In this episode, we talk about the concept of fascism and how it can be applied in the modern world. We discuss the difference between a fascist system and a socialist one, and the differences between fascism and managed democracy. We also talk about what it means to be a fascist in a post-Marxist world.
00:00:00.000In a fascist system, like in a communist system, the government is in control of industry, capital, and the economic system.
00:00:07.020But the goal of the collection of this money is not equal distribution among the body politic.
00:00:15.200It is of distribution disproportionately to individuals who are ideologically aligned with whatever ideology the system is looking to promote.
00:00:25.320So instead of complete equality, the system is designed entirely around promoting a specific ideological and cultural framework.
00:00:36.640If that fascist believes their goal to serve their political party is to redistribute the capital of the state to promote the ideological interests of that community, or to individuals based on their ideological affiliation, or to certain ethnic groups that are above other ethnic groups, right?
00:00:57.220Basically, they have decided that certain ethnic groups are more deserving of human dignity than other ethnic groups, and therefore, it's the job of the state to care for those groups.
00:01:08.240And the reason Germans targeted the Jews was because they were disproportionately economically successful, more economically successful than other groups, as a justification for the dehumanization of that group, and blaming that group for all of the problems that their society was having.
00:01:24.900Well, this becomes a problem, because that's exactly what the progressive movement does.
00:01:31.300I am so excited to be talking to you today, Simone.
00:01:33.880What we are going to talk about today is fascism as a concept.
00:01:39.620Because a lot of people have gotten overly focused on, like, dictionary definitions of fascism, which I do not think are particularly useful, or, like, leftist definitions of fascism.
00:01:52.080One of the, you know, famous here, we have our great episode on Starship Troopers, if you want to see it.
00:01:57.220But for leftists to call that world a fascist universe, or world, is just, like, nonsensical.
00:02:04.720Like, nothing about it, other than literally just the aesthetics, fit any historical definition of fascism.
00:02:12.360And it's, like, so, like, is fascism just politics you disagree with, and, like, dressing sexy?
00:02:20.520Like, is that literally, like, do you have no concept that fascism actually needs to be, like, a unique political and economic system to exist?
00:02:37.200So, I've been playing Helldivers, too, recently, which is actually pretty fun.
00:02:40.800I might, like, try to start a Discord server group.
00:02:43.840I'll add the Discord server thing here.
00:02:45.580For people who are doing that, that'd be a fun thing to do together.
00:02:49.000But, you know, it's done very much in a Starship Troopers-y world, right?
00:02:54.040And people, no, actually, I almost want to do a separate episode, which I will do, on their concept of managed democracy, because it works different from fascism, but it's also different from what we would think of as democracy, insofar as, like, your vote, they're like, imagine a world where everyone can just vote for whoever they feel like.
00:03:17.800Like, wouldn't that be silly? Like, I'm very interested to see who the algorithm chooses as my next candidate that I'm voting for.
00:03:24.860So, they vote by, like, hitting a button that says vote, and then an algorithm determines who they're voting for.
00:03:31.780I think based on their interest as an individual, was the idea being that individuals, it's actually a really interesting concept.
00:03:38.800Oh, so, like, I want my voice to be heard, and the algorithms already understand all my values and stated preferences, and therefore...
00:03:44.800And they can decide better than I can who I would have voted for, because it doesn't really make sense for individuals to be able to vote.
00:03:51.480Honestly, that sounds amazing, because people don't know anything about their candidates these days.
00:03:57.460It's completely called a personality, stuff like that.
00:03:59.860So, yes, for managed democracy, right throughout the galaxy.
00:04:03.720Anyway, but with Starship Troopers, it's not even that.
00:04:06.620Like, the only change they have is that you need to make some sacrifice to vote.
00:04:10.160And this sacrifice can be military service or civil service.
00:04:14.820You, like, people think it's only military service.
00:04:17.640No, in the books, it's also civil service.
00:04:19.760And in the movie, it's not explicitly stated that civil service can't make you a citizen.
00:04:24.260So, we have to assume that it exists in this universe, given that it's in the source material, which just means that what they're freaking out about...
00:04:31.240And I always say, like, this is so telling on the left, that they hate this world, where all of the things they tell everyone they're trying to achieve have already been achieved.
00:04:40.100This is the universe that has gender equality.
00:04:42.480This is the universe that has ethnic equality.
00:04:44.640This is a universe that has sexual equality.
00:04:47.120This is even a universe where religions are suppressed to an extent.
00:04:50.460Yeah, it's the shared locker rooms that everyone's been going for for ages.
00:05:03.660And that the universe demands some level of sacrifice to vote because something given without anything in exchange has no value, as the movie says.
00:05:46.780So, I'm going to divide these into three core political systems and three core economic systems.
00:05:54.200Capitalism is a system where – oh, I said it's probably easier to start with communism.
00:05:59.180Communism is a system where all of the industrial productivity of a nation is primarily under the control of the governing body of that civilization or country and is then redistributed equally among the population.
00:06:19.400So, the idea is that the people who are at the highest levels of sort of all economics of a system receive all of the wealth that they want from that system.
00:06:30.620Now, they can divide it in different ways.
00:06:32.560You can look at something like the Chinese system, which we will argue whether it's fully communist or not.
00:06:37.380But I think within a communist system, it is still reasonable to say we will rent out this thing or we will sell these things that we have produced to another country in order to distribute to the average man what we earn.
00:06:56.080It's not to say that they never engage with the market economy.
00:06:58.900It's just that any engagement with the market economy is meant to serve this goal of maximum equal distribution to the common man.
00:07:09.680Capitalist systems are systems in which there is – and this is like true – like within every one of these I'm discussing like the paragon of this system, right?
00:07:19.820Not the way they're ever really implemented in reality because the U.S. wouldn't fit this definition.
00:07:25.380Where the organizational structure of what is generating industry in a country is free-forming and allows organizations within it to grow and then die because they were out-competed by like new competitive organizations that are more efficient than them.
00:07:44.380So it's basically a completely decentralized approach to how industry and capital are generated within a state with the idea being that that approach is just so efficient that it uplifts everyone who is in the state more than a centrally planned system.
00:08:03.300And that it distributes economic resources in industrial capacity to those individuals who are the most competent within a system.
00:08:14.220These systems do end up wealthier than other systems.
00:08:17.120And when people convert to these systems, they often do end up wealthier.
00:08:20.280So there is an increase in efficiency, but a decrease in sort of how capital and everything is distributed.
00:08:27.200Now, a fascist system is a lot closer to a communist system and that the state, the governing body, can control any industry,
00:08:39.060capital allocation within the country.
00:08:43.020But the goal of that control is different than the goal of the control within a communist system.
00:08:50.260And so they often choose to exercise this power very differently than the people within communist systems.
00:08:55.900It sounds like a difference between a helicopter parent and a very strict, but otherwise culturally very independent supporting parent.
00:09:06.320I don't know if I agree with that analogy, but okay.
00:09:10.960Anyway, the point being is that in a fascist system, like in a communist system, the government is in control of industry, capital, and the economic system.
00:09:20.600But the goal of the collection of this money is not equal distribution among the body politic.
00:09:29.160It is of distribution disproportionately to individuals who are ideologically aligned with whatever ideology the system is looking to promote.
00:09:41.340So instead of complete equality, the system is designed entirely around promoting a specific ideological and cultural framework.
00:09:54.260So that can be either to like arts and stuff like that that are designed to promote a specific ideological framework, or it can be an unequal distribution within the body politic where that inequality elevates either certain ethnic groups or certain groups dependent on their political beliefs.
00:10:16.760And when you divide the three systems this way, the division becomes quite meaningful from like a philosophical and economic perspective, and most fascist systems from history would fall very squarely into this final category.
00:10:30.580Now, the state within fascist systems often allows for a bit more capitalistic action, i.e. a bit more free-forming of bodies and institutions underneath it, because it is just more interested in grabbing as much capital as possible, and those systems generate more capital than the communist systems.
00:10:53.020However, most communist systems actually end up drifting more towards fascist-like systems over time, as the political class begins to define their values and their class as more important than other people, which means that now they get a disproportionate share of the resources.
00:11:10.660You know, some animals are more equal than others.
00:11:13.080It's a really honestly great line from the book that's so good at describing.
00:11:17.200Yes, we're all equal, but some of us are a bit more equal than others, which is redefining equality to mean those with ideological power within the community.
00:11:27.160Now, this all becomes really important when you understand what fascism is through this lens, is that it makes it easier and not an arbitrary thing to call a system fascist.
00:11:39.600Because right now, calling something fascist has, you know, as I pointed out, was the Starship Troopers thing, it's become like an aesthetic thing.
00:11:47.460It's like, I disagree with you, therefore you are a fascist.
00:11:50.440Yeah, it's like calling someone racist or a Nazi.
00:11:55.020But this also allows a fascist system, which is really important, because it's also true as communist and capitalist systems, they can arise within complete democracies.
00:12:04.820You, within a democracy, can vote for a fascist.
00:12:09.400If that fascist, or if that individual, that politician who you've elected, believes their goal to serve their political party is to redistribute the capital of the state to promote the ideological interests of that community, or to individuals based on their ideological affiliation, or to certain ethnic groups that are above other ethnic groups, right?
00:12:33.500Whereas, in a democracy, you can have a totally communistic system.
00:12:39.280You can vote and then have the people in power say our goal is to distribute capital as equally as possible among the body politic, right?
00:12:46.780Well, this becomes really interesting, because if you take this framework, which I actually think is a very good and useful framework, and you apply it to our modern political system, the democratic party and the progressive value system is an almost, while it is rare to have pure expressions of any one of these three systems,
00:13:09.040It is almost a totally pure expression of fascism, in that they believe their goal is to promote this ultra progressive urban monoculture, and that they should distribute cash, like the government should distribute cash throughout a society, but it should distribute them to certain ethnicities and cultural groups that it sees as being more human or more deserving of human dignity than other cultural groups.
00:13:41.940So San Francisco has experimented with some universal basic income systems, except they only give it to certain ethnic groups and certain minority populations.
00:13:49.940So basically, they have decided that certain ethnic groups are more deserving of human dignity than other ethnic groups, and therefore it's the job of the state to care for those groups.
00:14:00.940And I think that people, they're like, no, no, no, no, that's not like Germany, Germany was targeting, you know, people because they weren't, it's like, no, the reason Germans targeted the Jews was because they were disproportionately economically successful.
00:14:13.940And they used that, and you can see this, there's like great stats.
00:14:17.940If you want to go into all the stats into this, because we actually go over in the pragmatist guide of crafting religion, if you think Jews pre the Holocaust were some like poor group in Germany that had no either economic or political power, that just does not coincide with the data that we have.
00:14:36.940They were vastly more likely, like orders of magnitude more likely to have jobs like doctors and bankers and stuff like that, that were high paying within this world, and we can look at the data on this.
00:14:47.940And they used that, the fact that one group had been more economically successful than other groups, as a justification for the dehumanization of that group, and blaming that group for all of the problems that their society was having.
00:15:01.940Well, this becomes a problem, because that's exactly what the progressive movement does to, they'll say, oh, well, you know, white cis men have run our country forever, and they have all the economic resources, and they have all the whatever success, and therefore, we are justified in making it difficult for that group to get jobs.
00:15:23.780And, you know, it was in social media lynching that group, and people can underestimate, they're like, oh, they're not really destroying them.
00:15:33.260When you take someone who's a primary income earner of a large family, and you destroy their ability to get a job, and you downplay the effects of doing that, that is genuinely evil.
00:15:46.120This is a huge thing to do to someone.
00:15:48.220Well, and I think what people are missing somehow, because fascism has been villainized for so long, aesthetically, and in general, is, I think people are under the impression that if one is in a fascist system, everyone knows that they're doing a bad thing.
00:16:04.540And they're like, yeah, we're gonna bully those people, we're so mean to them, ha ha ha.
00:16:29.840Fascist systems always believe, at least in their early days, that they are being victimized by some other group.
00:16:36.680And that they have to correct that victimization, that they have to right the wrongs, they have to correct the injustice.
00:16:41.460Yeah, and this is actually really interesting, that when you understand the core difference between fascism and communism and capitalism, you understand that the modern progressive movement is the purest manifestation of fascism that can exist.
00:17:00.040I mean, they are as pure fascism as Mussolini or Hitler.
00:17:05.460And when you attack these communities, and people can be like, oh, come on, they wouldn't kill people who fall into these communities that they're dehumanizing.
00:17:18.400This is one of those things that happened was in the early Jewish communities, and I have a friend who this happened to, is he read, when I say friend, it was the grandfather of a girl I was dating in high school.
00:17:28.960And he read Mein Kampf, and he went around to his community, and he's saying he wants to literally kill us.
00:17:37.700And they thought he was a crazy person, and he ended up having to break in and kidnap his girlfriend in the middle of the night, and broke the house's window and took her out.
00:17:46.080I can only imagine the parents waking up the next day, and they're gone.
00:17:55.520Today, when I say things like, go on to these Twitter communities, look at what people are saying, even who are thought leaders in these groups, who talk about killing men, who talk about killing cisgendered men, who talk about killing white people.
00:18:15.380This is something you will see in these communities among their political organizers very, very frequently.
00:18:23.140For you to say that they would never actually act on that is very similar to those in these Jewish communities in the early, but they're like, they never actually act.
00:18:33.400Yeah, oh yeah, he wrote Mein Kampf, but...
00:18:35.640Well, it's this mixture of both dehumanizing the group that you see to be systematically unfair, and also believing them to be causing genuine harm that must be corrected on a societal level.
00:18:48.320And if not corrected, will lead to unending harm, right?
00:19:03.320No, I want to elevate what you just said there, because I think that it is really important, right?
00:19:07.860The key to fascism is identifying specific groups in society, this is one of the ways that fascists rise to power, and say this group is causing harm in our society, this ideological group often.
00:19:21.420And therefore, they must be gotten rid of, because harm will continue to come to our society until they are erased.
00:19:33.060And that morally justifies behavior that you might think that your neighbors could never morally justify.
00:19:42.520And yet we are already well on the path towards true and total fascism within leftist circles.
00:19:52.320And I think that people don't see how dangerous things are getting, because Nazism specifically has been used hyperbolically for so long.
00:20:02.300And people can be like, come on, look at this, what is it, like, sea to ocean language that you see on college campuses now and stuff like that, right?
00:20:15.140From the river to the sea language, which literally means we need to wipe out all of the Jews in Israel.
00:20:21.160You see them elevating this kind of language and it being normalized.
00:20:26.760I mean, kids in colleges like Harvard are going around marching this stuff and not being expelled from school.
00:20:35.360If you think that they treat all groups as equal, if they said this about a Muslim population, they'd be expelled.
00:20:43.100No, if they said this about an LGBT population, they'd be expelled.
00:20:46.960They are converging on the anti-Semitism that most fascists in history can converge around, but they are including additional groups alongside that anti-Semitism that historically weren't included.
00:21:04.360But what I would say is they intend to target you.
00:21:07.420If you're like, yeah, but I'm a good white cis man, no.
00:21:13.280Yeah, but also, again, they think that they're doing the right thing.
00:21:18.960They think that they're the goodies and not the baddies because...
00:21:28.240I think it's really hard for people to...
00:21:30.280To realize that they are genuinely the face of evil.
00:21:34.260Well, but, okay, so that they can be the face of evil, but that they are firmly convinced that they are good people doing the right thing who are empathetic, who feel deeply for the populations that they are trying to protect, and who see the populations that they are victimizing and harming as the unfeeling, as the enemy.
00:21:56.640And we have to think about that a little bit more carefully because...
00:22:00.260Because this is the difference, right?
00:22:02.180You know, you have populations like us where you are able to empathize, at least, to a large extent with progressives, right?
00:22:09.080Like, you're like, they're still human.
00:22:11.640But at a certain point, you need to say they're, like, you need to recognize what the long-term consequence of this political framework is.
00:22:22.020I'm all for addressing this kind of myopic and delusional viewpoint with extreme strictness and having a zero-to-one policy, but I'm also not for dehumanizing the other side.
00:22:47.200But you can't engage someone mentally and call them out in a way that they will actually hear if you are doing that while dehumanizing them.
00:22:56.200Yeah, but I think saying that they're literally Nazis at this point.
00:23:01.120And now you could say, oh, calling them literally Nazis at this point is dehumanizing them because you see Nazis as less than human.
00:23:28.880They're capable of seeing us as fully human.
00:23:30.920So what in the book, How Minds Change, the general thesis of how people actually have their minds changed with very offensive things, things along these lines where you think that there's no cure, there's no solution, is first you get two people to bond as humans in some way, find common ground before they ever talk about the subject to develop some kind of rapport.
00:23:51.420And then they start discussing it, but in the other person's terms.
00:23:57.480The ways that fascist ideologies prevent that from happening, prevent people from being deconverted, is they create systems where if you are seen as talking with the enemy group, you are just as bad as that enemy group.
00:24:12.220And this is something that really showed up at the natalism conference, right?
00:24:15.240And the organizers tried so hard to bring in progressive demographers.
00:24:21.120Anyone who was left-leaning, who was looking at demographic collapse or population shifts, and for the life of them, they could not get a single one to show up.
00:24:30.140Which is pretty telling, I think, to your point, right?
00:24:32.880That they will simply not be willing to even associate.
00:24:37.000And people on Twitter constantly hounded us saying, do you know who's going to this conference?
00:24:42.440Don't you – white supremacists are going to this conference.
00:24:45.280You know, the wrong people are going to this conference.
00:24:54.620They said, if you engage with these communities, especially if you engage with them as equal, like Jews, et cetera, then you are just as bad as them.
00:25:02.960And that is how they prevent people from within their circle from realizing that these others are still human.
00:25:12.860What I'm suggesting is actually to be actively misleading and to not let people know who you are and what you stand for, which is, I guess, part of what BreadTube was all about, right?
00:25:20.660So, okay, that's not, I guess, what upper-handed of me.
00:25:34.100What I'm saying is first disguise yourself as someone who's on their side, then get to know them, and then once you have rapport, introduce them to your ideas, which is how groups on all sides of the spectrum have manipulated other groups.
00:25:45.160That's an insane thing to do because then they're like, oh, I have been – somebody's been trying to – they report you to, like, their Gestapo.
00:25:53.400And this is also really interesting because I've been reading more about the history of the CIA, the FBI, et cetera.
00:25:58.520These organizations were never supposed to exist long-term.
00:26:01.600Even Truman, the guy who created it, said that he regretted doing it because these were only supposed to exist in wartime.
00:26:07.360And the reason is because when you have a group that's not fully accountable to the American government operating in silence, you know, these groups can become ideologically captured, which we're already seeing with wokeism within these groups, right?
00:26:22.600Is they're becoming more and more woke to the individuals I know within them.
00:26:25.720And they are being used, like was in the Sweet Baby Inc. controversy, that government money is being used to support Sweet Baby Inc. right now, right?
00:26:38.140It shows that they have become so ideologically captured that now they see their purpose as like a secret police that has access to all of your communications in this country, enforcing ideological conformity.
00:27:22.180No, of course, if you want to go into the trade-off.
00:27:23.200Or at least anything close to your degree level.
00:27:25.400And people who haven't gone out there and tried, like Simone and I, because we have similar resumes, mine's significantly stronger than hers, by the way.
00:27:52.260You know, this is your opportunity to shine.
00:27:54.480Many groups out of history have been discriminated against.
00:27:56.680And if you bow out just because you're discriminated against by the powers that be, then, well, I guess you don't deserve to exist in the future, which is the way the system works.
00:28:07.120Oh, this is why groups like that end up essentially producing the people who build society because they're faced with so many selective pressures.
00:28:15.440Well, and that's why historically immigrants in the U.S. have created most of our new companies and stuff like that.
00:28:20.220Because when you can't get mainstream jobs, you end up creating new companies.
00:28:23.480And what they're forcing to have happen is predominantly white cis men are going to create most of the companies in this country going forward because they're not getting mainstream jobs.
00:28:34.980So, yeah, all this stuff about, you know, who, you know, built history and present about that, it's, well, they weren't given other options.
00:28:43.140They weren't allowed to marry and be safe.
00:28:44.720I should point out, it's not just white.
00:29:33.920I have enjoyed chatting with you, as always.
00:29:36.780Today is, so we record these in batches, so I mentioned this on a few other episodes, but we only just launched our, what is that thing called?
00:29:45.620Sorry, I know so little about this stuff, but I was so excited to see that we're already at, like, the 53 active members at just a random time when I joined.
00:29:53.420And 163 people have joined, like, this is cool, like, it's an actual community, and it makes me happy to see that people are discussing and engaging things on there, and I'm able to, like, drop potential title cards and ask people, which one should I use for today's episode?
00:30:08.280Because usually I'm doing that with you, Simone, and now I won't need to bug you as much, because they came to the same conclusion you did.
00:30:14.680And so now I can leave you alone more.