JCC The JCC Fascism Thread

it's almost as if the two were compatible.

 

thank you mr hitchens

 

Well, Mussolini didn't sleep with the mummified arm of St. Theresa, did he? Franco wins!

 

touche

 

basically as far as "winning" fascism goes its pretty much

1. Mishima for being badass and ideologically unyielding and for basically devoting his life and death to his fascist aesthetics

2. Franco for holding onto power for a ridiculously long time despite doing a whole bunch of weird capricious ****

3. Napoleon III for basically being in the right place at the right time an inordinate number of times and holding onto power for a pretty long time despite being an imbecile and for pretty much inventing fascism as we know it and foreshadowing the politics that would come to dominate the first half of the next century

 

Napoleon III?

 

Is it really surprising? They needed something with broad popular support to bolster their legitimacy and was simultaneously identified with the national identity while not being the institutions they were overthrowing. The Catholic Church was one of the obvious options for the countries in question. What is surprising is not that the fascists wanted to embrace Catholicism. What is remarkable is that to a disturbing extent the Catholic Church embraced them back.

 

i edited to explain but yeah the second empire was pretty much the prototype of fascism. he was a pioneer, (albiet a somewhat bumbling one)

 

So, a French pioneer then?

 

What makes the Second Empire different than the other powers on the continent at the time-- Prussia/Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia-- hell, even the Ottoman Empire? I'm no student of fascism in particular, but they all had seemingly proto-fascist movements and sensibilities.

 

The rainbow of political ideologies is there only to divert our gaze from the Truth: that each and every 'person' in a position of power - including all TFn moderators - is an extraterrestrial lizard-critter.

Dave* told me that. At the pub**.

* A venerable personage with magnificent hair
** An august institution of learning

 

Oh Pearls, you're far too good for the industry you're stuck rotting in, bad puns and all.

 

YES

 

you would

 

Franco was a true zealot. His extreme Catholicism is well documented, even before the Spanish Civil War. He literally slept with holy relics.

 

Iello I think if anyone on these boards could turn into a fascist autocrat it would be you.

 

Falange was a melting pot of different right wing ideologies. You had the pure fascism of co-founder Sanchez Mazas, the authoritarianism of the Carlist traditionalists, the rabid Catholicism of the Catholic unions... You can definitely consider Franco himself to not be a fascist, as he certainly purged many of the original Falangists from the party. He was a simple man, rabidly anti-Communist and fervently Catholic, and I doubt he could even get to grasp what fascism was.

 

Nah, you're one tiny moustache away from a collection of bespoke brown shirts. You tyrant mod.

 

Is think that if you are going to insist that Franco and Mussolini weren't really fascists then you're taking a no true Scotsman position. I have also seen the argument that while Franco and Mussolini were fascists, Hitler wasn't truly a fascist because National Socialism borrowed from fascist ideology but didn't make Catholicism a core part of the ideology.

Anyways, to relate this discussion back to Star Wars, I think that anytime you hear someone insisting on a "with us or against us/join us or die" position, its a red flag for authoritarian impulses (not necessarily fascist). I've seen that same (or similar) position used to justify mass murder by Nazis, an Argentinian officer in the military who tortured/disappeared people in the Dirty War, George W. Bush, and of course... Darth Vader.