Self definition of ideological affinity, in NS forum

[Settrah]

I found myself dodging back and forth between every ideological position, in order to form my own schemata of how I interpret and evaluate it.

I kind of think of myself as fairly right wing on the economic front. I sway to the market over state, I sway to free trade, I sway to small government. So economic libertarian/right wing libertarian is what I genuinely apply.

Socially I'm into the balance. If I think either side is getting silly on social issues (for or against, progressive or conservative) I'll happily voice the situation depending. For example I support equality but I am heavily critical of the current movements that champion it. I tend not to attach to an ism for this, and prefer to be more unhinged.

I dabbled in a couple of alternative economic models. I found the Christian democratic model of Distributism appealing, and feel with a bit of tweaking could work.

But I would say anarco-liberal by this poll/criteria but that would be incorrect as I'm not an anarchist.

So conservative I guess because I'd rather preserve capitalism than want socialism.

In the end it's all trivial, the NWO still owns you anyway

[Phoenicaea]

Somewhere in that hazy space between classical liberal, conservative and reactionary. I sometimes use the term paleoconservative.

it is conservative, at its finest. wish to say, sometime i suppose me as i would have been conservative if i had been born in england, in usa who knows.

in my mediterranean born and living, that feeling with justice and authority has turned in liberalism, toward anarchy, in front of mafia and carefully planned mass disorder.

[Autarkheia]

For the last fucking time, the Portuguese Estado Novo and Francoist Spain were NOT fascist!

They borrowed certain aspects of fascism or hijacked and then cucked a popular fascist movement respectively, but they were not fascist.

The Portuguese National Syndicalists and the Spanish Falangists were the true fascists.

You say that as if it were an unambiguous metaphysical fact, but 'fascism' like all political ideologies is a socially-constructed label, its meaning is as protean and ambiguous as the labels 'liberal' and 'conservative'. If you base it off Umberto Eco's identifiers of fascism, for example, then Estado Novo and Francoist Spain certainly meet most of the elements he identifies as fascistic (culturally reactionary, palingenetic ultranationalism, authoritarian nationalism, corporatism etc etc). Obviously you can disagree with that assessment, as is your right, we can argue whether Regime A is fascistic or communistic till the cows come home, but what I find shocking is your arrogant assertion that just because you say Regime A is not fascistic, it definitely isn't fascistic, like some kind of unambiguous epistemological truth. The label 'fascism' lacks an objective metaphysical reality, like labelling something a chemical or an element or a star or a planet. It's a socially-constructed label to refer to a political ideology, which necessarily imports a certain degree of ambiguity into whether its employment in particular circumstances is or is not accurate.

Even experts on fascism don't fully agree on how to define fascism although it seems to me that palingenetic ultranationalism is the key trait. There is no one point at which something becomes fascist. Depending on how strict we want to be, we could argue that no regime in history was fascist except Italy. I tend to think of Spain and Portuguese as more or less fascist even though they lacked some of the traits of it.

One thing is for sure at least, it isn't a catch-all term for authoritarianism. For example Ben Shapiro claims Stalin was a fascist, which is only true in a rhetorical sense, and nonsense in a literal one. (He also claims the Nazis were leftists, so he's that kind of conservative.)

[Purgatio]

You say that as if it were an unambiguous metaphysical fact, but 'fascism' like all political ideologies is a socially-constructed label, its meaning is as protean and ambiguous as the labels 'liberal' and 'conservative'. If you base it off Umberto Eco's identifiers of fascism, for example, then Estado Novo and Francoist Spain certainly meet most of the elements he identifies as fascistic (culturally reactionary, palingenetic ultranationalism, authoritarian nationalism, corporatism etc etc). Obviously you can disagree with that assessment, as is your right, we can argue whether Regime A is fascistic or communistic till the cows come home, but what I find shocking is your arrogant assertion that just because you say Regime A is not fascistic, it definitely isn't fascistic, like some kind of unambiguous epistemological truth. The label 'fascism' lacks an objective metaphysical reality, like labelling something a chemical or an element or a star or a planet. It's a socially-constructed label to refer to a political ideology, which necessarily imports a certain degree of ambiguity into whether its employment in particular circumstances is or is not accurate.

Even experts on fascism don't fully agree on how to define fascism although it seems to me that palingenetic ultranationalism is the key trait. There is no one point at which something becomes fascist. Depending on how strict we want to be, we could argue that no regime in history was fascist except Italy. I tend to think of Spain and Portuguese as more or less fascist even though they lacked some of the traits of it.

One thing is for sure at least, it isn't a catch-all term for authoritarianism. For example Ben Shapiro claims Stalin was a fascist, which is only true in a rhetorical sense, and nonsense in a literal one. (He also claims the Nazis were leftists, so he's that kind of conservative.)

Yeah well Ben Shapiro and his kind are quite famous for throwing the term 'fascist' around willy-nilly to mean anything they don't like. Ben Shapiro has called gun control Nazism before, and Stephen Crowder has denounced abortion and universal healthcare as Nazi fascism, so I agree with you that citing them would do nothing more than derail this conversation.

I also agree with your broader point that 'fascism' is a political label that experts don't always agree on, unambiguously, as to whether a particular regime is or is not fascistic, there are gray areas to fascism just like there are with any other political/ideological label out there (socialist, libertarian, liberal, conservative etc)

[Autarkheia]

Yeah well Ben Shapiro and his kind are quite famous for throwing the term 'fascist' around willy-nilly to mean anything they don't like. Ben Shapiro has called gun control Nazism before, and Stephen Crowder has denounced abortion and universal healthcare as Nazi fascism, so I agree with you that citing them would do nothing more than derail this conversation.

I swear American conservatives think fascism, socialism, communism and liberalism are all exactly the same thing.

I also agree with your broader point that 'fascism' is a political label that experts don't always agree on, unambiguously, as to whether a particular regime is or is not fascistic, there are gray areas to fascism just like there are with any other political/ideological label out there (socialist, libertarian, liberal, conservative etc)

And with fascism it gets even more muddled because it's an extreme form of nationalism so by nature it varies a lot depending on which nation it's found in.

[Luziyca]

I think I am a social democrat: while I do love the utopian vision of Marx's communist utopia, I know that it is impossible.

Yeah well Ben Shapiro and his kind are quite famous for throwing the term 'fascist' around willy-nilly to mean anything they don't like. Ben Shapiro has called gun control Nazism before, and Stephen Crowder has denounced abortion and universal healthcare as Nazi fascism, so I agree with you that citing them would do nothing more than derail this conversation.

I swear American conservatives think fascism, socialism, communism and liberalism are all exactly the same thing.

Agreed.

[Phoenicaea]

I think I am a social democrat: while I do love the utopian vision of Marx's communist utopia, I know that it is impossible.

..

Agreed.

when it was 'discovered', in europe of the latter 19th century, it has been called 'reformism'. it gained its largest share before the great war, then in the post IInd war all was different.

older persons keeped it as a definition, until at times it has been used as 'social-democrat' synonym.

in past decades, it has been discredited by parties that revived it for theirselves, they wished to be flavoured as center-lelf while being most a 'whatever' parties, for taking the pie.

so the definition has fallen again into shadow. in its heighest, among main personalities were Turati in Italy, Bernstein in Germany, and even if on its own Jean-Jure' in France could be.

in origin, corporativist associations financing fascist parties in the after war precisely had this commitment, to oust these branches of democratic-socialism from enlarging again.

in Italy, again, some of (some, the part of it) most seeking-career syndacalists-revolutionaries who had been used for the purpose, bacame all-time bureocrats of emerging fascists.

Mussolini in Italy was precisely this, toghether with Rossoni, a syndacalist 'brothel' low-politician who led a socialist party paper for fat-cats, and denigrating social-democrats.

Instead after-II was Napolitano, an Italian politician led the fringe of the communist party who was for 'reform' and side with Us, against socialist party favourable to cold-war scenario.