...when you belong to a religion that tells you to dismiss logic and reason in favor of faith and obedience, it’s not that big of a leap for worshipers to accept a difference kind of mythology. If the members of your church are spreading QAnon memes online, then maybe you weren’t doing that great of a job teaching them how to think for themselves.
That’s not specific to evangelicals, obviously. But many of the factors that make a church grow and thrive — a sense of shared purpose, a feeling of knowing something others don’t understand, a desire for knowledge in any form — are the same weapons being used by online conspiracists. If those pastors, who rightly reject QAnon and just want their members back, don’t understand the role Christianity played in convincing people to adopt comforting myths that defy common sense, they have no chance of “saving” the people who need to be rescued.
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What do you think Fascism means?
You're denying history, and pretending that Fascism was not a product of the contradictions of imperialism.
You're trying to claim that Fascism existed prior to the 20th century, which is wrong. No historian or theoretician would make that claim.
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Yeah, that is not Fascism. That is Settler-Colonialism & Liberalism. I do not know why you're trying to white-wash Liberalism.
I'd recommend you learn what words mean before using them. This essay by J Sakai, author of Settlers, does a good job elaborating. [1]
And yes, Liberalism & Fascism are both ideologies of the bourgeoisie. The ruling class use both depending on the stage of capitalism. Material conditions trump ideas. Liberalism is capable of managing the imperial core during capitalist prosperity for the Empire. Fascism is needed to manage the imperial core during the decay of capitalism. Outside the imperial core, it's just Imperialism & Colonialism. The bourgeoisie do not dress their exploits of the Global South in ideology.
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Liberals in the Global South collaborate with Liberals in the imperial core. The puppet regime that the US installed following the invasion of Iraq was Liberal.
The puppet regimes throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia - particularly those who have gone through a decolonial phase then fell victim to neocolonialism - will use Liberalism as an ideological tool if that can manage the contradictions of capitalism within the country.
You are beyond fucking stupid. You really want to retcon the definition of "Fascism" to mean "when Capitalism does bad things."
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Did I say every single person operating in within a Liberal Democracy in the Global South collaborates with the imperial core? No. Also, when has Lula described himself as a Liberal or espoused the idealism of Liberalism? I have listened to him countless times, and have not ever heard that. Leading a workers' party in a Liberal Democracy does not make someone a Liberal.
The definition of Fascism that I'm using - an ideological tool used to bring the tools that the Empire uses on the colonized into the imperial core - is the product of theorists in the colonized world.
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