My irony meter just broke.

...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.

  • PhaseFour [he/him]
    1·
    4 years ago

    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.

      • PhaseFour [he/him]
        1·
        4 years ago

        What both your parties have been doing all over the planet for decades: wars, coups and sanction that murder millions.

        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]

        The white Left here is behind in understanding fascism. When they're not using the word loosely and rhetorically to mean any repression at all (like the frequent assertions that cutting welfare is "fascism"! i mean, give us a break!), they're still reciting their favorite formula that the fascists are only the "pawns of the ruling class". No, that was Nazism in Germany, maybe, though even there that's not a useful way of looking at it. But definitely not here, not in that old way.

        The main problem hasn't been fascism in the old sense – it's been neo colonialism and bourgeois democracy! The bourgeoisie didn't need any fascism at all to put Leonard Peltier away in maximum security for life or Mumia on death row. They hunted down the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement like it was deer hunting season, while white America went shopping at the mall – all without needing fascism. And the steady waterfall of patriarchal violence against women, of rapes and torture and killings and very effective terrorism on a mass scale, should remind us that the multitude of reactionary men have "equal opportunity " under "democracy ", too. They don't need fascism – yet.

        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.

          • PhaseFour [he/him]
            1·
            4 years ago

            Liberals in countries in Latin America aren’t going on Holy Wars of genocide against an entire region of the planet. They aren’t imprisoning the most people on the planet and at the highest rate. They didn’t drop two nukes on civilians and said it was “justified."

            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."

              • PhaseFour [he/him]
                1·
                4 years ago

                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.

                  • PhaseFour [he/him]
                    1·
                    4 years ago

                    Communism, Liberalism, and Fascism are not the totality of ideological thought in the world. That is at the root of the disagreement we are having.

                    Lula & Evo both seem to be the product of workers' & indigenous struggle in their countries. I'm not an expert on those cultures, so I cannot begin to outlet their ideological roots. But I have not seen either espouse Liberalism or identify as a Liberal. The only reason I could see someone call them a Liberal is because they won power in a Liberal Democracy.

                    You're trying to flatten the world into "Fascist", "Liberal", and "Communist." That is insanity lmao.

                    And that's the origin of this thread. The American project is rooted in Settler-Colonialism and Liberalism. Fascism became prevalent during the economic crisis in the 1910's & 1930's. Fascism is once again becoming a powerful trend in America. Liberalism, Settler-Colonialism, and Fascism have all been capable of carrying out the crimes of American Empire.