Fascism is Heroarchy

[clearspira]

Moving it away from fascism here slightly, the most interesting hero study of them all is Heracles - widely regarded to be one of the first ''superheroes'' in fiction. What makes him interesting is that he has all the traits of a modern hero - bravery, sacrifice, honour, bad parents - but he's also a man from 3000 years ago. He has no emotional restraint, he kills for personal gain, he is a misogynist and racist of a high order. What's even more interesting is that many scholars have argued that he is an extremist even by the standards of his time, as in, even the Ancient Greeks may have thought him as a bit of a prick.

But then to flip it again, he does reflect their gods. A brutal gang of violent rapists who also loved poetry, art, music and helping others. It is an interesting dichotomy. They are beloved yet feared - like Heracles.

Heroism is an interesting topic because it is completely defined by our respective culture. James Bond would be another interesting analysis - a character born of the British Empire by a snobbish 1950s man very much of the upper classes. Reading ''Casino Royale'' today is a bit of a hoot. A chain-smoking, alcoholic, gambling, imperialist, misogynistic assassin who saves the girl, fights for his country and routinely saves the world. Admittedly even Fleming thought of Bond very much an anti-hero but you cannot have ''anti-hero'' without ''hero'' now can you?

[hammerofglass]

There's an SMBC for everything.

[Jonathan101]

People will never agree on what "fascism" is because most have agreed that simply "fascism is the worst" and nobody wants anything to do with it, and in fact would rather define it as the antithesis of whatever they believe.

Definitions of fascism are often ideologically biased to a greater or lesser extent (even some scholarly ones), cherry picking whatever aspects of fascism the writer finds most objectionable and downplaying the ones they either don't mind or that don't fit the picture they are trying to paint, and they often have more to do with contemporary politics than those of the 1920s-40s. Most online arguments about what fascism actually is are riddled with fallacies like appeal to definition because the point is push a particular viewpoint or agenda, and to prove ones own point rather than seek to disprove it.

That Fascists themselves couldn't agree on what precisely it meant, in part because it was really composed of different factions who had their own agendas and in part because it was simply so young when it took power that it barely had time to (and that Mussolini redefined it whenever it suited him) doesn't help much either, of course, nor does the fact that arguments about fascism invariably revolve around the Nazi's rather than the Italians, and even less about fascistic movements in other countries.

This isn't new, either- it's been going on around the world since fascism first appeared, and in American politics it has been practically the national pastime ever since the days of FDR.

Fascism is all too often just an insult; it's just that people sometimes spend years of their lives trying to intellectually justify their use of it (or debunk the use of it by their adversaries).

[MithrandirOlorin]

My objective was not ideologically biased, there plenty of ideologies I don't like that don't fit any definition of Fascism I've considered, and I in this post associated it with stories and characters I am a fan of.

[Jonathan101]

Everyone is ideological, whether they realise it or not. Ideology is ultimately just ideas about how the world works or how it "should" work, derived from a conflation or culture, education, experience and even just personality.

I wasn't saying that adherents of a particular ideology or belief system or anyone who has a bias (which is literally everyone) sees fascism as the "only" ideology they object to; I was saying that the tendency in all these definitions of fascism is to treat it as uniquely dangerous or stress particular traits that one disagrees with, rather than looking at what fascists actually believed about themselves or what they were trying to do (which is admittedly muddled by fascists having their own factional disputes, contradictions and individual agendas).

It wasn't directed at anyone in particular; it was more a general observation about how trying to get people to agree on what fascism actually "is" is often an exercise in futility.

[MithrandirOlorin]

I consider Nazims specifically a uniquely evil and dangerous ideology, but Mussolini and Mosley style Fascism dislike about the same as I do Leninism or the weird Socialism of H.G. Wells.

My own ideology is currently somewhere between a Luxemburgist and an Anarchist.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I’ve talked about the axis powers inclusive of the ussr as collective fascists while on here, though admittedly I’ve had indifference either talking about and even looking up the nature of each country being consistently fascist. Nazism as a form of fascism comes up enough, sure, but is hardly reconciled in the various types of forums you’ll come across that discuss it. Not to mention that research tends to point to a particular fascist group in Germany next to the nazis. The soviets are distinctly “communist” while the nazis developed their conceptual brand through their heinous policies written straight on paper.

Contemporary times do seem to influence a lot of consideration of fascism to be the underlining link between any of the countries that are subjected to dictatorship, from the Nazis to the US/Britain, with various countries in between like the Soviet union, fascist Italy, certain countries in Central/South America, among others. Admittedly the consistency between the us/Britain and any of the others listed is somewhat dubious.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Moving it away from fascism here slightly, the most interesting hero study of them all is Heracles - widely regarded to be one of the first ''superheroes'' in fiction. What makes him interesting is that he has all the traits of a modern hero - bravery, sacrifice, honour, bad parents - but he's also a man from 3000 years ago. He has no emotional restraint, he kills for personal gain, he is a misogynist and racist of a high order. What's even more interesting is that many scholars have argued that he is an extremist even by the standards of his time, as in, even the Ancient Greeks may have thought him as a bit of a prick.

How would you draw the line between him and Thor? Also include Disney's take.

[CharlesPhipps]

I consider Nazims specifically a uniquely evil and dangerous ideology, but Mussolini and Mosley style Fascism dislike about the same as I do Leninism or the weird Socialism of H.G. Wells.

My own ideology is currently somewhere between a Luxemburgist and an Anarchist.

One of these is not the same and I'm an anarchist.

[CharlesPhipps]

I define fascism as a moving goal post as part of the appeal of the ideology. It's simply put an emotional rather than intellectual philosophical system. Trying to strictly define it is an exercise in futility because the leaders of fascism can, do, and will change the definitions of it as when it is appealing to their needs.

If I were to distill it down to three sentences, though?

"Fascism is an emotional extremist loyalty to traditionalist power structures and ideologies like state, religion, ethnicity, and leader that requires extreme sacrifice as well as unquestioning obedience. The loyalty is usually defined by visceral hatred of an outsider group. Fascism is reactionary and inherently an outgrowth of conservative beliefs but takes them far past any past incarnation."

In simple terms, it at least defines it as Far Right and fascism as antithetical to Leftist authoritarianism, which is Far Left.