What exactly is the difference between them? If I were to draw a Venn diagram, I could probably think of some contrasts. I don’t know if most conservatives really care about segregation at this point. I don’t know if conservatives are down for a genocide (though I have my suspicions). The main thing that they have in common is anything BLM or black crime related. Talk to any regular conservative about those things and they’ll turn into Derek from American History X. This is because at their core, they think the law should apply to everyone but them. They don’t care if White people get away with crimes against POC, but think POC should be executed for shoplifting.
Conservatives know how to be slippery and use certain language in certain contexts, or actually most of them are fooled by their own rhetoric about freedom and individual rights etc. Neo Nazis have lost the plot and don't believe they have any electoral means of gaining power or they don't believe in the neoliberal methods of enacting racist oppression because it's not direct and widespread enough for their liking.
Without fail, every single conservative person I've ever met holds 3 things in common as their core ideology. Hatred of the poor, rascism, and a confused white supremacist understanding of American history. Almost all of them hide those things from even themselves to the point where ideological expression is more like a game. It's sports because materially speaking most of them have already won. They sit atop a pile of corpses from the global south and usually maintain white supremacist cultural dominance at home.
A Neo Nazi however does not tolerate essentially winning, they want their victory to be more straightforward. They want the symbols and the songs and people murdered through direct violence. They find the deaths caused by poverty and negligence distasteful or too slow.
There's some hope here though. Because it's only a game to most conservatives, the working class ones are actually pretty amenable to working class policy a lot of the time. They want higher wages and more affordable healthcare. The capitalist conservatives are actual parasitic vampires gleefully chuckling it up as they extract value and enjoy their position on the top.
The neonazis though have soaked up too much internet nonsense and have driven themselves batty through memes and insular communities. They're a little like our shadow a lot of the time. Often social outcasts or they faced poverty themselves. Maybe they were complete nerds in school and escaped by reading Evola or some other fascist fuck. They're largely cosplayers but the smarter ones know how to use the conservative language to slip right in. That's part of why I don't believe they're too different ideologically.
Like Miller, Bannon, and Gorka were part of the Trump admin, which was supposedly conservative and not nazis, yet those three are 100% dyed in the wool bloodthirsty fascists. Fit right in.
Yeah so all in all I don't think much separates conservatives and modern fascists other than terms they use and what they believe about themselves. The fascists tend to be more nerdy or insane. It's an aesthetic difference.
Conservatives are just the OG state of false consciousness. They actually believe in bourgeois individualism and freedom. They think it works, and to a lot of them it appears that way because they lead moderately comfortable (but usually incredibly alienated) lives.
It's fun to start describing the base tenants of communism to your conservative family members and watch them just full throatedly agree with everything until you use the word "proletariat" or something and they immediately start screaming that you tricked them lol. The things they proclaim to believe are what we actually believe, the difference is that most conservatives find their community in the church, and the church is a wholly bourgeois institution incapable of revolutionary movement (in America at least).
I know a few black conservatives and maybe they're just following one stream, but their entire thing is like they took Ben Shapiro's advice about escaping poverty seriously. The whole, go to college, don't have kids after marriage, stop letting your pants sag thing. Their entire thing seems to be about trying to get black people to emulate suburban white business owners. They talk about political ideology in terms of self-help, like this is how you get out of debt, this is how you get a job in this field, this is how you keep a marriage together, stuff like that. They've entirely internalized that racism doesn't exist in the USA, but rather, black people have some kind of culture that keeps them impoverished and they act like the point of politics is to reach a point where you have a superior culture. They tried to rope me into one of their things a few years ago, some kind of group about learning financial literacy and getting into real-estate.
They also hate BLM, but it's the same thing that white conservatives pretend to believe in. That all accusations of racism come from a "victim mindset" where you're using self-defeating thoughts instead of achieving your potential of being an investment banker or house flipper or whatever the hell.
Yeah that's the exact sort of thing I've seen sometimes. It really does track to me as the same thing as white supremacy. It's proposing there's a correct way to be black and it involves talking, dressing, and acting in specific ways that white people are more comfortable with.
Imagine a black guy who manages to succeed under the terms of our society and make a better life for himself than his parents had. Like a dentist or something. Also he never makes a stink about all the structural racism he's experienced on the way.
Under conservative ideology, that guy is proof that all other black guys are lazy and deserve all the shit our society gives them. He's "one of the good ones."
Under neo nazi ideology, that guy's success is stealing from the white race and he needs to be dealt with. He's a threat.
They're the same thing
They can't tell the difference between Iran and fucking Bangladesh, why would I care one iota about their trivial differences?
I don’t know if they’re the same because of that though.
I think they differ a fair bit in terms of tactics and priorities; for example, Neo-Nazis don't give a shit about tax cuts and conservatives think opening up literal concentration camps is a little too uncouth. They'll always back each other when the chips are down but in current conditions Nazis and Reaganomics dipshits aren't pushing for the same things.
Depends on what you mean by "conservative." If we're talking about explicit ideology, then no, there's a difference. If we're talking about your average CHUD, most people aren't serious ideologues, they just move toward the extant structures that suit their material conditions, and in light of that I don't think there's a serious difference; at the very least they're splashing around in the kiddie pool of white supremacy.
they think liberals and communists are the same, why should we care to distinguish between their particular brand of reactionary
Because we're not them and base our ideology on a material understanding of how the world really is? That said, I think there is usually very little functional difference between regular conservatives and outright neonazis, but whatever difference there is should absolutely be recognized by us lefties.
No, but it's definitely a pipeline. I think most "conservatives" really only have one or two issues that they care about, but they get inducted into that side of the culture war and all of the other conservative bugbears get grafted onto them. So they either take those thoughts to their logical conclusion and become fascists or they become the type who has big contradictions in their beliefs (ie believing in treating people equally while supporting literally every single policy that discriminates based on race). Most Americans (lib and conservative both) are in the second group, it's only weirdos like us who actually think through the contradictions in our politics.
This is a hot take, but I've come to the conclusion that in a global and historical context, there is no real distinction between fascism and capitalist liberalism. A conservative is just a moderate fascist. Liberals are slightly more progressive fascists, who disavow a desire to actively oppress those with minority identities, and usually have some class sympathies, but don't really mind watching the state grind the majority of poor people into little bits. An alt right, neo Nazi, skinhead type is correspondingly a rightist fascist. One that considers the current system to be too inefficient at enacting capitalist consolidation of all power and historical contingency. As the KPD was fond of pointing out, there are also social fascists.
I'm basing this not really on these groups self-conception of their own ideological tendencies, but simply on the basis of what material effect their ideas would have on society and what actions they are interested in taking to enact them. Revolutionary right fascists don't have to think of themselves as such to be essentially brown shirts in training.
