Then & Now I’ve made a bunch of videos I later regretted. It’s a common trend for people who try to experiment.

Then & Now :)

be that as it may, I still appreciate the effort, as these ideas are pertinent to the time and we need to be thinking these things through, thanks

For most of the video, I had the sense it was going somewhere really important. So, I do think the two topics can go together in really interesting ways. It just seemed, by the end, that you hadn't quite gotten there; I wasn't sure what the big takeaway was supposed to be. And I don't know what big takeaway I would want to leave people with from a discussion playing these two topics off each other, so that's not much help. But there's definitely something there.

I thought this was a great video, and if you wanted to make an additional video with more focus on defining fascism then I’d love to watch it. I have Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism on my reading list and I’ll gladly receive any additional help in defining this tricky concept.

Yeah. The thing about fascism and speech act theory is that fascistic utterances tend to be fairly peculiar speech acts, in that they look like communicative ones but there's little assumption that the speaker genuinely believes them and there's comparatively little interest in the audience accepting them either. (Credit to Sartre and Harry Frankfurt for relevant concepts here.) Fascist utterances are markers of identity inside the group and symbolic punches in the face for outsiders - newspeak helps make them all the better at that, since thinking about them is exactly not the point.

Hope it doesn't disappoint too much - as I note above, I'm unhappy with it!

@@ThenNow I actually thought it was a solid video. I consider that this sort of open ended essays are less about convincing people of a conclusion and more about exploring ideas, a kind of heuristic endeavor. I really like how you try to apply speech act theory to explain how people use the word fascism instead of exploring the concrete socio-historical phenomenon (I have "How to do things with words" on my reading list).

you mean like how the left calls all right leaning ideologies "far right"?

The Democrat party has been hijacked by socialist and communists. Bernie was a communist long before he was a socialist, as was Warren. AOC is also a socialist, although she's not bright enough to know it. They are as fascist as they get, too. The roots of fascism have always been from the Left. ALWAYS...

First there is a need to mention, that the term socialist has a unique use in the states. Normally there are socialists and social democrates. Socialists want to get rid of capitalism, social democrates want a state that controls certain aspects like healthcare, public transport or the energy sector.

I see Fascism as Socialism with Nationalism mixed an example would be Nazi Germany, as they claim to be National Socialists

@@matsfreedom Everything you wrote is nonsensical and ahistorical. 1) Is that why we have Medicare4all, free tuition university, guaranteed jobs. Your belief that the Democratic Party is „hijacked“ by Sanders or Warren is absurd. It is a party controlled and dominated by corporate interests which is by definition right wing. 2) Warren was a Republican before she became a Democrat. 3) Sanders ideas are best described as social democrat or FDR liberalism. Sanders mentioned only once a socialist policy namely worker cooperatives but had no policy in regards to it. Everything he proposed was social democratic proposals. Fascists in Europe were considered Right Wing parties. And were placed into power by right wing coalitions. The social democrats, the German Democrat party a liberal party, socialists, and communists were against Nazi and Hitler. While all the right wing parties were for Hitler and Nazi. Hindenburg a Right Wing Monarchist appointed Hitler. And once Hitler cam into power he persecuted the Left wing Not the Right Wing.

Very true

Yeah, there's a real problematic 'horseshoe theory' vibe to the way fascism is defined here.

The materialist definition is right here www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm

All of Central and Eastern Europe agrees.

@@alfredcam5213 Because intentions determine morality, that's why. If I bomb your city to liberate the people you oppress and you bomb my city to enforce your oppression then those two things are not the same. The Nazis, Soviets and the US all put people in camps during WWII, these are not the same. Nazis to kill them, Soviets to remove them as a political threat and the US to make people feel safe. This is why Intentions matter, almost more, than actual actions. It is specifically focussing on actions rather than intentions that the Fascist Propagandists use to justify their evil.

@@alfredcam5213 Hitler didn't. That's the point. That's what makes it Fascism.

@@alfredcam5213 When you act the motivation for that act matters. When you don't act your motivation to not act also matters. If I kill you because I hate you that is evil. If I kill you in self-defense that is tolerable. If I hate you and still don't kill you that is civilization. Motivation makes all the difference.

Yes this is a common error in English speakers. The sound 'ee' is usually represented by the letter "i" in Spanish, Italian & other European languages; rarely, if ever, by the letter "e".

Also "Gramshi" instead of "Gramski"

Which I think is what you're touching on.

Que no, ese ha sido un audio libro, este, en cambio, es una introducción a toda una teoría semiótica y su relación a como entender el acto de calificar a alguien o algo como fascista.

Linkéame al furro ese, crac

What is it ?

@@pierren___ : a political and economic system that rejects ca pita lism, lib era ism/de moc racy, and com muni sm, in which the means of production is organized by national wor ker syn dicals (i.e. trade uni  ons), and the guiding philosophy of the state is Actual Idealism.

@@Historia.Magistra.Vitae. haha yes !

You really miss the mark with this comment but at least you acknowledged that fascism makes people uncomfortable because it turns the mirror on to those people who live by delusional conceptions of what realistic and what's not.

I think you have a point, but for me personally it is too broad of an idea. It’s been stated before „The fascism in us all that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us." - Michel Foucault. But this internal understanding does not tell us much as to the external phenomena. It tells us of the vulnerability of adopting it but not what it is in and of itself. There is a striking difference in ideology of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. For Joseph Stalin tribalism based on race was a taboo, but one based on political vanguardism dominated his ideology, it had a similarity to Inquisition Christianity a person could „convert“. But it Nazism tribalism groups were excluded primarily by race, ethnicity. I think a better way of dealing with the subject in a universal way is to create the broad category of totalitarianism. And to understand that any ideology can become totalitarian and that certainly includes US liberalism, which wages war on Iraq to force people to be „free“. When we can see that any ideology even the most seemingly benign can become totalitarian, we can do something about it. Perhaps Christianity is one of the best examples of this. How does a religious philosophy of „love thy neighbor“ and „love thy enemy“ and „forgiveness of others“ result in genocides and inquisitions?

That "eco fascism" essay is left shifted as all hell!

Oh that's so sweet

Robert Flury why

Yes,like the commies and nazis.

Why?

@@arijao92 because they're fascists, and can, definitionally, add nothing to do the discorse except pain and hatred, and to pretend like they deserve any place in the discussion belies a complete historical illiteracy.

@@_pink_clovers Fascism in itself does not mean that you hate anyone and you are an authoritarian yourself if you wish to ban free speech

@@arijao92 I'm not talking about legally banning, I'm talking about socially excluding them from political discorse, like banning them from social media, stuff like that; if you're for private property, these companies can have whatever TOS they want, and I think, we, as a community, should be asking to ban fascist and white nationalist content.

mudpuddlestruck bylightning I don’t get it. Why shouldn’t we take Eco seriously? And how did you feel about the other conceptualization of fascism in this video? They all seemed legitimate and useful to me

@@user-wl2xl5hm7k Eco makes some simplifications - such as being 'anti-modernist'. We see no evidence for this. We see a confused attitude to modernism in fascism - and to a lot a lot of other things too. These things are vitally important in describing the attitude that is fascism. The nuance that Eco knows is there should be smashed into our heads in his description and in all re-tellings. Unless we do that, we end up replicating all the old errors of defining fascism/repeating simplifications. There's much in this vid to help us assume a fixed, left-right spectrum. This can be picked out and seen as confirmation of the ridiculous idea that there is a political right and left and they are opposite each other. This left-right description is now used as a tool of power - a tool that helps the left generally and asks us to take the existence of phantoms seriously. Perhaps I'm harsh - but anything that supports the nonsense idea of a left-right spectrum , has to be challenged. Not challenging sloppy descriptions gets us in trouble. The greatest burden falls on those who are nearest to good explanations - and that's Eco. We see this in the political compass idea. It is worse than the old left-right position. It wades in - and apparently explains all the idiocies of the old system. In contrast to it, it has great explanatory power. Ultimately, it's bollocks!

mudpuddlestruck bylightning I’m sorry. I don’t understand the points you’re trying to make. And the reasoning I do grasp doesn’t resonate with me.

@@user-wl2xl5hm7k What's so complicated about challenging muddled language? What's so fuzzy about invention of concepts like 'left-right'? What's so distant about attacking sloppy descriptions - designed to replicate further sloppiness?

@@damianbylightning6823 finally, someone calls out the "left- right" hodgepodge 😂

Nonsense. The conditions that make capitalism possible are anti-capitalist. So facsism is anticapitalist

silly comment

Someone is actually a Marxist, lol