[opendomain]

Have you not seen the videos of people doing the nazi salute?

Marches of masked men with flags bearing nazi symbols?

Perhaps you have heard of deployment of military inside the country used for oppression?

Seizing people without hapeas corpus? And then deporting citizens without any criminal record at all?

[Den_VR]

The first two are effectively rituals. If we stopped the such rituals, should antifascism be considered successful?

The military is deployed inside the country, if only law enforcement officers were conducting the same work would antifascism think it was a job well done?

And therefore, exactly what do you consider fascism? Hence my question.

[Den_VR]

It’s always weird to me how when I try to talk about what fascism means to antifascists they go silent and assume I’m somehow pro-fascist. I’m pro-“Liberty and Justice for all.”

I am also an engineer: One that sees poorly defined requirements, and not a fan of authoritarianism.

[immibis]

It could be because 99.99% of people who decide to get into arguments about what fascism is turn out to be fascists. I believe it's called "sealioning": stalling actual discussion and wasting time of your opponents by endlessly asking basic questions politely.

[Den_VR]

Sounds like people playing it fast and loose with the term fascist. Or maybe overloading the term. And that’s a big problem, not only does it create an in-group / out-group divergence in language but it is the foundation of an ideological motte & bailey.

[immibis]

Do you think it's possible that people get called fascists by antifascists because they are actually fascists?

How do you define a fascist? I'd say followers of fascism are fascists. Perhaps you think only the ones in power, actually doing the fascism, count as fascists. That would be a mere semantic difference.

[Den_VR]

I’ve seen of accusations of fascism levied on all sorts that do not believe in: authoritarian political ideology that seeks a centralized, dictatorial government, suppresses dissent and opposition, ultranationalism promoting the supremacy of one group over others, and rejecting democratic institutions and liberal freedoms.

I suppose you can pick your poison, either condemn an innocent so no guilty escape or the opposite. But in that condemnation I often see: authoritarian political ideology that seeks a centralized, dictatorial government, suppresses dissent and opposition, rejecting liberal freedoms. And they self identify as antifascism. Its not a new thing, “horseshoe theory” has been around for ages.

I think we can collectively do better in combating trends towards fascism and its ilk than that. But not without understanding the problem, and the context in which it rests.