I know fascists do this, but doesn't everyone kind of? If you don't think your enemy has strengths then they're not worth being your enemy and if you don't think they have weaknesses then opposing them is pointless.

edit: I guess one difference is fascists pick enemies that genuinely are powerless, but that doesn't really seem to line up with the original claim

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
    ·
    4 years ago

    honestly a lot of scholarship on fascism was done after the end of the World War II and i think the foundational definitions of fascism ascribe to it habits and attitudes that are now so universally pervasive that they aren't distinctive. fascism is an ideology of willful self deception, of sentimental yearning for an imaginary bygone era, of rejecting the realm of politics as such for a purely aesthetic realm. except by these definitions, we're functionally all fascists some of the time.