this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Nope. We've been there for a long, long time now. People are only figuring it out now, though.
The (so-called) "political spectrum" becomes perfectly irrelevant once you understand WHY and HOW our political establishments dangle the liberal carrot and the fascist stick before us.
To a degree yes, but the intensity changes. And I know there were times, where there was even greater inequality (e.g. Mansa Musa). Yet it's not really comparable with the modern world, which largely relies on speculative assets, and growth.
No it doesn't, fascism is a different level than liberal establishments. Our democracies are far from perfect, but they at least have some form of control by the people, to keep power somewhat in check. Fascism is definitely concentrating on centralizing power, with the tendency to escalate (as obviously seen in the past). Also there are a lot of statistics, which show, that we were in a comparably very peaceful state for some time (since the last world war), but we're currently getting out of that period again (though still relatively peaceful), into a more autocratic world again unfortunately.
I'm speaking as european, where things are not (yet) that bad. The "democracy" in the USA is definitely less democratic than let's say scandinavian democracies... And I don't want to even begin with something like Russia or China.
How many times will the liberal establishments have to blatantly show you what it truly is before you believe them? They've been doing it at least since 1919, but it has never been more blatant than now.
Since you're European, I'd like to know what thought-terminating cliches you use to explain to yourself why Germany's oh-so-liberal political establishment has co-existed, side-by-side, with a securotocracy that was filled to the brim with Nazi war criminals ever since the end of WW2.
You'd think the oh-so-liberal Global North being exposed red-handed funding yet another colonialist genocide would make a dent in those cliches, but I guess it's true what the anarchists say... scratch a fascist and a liberal bleeds.
Fascists don't "concentrate" power - they are HANDED power that has ALREADY been concentrated FOR them. You wanna guess who it is that concentrates it before handing it over to them? Do tell... how has police funding been doing under all these liberal regimes in Europe, eh?
Let me ELI5 it to you so that you cannot claim nobody told you.
The capitalist ruling elite, like all ruling elites throughout history, requires TWO things to stabilize their own power and privilege. They need a way to CO-OPT certain segments of the populace they rule over, and a way to brutally REPRESS those parts they can't or don't want to co-opt. Carrot and stick - no need for a fancy poli-sci degree to understand this.
Therefore, the capitalists have developed a POLITICAL wing, which we call "liberalism," and a REPRESSIVE wing, which we call "fascism." That is what they have been since the start (ie, long before Mussolini gave fascism a name) - and which one you get depends on how much of a threat the capitalists think you pose to their precious world order.
Fascism and liberalism is joined at the hip - you can't have one without the other.
After all this text-wall, I'd be interested in your political attitude.
So you agree with me? I didn't say fascists are concentrating power, but they definitely maintain it (just look at the third Reich and literally all other fascistic states). (And in reality they definitely sought after concentrating power, yet again just look at the history of the third Reich...)
The world is much less black and white as you depict it here. True, all the (liberal) democracies to date have their flaws and at least traces of fascism (unfortunately) growing this time again. I can rant about it all day if I wanted to (but I consider that a waste of time after having wasted too much with that already).
But (true) liberalism is not fascism, say what you want. After all, it's about being liberal (I don't consider our late-stage-capitalism liberal btw. capitalism is as we see right now in the US also concentrating power to the rich)...
I consider liberalism closer to anarchism (not the capitalistic kind of course). There are obviously differences, but as being liberal has to do with personal freedom, and anarchism is about being against all forms of authority, it's per definition closer to that than fascism.
How it's interpreted is a whole different story. Same with all the "communistic" kinds of states. I don't think we ever had "real" communism, only authoritarianism with the label of "communism".