White Supremacy discussion thread

[Borderlands of Rojava]

i would question why we expect american fascism-using the contested term broadly-to fit into the blocks of european fascism, instead of being an analogue to it

beyond the fact that one is mostly run by idiots and astroturfed (and out of control) disinformation chambers, which i feel is somewhat critical to any discussion of it

I mean... there has been at least some distinction between American white nationalists and fascists/Nazis traditionally, hence why I would caution against even using the term when the other trappings and ideological tenets of fascism are absent from an ideology. A lot of self-declared antifascists seem to want it to be a meaninglessly catch-all term for political ideologies they dislike, regardless of how they might differ. Hence NVA using it to describe neocons on a routine basis.

Describing neocons as fascist?

I feel weird rn.

[Fahran]

Describing neocons as fascist?

I feel weird rn.

As well you should. People get weird when the word fascist pops into the conversation.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Describing neocons as fascist?

I feel weird rn.

As well you should. People get weird when the word fascist pops into the conversation.

Fascism is a fairly specific ideology. There are Grey areas but I wouldn't describe globalist neocons as fascist at all.

[Kowani]

i would question why we expect american fascism-using the contested term broadly-to fit into the blocks of european fascism, instead of being an analogue to it

beyond the fact that one is mostly run by idiots and astroturfed (and out of control) disinformation chambers, which i feel is somewhat critical to any discussion of it

I mean... there has been at least some distinction between American white nationalists and fascists/Nazis traditionally, hence why I would caution against even using the term when the other trappings and ideological tenets of fascism are absent from an ideology. A lot of self-declared antifascists seem to want it to be a meaninglessly catch-all term for political ideologies they dislike, regardless of how they might differ. Hence NVA using it to describe neocons on a routine basis.

NHA's use of it isn't really something i care to defend
there was a term i liked to describe the more fascist-adjacent bits of the american right,"Border Fascism"

Border fascism, he explains, is a new strain of a far-right nationalism that fetishizes boundaries. The racism of this movement isn’t always overt, but its underlying ideology is based on a racialized understanding of citizenship that idolizes “law and order” and attacks “the illegals” for violating the supposed sanctity of the country’s border.

JARED OLSON: The big idea I got from the book was the idea of border fascism. How did you come to that? And was there any distinct moment in your report or research when that became clear to you?

BRENDAN O’CONNOR: One of the things I noticed in the course of my reporting on the far right is that over the past few years, there’s been a proliferating self-taxonomy of individuals and groups trying to name what they are doing, as a way to set themselves apart from rival factions.In a kind of grandiose way, they’re trying to plant the flag and say, “This is the name of this political project. And we want everyone to rally around this.” Whether that’s ecofascism, white nationalism, or a kind of workerist populism. One of the things I wanted to be careful to avoid in my reporting and my book was legitimizing any one of those [projects] as the banner for the whole group. But there is something that unites all these different factions and all these different sub-groupings and ideologies. In my peripheral and historical research, I ended up coming across a piece about the Mussolini regime that focused on the particular characteristics of the fascist regime in the border regions of Italy, with the Slavic countries across the Adriatic. There are scholars that refer to this part of the regime as border fascism. And it just sort of clicked: I was going to borrow this idea from historical scholarship and run with it as a new category to try and capture a variety of different phenomena and a groups that are pursuing different strategies but that seemed to me to be participating in the same political projects and have ideological resonances with each other. Nobody calls themself a border fascist. But this seems like a useful framework to apply.

there's more, and i haven't read the book itself (my reading list is backed up as it is), but i do feel that this is a decent enough framework for an overlapping discussion

[Dejado Atras]

As well you should. People get weird when the word fascist pops into the conversation.

Fascism is a fairly specific ideology.

And yet it has become another tired buzzword for anything right.

[Fahran]

NHA's use of it isn't really something i care to defend
there was a term i liked to describe the more fascist-adjacent bits of the american right,"Border Fascism"

Border fascism, he explains, is a new strain of a far-right nationalism that fetishizes boundaries. The racism of this movement isn’t always overt, but its underlying ideology is based on a racialized understanding of citizenship that idolizes “law and order” and attacks “the illegals” for violating the supposed sanctity of the country’s border.

JARED OLSON: The big idea I got from the book was the idea of border fascism. How did you come to that? And was there any distinct moment in your report or research when that became clear to you?

BRENDAN O’CONNOR: One of the things I noticed in the course of my reporting on the far right is that over the past few years, there’s been a proliferating self-taxonomy of individuals and groups trying to name what they are doing, as a way to set themselves apart from rival factions.In a kind of grandiose way, they’re trying to plant the flag and say, “This is the name of this political project. And we want everyone to rally around this.” Whether that’s ecofascism, white nationalism, or a kind of workerist populism. One of the things I wanted to be careful to avoid in my reporting and my book was legitimizing any one of those [projects] as the banner for the whole group. But there is something that unites all these different factions and all these different sub-groupings and ideologies. In my peripheral and historical research, I ended up coming across a piece about the Mussolini regime that focused on the particular characteristics of the fascist regime in the border regions of Italy, with the Slavic countries across the Adriatic. There are scholars that refer to this part of the regime as border fascism. And it just sort of clicked: I was going to borrow this idea from historical scholarship and run with it as a new category to try and capture a variety of different phenomena and a groups that are pursuing different strategies but that seemed to me to be participating in the same political projects and have ideological resonances with each other. Nobody calls themself a border fascist. But this seems like a useful framework to apply.

there's more, and i haven't read the book itself (my reading list is backed up as it is), but i do feel that this is a decent enough framework for an overlapping discussion

I'm not certain I can wholly agree with O'Connor's theorizing here, but I wouldn't be able to tell with absolute certainty unless I read a little bit more of what he had to say. My initial inclination is to state that the obsession with borders and the ethnic other has a much older precedent in American political culture and that it came to especial prominence under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Trump seems to represent an especially vitriolic revival of those sentiments, now juxtaposed against a Democratic Party that includes a strong anti-border faction. Of course, even the older sentiments absolutely have parallels in Mussolini and Hitler, but the broader ideological framework differs.

The absence of totalitarianism and the steadfast adherence to capitalism are what really stand out to me in differentiating these modes of political thought from one another.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

NHA's use of it isn't really something i care to defend
there was a term i liked to describe the more fascist-adjacent bits of the american right,"Border Fascism"

Border fascism, he explains, is a new strain of a far-right nationalism that fetishizes boundaries. The racism of this movement isn’t always overt, but its underlying ideology is based on a racialized understanding of citizenship that idolizes “law and order” and attacks “the illegals” for violating the supposed sanctity of the country’s border.

JARED OLSON: The big idea I got from the book was the idea of border fascism. How did you come to that? And was there any distinct moment in your report or research when that became clear to you?

BRENDAN O’CONNOR: One of the things I noticed in the course of my reporting on the far right is that over the past few years, there’s been a proliferating self-taxonomy of individuals and groups trying to name what they are doing, as a way to set themselves apart from rival factions.In a kind of grandiose way, they’re trying to plant the flag and say, “This is the name of this political project. And we want everyone to rally around this.” Whether that’s ecofascism, white nationalism, or a kind of workerist populism. One of the things I wanted to be careful to avoid in my reporting and my book was legitimizing any one of those [projects] as the banner for the whole group. But there is something that unites all these different factions and all these different sub-groupings and ideologies. In my peripheral and historical research, I ended up coming across a piece about the Mussolini regime that focused on the particular characteristics of the fascist regime in the border regions of Italy, with the Slavic countries across the Adriatic. There are scholars that refer to this part of the regime as border fascism. And it just sort of clicked: I was going to borrow this idea from historical scholarship and run with it as a new category to try and capture a variety of different phenomena and a groups that are pursuing different strategies but that seemed to me to be participating in the same political projects and have ideological resonances with each other. Nobody calls themself a border fascist. But this seems like a useful framework to apply.

there's more, and i haven't read the book itself (my reading list is backed up as it is), but i do feel that this is a decent enough framework for an overlapping discussion

I'm not certain I can wholly agree with O'Connor's theorizing here, but I wouldn't be able to tell with absolute certainty unless I read a little bit more of what he had to say. My initial inclination is to state that the obsession with borders and the ethnic other has a much older precedent in American political culture and that it came to especial prominence under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Trump seems to represent an especially vitriolic revival of those sentiments, now juxtaposed against a Democratic Party that includes a strong anti-border faction. Of course, even the older sentiments absolutely have parallels in Mussolini and Hitler, but the broader ideological framework differs.

The absence of totalitarianism and the steadfast adherence to capitalism are what really stand out to me in differentiating these modes of political thought from one another.

Where in trump's history has totalitarianism been absent? He literally stans for Kim Jong Un and constantly talked about using authoritarian methods to repress people he didn't like, on some instances actually using them.

[Kowani]

NHA's use of it isn't really something i care to defend
there was a term i liked to describe the more fascist-adjacent bits of the american right,"Border Fascism"

Border fascism, he explains, is a new strain of a far-right nationalism that fetishizes boundaries. The racism of this movement isn’t always overt, but its underlying ideology is based on a racialized understanding of citizenship that idolizes “law and order” and attacks “the illegals” for violating the supposed sanctity of the country’s border.

JARED OLSON: The big idea I got from the book was the idea of border fascism. How did you come to that? And was there any distinct moment in your report or research when that became clear to you?

BRENDAN O’CONNOR: One of the things I noticed in the course of my reporting on the far right is that over the past few years, there’s been a proliferating self-taxonomy of individuals and groups trying to name what they are doing, as a way to set themselves apart from rival factions.In a kind of grandiose way, they’re trying to plant the flag and say, “This is the name of this political project. And we want everyone to rally around this.” Whether that’s ecofascism, white nationalism, or a kind of workerist populism. One of the things I wanted to be careful to avoid in my reporting and my book was legitimizing any one of those [projects] as the banner for the whole group. But there is something that unites all these different factions and all these different sub-groupings and ideologies. In my peripheral and historical research, I ended up coming across a piece about the Mussolini regime that focused on the particular characteristics of the fascist regime in the border regions of Italy, with the Slavic countries across the Adriatic. There are scholars that refer to this part of the regime as border fascism. And it just sort of clicked: I was going to borrow this idea from historical scholarship and run with it as a new category to try and capture a variety of different phenomena and a groups that are pursuing different strategies but that seemed to me to be participating in the same political projects and have ideological resonances with each other. Nobody calls themself a border fascist. But this seems like a useful framework to apply.

there's more, and i haven't read the book itself (my reading list is backed up as it is), but i do feel that this is a decent enough framework for an overlapping discussion

I'm not certain I can wholly agree with O'Connor's theorizing here, but I wouldn't be able to tell with absolute certainty unless I read a little bit more of what he had to say. My initial inclination is to state that the obsession with borders and the ethnic other has a much older precedent in American political culture and that it came to especial prominence under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Trump seems to represent an especially vitriolic revival of those sentiments, now juxtaposed against a Democratic Party that includes a strong anti-border faction. Of course, even the older sentiments absolutely have parallels in Mussolini and Hitler, but the broader ideological framework differs.

The absence of totalitarianism and the steadfast adherence to capitalism are what really stand out to me in differentiating these modes of political thought from one another.

i am not so certain that "steadfast adherence to capitalism" is really an accurate statement for certain portions of the right
they are not any degree of economic leftists, because that would require diverting resources to the "undeserving"
but they are not fully capitalists either, though their motives differ based on who exactly you're talking to
there is a belief that corporate institutions have been "captured" by socially leftist beliefs, and so those corporations must be punished-the mechanisms here also differ
note that this sentiment is largely confined to the base, the actual legislative and "policy" arm is nowhere near on this train

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I'm not certain I can wholly agree with O'Connor's theorizing here, but I wouldn't be able to tell with absolute certainty unless I read a little bit more of what he had to say. My initial inclination is to state that the obsession with borders and the ethnic other has a much older precedent in American political culture and that it came to especial prominence under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Trump seems to represent an especially vitriolic revival of those sentiments, now juxtaposed against a Democratic Party that includes a strong anti-border faction. Of course, even the older sentiments absolutely have parallels in Mussolini and Hitler, but the broader ideological framework differs.

The absence of totalitarianism and the steadfast adherence to capitalism are what really stand out to me in differentiating these modes of political thought from one another.

i am not so certain that "steadfast adherence to capitalism" is really an accurate statement for certain portions of the right
they are not any degree of economic leftists, because that would require diverting resources to the "undeserving"
but they are not fully capitalists either, though their motives differ based on who exactly you're talking to
there is a belief that corporate institutions have been "captured" by socially leftist beliefs, and so those corporations must be punished-the mechanisms here also differ
note that this sentiment is largely confined to the base, the actual legislative and "policy" arm is nowhere near on this train

It's called welfare chauvinism. Trump fans support government giving them handouts, but they don't want any going to groups they aren't fond of, like inner city minority communities. Trumpsters usually aren't fans of a totally free market but they also aren't socialists. They really are almost like a third position.

[Fahran]

Where in trump's history has totalitarianism been absent? He literally stans for Kim Jong Un and constantly talked about using authoritarian methods to repress people he didn't like, on some instances actually using them.

He's nowhere close to the totalitarianism of fascists or socialists. Really, he pales even compared to folks like Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad. A totalitarian system would not have journos criticizing the leader. They would have been dragged out of their homes at midnight and summarily executed, tortured (possibly by family members or colleagues), or had similarly nasty things done to them. Neighbors would report neighbors for off-color jokes about the leader, and children would report parents. Not only did Trump never have a totalitarian state backing him, but, for all his pettiness and attempts to bully opponents, he didn't seem to express a particular desire to create a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is an almost foreign concept to most Americans because we haven't really experienced it. I would recommend watching interviews with people who have survived Saddam Hussein's prisons. And that's still arguably in the grey area between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

[Fahran]

It's called welfare chauvinism. Trump fans support government giving them handouts, but they don't want any going to groups they aren't fond of, like inner city minority communities. Trumpsters usually aren't fans of a totally free market but they also aren't socialists. They really are almost like a third position.

There's a lot of cognitive dissonance in this respect. But, no, it's not third-positionist economics.

[Suriyanakhon]

i am not so certain that "steadfast adherence to capitalism" is really an accurate statement for certain portions of the right
they are not any degree of economic leftists, because that would require diverting resources to the "undeserving"
but they are not fully capitalists either, though their motives differ based on who exactly you're talking to
there is a belief that corporate institutions have been "captured" by socially leftist beliefs, and so those corporations must be punished-the mechanisms here also differ
note that this sentiment is largely confined to the base, the actual legislative and "policy" arm is nowhere near on this train

It's called welfare chauvinism. Trump fans support government giving them handouts, but they don't want any going to groups they aren't fond of, like inner city minority communities. Trumpsters usually aren't fans of a totally free market but they also aren't socialists. They really are almost like a third position.

That's completely separate from the third positionism that Fascism proposes, which usually involves a chamber of corporative bodies composed of workers, engineers, industrialists, etc. who are supposed to cooperate for the good of the state. Ironically, social democracies have more in common with Fascist economics than Trump does.

[New haven america]

i would question why we expect american fascism-using the contested term broadly-to fit into the blocks of european fascism, instead of being an analogue to it
beyond the fact that one is mostly run by idiots and astroturfed (and out of control) disinformation chambers, which i feel is somewhat critical to any discussion of it

Because people don't want to admit that the US, the country that supposedly ended fascism, is increasingly falling into its grasp.

Also, because a lot on the right support American Fascism, consciously and subconsciously.

[Fahran]

Because people don't want to admit that the US, the country that supposedly ended fascism, is increasingly falling into its grasp.

Also, because a lot on the right support American Fascism, consciously and subconsciously.

If the GOP is so fascist, why don't Nakena and Suri support it? :^)

[Nevertopia]

Because people don't want to admit that the US, the country that supposedly ended fascism, is increasingly falling into its grasp.

Also, because a lot on the right support American Fascism, consciously and subconsciously.

If the GOP is so fascist, why don't Nakena and Suri support it? :^)

philosophically speaking doesnt the GOP advocate for white nationalism?

[Kowani]

If the GOP is so fascist, why don't Nakena and Suri support it? :^)

philosophically speaking doesnt the GOP advocate for white nationalism?

no

[-SARS-]

i would question why we expect american fascism-using the contested term broadly-to fit into the blocks of european fascism, instead of being an analogue to it

beyond the fact that one is mostly run by idiots and astroturfed (and out of control) disinformation chambers, which i feel is somewhat critical to any discussion of it

I mean... there has been at least some distinction between American white nationalists and fascists/Nazis traditionally, hence why I would caution against even using the term when the other trappings and ideological tenets of fascism are absent from an ideology. A lot of self-declared antifascists seem to want it to be a meaninglessly catch-all term for political ideologies they dislike, regardless of how they might differ. Hence NVA using it to describe neocons on a routine basis.

The problem is that other tenets of fascism aren't absent. There's been a significant increase in political violence and antidemocratic behavior, not just racist beliefs.

[Dejado Atras]

I mean... there has been at least some distinction between American white nationalists and fascists/Nazis traditionally, hence why I would caution against even using the term when the other trappings and ideological tenets of fascism are absent from an ideology. A lot of self-declared antifascists seem to want it to be a meaninglessly catch-all term for political ideologies they dislike, regardless of how they might differ. Hence NVA using it to describe neocons on a routine basis.

The problem is that other tenets of fascism aren't absent. There's been a significant increase in political violence and antidemocratic behavior

One can say they have been seeing this from both sides.

[Nilokeras]

That's completely separate from the third positionism that Fascism proposes, which usually involves a chamber of corporative bodies composed of workers, engineers, industrialists, etc. who are supposed to cooperate for the good of the state. Ironically, social democracies have more in common with Fascist economics than Trump does.

Fascism as an ideology contained in the actual writings of what you might call 'fascist' theoreticians is entirely dead. They've been dead ever since the various purges in Spain, Italy and Germany in the 1930's. To the extent fascism is alive today it's as a strain of Eco's ur-fascism: a revanchist nationalism that harkens back to an imagined 'purer' past and which sees their opponents as degenerate elites that must be toppled to unify the organic nation. Ur-fascism lies rooted under the surface of our culture, and Italian fascism and Nazism or falangism are just individual growths that emerged and flowered before being cut down.

[Nakena]

That's completely separate from the third positionism that Fascism proposes, which usually involves a chamber of corporative bodies composed of workers, engineers, industrialists, etc. who are supposed to cooperate for the good of the state. Ironically, social democracies have more in common with Fascist economics than Trump does.

Fascism as an ideology contained in the actual writings of what you might call 'fascist' theoreticians is entirely dead. They've been dead ever since the various purges in Spain, Italy and Germany in the 1930's. To the extent fascism is alive today it's as a strain of Eco's ur-fascism: a revanchist nationalism that harkens back to an imagined 'purer' past and which sees their opponents as degenerate elites that must be toppled to unify the organic nation. Ur-fascism lies rooted under the surface of our culture, and Italian fascism and Nazism or falangism are just individual growths that emerged and flowered before being cut down.

Interesting theory.

So basically fascism would be functionally similiar to the barbarian tribes from the fringes Ibn Khaldun described who are taking down and ultimatively restoring and renewing civilization?

Or something deeper that is always somehow present and just waits to be awakened and summoned, in times of crisis and uncertainity?

[Nilokeras]

Fascism as an ideology contained in the actual writings of what you might call 'fascist' theoreticians is entirely dead. They've been dead ever since the various purges in Spain, Italy and Germany in the 1930's. To the extent fascism is alive today it's as a strain of Eco's ur-fascism: a revanchist nationalism that harkens back to an imagined 'purer' past and which sees their opponents as degenerate elites that must be toppled to unify the organic nation. Ur-fascism lies rooted under the surface of our culture, and Italian fascism and Nazism or falangism are just individual growths that emerged and flowered before being cut down.

Interesting theory.

So basically fascism would be functionally similiar to the barbarian tribes from the fringes Ibn Khaldun described who are taking down and ultimatively restoring and renewing civilization?

Or something deeper that is always somehow present and just waits to be awakened and summoned, in times of crisis and uncertainity?

Fascism or ur-fascism isn't eternal - it's a specific consequence of the concoction of nationalism, racism and romanticism that most of our national ideologies were constructed out of. To paraphrase the famous quote, fascism is Western society in decay: it erupts forth when the existing capitalist liberal/conservative ideological superstructure fails and has to absorb material consequences that it cannot incorporate into its narratives - like the loss of the German Empire in WW1. Mainstream conservative ideology could not explain why they lost or how to return to power, so a 'stabbed in the back' myth evolved to explain it and spawned a million varieties of fascism, of which Nazism as we know it came out on top.

[Nakena]

Interesting theory.

So basically fascism would be functionally similiar to the barbarian tribes from the fringes Ibn Khaldun described who are taking down and ultimatively restoring and renewing civilization?

Or something deeper that is always somehow present and just waits to be awakened and summoned, in times of crisis and uncertainity?

Fascism or ur-fascism isn't eternal - it's a specific consequence of the concoction of nationalism, racism and romanticism that most of our national ideologies were constructed out of. To paraphrase the famous quote, fascism is Western society in decay: it erupts forth when the existing capitalist liberal/conservative ideological superstructure fails and has to absorb material consequences that it cannot incorporate into its narratives - like the loss of the German Empire in WW1. Mainstream conservative ideology could not explain why they lost or how to return to power, so a 'stabbed in the back' myth evolved to explain it and spawned a million varieties of fascism, of which Nazism as we know it came out on top.

Interesting. That is actually somewhat similiar to what I described as the pre-conditions for Fascism to happen or to be formed.

I believe Trump is just an berlusconi like wannabe autocrat or at worst caudillo who doesnt fits the bill or the bar for it, despite he initiated the capitol storm which is new for the US. But such stuff is not uncommon elsewhere. If at all it just killed of american exceptionalism. Its more like the US is moving closer to latin america and the rest of the non-western world in terms of political stability.

What you (?) and I describe is a fundamental crack or break in society and civilization through which real Fascism can emerge.

[Nilokeras]

Interesting. That is actually somewhat similiar to what I described as the pre-conditions for Fascism to happen or to be formed.

It doesn't have to be war, necessarily. Moreso a perception of national decline - that can come about acutely because of the loss of WW1 as in Germany, or of a progressive decline a la Spain in the early 1930's when falangism emerged.

I believe Trump is just an berlusconi like wannabe autocrat or at worst caudillo who doesnt fits the bill or the bar for it, despite he initiated the capitol storm which is new for the US.

Trump isn't even a wannabe dictator really. He's a sundowning dementia case who, if you point a mic at him, says a lot of the things that many American people already believe - and which aligns with what we'd call ur-fascist sentiments in terms of national decline and an elitist, treacherous enemy class. People around him certainly tried to maneuver him into being a caudillo-like figure but I doubt we can ascribe much intentionality to what he does beyond impulse. The danger Trump represents is less in his own personal capacity and moreso in revealing the American appetite for ur-fascist rhetoric which cannier people can use to more effect.

But such stuff is not uncommon elsewhere. If at all it just killed of american exceptionalism. Its more like the US is moving closer to latin america and the rest of the non-western world in terms of political stability.

Which is, of course one of the other competing definitions of fascism: the process of colonial methods of governance and control seeping back into the imperial core. Those Latin American caudillos could not have existed without American political interference and strategy.

What you (?) and I describe is a fundamental crack or break in society and civilization through which real Fascism can emerge.

There isn't any 'real fascism' outside of the ur-fascism Eco describes. It can look quite different depending on place and time.

[Fahran]

Fascism as an ideology contained in the actual writings of what you might call 'fascist' theoreticians is entirely dead. They've been dead ever since the various purges in Spain, Italy and Germany in the 1930's. To the extent fascism is alive today it's as a strain of Eco's ur-fascism: a revanchist nationalism that harkens back to an imagined 'purer' past and which sees their opponents as degenerate elites that must be toppled to unify the organic nation. Ur-fascism lies rooted under the surface of our culture, and Italian fascism and Nazism or falangism are just individual growths that emerged and flowered before being cut down.

As stated previously, there's quite a lot to criticize in Eco's conception of fascism, which, by his own admission, is more a disparate set of ill-formed anti-modernist tendencies than anything concrete or ideological. Interpreting them in the broadest possible sense could make applicable the designation of fascist to even many conservatives and socialists who have raised critiques of modern political institutions, modern socioeconomic elites, and post-modernist ethical frameworks and the abiding nihilism intrinsic to many present societies. If fascism is a tendency, it is a tendency that has been with us ever since the French Revolution and one we might just as easily term insular nationalism or traditionalism.

[-Astoria-]

Fascism is a fairly specific ideology.

And yet it has become another tired buzzword for anything right.

As has "socialism" & "communism", on the other hand.