[starspangled]

Those sound like enemies within, but what do I know? Liberals / leftists / whatever have non-personal internal enemies (white supremacists, ultra right wing, nationalists, etc), and right wing have external enemies as well as entirely personal internal enemies too. Right wing certainly talks about moral failings.

Seems really difficult to quantify to the extent you can just say they don't. We can all come up with examples or handwaved anecdotes of any kind of enemy from any ideology really, so what actual metrics are you using to differentiate these things?

[orwin]

My bad, i shouldn't have used "left" or "right", it has different meaning in different part of the world.

I'm not sating paranoia isn't present everywhere, i'm saying one one kind of political ideology use it as a building block of their ideology, and it is fascism.

"We are (culturally/genetically) the best, but right now others seems better/won/took advantage of us. The only reason we are not at the top is because we have internal traitors (jew/blochevics/unionist/homosexuals/whatever float your boat). We have to eliminate those"

Each time something like this is uttered to justify taking power away from court/parliaments, you'll be looking at fascism. Which can be used with capitalism or with communism (as production methods). The "internal enemy" as a reason to justify taking power away from the court/ignoring human right/taking power away from parliement is fascistic. [0]

That's mainly how i differentiate the extreme centre from fascists, their justification. Von Papen/Schleifer removed power from the Weimar parliament because "people are dumb and did not understood how intelligent we are, so we can safely ignore their vote", then Hindeburg installed Hitler, who did the same thing, but stronger, and justified it with the "internal traitor" myth.

[0] Trotsky called that "bonapartism", and argued that Stalinism was another heir of that ideology, but here, i think he is simply wrong (as usual), although it is interesting (where lie the fascism roots?). And now, writing about it, i will have to re-read him and think about it more, he might have a point, is fascism an evolution of bonpartism, with a more rigid hierarchical order? :/ fml.

[starspangled]

Seems too simplistic and centric to one particular country / system / ideology.

Laws and courts can be and are made oppressive and used against the people by a tyrannical government.

Taking power away from [government] is not necessarily fascism. It really depends what and why. If it is a rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers? What really matters is the power the government as a whole has over the people.

There has recently been a lot of noise from American left wing about the Supreme Court being corrupt, illegitimate, politicized, etc., etc., and calls to reduce its powers, for example.

You could call that "fascistic" I suppose, but I'm not really here to get bogged down in semantics, my point is that the types of real or imagined enemies of political movements very much run the spectrum.

[orwin]

> There has recently been a lot of noise from American left wing about the Supreme Court being corrupt, illegitimate, politicized, etc., etc., and calls to reduce its powers, for example.

Exactly my point? Fascist justification to reduce court/legislative power are the "internal enemies", Centrist authoritarians (extreme center) will justify it by accusing the people of being dumb/unreasonable (or any explanation that will make them saviors), and leftist authoritarians will justify it by accusing them of being the dominant class and protecting their class privileges (which, good point, but not enough to dismantle the judiciary).

> rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers

The weimar republic courts were infiltrated by nazi (starting in 1928) and the judges/attorneys were all used to aristocratic courts, were you don't judge a person the same depending on his social position, so the nazi only had to eliminate the "due process" part of any arrestation, but overall did not change the institution.

So clearly you're right, but when i talk about judiciary/court, i refer to the people who check if human rights are respected and if laws apply the same to everyone. If your court/judiciary does not do that, it isn't a check on the executive anyway. (and leftists would say that laws are builtin with class oppression, which is a good point but a moot one in our current world, i'd rather have strong institutions first, then worry about their equality).