The Auron MacIntyre Show - Shut Up! Not Everything Is Fascism ｜ 10⧸25⧸24

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00:00:30.560 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.080 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.700 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:36.540 You might have heard this over the last few weeks. 0.99

00:00:39.300 Everybody I don't like is a fascist. 1.00

00:00:41.620 Donald Trump is a fascist. 1.00

00:00:42.860 Kamala Harris is a fascist. 1.00

00:00:44.980 We especially hear this on the left. 0.93

00:00:47.080 You know, there used to be this very common refrain from the radical left,

00:00:51.900 especially the radical Marxist.

00:00:54.000 Everything about American society that was normal, that was safe, that was traditional.

00:00:59.300 It was all fascism.

00:01:00.760 It's all representation of fascism.

00:01:02.860 But slowly that language has entered our popular lexicon.

00:01:07.260 And increasingly everyone on the left, every Democrat, every political pundit, everybody

00:01:14.180 inside the progressive movement now applies the idea of fascism to any opponent.

00:01:20.720 Any form of political opposition is, by definition for them, fascism.

00:01:26.500 And we even see this on the right.

00:01:28.680 A lot of people on the right like to counter with, no, the left has these elements of fascism.

00:01:34.380 Actually, maybe Kamala Harris is the real fascist. 1.00

00:01:37.520 And I got to say, I'm pretty tired of it.

00:01:40.420 Not just because the obvious incendiary rhetoric is going to drive us to a very bad place politically,

00:01:47.240 but also because I'm somebody who really likes political philosophy, really likes to understand

00:01:53.520 political concepts.

00:01:54.700 And I can get very pedantic about this.

00:01:57.160 I think we should use words properly.

00:01:59.060 I think that these concepts have meaning.

00:02:01.600 There is a real philosophy of fascism.

00:02:04.280 It's not just a synonym for evil.

00:02:06.960 It was a real political ideology.

00:02:09.620 And I don't think it's a very good one, but it was an actual thing.

00:02:13.480 It's not just a stand in for everything that you hate.

00:02:16.360 So today I want to address what is fascism?

00:02:19.940 Where did it come from?

00:02:21.140 What does it actually mean?

00:02:22.300 How can we recognize it?

00:02:23.880 Why ultimately is it dead and not coming back?

00:02:26.620 And why should we kind of expunge this language from our discussion?

00:02:30.700 Because ultimately I do think it's bringing us to a terrible place.

00:02:34.440 But before we dive into all of that, guys, let me tell you a little bit about today's

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00:03:40.820 Now, like many of you, I remember back when everyone was just a racist.

00:03:46.680 It seems like a more quaint time, but the left is not new to this idea of throwing around

00:03:52.460 hyperbolic language.

00:03:53.680 They called George Bush Hitler. 0.84

00:03:55.460 They called Mitt Romney a fascist.

00:03:58.100 So this isn't exactly a new concept, but that tend to be a little more sporadic.

00:04:03.940 Yes, they painted a lot of Hitler mustaches on George W. Bush, but ultimately you didn't

00:04:09.120 have a lot of high profile people saying these things on a regular basis, making this a drum

00:04:15.820 beat of every news story, every conversation, every political understanding, especially on

00:04:23.760 the left wing side of the aisle.

00:04:26.240 But slowly over time, the rhetoric has escalated, right?

00:04:29.840 We went from everybody is a bigot to a racist to everybody became a white nationalist for

00:04:35.420 a little bit, if you remember that.

00:04:37.340 And then they kind of finally settled on fascists and then went full on to Nazi and Hitler.

00:04:42.140 This rhetorical escalation is very dangerous for a number of reasons.

00:04:47.620 And the Democrats are kind of counting on this.

00:04:50.320 If you've been paying attention to the news over the last week, Kamala Harris has started

00:04:55.060 using this language directly.

00:04:56.880 Of course, she was always kind of hinting at it.

00:04:59.280 She would sprinkle it in. 0.89

00:05:00.720 But she has been openly calling Donald Trump a fascist.

00:05:04.200 As of late, she held a press conference where she acknowledged a story put out by the Atlantic

00:05:11.060 that has zero sources and she treated it as if it was true, saying that Trump was praising

00:05:18.280 Hitler and his generals. 0.94

00:05:20.120 And that means ultimately that Donald Trump is just like Hitler and is planning to use his 0.55

00:05:25.020 military against the people of the United States.

00:05:28.120 It's all this projection.

00:05:28.840 It's all the things that she herself is doing or the Biden administration was doing and that

00:05:36.860 she was a part of.

00:05:38.460 So it's a lot of projection.

00:05:39.900 But ultimately, the rhetoric is also an escalation.

00:05:43.380 You see, the Democrats failed to ban their political opponent.

00:05:47.640 Donald Trump wasn't banned off of the ballot under the 14th Amendment.

00:05:51.720 He wasn't imprisoned by all of the false charges brought against him in different cases, and

00:05:57.880 they weren't able to bankrupt him or otherwise scare him away from running.

00:06:01.560 And so Donald Trump has survived all of these attacks, which are very dangerous in and of

00:06:06.720 themselves on our political fabric.

00:06:09.500 But now they've kind of come down to the wire.

00:06:12.140 It feels like momentum is building.

00:06:14.500 Still go out, do your thing, support Trump, whatever.

00:06:17.560 But it seems pretty clear that the zeitgeist has shifted.

00:06:21.860 A lot of people are hedging their bets on who were very pro-Kamala Harris.

00:06:27.120 There are articles appearing about how maybe we should have stuck with Joe Biden.

00:06:30.780 The polls are shifting towards Trump, even in demographics that don't normally support him.

00:06:35.600 And so there's this very clear moment of dread the left are recognizing that we might not be

00:06:40.620 able to beat this guy, we might not even be able to beat him credibly with a little bit

00:06:45.200 of that electioneering we did last time, that election fortification that we pulled out last

00:06:50.460 time.

00:06:50.700 We might be able, but we might not be able to push Kamala Harris over the finish line. 0.88

00:06:57.100 And they're starting to panic.

00:06:58.140 And really the only strategy left, it feels like, for Kamala Harris is to encourage political

00:07:02.840 violence against Donald Trump.

00:07:04.040 And I want to be very clear, she knows she's doing that, and she's really hoping someone 0.98

00:07:07.700 shoots Donald Trump. 0.65

00:07:08.740 Like Kamala Harris is regularly getting up in front of crowds of deranged people who

00:07:13.500 have been fed a steady diet of the idea that Donald Trump is orange Hitler for the last

00:07:17.820 eight years.

00:07:18.400 And she is telling them he's an existential threat to democracy.

00:07:21.660 He is Hitler. 1.00

00:07:22.520 He's a fascist. 0.99

00:07:23.380 He's going to turn the army against you. 0.81

00:07:25.180 I mean, what is the logical conclusion of that argument, right?

00:07:28.880 If they really believe what they say, right, then why wouldn't you, you know, if you could

00:07:34.960 get rid of Hitler, would you? 0.70

00:07:36.640 Of course, right? 0.99

00:07:37.300 Like, so if Trump is Hitler, if Trump is literally Hitler, if Trump is literally a fascist and 0.94

00:07:41.920 he's going to install this, well, they're hoping you make the connection. 0.81

00:07:45.300 They're hoping that you take action.

00:07:46.820 And Kamala Harris is trying to eliminate her opponent through violence. 1.00

00:07:50.420 That's really all there is to it.

00:07:52.340 And that's why it's so dangerous to use these terms when they're completely unconnected from

00:07:57.320 reality.

00:07:58.220 Again, fascism wasn't just some weird synonym for everything we hate.

00:08:04.340 That didn't used to be the case.

00:08:07.520 Fascism was a specific political ideology that functioned during a specific time.

00:08:13.500 It had a historical context.

00:08:15.580 And I think it's important for us to understand this because in this current environment, the

00:08:20.020 word fascist just gives you a blank check to do whatever you want.

00:08:23.720 You see, in our secular society, we had to banish all the kind of metaphysical understandings

00:08:30.600 of evil that existed prior, the ones that everyone had had for the rest of human existence.

00:08:35.900 And of course, we couldn't get rid of the actual concept of evil, even though we just

00:08:41.720 dismiss the religious language. 0.64

00:08:43.980 And so as a substitute, we started putting in these secular devils, right? 1.00

00:08:48.280 Hitler became Satan. 0.99

00:08:49.700 Fascism became a stand in for evil. 0.66

00:08:51.720 That's what these words mean.

00:08:53.200 And you can tell because this is just how people use the word.

00:08:57.020 They just deploy it whenever they see something they don't like.

00:09:00.200 And we've seen this logic kind of build over time.

00:09:02.640 If you remember the punch-a-Nazi phenomenon, right, when Richard Spencer and the alt-right

00:09:07.480 were kind of a thing during the first, you know, prior to the first Trump election.

00:09:12.540 And he was out there kind of pushing his stuff.

00:09:16.080 Someone came up and punched him at some point while he was talking on camera.

00:09:19.920 And there became this huge debate.

00:09:21.540 The left wrote several different stories about whether or not it was okay to punch a Nazi.

00:09:26.120 Is it okay to be violent towards someone that you feel is actually a Nazi?

00:09:30.540 And the conclusion that the left came to is, yes, absolutely, you can do that.

00:09:34.620 And from that, they've kind of just scaled up.

00:09:37.060 And now everything is fascism, right?

00:09:39.160 Like wanting to have a family is fascism.

00:09:41.680 Wanting to have law and order is fascism.

00:09:44.000 Wanting to have a functional society is fascism.

00:09:46.260 You don't want to lock up all of your products at a drugstore.

00:09:49.880 That's fascism. 0.99

00:09:51.180 Everything about social order is fascism, which is a pretty dumb game for the left to play. 0.90

00:09:54.720 If you keep telling the average person that any desire for a normal, safe, prosperous life is fascist, at some point they're just going to believe you, right? 0.89

00:10:03.700 Like they're going to be like, well, then that sounds pretty good.

00:10:06.320 Of course, they're really counting on the fact that they've turned that word into a synonym for evil and Satan to scare people off of it, right?

00:10:13.480 They're like, well, we can always push this button.

00:10:15.760 There's never any cost to pushing this button because we've designated this word to basically mean evil.

00:10:22.880 And so if you're on this side, then basically you can be killed. 0.94

00:10:25.780 You can be destroyed. 1.00

00:10:26.880 We can normalize violence against you. 0.99

00:10:29.320 That's the way the left has set this up.

00:10:30.740 And then they just pile everything they don't like, including like having a functioning society, having a normal family, not hating your people, your history, your tradition.

00:10:40.440 They pile all that under fascism and then just say, we've banned this, right?

00:10:43.860 Because fascism is banned from our society.

00:10:45.580 And ultimately, I want to address this because this anti-fascist crusade has become a very dangerous thing in our society because so many people were scared about the return of fascism.

00:10:57.840 We now have this anti-fascism crusade, which justifies literally anything, including the destruction of the family, destruction of the church, the destruction of safety in our society, all in the name of anti-fascism.

00:11:10.360 We have entire blocks of terrorists who basically operate unopposed by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security just because they call themselves anti-fascist, right?

00:11:21.100 And they're obviously aligned with the regime.

00:11:23.440 They get special favors from the regime.

00:11:25.760 They're allowed to do violence because they're doing it on behalf of this anti-fascist crusade.

00:11:30.640 And so I think it's really important for those left and right to understand what fascism really is because even those on the right are buying into this.

00:11:38.840 They're buying into this idea.

00:11:40.080 And it's very dangerous.

00:11:41.440 It's very harmful to our political future.

00:11:45.700 So that said, let's dig into what fascism actually is.

00:11:49.820 Now, I want to say before we get started, I'm pulling the majority of this from the scholarship of Paul Gottfried, who's been on the show several times.

00:11:57.980 But if you would like to get a better understanding of this topic and do it in a much more formal and academic way, then you can check out his books on both fascism and anti-fascism.

00:12:07.500 They're both great, explained kind of from all angles what's going on here.

00:12:11.960 And so that resource is there for you if you better want to understand what's going on.

00:12:17.120 So let's begin on what fascism actually is.

00:12:22.240 So first, we need to understand that fascism is not just authoritarianism, okay?

00:12:29.380 Authoritarianism has existed since the beginning of mankind.

00:12:32.700 It is a system in which, you know, the individual rights and these things are not considered.

00:12:39.920 And, you know, you have a heavy hand, a wide latitude of powers coming from the governing authority.

00:12:45.520 That has been around since the dawn of time.

00:12:47.920 So just because something is authoritarian does not make it fascist.

00:12:51.880 The communists were authoritarian.

00:12:53.160 In fact, they were more authoritarian than many of the fascists or really the only fascist regime we're really going to talk about here.

00:13:01.480 And so we can't just say it's authoritarianism.

00:13:05.660 It's also not just right-wing authoritarianism.

00:13:08.800 There have been plenty of right-wing authoritarians that were not fascist.

00:13:13.060 There have been right-wing dictators.

00:13:14.600 There have been right-wing monarchs that were not fascism.

00:13:18.260 Fascism is not just right-wing authoritarianism.

00:13:21.420 I also want to make it clear that there should be a distinction on what countries that were really fascist.

00:13:27.880 Again, under the scholarship of Paul Gottfried, he points to the fact that really Italian fascism is only the only true fascism that existed.

00:13:36.760 A lot of people think of Hitler and the Nazis as the primary exponents of fascism, but that's actually not the case.

00:13:45.260 National socialism had a lot of aesthetic overlap with Italian fascism, and they obviously allied during World War II.

00:13:53.860 So many people simply lumped them together, but they are not the same thing.

00:13:58.080 In fact, national socialism takes some big liberties, ultimately, with Italian fascism.

00:14:06.060 And so these things, you know, they're not entirely unrelated, but they are not the exact same thing.

00:14:11.580 And dictators like Franco and others were also not fascist.

00:14:15.760 Salazar, these people were not directly fascist.

00:14:18.200 Again, some of the aesthetic qualities, the, yes, authoritarian, you know, for sure, but that is not just a synonym for fascism.

00:14:26.800 I also want to make it clear as we get into the different aspects of what fascism is, that one similarity does not make something fascist.

00:14:36.200 A lot of people are going to say, well, one of these aspects does exist in our society, and therefore our society is fascist.

00:14:42.020 But that is not how it works, okay?

00:14:44.580 That is not how it actually works.

00:14:46.540 Just because, you know, cats are four-legged animals, you know, Socrates is also an animal of some kind, and therefore he is a four-legged cat.

00:14:58.560 Like, that is not a valid syllogism, just because, you know, they have some overlap, you know, they have one feature in common, does not make them the same thing.

00:15:07.600 So you are going to notice that some of these things do exist in our society, but simply because, you know, there's a corporate economy or there's, you know, the silencing of opposition does not mean that all of a sudden you necessarily have fascism.

00:15:21.560 There's not always the same thing.

00:15:23.780 All right, so let's start out.

00:15:25.260 The first thing we need to grasp is that Paul Godfrey and many other scholars recognize that fascism is a specific movement in a specific context.

00:15:35.800 It is born out of a reaction to modernity, a large transition in societies, a revolutionary aspect of the left, and a big shift in economics, okay?

00:15:48.500 So when we look at this, we need to understand that fascism is born of a specific time, and it is very particular to that time.

00:15:56.520 It is not a universal ideology in the way that we think of ideologies today.

00:16:01.580 It's not liberalism or communism in its ambitions.

00:16:05.840 It is not globalistic.

00:16:07.440 It's not looking to, you know, necessarily spread its way of understanding into all other areas.

00:16:14.020 Obviously, guys like Hitler did try to, you know, conquer other nations necessarily. 0.77

00:16:20.400 Eventually, Mussolini did this as well to, you know, at least he tried in Ethiopia, but that was not initially, you know, the fascist understanding.

00:16:28.940 And so we need to understand that this is particular to a time and a place and a history.

00:16:34.060 It's a reaction to certain realities involved.

00:16:37.280 We should also recognize that the two big forces really in fascism were Benito Mussolini, the eventual leader of Italy, and Giovanni Gentelli, who is probably the most well-known intellectual proponent of fascism.

00:16:52.040 So it's not like we have to guess at, like, where fascism comes from or what theories are.

00:16:57.380 They're written down.

00:16:58.440 We can see them.

00:16:59.320 We can understand them.

00:17:00.320 These are things that exist in a context.

00:17:02.600 It's not just a zeitgeist.

00:17:04.080 And that's what the left and the right have kind of turned it into.

00:17:06.880 You know, fascism is a spirit, you know, that can be – that can come over us at any time.

00:17:12.500 That's not actually what fascism is.

00:17:14.300 It's grounded in a specific context, and we need to put it in that context if we want to understand why our world today is not fascist in any real sense.

00:17:24.040 We're going to get deeper into what fascism is.

00:17:26.280 We're going to go over these different bullet points.

00:17:28.600 But before we do, guys, let me tell you a little bit about ISI.

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00:18:55.040 That's ISI.org.

00:18:56.800 All right, so let's dive into what is fascism.

00:19:02.400 Let's get a real definition.

00:19:03.920 It's not just things I hate.

00:19:05.140 It's not just authoritarianism.

00:19:07.040 It's not just guys in snazzy suits.

00:19:09.580 What is fascism?

00:19:10.900 What are the actual doctrines?

00:19:12.360 I would like to make it clear again here before we get started that I do not like fascism. 0.93

00:19:18.160 I think that it's stupid that we constantly have to denounce this.

00:19:21.560 I'm going to talk more and more about why this ritual of denunciation is a failure. 0.84

00:19:26.960 But people are going to immediately take this stream out of context.

00:19:30.340 So just at the top, I want to make it clear.

00:19:32.500 I oppose the system of government, not just because of the historical context or whatever, the necessary denouncements of the post-war consensus.

00:19:40.220 But because of specific doctrinal differences I have with it, ultimately fascism is a progressive modernization of society to the extent in which I think any level of authoritarianism is in any way justified.

00:19:53.840 It would be of the throne and altar variety.

00:19:56.100 It would have nothing to do with this more modernized understanding, this managerial ideology that ultimately that is fascism.

00:20:04.540 So I have problems with this ideology.

00:20:06.780 This is not a stream in defense of this.

00:20:08.400 In fact, it's specifically going to point out the problems with this.

00:20:11.800 But my problems will not be that of the left.

00:20:13.880 And more importantly, the problems will be specific to the ideology.

00:20:17.520 It will not just be because I'm supposed to not like this thing.

00:20:20.740 There are real reasons to dislike it.

00:20:22.860 And we're going to go through them as we go through what it is.

00:20:25.960 All right.

00:20:26.300 So what are some of the pillars of fascism?

00:20:30.440 So the first one would be its historical context as an opposition to leftist destruction of tradition.

00:20:37.580 So you have to understand that in many scenarios, this is a reaction to communism.

00:20:43.920 In fact, in all scenarios, it's a reaction to communism and the wider leftist revolution against, you know, classical identity and tradition in the nation.

00:20:53.660 Now, ironically, it itself will replace that tradition, which is why I have a problem with it.

00:20:58.580 But this is what what it is initially supposed to do.

00:21:02.480 The reason that it tends to have a lot of support in, say, rural areas and in middle class areas is that these are areas that are still clinging on to tradition.

00:21:13.680 That don't like the revolutionary aspects of the left that tend to be very cosmopolitan, usually concentrated in urban areas and cities.

00:21:22.480 It usually has a revolutionary subject that is, you know, fighting against these traditional hierarchies and, you know, the type of structures that middle class people tend to rely on to maintain their way of life and their culture.

00:21:36.880 And so first thing you have to understand is that this is a reaction to to that.

00:21:43.480 Now, this immediately I want to make this clear for right wing people who throw around this and are like, oh, the left is the real fascist. 0.94

00:21:50.320 Kamala Harris is the real fascist.

00:21:51.800 I want to be very clear that academically, just immediately, this disqualifies all left wing movements from being fascist.

00:21:59.620 OK, they're just that's not what it is.

00:22:01.720 I get it.

00:22:02.460 You want to flip the tables. 0.99

00:22:03.580 The Dems are the real racists that, you know, Kamala Harris is the real fascist. 0.93

00:22:07.240 And we'll point to elements of Kamala Harris's policies that do share one or two pieces of overlap.

00:22:12.900 But like we said at the beginning, that is a failure of identity metaphysics to say, well, it shares one one aspect that is the same.

00:22:20.560 And therefore, it is that thing that is simply a logical fallacy that does not work.

00:22:25.560 And throwing this around on the right just does not help you.

00:22:28.660 OK, and we'll go into deeper at the end of this, why it's so important for the right to stop throwing this word around.

00:22:34.540 But to be clear, just off the bat, this does not work when you call the left fascist for the simple reason that it is by definition an opposition to the leftist revolutionary spirit, right?

00:22:49.080 Like you simply cannot have that as part of any kind of left wing movement.

00:22:54.860 It just doesn't make any sense.

00:22:56.760 So it's a historical context here.

00:22:58.680 Now, you could say, oh, well, you know, maybe on the right you could you could see this now, you know, because there is the left wing revolution is going on.

00:23:07.280 It is an attack on the middle class. 0.74

00:23:09.200 So perhaps, you know, there is some aspect of this.

00:23:11.360 Again, one piece of overlap does not make this a valid comparison.

00:23:15.100 It is simply one piece of overlap.

00:23:16.860 We're going to see that same piece of overlap exists for Kamala Harris. 1.00

00:23:19.980 That doesn't make her fascist and it doesn't make Donald Trump a fascist.

00:23:22.580 Neither of these people are fascism or fascist.

00:23:25.140 Fascism is dead.

00:23:25.940 Fascism is not a living political ideology.

00:23:29.920 It is specifically, you know, situated inside this historical period period.

00:23:36.180 Second, permanent authoritarian single party nationalism.

00:23:40.560 Again, another reason that the left cannot be fascist.

00:23:43.600 They are not nationalists.

00:23:44.740 Yeah, they throw around black nationalism or whatever into all of this.

00:23:48.340 But ultimately, they are pushing for globalists, globalization.

00:23:51.740 They are pushing for internationalization.

00:23:53.420 Now, again, you could say, well, you know, the left is trying to create a permanent authoritarian single party state.

00:24:00.340 I believe they are absolutely trying to do that right now.

00:24:03.020 They are trying to eliminate their political opponents.

00:24:05.340 They are trying to eliminate free speech.

00:24:07.000 They are trying to jail their political opponents.

00:24:08.700 These are all things that the left is doing right now.

00:24:10.500 So left is attempting to create a single party state that is authoritarian.

00:24:14.960 It does meet those criterion right now.

00:24:16.940 This is a goal of Kamala Harris and the wider Democratic Party.

00:24:20.220 But they are not nationalistic.

00:24:21.940 So, again, it is an invalid thing to call them fascists.

00:24:28.500 And I don't believe that the right is trying to do this.

00:24:30.180 I absolutely don't believe that Donald Trump believes in a permanent authoritarian single party nationalism.

00:24:35.160 He believes in nationalism.

00:24:36.680 But I don't think he's planning to end, you know, other opposing political parties.

00:24:41.100 I don't think he's planning to ban elections or anything.

00:24:45.160 Even if some people would prefer that, that that's just not what he's going to be doing.

00:24:49.700 You know, the left's fever dream is that's what he wants.

00:24:52.400 But that's really just a projection on what they want.

00:24:55.380 The next thing is an artificial ethnic ideology.

00:25:00.120 So important thing to understand that we're going to get into a little bit of the weeds here.

00:25:05.220 But that's critical to understand the differences, especially here between fascism and national socialism.

00:25:10.080 So think about Italy at the time period where fascism is kind of emerging.

00:25:17.340 Italy had been trying to unify in one way or another for a very long time.

00:25:22.300 Machiavelli's dream back in the 1500s with the unification of Italy.

00:25:26.300 But that was just not in the cards for Italy for a very long time.

00:25:29.640 In fact, prior to World War I, many of these states simply had not unified.

00:25:34.340 Nationalism was still a revolution in progress.

00:25:36.860 Many states still existed under imperial or monarchical structure.

00:25:41.660 The idea of the nation state as kind of this singular organizing principle for all political entities simply did not exist at the time.

00:25:49.720 And so unified national identities were relatively new, especially in Italy, which had had its unification around 1860, I believe, with Garibaldi.

00:26:01.100 And so a unified Italian identity was still relatively like it was almost within a generation or two that this thing had even been created.

00:26:10.400 And it was still not really unified at that time.

00:26:14.300 And so one of the functions of fascism and communism later on, but we'll get to that in a second, was this attempt to modernize and unify, right?

00:26:26.160 One of the things I talk about in my book, The Total State, is the dominance of managerialism.

00:26:30.900 And one thing I'm going to explain here is that fascism, communism, and liberalism, as we understand it now, all eventually become this managerial ideology.

00:26:39.740 And so both fascism and communism are attempting to unify, centralize, and again, FDR's liberalism also does this, the national identity into one.

00:26:51.600 And in the case of communism, an international identity.

00:26:55.320 But the idea is to centralize production and consumption, centralize this top-down understanding of the nation and the way it can be managed.

00:27:03.920 This happens across all of these ideologies, is James Burnham's thesis in the managerial revolution.

00:27:09.640 And also, in many ways, it's just a way to modernize.

00:27:13.140 Many of these nations were behind in the industrial revolution.

00:27:16.420 They needed a way to catch up.

00:27:18.040 And so that's what this allows to do.

00:27:19.760 And so a way to do this, a way to kind of create this identity that allows you to unify everybody is to create this artificial ethnic ideology.

00:27:29.880 Now, there are plenty of ethnosis inside Italy.

00:27:33.820 And today, because of its existence as a more unified whole for a while, there's probably a larger Italian identity.

00:27:40.100 Though, ironically, actually not that ironically, we would kind of predict this.

00:27:44.480 Many, it's people outside of Italy, of Italian heritage, that tend to have an Italian identity.

00:27:50.360 People inside Italy today still have a very fragmented identity.

00:27:54.340 There is a more unified national identity.

00:27:56.580 But at the time of Mussolini, this is largely synthetic, right?

00:28:01.860 And you can say the same thing when it comes to Germany.

00:28:05.080 You know, Germany was a relatively new state.

00:28:07.300 Now, again, national socialism and fascism are not one-to-one.

00:28:11.100 It's not exactly the same thing.

00:28:12.240 But to the degree that they overlap, it also was necessary in Germany because it was trying to synthesize a unified German identity,

00:28:19.820 which was still relatively new at the time of Hitler's ascension.

00:28:24.460 And so another aspect of this is the artificial ethnic ideology.

00:28:29.680 Now, I want to make it clear that this is where fascism and national socialism depart.

00:28:34.900 Fascism is not dependent necessarily purely on race.

00:28:38.620 And I know that's confusing for some people because they think race and ethnos are the same thing.

00:28:42.760 They aren't. Probably going to do more on that later.

00:28:46.260 But just suffice to say here, because we have a lot to get to, it is not as racialist as national socialism.

00:28:56.260 And a lot of people will say, well, that's not a significant distinction for me.

00:28:59.360 That's fine.

00:28:59.900 It is a significant distinction when it comes to understanding these political ideologies.

00:29:03.820 Also, fascism is not necessarily anti-Semitic.

00:29:07.160 In fact, there was a large contingent of Jewish fascists inside the Italian party until they were eventually expunged once mostly kind of eventually paired up with Hitler.

00:29:19.800 But that was not a core doctrine of fascism.

00:29:23.600 That is not necessarily something that was part of it.

00:29:26.480 And so these are ways in which these ideologies depart, even though there is a certain level of overlap.

00:29:33.640 National socialism is most assuredly a derivative of fascism, but it comes heavily with a German flavor focused much more on race, focused much more on anti-Semitism, features of the occult and that kind of iconography that were part of more of a Hitlerian understanding of this.

00:29:51.300 So, again, that might just be in the weeds for most people, but it does matter when we're just throwing around a political ideology that is actually very specific to a time and place and a nation.

00:30:02.100 Remember, fascism is built on nationalism, meaning it has a specific national character.

00:30:08.600 Italian fascism cannot be exported to Germany and it can not be exported to Spain or the United States.

00:30:15.400 It simply doesn't look the same.

00:30:16.980 You can think of someone like Oswald Mosley in England, who's the fascist leader in England.

00:30:23.820 It has a very different understanding.

00:30:25.660 His was not racialized for the most part.

00:30:28.560 And so there's, again, just a very different understanding of what that is.

00:30:32.500 Some of the failures of fascism in England had to do with the fact that Mosley did try to export some of the Italian aspects that just didn't fit into English culture.

00:30:41.060 And so that's why I'm saying this, you can't have this idea that fascism is this eternal thing that exists across societies and perpetuates itself well in like a hundred years or whatever, almost after its inception, because it's specific to a time.

00:30:56.680 It's specific to a place.

00:30:57.700 It's specific to a political reaction to communism.

00:31:01.820 It's very nationalistic.

00:31:03.760 It is in a specific context that it's really important to understand.

00:31:07.840 A charismatic unitary leadership.

00:31:09.840 Okay, again, this is something that people love to point to.

00:31:12.620 Oh, there's one guy who's saying, you know, who's pounding on a desk with a snazzy uniform.

00:31:17.640 So it's fascism.

00:31:18.920 That's just not right.

00:31:19.900 Again, you can have dictators. 0.99

00:31:21.200 You can have monarchs.

00:31:22.460 You can have a unified totalitarian understanding of power or authoritarian understanding of power.

00:31:29.720 Those things are not the same, by the way.

00:31:31.340 Totalitarianism and authoritarianism are not the same.

00:31:33.020 We currently have a approaching totalitarian state that is not authoritarian in the sense that, you know, we would think of it.

00:31:42.240 But it is approaching that.

00:31:43.540 But anyway, the point is that a lot of people just say, oh, man with medals on his chest, speaking loudly, therefore fascism.

00:31:51.380 That's just not how it works.

00:31:53.700 Also important to note here, the elimination of political opponents is not fascism.

00:31:59.200 People do this as well.

00:32:00.160 They're like, oh, well, if someone is trying to silence their political opponents, then they're fascist.

00:32:04.840 No, of course not.

00:32:05.620 Again, this is something that exists across many different systems of government.

00:32:10.000 Communists did this.

00:32:11.040 They silenced their opponents.

00:32:12.720 There have been plenty of dictators and others throughout history that have silenced their opponents.

00:32:17.280 Our democratic governments are currently silencing and eliminating their political opponents and trying to make it illegal for them to exist in the political environment.

00:32:26.460 So this is not somehow unique to fascism.

00:32:28.980 Again, perhaps an overlap.

00:32:30.960 You can certainly say, oh, well, this is something Kamala Harris is doing or that's fine. 0.99

00:32:34.860 But that does not make Kamala Harris a fascist.

00:32:37.300 That does not make, you know, it doesn't even make someone like Franco a fascist.

00:32:40.860 Like, understand that that is an aspect that is not the aspect.

00:32:45.000 All right.

00:32:45.160 Another big one is the corporatist economy.

00:32:47.900 So, again, you need to understand the context in which fascism is taking place.

00:32:52.400 The Industrial Revolution has radically changed the economic production model across all of, you know, kind of more advancing societies.

00:33:00.820 This has created huge social upheaval, massive disruption.

00:33:05.200 And the way that this is being handled in these countries is different, but they all have to handle it.

00:33:10.160 They all have to get this process under control and have it serve the ends of the nation once again.

00:33:15.280 Nick Land outlines this in great detail when it comes to capital escape and the ways in which modern managerialism are really a human defense mechanism attempting to recapture aspects of the system and bring it back under human control.

00:33:30.460 Both communism and fascism are a reaction to this process.

00:33:35.540 Communism obviously tries to go ahead and just grab the means of production, make them public, make sure that, you know, that ownership is socialized.

00:33:45.240 That is the understanding.

00:33:46.480 Under fascism, it's a little different, right?

00:33:51.600 You're still allowed to have private ownership.

00:33:53.600 You're not stripping away private ownership.

00:33:55.480 You're not even stripping away necessarily the operation of capital under private hands.

00:33:59.580 However, it does have to hybridize with the state.

00:34:03.000 The state has to have a certain level of control over what this is doing.

00:34:06.480 Now, a lot of people will say, oh, well, that's exactly what's happening now.

00:34:09.180 That's exactly what's happening now.

00:34:10.500 And yes, it is.

00:34:11.220 It's true.

00:34:11.620 There is a corporatist understanding right now of economics that is coming out of many different nations across Western liberal democracies, these public-private partnerships, right?

00:34:22.340 Like a lot of people point to the WEF and the desire for public-private partnerships.

00:34:26.880 Yes, it's true.

00:34:27.500 There is a certain corporatist economic aspect that is now coming into popularity across all of these systems.

00:34:34.920 But I want to make it clear, this is also what FDR did, right?

00:34:38.480 Like he also basically brought corporations.

00:34:41.920 He brought private capital under the control of the government and made them bend the knee to the needs of the state, these kind of things.

00:34:51.900 So if you want to say this is fascism, okay, well, then America has been fascist since the 1930s.

00:34:56.800 The answer is actually that this is all part of managerialism.

00:35:01.600 A lot of what people are noticing, both in communism and fascism, and why they think that our current liberal state is actually becoming communist or fascist, they use those words interchangeably, is what they're actually recognizing is aspects of managerialism, which decides that all aspects of human existence can be ordered top-down.

00:35:20.300 Everything can be tweaked, everything can be brought under the control of experts and bureaucracies, everything can be managed, there doesn't need to be an invisible hand, there doesn't need to be an organic understanding of the needs of the people, we can define the needs of the people, we can define the economy, we can force it all to work together under managerialism.

00:35:36.300 So a lot of people will point to the corporatist economy that is coming out of many nations right now and say, well, that means it's fascism.

00:35:44.980 Again, I understand it, you're right, there's one aspect of overlap there.

00:35:48.380 Maybe there's even multiple aspects of overlap, but most of these corporatist economies are increasingly globalist, right?

00:35:54.060 They are trying to extend into a global network.

00:35:56.500 So again, that immediately disqualifies them from being fascist.

00:35:59.960 They simply do not check one of the necessary and critical boxes to have fascism.

00:36:05.380 And again, this is a historical reaction in a specific time.

00:36:09.780 So when you try to extrapolate it out to a wider ideology, especially when it is particular and nationalistic, you're going to fail.

00:36:17.700 You can say, oh, well, there's an aspect of fascism that everyone kind of fell into, and that's pretty obviously true.

00:36:25.040 You think of China, right?

00:36:26.700 China is a communist country in theory, but in actuality, their system is really corporatist, right?

00:36:32.740 They have these private capital, you know, that you are allowed to have private ownership in China at this point.

00:36:38.060 And there are even zones where more capital freedom is allowed, right?

00:36:41.840 These like opportunity zones.

00:36:43.200 But ultimately, the government has their hand in everything.

00:36:46.180 Many of these corporations are extensions of the government in any real sense.

00:36:51.020 And so you could, is China fascist?

00:36:53.700 Is it communist?

00:36:54.720 Well, the answer is it's managerial, but people don't have that language.

00:36:58.240 They're just using these dead ideas that haven't really functioned for a long time.

00:37:03.200 And that's why we get the level of confusion that we do.

00:37:06.300 Again, I know this seems pedantic to break this down at this granular level, but I want you to understand that our failure to grasp that these political ideologies are dead brings us to a point where we're screaming at each other about aspects of our current reality.

00:37:20.020 That mimics some aspects of these previous political ideologies, but ultimately leads us to confusion.

00:37:27.200 We don't understand what our political situation is because we don't understand context and the reality of these political ideologies, what their historical significance is and why they're no longer operating in the real world.

00:37:39.340 And finally, I want to hit on an aspect that I really disagree with when it comes to fascism, is that it's ultimately a secular progressivism or a pagan synthesis with antiquity.

00:37:52.180 You'll notice that a lot of kind of the fascism, you know, Italian fascism and then the like national socialism that's adjacent to fascism is focused on synthesizing with antiquity, right?

00:38:04.840 We are the real Romans, right?

00:38:06.820 Whether we're the Italians or the Germans, we're aping a lot of the iconography of the Roman Empire.

00:38:12.140 We're bringing back many of the ideas that we are, you know, kind of tied to the blood of these ancient pagan people.

00:38:19.100 And so in many ways, fascism is really trying to bring back this and synthesize it with the modern world, right?

00:38:26.140 How can we modernize this pagan understanding?

00:38:28.840 There is a level at which fascism will kind of work with the church, right?

00:38:33.600 There's lip service to this, but ultimately these ideologies are actually anti-clerical.

00:38:40.660 They don't want the church to have a significant influence in politics.

00:38:44.780 They're in many ways an ideology that is trying to free the political from its ties to Christianity or to the church, to, you know, to their modern understanding of religion.

00:38:55.400 And so it's trying to, it's very future oriented with the idea that perhaps we can synthesize a pagan identity and kind of orient it towards a dominant future, right?

00:39:06.940 So this is something that is discarding the throne and altar stuff, right?

00:39:10.520 Like if you look at even the Spanish Civil War and its different factions, you do have like the Falangists and then you have the Monarchists.

00:39:18.500 You know, so you have the Fascists and you have the Monarchists. 0.81

00:39:20.980 They are both right-wing.

00:39:22.280 They're both working on the right-wing side to fight against the communists, but ultimately they are not friends in the true sense.

00:39:29.740 They are co-belligerents. 0.94

00:39:31.340 You know, if you're playing your Orin bingo, I just use co-belligerent. 0.99

00:39:34.660 You can market your space.

00:39:36.240 They are co-belligerents. 0.94

00:39:37.360 They are working together in the moment, but they are not ultimately allies in the true sense where they want the same future.

00:39:44.060 They have the same goals, right?

00:39:46.700 Like there are definitive things that they want that are very separate from each other.

00:39:50.560 And so I want to make it clear that while fascism is right-wing, it is in opposition to ultimately Christian ends. 0.89

00:39:59.300 So that's why this idea that like Christian nationalism would be fascist is entirely wrong.

00:40:04.160 It can't be fascist.

00:40:05.340 It can't be fascist because again, it doesn't check one of the critical boxes that aligns it with fascism along with the fact that fascism is dead.

00:40:13.020 And that's really what I want to get to now. 1.00

00:40:15.120 Ultimately, fascism is stupid. 1.00

00:40:18.540 It's stupid to throw this around and call everything fascist because fascism is dead. 1.00

00:40:22.300 This is also true, by the way, of communism and liberalism in any real sense. 0.98

00:40:26.020 And you might say, but Orin, you know, we exist in this kind of liberal state or there is a certain level of communist rhetoric, Marxist rhetoric that is involved in wokeness and these kind of things.

00:40:38.780 And all of that is true.

00:40:39.720 It's not that none of these ideas have survived.

00:40:42.240 Some, a few of the fascist ideas have survived, but the ones that have survived in most part are ones that are useful to managerialism.

00:40:49.940 And the, and so what we have now is not really any of these ideologies.

00:40:55.100 They might have a certain level look, even I will make the joke that the left are kind of, you know, doing the gay race communism thing, but, but ultimately they're not, they're not true economic Marxist.

00:41:05.200 They might believe in some level of redistribution, but they're not, they're, no one is at this point really talking about destroying the complete private ownership of anything.

00:41:14.340 They're not going to completely seize the means of production.

00:41:16.980 It might be highly confiscatory.

00:41:18.420 It might be more of this corporatist model, but it's not going to be true communism either.

00:41:22.580 So like all of these political ideologies are dead, but the reason that I'm focusing on fascism as the really dead ideology is that we have turned it into this crusade, right?

00:41:34.400 R.R. Reno and many others have talked about the post-war consensus.

00:41:38.240 This idea that kind of after World War II, there's this never again mentality, many, much of it is tied to kind of like this sacralization of a Holocaust.

00:41:48.280 And it is said that basically we have to avoid all authoritarianism, but we also need to avoid like all instances of greater connection to the good and beautiful and the true.

00:41:59.780 Nothing about, you know, no powerful identities.

00:42:02.340 Again, R.R. Reno calls it the strong gods.

00:42:04.780 We have to banish the strong gods, all these strong affinities, these transcendent identities.

00:42:09.680 They have to be done away with after World War II because like just terrible things happened.

00:42:14.100 Hitler was a really bad guy and we have to banish all of these things. 0.97

00:42:17.860 Now, I think that what we're seeing is that that kind of founding myth of our current order is allowing really terrible things to happen, right?

00:42:27.160 The anti-fascists in the sense of, you know, these Antifa people are given carte blanche to do violence against people, to do things that, you know, no other, they're basically become paramilitary groups, right?

00:42:39.460 And the ironic sense of basically being black shirts or brown shirts, but for the regime at this point.

00:42:45.000 And this is really dangerous place to be again, Paul Godfrey points out in his excellent book on anti-fascism that this crusade has more or less enabled the government to do anything in its name by turning Hitler into Satan and fascism into the worst evil possible.

00:43:00.160 We've kind of given a blank check to our governments to become as totalitarian as they want to be in the name of anti-fascism, right?

00:43:09.180 An ideology that is dead and can't really hurt them ultimately, but it does allow them to have this kind of boogeyman that they can shake at any time. 0.97

00:43:17.540 You know, some idiot in a uniform runs around, you know, holding up, you know, old flags from 1940s Germany. 0.89

00:43:24.900 We end up in this scenario where they revivify this evil and they're able to, you know, summon all of their powers after it. 0.99

00:43:31.800 And it's just this ongoing cycle of, you know, we can bring any weapon to bear on these enemies of freedom and democracy.

00:43:39.000 We have to be, you know, constantly vigilant for the return of fascism, these kind of things.

00:43:43.680 And this is why I want the right to stop throwing this term around.

00:43:46.480 Okay.

00:43:46.840 Because one is just academically incorrect.

00:43:49.180 It's just factually wrong.

00:43:50.640 Two, because it is feeding into the ideological justification the left relies on to do its crusade, right?

00:43:59.600 The anti-fascist crusade is the ideology of the left.

00:44:03.820 This is the ultimate unifying idea that, you know, that all of these groups are coming together to defeat fascism.

00:44:09.360 And we have to constantly be vigilant and anything and everything is legitimate.

00:44:13.020 And anything you love, anything that you believe in that opposes the regime, anything like, you know, family, anything like faith, any of this stuff, well, that's just fascists.

00:44:23.580 It's all coded fascists.

00:44:24.620 And we all know that fascism is just evil and we can do anything to fascists we want.

00:44:29.420 And so there's a subtle threat beyond it.

00:44:31.100 If you're coded as fascists, we can hurt you in any way we want.

00:44:34.280 And that's legitimate.

00:44:35.120 That's morally allowable because we have entered this anti-fascist crusade. 0.96

00:44:38.820 And so when the right throws around fascism and says, oh, the WF is fascist or Kamala Harris is fascist or, you know, Barack Obama is a fascist.

00:44:47.940 What they're saying is I am affirming your frame of fascism as the ultimate evil, you know, a terrible thing that we always have to watch out. 0.94

00:44:57.400 It's the eternally, you know, we have to be eternally vigilant to stop this devil, the Satan.

00:45:02.860 I'm affirming that frame and I'm just including my enemies in it.

00:45:06.960 But that never works, right?

00:45:08.880 Like no one, no leftist has ever said, oh, well, in that case, like, yeah, we have to stop, you know, Barack Obama.

00:45:14.760 We have to stop Kamala Harris. 0.79

00:45:16.520 We have to stop, you know, the globalists because they are fascists and we are anti-fascists and therefore we will work against it.

00:45:22.340 You notice that trick never works, right?

00:45:24.260 These people never buy in to that narrative because ultimately they know that's just not the case.

00:45:29.180 That's not what the word fascism is doing.

00:45:31.120 It's enabling their crusade, their power, their frame, their worldview.

00:45:36.200 And so the reason, again, I want to do this is not just to be, you know, really pedantic about the specific political implications or the historical context, though I am doing that to be clear.

00:45:46.560 But also because I'm really tired of right-wingers reinforcing this frame and this narrative.

00:45:52.260 You need to stop doing it, okay?

00:45:54.260 If you need to call them anything that's just incorrect, just call them communists.

00:45:58.220 It's also incorrect, but at least it's not incorrect and reinforcing their frame simultaneously, okay?

00:46:04.360 If you have to, I don't think you should run around calling everything communist either.

00:46:07.280 But if that's really what you need to do, then just do that and don't use fascist.

00:46:13.220 It just doesn't make sense.

00:46:14.640 And you're just reinforcing the frame of your enemies.

00:46:18.400 All right.

00:46:19.120 So that's what I wanted to lay out.

00:46:21.300 I wanted just to kind of grasp what fascism really is.

00:46:24.480 I wanted to grasp why it's important not to reinforce the left's frame, why people who are constantly using this language are doing it incorrectly and often maliciously,

00:46:33.920 and how it's kind of become the ruling ideology, how it's enabled this crusade that is now allowing the government to do anything and everything and be as totalitarian as it wants in the name of fighting fascism, right?

00:46:45.600 Like when they say we have to, you know, ban elections to save democracy and stop fascism, there's a reason that that word salad, in one sense, that word salad doesn't make any sense, right?

00:46:55.520 Because all the terms aren't attached to any of the real definitions of those words.

00:46:59.800 But if you understand the ideological and like kind of religious connotations to those phrases, then actually that word salad does make sense because it's all it's really saying is we need to kill the enemy so that we can continue to have our reigning power structure in control.

00:47:16.100 That's really what that sentence means.

00:47:18.780 And so you need to understand that when you use their language, you are empowering that frame.

00:47:23.400 You are reinforcing that frame, and that is just terrible from a, you know, from a politics standpoint, from a moral standpoint, from a historical standpoint.

00:47:32.160 It's just a failure to understand the situation you're in.

00:47:35.160 All right, guys, let's go to the questions of the people here real quick.

00:47:40.660 Let's see here. 0.94

00:47:41.860 Philosophical Thirst Worm says, I wish my boy Trump was actually a fascist. 0.56

00:47:46.180 Well, maybe you do, maybe you don't. 0.87

00:47:48.140 But ultimately, like I said, it's dead.

00:47:50.620 It just doesn't matter.

00:47:51.640 You're not a fascist either, by the way.

00:47:53.400 It just that's just not what it means.

00:47:55.200 Right.

00:47:55.460 It's historical context.

00:47:56.660 It's a specific understanding.

00:47:58.660 It's a bad one, by the way.

00:47:59.860 I don't think it's a good ideology.

00:48:01.220 I think it has very serious flaws.

00:48:03.060 I oppose it.

00:48:03.980 I don't think you should invest yourself in it because, A, it's dead and, B, it's wrong.

00:48:07.980 You know, have a better philosophy.

00:48:10.660 But even if, you know, it was around, that's just not who Trump is.

00:48:13.920 It's not the case.

00:48:15.380 Let's see. 0.99

00:48:16.760 The Tiny Stupid Demon says, first we had the great chain of being, but then God died. 0.99

00:48:21.240 Then we had the great political spectrum of being. 1.00

00:48:24.120 But now not everyone I hate is literally Hitler.

00:48:27.160 Time and space have become unmoored.

00:48:29.080 Yeah.

00:48:29.260 I mean, that really is true, right?

00:48:30.940 With this idea of the death of God and the death of spirituality, they had to secularize

00:48:35.220 all these concepts because actually evil is still real and people do still work towards

00:48:39.460 these, you know, these impulses.

00:48:41.500 But you have to secularize them. 0.94

00:48:43.000 You have to come up with new language for them.

00:48:44.900 And so we end up in these kind of weird places.

00:48:47.420 And the more abstract we get away from the truth, the reality of God and evil, the more

00:48:52.440 we get into these secular ideologies that stand in for them, the more we get muddled in our

00:48:57.340 ability to communicate moral concepts.

00:48:59.720 And this is a huge problem that the secular kind of, you know, I didn't leave the left,

00:49:05.440 the left left me, IDW centrist.

00:49:08.320 They run this problem, too.

00:49:09.640 Like they want to say these things.

00:49:11.240 They want to talk about evil.

00:49:12.780 They want to talk about truth.

00:49:13.880 They want to talk about the good.

00:49:14.980 But they can't really do any of that because they've banished all the language, all the 0.97

00:49:18.420 core concepts from it.

00:49:19.780 And so they end up just throwing around these terms as well.

00:49:22.100 And it's just super unproductive.

00:49:25.460 Michael Robertson says, lots of new people in our corner lately.

00:49:29.080 We should be iterating Yarvin's lesson that not that just because you see how bad progressives

00:49:34.080 are, you are not a fascist.

00:49:35.960 That's their frame.

00:49:36.760 Yeah, this is I did a video on this at the very beginning of my channel.

00:49:39.640 But Yarvin had a great essay and he's mentioned it several times in other essays since about

00:49:46.180 not assuming the frame of your enemy, right?

00:49:48.300 Like I see how terrible current regime is and they tell me that the opposition to the

00:49:53.720 regime is a Nazi.

00:49:55.360 So therefore, I'm going to be a Nazi. 0.68

00:49:56.880 Like that is not the way to do things.

00:49:59.000 That is not how you should understand things.

00:50:01.060 In fact, even if that was the real opposition, no, actually, that's not the case.

00:50:05.820 That is itself a proxy for a more healthy.

00:50:10.060 That is a gross, progressive, secular mutation of a much more healthy understanding of right

00:50:16.640 wing opposition to leftism.

00:50:18.280 You should be looking for that more healthy traditional understanding, that tradition

00:50:23.140 that is rooted in faith and in real identity, not in these fake synthetic identities.

00:50:28.720 Those things are what actually opposes the left.

00:50:31.540 And so do not just take don't just wear that skin suit.

00:50:34.820 Don't just wear that costume because the left tells you that's what they want.

00:50:38.020 They want the enemy for a reason.

00:50:40.160 They know the spiritual significance that the Nazis and fascism holds up. 0.78

00:50:45.580 They're the ones perpetuating it.

00:50:47.060 So if you step into that frame, you're going to lose.

00:50:51.360 Let's see. 0.80

00:50:53.340 Perspicacious Heretic says, I'm pretty sure fascism is just you're a big meanie.

00:50:58.200 Yeah, ultimately, that really is what it's been turned into. 0.99

00:51:01.840 Tiny Stupid Demon says, I feel you. 0.78

00:51:03.720 Sometimes I think my entire life is that quote from the Princess Bride. 1.00

00:51:07.920 You keep using that word.

00:51:09.140 I do not think it means what you think it means.

00:51:11.200 Might put it on my tombstone.

00:51:12.840 Absolutely.

00:51:13.420 That is most assuredly the case with uses of fascism in the modern day.

00:51:19.100 Let's see.

00:51:19.920 Life of Brian says, fascism is an appeal to a shared metaphysical terrain.

00:51:24.560 Any appeal to any good not grounded in individual preference.

00:51:30.900 I'm thinking about that for a second.

00:51:37.520 I don't even think that's right.

00:51:38.960 Because like Mussolini even said, like, we're not the collectivists, which I know sounds very weird to people who are thinking about even, you know, genuine fascism that existed in Italy.

00:51:49.660 But he didn't even see it that way.

00:51:51.520 I mean, they are appealing to a shared metaphysical terrain.

00:51:54.900 That's true.

00:51:55.240 But it is a synthetic one.

00:51:57.080 It's not one grounded in organic identity or transcendent reality tied to, you know, Christianity or these kind of things.

00:52:05.660 It is an attempt to kind of make this like faux pagan understanding of kind of that shared metaphysical plane.

00:52:11.920 So, I guess the first part of that is true, but I don't know.

00:52:16.640 Like I said, I think there's a little more to it there.

00:52:19.680 Let's see here.

00:52:22.920 Broman Hank says, MAGA feels basically like libertarianism, but more goofy.

00:52:29.480 Calling it fascism is comical.

00:52:32.060 Anyway, great episode.

00:52:33.080 Oh, thank you very much.

00:52:33.920 And, you know, I don't know if MAGA is goofier than libertarianism.

00:52:39.020 I mean, you know, guy dancing around in kind of the, you know, the Trump hat with an elephant attached to it, guy dancing around in his underwear on stage. 0.80

00:52:46.700 I guess you can make the decision there on who's goofier. 0.52

00:52:50.340 I would say that MAGA is really liberal.

00:52:53.800 It's liberal in a real sense, like a classical sense, not in a not in the sense of, you know, kind of the current explanation of progressivism.

00:53:03.040 But even then, it's not classical liberalism either.

00:53:05.420 It derives many different conclusions that like John Locke wouldn't derive.

00:53:10.280 But it is closer to actual liberalism, which is ironic because most people call themselves liberal hate it.

00:53:16.140 Even the people who call themselves classical liberals usually aren't fans of Donald Trump and MAGA.

00:53:21.700 So, there's that.

00:53:23.320 Let's see here.

00:53:24.420 Philosophical Thirst one says, then just China ticks everything on your list and it's a wildly successful project. 0.98

00:53:35.680 Singapore is very close.

00:53:38.280 So, Singapore is closer.

00:53:40.800 I'll give you that.

00:53:41.800 Singapore is multi-ethnic, but they are unified in kind of this identity that is dictated synthetically from the top down.

00:53:52.260 So, there is some truth to that, right, that it does ultimately rely on that.

00:53:56.560 I don't think you could say Singapore is an opposite to leftist destruction of tradition.

00:54:01.920 I don't know that that really works there ultimately.

00:54:06.360 But it certainly is, you know, somewhat corporatist, though it's authoritarian for sure.

00:54:12.600 But it does allow a lot more free economics than I think perhaps a classical fascist regime would say.

00:54:19.840 But I would say Singapore is probably closer.

00:54:21.440 I'll say that.

00:54:22.680 And you're right that it is more successful for the goals that it is reaching, though I don't think it quite meets all those boxes.

00:54:30.160 It certainly is not historically contingent in the sense that it's a reaction to communism.

00:54:35.700 And I don't think that ultimately, you know, China qualifies either, you know, same reason.

00:54:42.000 It's not it is.

00:54:42.940 Well, I guess you could say it's a reaction.

00:54:44.860 The current Chinese government is a reaction to the previous Chinese communism, even though it's still operating as a communist party.

00:54:51.060 It is a very weird synthesis.

00:54:53.300 Ultimately, I think that managerialism does explain this better than most.

00:54:56.900 But it is it is a synthetic identity for sure, to a certain extent, though, I suppose you could say that about many of the Chinese empires.

00:55:06.360 I have to think on that a little more.

00:55:07.540 But I still don't think that China really operates entirely as a fascistic understanding, again, if only because it's historically contingent and grounded mainly in Italian identity.

00:55:19.340 So maybe you could say it shares several of these aspects, but I don't think it ultimately qualifies here.

00:55:27.720 Let's see here.

00:55:28.960 And then we have historian Kane says Gottfried is a great is great on fascism pain to there was an attempt for international fascism fell apart.

00:55:37.820 Yeah, again, Gottfried identifies kind of that understanding that you can't really spread this because of its nationalistic character.

00:55:45.060 Any idea of exporting this, I mostly kind of ends up with kind of these weird importations of customs and rituals and understandings that simply aren't natural to the place.

00:55:57.380 You might see different aspects of this filter into different movements that are nationalistic, but ultimately they can't be specifically fascist because it really is grounded, again, in that historical cultural context that just doesn't exist everywhere.

00:56:09.700 So it can't be accurately replicated across every different part of this.

00:56:14.960 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

00:56:17.200 But thank you, everybody, for coming by.

00:56:18.800 It's been great talking to you.

00:56:20.380 If it's your first time on this channel, please make sure that you go ahead and subscribe.

00:56:23.760 Make sure you click the bell, notifications, all that stuff so that you know when these streams go live.

00:56:29.240 If you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you need to subscribe to The Orr McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:56:35.440 And if you'd like to pick up my book, Talking About Managerialism, so you can better understand why these modern ideologies are not just one-to-one with, say, fascism or communism,

00:56:44.640 you can do that at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, or at your own local bookstore.

00:56:49.280 Thank you, everybody, for watching, and as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 25, 2024

Shut Up! Not Everything Is Fascism ｜ 10⧸25⧸24

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