I'm just venting, it's not a big deal and it's nothing that needs fixing.

I take a conciliatory approach to engaging people, except when someone is completely out of line in which case I match their tone and rhetoric because shutting them up is of more use than a discussion could ever be. I don't appreciate the online slapfight culture and I think it's pretty toxic and it just causes people to double down in their position.

I don't bother with teaching people way to refine their arguments if their politics are in direction opposition to my own but if I get rh impression that someone is having a discussion with me in good faith about a topic we disagree with, I will often explain to them where my argument is heading, where I see their argument heading, and how the chips will fall. Not in a way like I'm trying to say that I already know everything and this is exactly how it's going to play out but more like the fact that I've been through this discussion before and we can cut to the chase if they are willing to level with me sorta thing (it probably doesn't come off that way but oh well.)

So recently I came across someone who I figure is either a baby leftist or more likely a progressive lib saying that fascism is when corporate power merges with the government or whatever. This was on an actual discussion about fascism btw.

I'm sure that most of you have already had this same discussion that I was about to dive into with this person. I find it to be tiring.

If you don't know the discussion basically it's this:

• People quote Mussolini as saying that

• The quote has never been sourced

• Mussolini only ever discussed corporatism, not corporatocracy and he details this system in writings like The Doctrine of Fascism

• While Mussolini coined the term fascism, he is not the only voice on the subject and just because he may have used a particular definition doesn't mean that we are all bound to sticking to his definition

• The Wikipedia entry on corporatism used to have a disclaimer about distinguishing the term from corporatocracy but I think they've updated it to being the entire first paragraph because lay people keep on conflating the two

• Corporatism is a system of structuring the political and economic spheres in such a way that people are grouped according to their profession or their interest group (but usually profession) into guilds that advocate for the group the represent with government - think where trade unions having a seat at the table with government and other interest groups like stay at home parents, unemployed people, religious groups etc. also have a representative guild

• Corporatocracy is a garbage-tier lib term that is functionally meaningless because it appeals to this notion of being able to turn the clock back to a time when corporations and governments were separate (you know, like back in the old days of the first corporations such as the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company, which ran intercontinental militaries and ruled as the government over entire countries they annexed... 🙄)

Anyway, you know the deal.

I told this person that I get what they're saying but corporatism doesn't mean what they think it means and I gesture to the Mussolini stuff being about corporatism not corporatocracy etc. I'm trying to be patient and kind in how I engage with them but they immediately go into online debatebro mode and start getting snarky and condescending and all of that stuff.

I was trying to give them an easy out and let them down gently so they could develop a deeper understanding of these terms and of politics more broadly. I wasn't looking for some beat down or to feel a sense of superiority over them. I was just trying to signal to them that they're on shaky ground and their position relies upon assumptions, and if they're willing to listen then I can give them pointers for developing their knowledge.

Idk. It just drives me nuts when people automatically assume that they are the smartest person in the room. I don't like humbling people but when someone is so self-assured it's almost impossible to get through to them without turning a discussion with them into bloodsport. I hate it.