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A variation on the current joke translated from Mandarin seems to apply:
”What is it like living in an actual authoritarian nightmare?”
”Oh, can’t complain.”
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