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ohsalome · 7 months

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How does a state become fascist? How did Russia do it?

A special kind of nationalism is needed here. To convince people that you were once great. That once you were a military empire — and then you were humiliated. This is what Hitler once said: “Germany was great, had colonies in Africa, but we were humiliated at Versailles

Under the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, which ended the First World War, Germany had to get rid of its numerous colonies in Africa, China and Micronesia, cede significant territories in Europe and pay reparations to the victorious states of the war in the amount of $442 billion at 2012 prices.. Our empire was taken from us, and our people in other countries and former territories faced genocide. We need a strong ruler to come and restore our empire. To show that we are a big powerful player. And Iʼm ready to do it.”

Putin behaved the same way. He even said that if Russia does not regain its greatness, it will destroy the world.

Also, often in countries that become fascist, there are many economic problems. And nationalism, this feeling of power, can replace food — you will draw your happiness from this feeling, or from the awareness of yourself as a German or a white American. After that, you say that representative democracy is evil. That it allows the existence of LGBT people and the like, that the state is weak because of democracy. Fascism appeals to conservative, religious people who would not call themselves fascists. He tells them: we will protect you from your children becoming gay, from someone destroying your churches. And they often call all their opponents communists. And they get votes. Sound familiar, right?

[...]

It is ironic that the Russians, who were once rightly regarded as the victors over fascism and who now practice fascism, call their war "anti-fascist."

It is necessary to pay attention not to words, but to ideology. Putin can say that he is a liberator — but he is closer to Hitler than to Brezhnev, to Peter I than to communists. And this is an important argument in favor of why the Russians should not leave a single piece of Ukrainian land. For the same reasons why it was not possible to leave, for example, Warsaw under the Nazis.

Now Putin is talking about Ukrainians like Hitler was talking about Jews. He says that there can be no Ukrainians, only Russians, and that all Ukrainians are actually Russians. This position means that he is going to get rid of everyone who speaks the Ukrainian language. That is why all this delusion of the West about territorial concessions must stop.

#ukraine #war in ukraine #russia #russian invasion of ukraine #politics #russo ukrainian war #russian invasion in ukraine #fascism #nazism #yale #Jason Stanley #political philosophy

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troythecatfish · 5 months

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philosophors · 6 months

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// Art: “Winter Landscape with Figures” by George Morland

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

— Plato

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blackponderer · 7 months

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“All About Love” by bell hooks, p. 122 - 123

#philosophy #socioeconomics #sociology #political philosophy #capitalism #anti capitalism #bell hooks

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lem0nademouth · 5 months

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i think the hardest pill for leftists/progressives/liberals/whatever you want to call yourself to swallow is that it’s not that simple. it’s not that easy.

i was the victim of a violent crime, and i personally do not want my perpetrator to go to prison. i do not think it will serve to protect anyone in the future or help me heal from what happened. but that’s my own feeling about my own experience. i do not get to dictate what other victims and their loved ones feel is justice for them. i support transformative and restorative justice as an option, but it can’t be the only one.

i work with young kids (2mo-7yrs) and try to keep up to date on discussions about child development to make sure i’m aware of what behavior is considered age appropriate. i ended up following a mom on tiktok who has been sharing her story about her son (who remains anonymous) and his progressive diagnoses of ODD, conduct disorder, and eventually antisocial personality disorder. he has threatened to kill his family, physically assaulted and severely harmed his family and neighbors, damaged private and public property, and has been arrested on several felony charges before his sixteenth birthday. this mom is distraught. he has no known history of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, was raised in a stable household where all his needs were met. he tried to kill one of the kids at the psychiatric hospital he was placed in, eventually leading to the state taking custody of him because it wasn’t safe for his family to be around him. not every person with his diagnoses is like him. but he is. and there needs to be a solution for him and his family.

my cousin was born to parents who were on a host of illicit drugs throughout the pregnancy and her early life, leading to her and her brother being placed in foster care. they were adopted by my aunt and it was revealed that my cousin has an intellectual disability called borderline intellectual functioning because her brain couldn’t develop properly in utero. fast forward to now, she’s in her early 20s and my aunt is raising the baby she had after being impregnated by her abusive boyfriend (we tried to get her to leave, called the police, my uncle nearly killed the guy) because she literally does not have the ability to raise a baby. she cannot process the complex thoughts you need to take care of a baby - her brain literally can’t do it. so now my aunt and uncle are raising their grandchild while caring for their daughter, who will never be able to live independently. was it ethical for that child to be born? i don’t know! i don’t even know if it was ethical for my cousins to be born! but i know it’s not as easy as “everyone should be able to have kids whenever they want and if you say otherwise its eugenics”.

people aren’t political issues. they’re people. and pretending like you have the answer to every problem doesn’t make you better or more in control; it makes you disillusioned. it’s not that easy. it never has been.

#long post #prison abolition #eugenics #psychiatry #politics #political theory #political philosophy #ethics #progressive ideology #leftist #liberalism #progressivism #leftism #its not that easy #restorative justice #transformative justice

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a-book-is-a-garden · 3 months

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“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep woman in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a plaything.”

- Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”

#A Vindication of the Rights of Woman #Mary Wollstonecraft #Quote #Literature #Philosophy #Political Philosophy #Feminism #English #18th Century

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frolic-in-frame · 7 days

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Animal farm quote, George Orwell (made by me 21/4/24)

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existentialcomicsfeed · 10 months

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The Rise of the Pawns

#philosophy #existential comics #chess #political philosophy

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phoenixyfriend · 2 months

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Hello! I was stalking your blog and saw your tags re: you cannot see an end to the occupation without causing large scale anti-semetism. So i wanted to send you this link. Additionally, i dont think opposing the israelis are in and of itself an act of anti-semetism as they're not being opposed bc of their religion but the fact that they, almost entirely as a nation save a meager handful, are disconcertingly hateful and murderous towards arabs and Palestinians. It is fact that they've created an ethnostate and use their religion as a shield to justify their wrongs.

I wrote this on the train to work so it's not as clean as it could be. Bear with me.

I think we're talking about two different issues. Your concern is the fault and the philosophy of the existence of Israel. My topic in those tags was the logistical follow-through and possible anticipated consequences.

Whether or not Israel should have tied their state to the Jewish religion is a different question. The fact of the matter is that they HAVE, and that many people see them as equivalent to each other.

For the purposes of this post, I am going to work on the premise that Israel must be dismantled. I have mixed feelings on the topic (see the below considerations), but for the rest of the post, let's assume it IS happening and we're just discussing how.

If the government at fault is violently and militarily opposed to being dismantled, then the dismantling has to come from outside, by foreign powers.

The nearest neighbors are differing levels of friendly, with some being of almost normalized relations, like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, but also include Yemen (admittedly not THAT close) and Lebanon, which have the Houthis and Hezbollah, and the former has "a curse upon the Jews" in their slogan.

"Allah is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam"

So whatever your personal take on the philosophy of Israel's existence, propaganda, and choice to define itself by Judaism is, the fact that there are multiple countries in the region that are run by or at least sympathetic to groups of this opinion cannot be discounted when talking abut things like disarmament.

There is only one Jew in Yemen, a guy imprisoned for trying to smuggle out a Torah.

Syria and Lebanon, which are much closer to Israel physically, have less than 100 between them. It is vanishingly unlikely that the once-thriving communities chose to leave en masse. Many were probably enticed by the supposed safety and freedom of Israel, yes, but a near total exodus? Unlikely without domestic discrimination against Jews.

So that is what I am thinking of when I talk about nearby antisemitism.

Forcibly de-arming Israel leaves them open to the antisemitism of their neighbors UNLESS an outside power is there to manage the transition, and people who dislike Israel are generally vocally opposed to that kind of international interference.

Unfortunately, it currently looks like the only way to dismantle Israel's institution of violence is either an international oversight of the kind enforced on post-war Germany as it transitioned to a more peaceful nation, or to try to do it naturally and slowly like in South Africa.

But South Africa still has extreme economic inequality between the races. Speaking as an American, it's been 160 years since slavery ended and black people are STILL suffering here, so a slow and natural process where the Israeli government is "convinced" to stop being discriminatory seems unlikely. There are anti-apartheid activists in Israel! There are plenty of pro-Palestine Jewish organizations in other countries! But they are not enough to take apart Israel in a peaceful and stable manner with a speed that would help Palestinians recovery in any reasonable timeframe.

Which brings us back to either violent overthrow or foreign interference by UN forces, meaning yet more western military posts in the middle east, because a disarmed Israel is one that is open to the vocally antisemitic and anti-Israel groups just across their North/East borders.

I guess MAYBE Saudi Arabia could be the oversight force, but I don't think an absolute monarchy is the best choice for overseeing the complete restructuring of a democratic state.

As for the link you sent... 75% of Israelis were born in Israel. Half of the population is either Mizrahi Jews escaping persecution from nearby states (again: Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon could not have gotten their Jewish populations that low without systemic discrimination) that were happy to see them go, or their descendants. The rest are mostly jews who escaped antisemitism in Europe or their descendants. (Also, Ethiopian jews, but given that Israel discriminates against THEM, they're a bit too complicated to discuss in this already complicated post.)

And of course there's the Jews who were already living there... and the question of those who were kicked out centuries or even millenia ago by Romans or the Islamic caliphates or the Ottoman empire or what have you.

(I'll note here that I have a large bias against Ottoman Empire things and am trying to be conscious of that.)

None of this JUSTIFIES their actions. But the whole Settlers thing, at least for the main body of Israel, is really complicated by the fact that Israel's history, and the fact that the Jewish people HAVE been there in some capacity for thousands of years, is complicated. He mentions the decolonization of Algeria and French people leaving but... French people had France. They could go back to France.

Israel is the homeland. The whole reason Jewish people wanted it was because their thousands of years of history were there. Their holiest site (temple mount) was there. They'd just been driven from it over and over again.

It does not, by any means, justify their actions against Palestine. It DOES, however, mean that the whole "jews should have stayed where they were instead of coming here" argument is... flawed. They should NOT have taken that land, no, should NOT have kicked out Palestinians, but at that point we also get into whatever the hell Britain was doing.

West Bank settlers are a different issue. That should not be happening. That is in fact colonization. Go back to your own side of the border. Etc.

My thoughts on the situating keep changing as I learn, but I'm really hesitant to get on board with any particularly black-and-white generalizations.

#current events #political philosophy #Israel #Palestine #colonization #Phoenix answers asks #Phoenix Politics

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lordascapelion · 9 months

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Been a lot of talk about fascism and obviously leftoids have been making its definition “political stuff I don’t like” for eons, but I think I’ve figured out what it actually, really is based on some information I’ve been consuming lately.

In short, Fascism is the idea that the State is a metaphysical entity that the citizens are utterly beholden to. The State is the body, the citizens are the cells and various organizations are… well, the organs.

Fascism doesn’t have prescriptive dictates on how the economy functions because a prescriptive economic system isn’t the goal- the sustaining of the State is. This is why the fascist regimes we have seen played fast and loose economically. Of course, as in a body, the businesses (organs) are under tight control by the State, so while there might be some aspects of a market, there is no true free enterprise.

Just as in the body, where some organs are considered more important, fascism embraces hierarchy (its main departure from Marxism, it’s rival collectivist ideology). After all, some organs will be held in higher importance than others. While the State/Body sustains its citizens/cells, no one individual has worth outside how they contribute to the whole. Anyone who knows biology knows that cells undergo “apoptosis”- programmed cell suicide, all the time. Cells that rebel against these dictates are cancer and the body eliminates them.

Worth repeating is the metaphysical nature of the State in Fascist belief. Not to go all anime villain on you, but Fascists literally believe they are creating the next phase of human existence- the coming together of all to form a new type of creature. Fascism is not just a governmental system, but a religion.

Fascism is not about any particular mode or method. It only truly cares about the elevation of the Corpus State above the individual and will employ whatever works to achieve this state of being. It has absolutely nothing to do with being “Capitalism in decay.” Marxists hate fascism because it’s a competing ideology, not due to any ontological state of the fascist ideal. At the end of the day they are both collectivist politic-religions that attempted to fill the void left by traditional religion’s receding from Western culture. Communists hate fascists because they are too alike, not because they are opposites.

And finally, allow me to declare: fascism is total bullshit. Just like Marx’s stateless society free of money and human greed, the Corpus State will never happen. Human beings cannot devote themselves as replaceable cells to an uncaring overmind. It’s not in our DNA. Fascism claims to be able to overcome human nature to create the New Human, but the law of God/Nature trumps the “innovations” of humanity, every time. The disdain for the individual fascism holds is at odds with the ascendant divine spark within every human being. Liberty is the optimal state for humans to embrace their divine reflections.

#fascism #political philosophy #philosophy

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loneberry · 10 months

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—Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene: Toward the Idea of Degrowth Communism

See “solastalgia”, a term coined by an Australian philosopher to “describe the existential melancholy induced by environmental change.”

Apparently geologists will soon vote on whether to accept the claim that we are in the geological epoch known as the Anthropocene.

“The AWG [Anthropocene Working Group] will present a proposal to make the Anthropocene official to the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy later this summer. If the subcommission’s members agree with a 60% majority, the proposal will then pass on to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which will also have to vote and agree with a 60% majority for the proposal to move onward for ratification.” What will be the outcome of the vote?

#political philosophy #philosophy #kohei saito #marx #marxism #communism #anthropocene #capitalocene #ecology #environment #solastalgia #capitalism #political economy #theory #metabolic rift #Lukács

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without-ado · 8 months

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"The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice."

—Montesquieu

#quotes #montesquieu #words #tyranny #french #political philosophy

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philosophors · 11 months

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“People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Conduct of Life”

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blackponderer · 9 months

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(Let This Radicalize You, p. 108, 111)

#philosophy #social justice #political philosophy #abolition #sociology #nonviolence #activism #mariame kaba

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aibidil · 1 year

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On “Civilization” from The Dawn of Everything

One problem is that we’ve come to assume that ‘civilization’ refers, in origin, simply to the habit of living in cities. Cities, in turn, were thought to imply states. But as we’ve seen, that is not the case historically, or even etymologically. The word ‘civilization’ derives from Latin civilis, which actually refers to those qualities of political wisdom and mutual aid that permit societies to organize themselves through voluntary coalition. In other words, it originally meant the type of qualities exhibited by Andean ayllu associations or Basque villages, rather than Inca courtiers or Shang dynasts. If mutual aid, social co-operation, civic activism, hospitality or simply caring for others are the kind of things that really go to make civilizations, then this true history of civilization is only just starting to be written.

As we’ve been showing throughout this book, in all parts of the world small communities formed civilizations in that true sense of extended moral communities. Without permanent kings, bureaucrats or standing armies they fostered the growth of mathematical and calendrical knowledge. In some regions they pioneered metallurgy, the cultivation of olives, vines and date palms, or the invention of leavened bread and wheat beer; in others they domesticated maize and learned to extract poisons, medicines and mind-altering substances from plants. Civilizations, in this true sense, developed the major textile technologies applied to fabrics and basketry, the potter’s wheel, stone industries and beadwork, the sail and maritime navigation, and so on.

A moment’s reflection shows that women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilization. As we saw in earlier chapters, tracing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite literally, in the fabric of material culture, such as painted ceramics that mimic both textile designs and female bodies in their forms and elaborate decorative structures. To take just two examples, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early Mesopotamian cuneiform documents or in the layout of Peru’s Chavín temples sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe or sculptor, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in earlier times through concrete practices such as the solid geometry and applied calculus of weaving or beadwork. What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.

—The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow

#civilization #history #anthropology #archaeology #political philosophy #human nature #sharing because I love this so much and need everyone to read it 🥲#finally some good fucking food #these guys spend the entire first chapter absolutely tearing apart all the enlightenment thinkers theories about social evolution #the dawn of everything

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haveyoureadthisbook-poll · 4 months

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#the prince #niccolo machiavelli #political philosophy #book poll #have you read this book poll #polls

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