Seems reductive.
It’s a convenient place to rest the goalposts until they have to snatch them up and run away again.
Because they genuinely don’t know what the definition of fascism is
Or they do, but need to change it because it fits a little too well.
They are by far the least emotionally accessible portion of the US populace. They are also very deliberately ignorant. They really don’t know what some of the words represent in full. They are put simply, stupid.
These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West.
You know, morons.
Damn, you really are the waco kid
Gabby Johnson is right!
They are genuinely bad with anologies and empathy. That’s how they got to be conservative. Everything taken at face value, nothing they haven’t experienced is real. Fascists are people named Mussolini. See? This isn’t 1930s Italy, so this isn’t fascism
It’s just sparkling authoritarianism.
Bad faith, nothing they say can be believed at face value, despite that being exactly what mass media trains people to do.
Because otherwise they’d really have to struggle with some highly uncomfortable and inconvenient realizations.
That’s a kind way of saying some of them would have an aneurism thinking too hard. /s
They certainly do not strike me as people overburdened by introspection. Or ethics, decency, conscience and compassion for that matter.
Regrettably, they’re just smart enough to have stumbled upon the secret known to all psychopaths and sociopaths: That being an unmitigated asshole can be both liberating and profitable, so long as one can manage to dodge the consequences. It helps if other people - usually referred to as ‘victims’ - are too civil to apply the FAFO principle.
They don’t. They play the victim a lot more ways than that.
For example: you don’t go to church. They think “Christian values are under attack.” You argue for civil rights. “The right of the White Man is under attack.” Shit like that. And they will call you a fascist, a socialist, a communist, everything but what you are, which is a nonconformist, for not doing exactly what they want you to do.
A conservative, by the simplest definition, is one who opposes change for the sake of change. The ideal of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” The problem is, while the system may not be broken for them (WASP), it needs work for people of colour, the LGBTQ+, Palestinians, and more. But they don’t want a world that works for the rest of us. They just want to maintain the status quo. A lot of them have much more complicated feelings and opinions than that, but that’s basically conservatism in a nutshell. Not extreme. Unfortunately very few conservatives are basic conservatives anymore.
which is a nonconformist
Thank you for this, it puts it in terms that make a lot of sense. This really helps explain a phenomenon I see so often. I know a few folks who are certainly not pro-trump, but are very anti-political. I’ve been told that I need to shut up, and things would be fine once the next election rolls around.
These folks might not like what’s happening, but they are fine conforming to it.
Maybe it’s a me problem, but I think it’s going to take a little more work than the bare minimum.
Because the dishonest fucks only engage in bad faith arguments.
Because conservatives don’t argue in good faith and at this point the only way you should communicate with them is with bricks
Because they’re literal fascists, by definition, and are trying to convince others that they are not.
Fascists always attempt to change the definition of words to suit their narrative.
Don’t let them.
Because they don’t want to admit that they’re fascists, so they leave out all the characteristics that would confirm that they are.
False question fallacy.
Conservatives don’t solely define fascists as “being violent”, at least in my country.
I see it all the time. “A leftist was violent? See I told you they were fascist.”
Because it suits them to. That is really all there is to it. “Fascism” got such a universally bad name, that even (almost all) fascists dont want yo call themselves such. Instead, they try to use this negatively associated word to describe the people fighting against them.
Some dont
They define every single thing as what they need it to mean that day. or hour. or minute. Religions vary wildly from the same religious texts.
There’s no overall logic. Just lie as they go along, and see what catches. It’s exactly how con-men work.
Because, to put it mildly, they lack intelligence.
Possibly more precisely:
Self-Awareness.
The people at the bottom, yes, probably. But it bears mentioning that the world’s simpletons are just repeating rhetoric that was carefully engineered and fed to them by powerful people who are smart enough to know it’ll make them more powerful.
Fascism is about killing as many people you don’t like as possible, while the richest people in the land consolidate power, and lying about everything to make it possible. It tends to last for decades and destroys the nation that embraces it.
You are all the good things and your enemies are all the bad things. There is no value in truth or rationality.
Good luck.
