That is what I wonder. Don’t know about you guys, but I feel like a European patriot, even though this maybe does not make sense to some.
Being a true European patriot means to me: caring about all of the freedoms we have, our social democracies, is to value the open pluralist societies we developed since WW2, wanting to protect what the reactionaries want to take away from us, stop those who want to lock us all up, back in the small closed-minded nation-states we all come from, which will ultimately lick the boots of either US or China/Russia.
They are well organized, but what is the organization, the movement that fights against this ongoing attack on our shared values and mode of existence?
The post-WW2 Europe is an oasis of bliss in a world which is on fire, and we are all under attack. How can we fight against this destruction from the inside as well as from the outside ?
100% unconditional intolerance for fascists. You can’t give them a millimeter or they’ll take the entire country.
I suggest watching Thought Slime’s recent video if you wish to know how to effectively counteract fascists.
The gist is that you shouldn’t try to argue with them, they don’t care about reality. Don’t let them look reasonable by arguing as if they were, insist on pointing out they’re being assholes (which they are) and that anything they suggest is so obviously wrong it doesn’t even need to be explained why it’s wrong (which is true).
I have a rule: I don’t pronounce the word fascist (in private or in public, I don’t care) without prefixing it with “lurid” in English and in Italian appending “di merda” after fascista/i. As someone who had nightmares at night about them, given the testimony of my grandmother, I feel that not qualifying fascist people is somehow working in their favor.
The day I will see a politician using that rule in a TV interview I will know that we have again a chance.
That may be true on a face to face level. In public, like on social media, it’s essential to keep arguing. Not to convince the person you’re arguing with, but to show other people reading that theirs is not the only perspective, nor is it the majority.
While you’re right, it’s incredibly frustrating when it’s near-impossible to convince onlookers on how the fascists operate on complete bad faith and we really should just not give them any time of day at all and ban them
I’ve had great difficulties in convincing people to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, leading to the fascists further exploiting it for their own gain
This is quite literally the opposite of how you actually get people to support your cause. Ask any psychologist.
Shutting them out completely might work fine when they’re a tiny minority, but when in some cases a quarter of the population agrees with them enough to vote for them, doing that is simply impossible. They will have reach.
I also still think we need people throwing their morals about manipulating people to the wind and starting to peddle left wing conspiracy theories just like the right wingers are doing. For example with how perfectly it fits there really should be an actual movement behind the whole trump=the biblical antichrist thing in the US, but I’ve only seen it as satire in spaces that are already left wing.
If 75 percent block together, 25 percent can be blocked. The rest is limited. If you legitimate them through participation, you risk them being seen more acceptable a reasonable option.
This just doesn’t have a any connection with reality. You know what you suggest is what has been done for 20 years and it has massively failed? In basically all western countries? Learn from your mistakes or be an idiot.
Make sure that you understand materialism and solidarity grounded in self interest if you want to win the working class. Get rid of idealists and identity politics (unless they’re working class or populist identity politics). Get your head around consequential ethics and how to set political priorities.
I recommend studying the 1930s strategy of the Swedish SAP.
Yeah you can’t argue with logic and reason of the other side does not accept this language and is always acting in bad faith. Engaging fascists civilly is always helping them gain ground. But not engaging with them becomes more difficult the more mind share they gain. How should not engaging look in practice? All of politics and media would need to stop giving them a platform at once. And again this is something we regular people don’t really have in our hands at all.