@troglodyt @mjf_pro @mattblaze Fascist ideas have always been around. It's base-instinct for a lot of people. Modern communications just made it easier to appeal to and organize people quickly on a large scale.

Technology is just an amplifier of what we already are.

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze

so what other animals have fascist societies?

@troglodyt @mjf_pro @mattblaze Sorry. I didn't think you were asking a serious question. They don't, simply because they don't have societies complex enough for the definition of fascism to have any meaning.

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze

what then do you mean by "base instinct"?

@troglodyt @mjf_pro @mattblaze

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/base+instinct

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze

did you read it? it defines it as animal instinct

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze

i believe fascism needs to extinguish "base instinct" to work, which is why high tech mass communication and industrial mass culture are prerequisites, and that's also why we don't see it in animals or preindustrial societies. it would also explain why there's no sophistication, no subliminal messaging in fascist propaganda, instead it relies on repetition and reframed familiarity

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze

my explanation also opens the possibility of a non-fascist society that isn't built on repression of "base instinct"

@troglodyt @mjf_pro @mattblaze I'm not sure I agree with the lack of subliminal messaging. Fascism is full of subliminal messaging and dog whistles.

The methods used by modern fascists to gain followers have been used by skillful despots since forever.

It's easy to set up an us-versus-them scenario. It doesn't even need to be based on anything meaningful. As long as you can create a division between groups of people, then you can capitalize on that and build a following. You feed feel-good stories to "your" people, make them feel good by constantly showing them how they're better than "that other group", how the "other" group is evil. You also want to instill some fear of the other group. Pretty soon you can fan this into flames and build hate for the other group.

Seizing and maintaining power is straightforward if you create a perceived enemy and convince the people that you are the one capable of leading them against this enemy. (This is basic leadership skill taught to aristocrats since forever.)

Somewhere around half of any human population is easily swayed by such arguments. They need someone to look down on. All you have to do is give it to them.

(This is the primary base-instinct I refer to. It's related to the warm fuzzy feelings one gets from tribalism. It's the warm fuzzies that hold street gangs together. It's the warm fuzzies of knowing you're in the "in crowd" versus the "out crowd" in high school. It's the reason people form fraternal organizations. It often appears in religions, as long as you belong to the "right" religion.)

This weakness is built into human nature and won't change until we evolve. You could be dropped into the middle of a group of humans 20,000 years ago and (ignoring the language barrier) you could apply these techniques to quickly assume leadership of the group / community / city.

The safeguard against it is education and vigilance. People need to be educated in these techniques of sowing division and capitalizing on it so they recognize them when a wannabe despot tries to employ it on them.

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze

dog whistles aren't subliminal, it's just a reframing of something obvious and familiar, you'd need to find another example if you really want to cling to that idea

very little of this is specifically fascistic

@Raven47 @mjf_pro @mattblaze Certainly not naive. You see the basic mechanisms that drive everything.

My only comment is that education is key. You can't have a solid democracy without an educated populace. The people have to understand the complexities of what they're voting for.

@shuttersparks @mjf_pro @mattblaze
So far, all "democracies" in human history had or have autocratic, exploiting economies (slaveholder, feudalism, capitalism), and some (Athenian, US) were even politically created for only a privileged part of the population. Yes, education is necessary but it will not be successful if it is in contradiction with the politico-economic reality. Democracy has to be just and fair in both areas, in politics AND economy.
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