Fascism
Fascism is bad. Don't be Fascist.
"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." -Robert Paxton
Also don't call everything right of center Fascist because it dilutes the term and turns a political discussion into an ad hominem attack. You get annoyed when they call you a Communist because you want universal health care so set a better example for discourse and seize the moral high ground.
Most people who currently behave like fascists have no self-awareness of that fact. Calling them fascist is just perceived as name-calling, and has the same persuasive effect. Rational arguments are not effective either. Treating the underlying emotional causes of fascism, and providing optimistic alternative visions of the future, is a better approach.
Unfortunately, once a tipping point has been reached, regular people with contrarian views and a loss of trust in institutions quickly turn into actual fascists when an authoritarian leader emerges who is willing to take advantage of them to consolidate power.
Fascism and Contrarianism
Fascism is an inevitable by-product of widespread contrarianism resulting from the loss of trust in institutions. Modern fascism allies authoritarian leadership with capitalist grift. Any time in history when people lose trust in the institutions and political systems of society, a leader can emerge that offers redemption through scapegoating the out-group and appealing to bad world beliefs.
Contrarians are easily manipulated with reverse psychology, and happily embrace leaders that embody the opposite of everything they were taught about morality. It is also an easy mechanism to conceive of from a neuroscience point of view. A simple flip of a logic switch and a good person can support a wide range of terrible ideas, having lost trust in any source of information that agrees with the "mainstream" worldview.
Fascism is Inevitable
Understanding why fascism is an inevitable by-product of contrarianism and a breakdown in the balance of power in capitalist democracies is necessary to create systems that serve as a bulwark against its rise. Capitalism can exist without leading to fascism, but only if strong systems are put in place to prevent money addicts from accumulating too much wealth that the balance of power is broken and the perception of economic justice can no longer be maintained.
This free book is an a complete guide to recognizing the patterns and tactics of fascism.
How to Oppose Fascism
Since fascism is a repeating historical pattern, opposition to fascism has many established tactics that you should be familiar with in times of rising contrarianism, concentrated wealth, and consolidated power.
A great thing about anti-fascist books is they are often free!
- Mark Bray - Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
- Curzio Malaparte - The Technique Of Revolution
- Spencer Sunshine - 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists
- Paul Mason - How to Stop Fascism
- Kelly Hayes, Mariama Kaba, Harsha Walia - Let This Radicalize You
- Natasha Lennard - Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life
- Aime Cesaire and Joan Pinkham - Discourse on Colonialism
Fibonazis
A faction of crypto-bros in the intellectual dark web use many of the same arguments from self-organization, emergence, and evolutionary psychology to promote rigid hierarchies as natural (therefore good) phenomenon. This leads them to seriously anti-democratic and anti-humanist philosophies. Jordan Peterson, Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein are examples of this. Though neologisms are discouraged, this wiki cannot help but call the mirror world doppelgangers of chaos theory Fibonazis.
Broligarchy is also taking off as a new term for these jerks.
Punk Hates Nazis
The best anti-fascist anthems come from the genres of Punk and Folk. Genres like glitch hop, vaporwave, witch house, and goblincore [1] tend to be less political.