This seems like an extremely high bar, that doesn’t seem to be practical in real world conditions (in the context of people like Meloni, not people who openly call themselves fascist/nazis and/or embrace their ideological beliefs).
Why don’t we apply the same standards to British Conservative politicians?
Why aren’t they expected to unequivocally denounce Churchill and most other major British politicians that preceded him (I’m not directly equating him personally with Mussolini but he and many other British prime ministers before him were brutal imperialists whose actions regularly directly or indirectly resulted in millions of deaths). I don’t see how British Imperialism was somehow fundamentally inherently less evil than Italian Fascism (it might have been to some extent but where do we draw the line?). Yet we accept or tolerate all sorts of symbolism from that period with little controversy.
British Empire might not be on the same level as Nazi Germany, the USSR, Mao’s China but I don’t see how it (or British Imperialism as an ideology) was particularly less evil than Fascist Italy.
On one hand it didn’t ally itself with an even more evil and genocidal regime (largely due to strategic reasons and not ideological affinity, these were still rival ideologies after all), was a limited democracy and occasionally allowed some freedom of speech on the other hand it did directly cause much more deaths and suffering over its existence). I think the main difference is that Britain (unlike Italy) was actually actually good at subjugating and exploiting other countries (with an occasional “lite” genocide mixed in), therefore it was in a position to shape the historical narrative and we have collectively decided that their positive contributions more or less outweigh all of the other stuff..
What I said might sound pretty distasteful, maybe even disgusting but I don’t see how is it particularly worse than selective [hypocritical] moral indignation).
Meloni isn’t anymore fascist than Boris Johnson is someone who wants to re-subjugate Ireland and reestablish the British empire.
And what other options are there? If we demonize people like her we’ll just end up with someone who might actually publicly embrace fascist values and ideas and would actually openly support fascist states like Russia (unless there is some way to suddenly convert 20-30% or of the electorate in Italy and other European countries to social-liberalism…).
Why don’t we apply the same standards to British Conservative politicians?
Why aren’t they expected to unequivocally denounce Churchill and most other major British politicians that preceded him (I’m not directly equating him personally with Mussolini but he and many other British prime ministers before him were brutal imperialists whose actions regularly directly or indirectly resulted in millions of deaths). I don’t see how British Imperialism was somehow fundamentally inherently less evil than Italian Fascism (it might have been to some extent but where do we draw the line?). Yet we accept or tolerate all sorts of symbolism from that period with little controversy.
British Empire might not be on the same level as Nazi Germany, the USSR, Mao’s China but I don’t see how it (or British Imperialism as an ideology) was particularly less evil than Fascist Italy.
On one hand it didn’t ally itself with an even more evil and genocidal regime (largely due to strategic reasons and not ideological affinity, these were still rival ideologies after all), was a limited democracy and occasionally allowed some freedom of speech on the other hand it did directly cause much more deaths and suffering over its existence). I think the main difference is that Britain (unlike Italy) was actually actually good at subjugating and exploiting other countries (with an occasional “lite” genocide mixed in), therefore it was in a position to shape the historical narrative and we have collectively decided that their positive contributions more or less outweigh all of the other stuff..
What I said might sound pretty distasteful, maybe even disgusting but I don’t see how is it particularly worse than selective [hypocritical] moral indignation).
Meloni isn’t anymore fascist than Boris Johnson is someone who wants to re-subjugate Ireland and reestablish the British empire.
And what other options are there? If we demonize people like her we’ll just end up with someone who might actually publicly embrace fascist values and ideas and would actually openly support fascist states like Russia (unless there is some way to suddenly convert 20-30% or of the electorate in Italy and other European countries to social-liberalism…).