this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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In the case of intolerant statements and actions, empathy and tolerance are functionally the same.
You don't need to empathize with fascists in order to understand them and the lies they've been tricked by/are tricking others with.
What you need to fight fascism is knowledge about how propaganda works, the underlying societal issues granting fascists an opening, and the strategy and courage to defeat both the fascists and the less obvious people and problems that enabled their rise.
You CAN empathize with fascists if you have the necessary emotional bandwidth to do so without destroying your own sanity and/or joining them, but it's not necessary or even helpful when it comes to defeating them.
You gave me so much hope. I really thought you’d say “the underlying societal issues that lead to someone becoming a fascist”. But then…
Where do these fascists come from that are tricking people and look for openings to poison good peoples minds? Are they evil demons sent by Satan himself? Are they just born bad people?
But hey, you keep on fighting the good fight against these evil humans like you’re on a crusade. I’m sure the current generation of fascists will be the last one if we just keep on doing what we’ve been doing.
Yeah, people become fascists by demagogues tricking them into thinking that their REAL problems can be solved using fascistic means.
In the case of Nazi Germany, rampant poverty and wounded national pride (as well as several other things, but those were the main ones) paved the way for malignant actors like Hitler and his backers to sell them fascism.
In the case of 2015 and onwards US fascism, gradually ballooning wealth and opportunity inequality, a press that focuses on attention and profits over objective reality and a duty to inform the people of same, a gradual realization by the vast majority of the population that the system is broken, and a two party system where the ratchet effect has been causing a rightward drift of the Overton Window for several decades has enabled Trump and other bad faith actors to convince millions of people that mask off fascism is the solution.
You can't make people fascist without lying to them, but lies of that magnitude need critical real world problems to gain traction.
People become zombies by demagogues biting them.
Are demagogues not zombies? Otherwise it’s kind of a circular argument.
That’s just wrong. You can if you believe what you are saying is true. I’d say it’s even more likely that you will be successful in spreading ideas if you believe them to be true.
I could say you lie to people because you demonize fascists. But you believe it’s true. I believe fascism is a symptom and if we really want to get rid of it we need to look at and fix the root causes.
Clearly you're ignoring or ignorant that the very core of fascism is not a coherent ideology, but power.
A fascist politician will contradict his stated beliefs without hesitation if he believes it to be beneficial to his chances of retaining and/or increasing his power.
It's not just a Donald Trump thing and it's not even the exception: pursuit of power and attempts to not lose it is the thing itself.
The persecution of the Others, the flouting of law and simultaneously systematic and chaotic behavior while proclaiming to be the valiant champion of law and order are not the ideology or the point, it's just means to an end and the end is power.
Even the dupes who are tricked into ACTUALLY believing the lies either feel powerless, desire to be powerful, or both. It's like the regular "poor people considering themselves temporarily embarrassed billionaires" symptom of "normal" conservativism taken to 11 and broadened to include race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender, and cult membership.