[throwaway49872]

> The antifa lot essentially define fascism as an eternal set of human psychological impulses: nostalgia, in-group preference, desire for cultural homogenity, etc.

Add authoritarianism and militarism to it and you have the definition used by historians and political scientists.

> Fascism was a direct result of, and contingent upon, the mass death and poverty caused by WWI.

"mass death and poverty" in Italy? This is plain false. But it's also besides the point:

The word "fascism" is used to describe any similar pattern of thought and behavior, just like "communism", "skepticism", "pacifism".

[mjburgess]

Then it is nearly meaningless and just a term of abuse. Fascism is not "skepticism".

By this definition of fascism, antifa are fascists and so are all governments and most people.

This may be how some use the term, just as some use "communism" to describe any use of the state. It's pseudo-political nonesense that's just a term of abuse.

[mcv]

Now you're just making words meaningless. Fascism is a reasonably well-defined ideology. Not every use of the word applies it correctly, and I've even seen convincing arguments that Nazism wasn't true fascism while Stalinism was, but this is what's generally meant by fascism: an ideology where everything revolves around a great leader, his inner circle, the party, the "true" people, and where every aspect of society serves this unity of concentric circles. It's explicitly totalitarian and doesn't tolerate dissent or different opinions; everybody needs to be loyal to the leader, or is considered an enemy of the people.

Antifa, by comparison, doesn't even have a leader. And doesn't want one either.

[mjburgess]

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#%22Fascist%22_as_a_pej...

> it's explicitly totalitarian and doesn't tolerate dissent or different opinions; everybody needs to be loyal to the leader, or is considered an enemy of the people.

Right, which is most echo-chambres. Under a psychological definition, we're all fascists. An echo-chambre is totalizing (ie., everything is subsumed under the ideology), it has unimpeachable leadership, and no dissent is considered. Try r/feminism or r/conservatism.

Fascism isn't an ideology in the modern "world view" or psychological sense... that's the impact of psychoanalysts being, somehow, the main people humanities students turned towards for explanations of the 20th C.

The right people to turn to are political scientists, wherein fascism is an ideology in the sense of "state apparatuses, doctrines, institutions, practices, economic conditions", etc.

In which case Stalinism wasn't fascism, nor was Nazism. Nor were many things. Fascism quickly became a term of abuse in tabloids of the 40s, esp. in america. And here we are today with everybody being fascists.

There is no deep connection between the "psychological fascism" that is of rhetorical interest to the left, and the state apparatuses of fascist italy. This connection is a pseudo-scientific one from the psychoanalysis of the 50s and 60s; and it is a duplicitous and alarmist one from the left today.

[mcv]

Most people aren't going around calling people who disagree with them an "enemy of the people". Nor do they insist on loyalty to a great leader. Many Americans, for example, prefer loyalty to the Constitution or a set of principles over loyalty to the president himself.

Echo-chambers might have the feature that they don't like dissent, but that doesn't mean everybody prefers echo chambers over open discourse, nor does it mean people in an echo chamber want to apply their echo chamber to the entire country, with a great leader in charge that everybody needs to be loyal too.

So no, you're wrong about that. Not everybody is automatically a fascist, and the word does have meaning. There's a very clear difference between fascist leaders + followers, and the people who disagree with them.

And yes, there are differences between Nazism Stalinism and Italian Fascism, but they have a lot more in common with each other than with liberal ideologies. Not every liberal is liberal in the same way, not every environmentalist has exactly the same priorities, not every conservative is conservative about the same things. Similarly, it's not so strange for there to be multiple interpretations/implementations of fascism. They may differ in details, but they're clearly related.