I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or any kind of pacifist, non-antagonistic action can be taken to lower that threat.
Seems like a typical mythos of most political movements these days, doesn't it? E.g., "the far-right is our greatest threat". And it's said that e.g., Russia themselves is no great threat, they're basically an incompetent tinpot dictatorship with a ramshackle military easily beaten by us / our allies. It is the traitors within who "collude with Putin" who are the real problem.
Intolerant groups are a special problem for societies that wish to be tolerant. A tolerant society must be specifically intolerant of the intolerant to keep being a tolerant society. It's a required bit of looking within to maintain a tolerant society.
I wasn't commentating on the rationale behind the thinking or whether it is right or not, just that the idea of the internal enemy is not owned by any one political persuasion.
Though I'm sure right-wing groups believe themselves to be tolerant of one-another and their allies and others with similar aims, and that groups that oppose them are intolerant and therefore must be met with intolerance. The paradox of the paradox of tolerance is that you can't claim tolerance by excusing your intolerance with the paradox of tolerance. Or said another way, one man's tolerance is another's intolerance.
Nah. The side that actively spouts racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-trans positions is pretty clearly the intolerant one.
This is not hard to see unless one is being willfully blind. Which is especially funny given this conversation is happening in response to giving Grok an intentional blind spot.
Creating a false equivalency between intolerance of the intolerant and intolerance of others / other groups is a key rhetorical device for fascists.
Even if you've walked to this position through "logic" and a concept of perfectly spherical human beings [0], with no steps through fascism, you should be aware of how this position is used by fascists to give themselves a veneer of rationality while painting their opponents as irrational.
>Seems like a typical mythos of most political movements these days, doesn't it? E.g., "the far-right is our greatest threat".
>Though I'm sure right-wing groups believe themselves to be tolerant of one-another and their allies and others with similar aims, and that groups that oppose them are intolerant and therefore must be met with intolerance.
>Other side will call them intolerant racists too, it is also pretty clear to them.
These would be the statements where they were creating a false equivalence. The things being compared are not equivalent but they are given rhetorical treatment to make them seem equivalent.
From what I can tell, they simply made an observation. You're the one applying a value judgment to their statements. Pointing out that different tribes use rhetoric to "other" outsiders isn't creating a false equivalence.
Denouncing and accusing people as fascists who must not be tolerated for the transgression of discussing social and political issues in a manner deemed verboten seems like something a fascist might do.
The mythos of the liberals is way more personnalized, usually assigning moral failings to people who disagree eith them, something like "those people are dumb enough to be manipulated, we ought to explain thing slower/better" "we are on the reason's side". The fondamental attribution error is probably the fallacy for which liberals (authoritarians liberals especially) are the most susceptible to.
For the leftist movements, the mythos will either go to a marxist or neomarxist "We oppose the billionaire/landlords/owner class, and must struggle together to put it down, educate yourself and those close to you" or to a more generic anti-system mythos.
Furthermore, the left is often egalitarian, and the "traitor in our rank" mythos is mobilized to explain why you are not above X depite being (genetically for nazis, culturally for fascists) superior.
Those sound like enemies within, but what do I know? Liberals / leftists / whatever have non-personal internal enemies (white supremacists, ultra right wing, nationalists, etc), and right wing have external enemies as well as entirely personal internal enemies too. Right wing certainly talks about moral failings.
Seems really difficult to quantify to the extent you can just say they don't. We can all come up with examples or handwaved anecdotes of any kind of enemy from any ideology really, so what actual metrics are you using to differentiate these things?
My bad, i shouldn't have used "left" or "right", it has different meaning in different part of the world.
I'm not sating paranoia isn't present everywhere, i'm saying one one kind of political ideology use it as a building block of their ideology, and it is fascism.
"We are (culturally/genetically) the best, but right now others seems better/won/took advantage of us. The only reason we are not at the top is because we have internal traitors (jew/blochevics/unionist/homosexuals/whatever float your boat). We have to eliminate those"
Each time something like this is uttered to justify taking power away from court/parliaments, you'll be looking at fascism. Which can be used with capitalism or with communism (as production methods). The "internal enemy" as a reason to justify taking power away from the court/ignoring human right/taking power away from parliement is fascistic. [0]
That's mainly how i differentiate the extreme centre from fascists, their justification. Von Papen/Schleifer removed power from the Weimar parliament because "people are dumb and did not understood how intelligent we are, so we can safely ignore their vote", then Hindeburg installed Hitler, who did the same thing, but stronger, and justified it with the "internal traitor" myth.
[0] Trotsky called that "bonapartism", and argued that Stalinism was another heir of that ideology, but here, i think he is simply wrong (as usual), although it is interesting (where lie the fascism roots?). And now, writing about it, i will have to re-read him and think about it more, he might have a point, is fascism an evolution of bonpartism, with a more rigid hierarchical order? :/ fml.
Seems too simplistic and centric to one particular country / system / ideology.
Laws and courts can be and are made oppressive and used against the people by a tyrannical government.
Taking power away from [government] is not necessarily fascism. It really depends what and why. If it is a rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers? What really matters is the power the government as a whole has over the people.
There has recently been a lot of noise from American left wing about the Supreme Court being corrupt, illegitimate, politicized, etc., etc., and calls to reduce its powers, for example.
You could call that "fascistic" I suppose, but I'm not really here to get bogged down in semantics, my point is that the types of real or imagined enemies of political movements very much run the spectrum.
> There has recently been a lot of noise from American left wing about the Supreme Court being corrupt, illegitimate, politicized, etc., etc., and calls to reduce its powers, for example.
Exactly my point? Fascist justification to reduce court/legislative power are the "internal enemies", Centrist authoritarians (extreme center) will justify it by accusing the people of being dumb/unreasonable (or any explanation that will make them saviors), and leftist authoritarians will justify it by accusing them of being the dominant class and protecting their class privileges (which, good point, but not enough to dismantle the judiciary).
> rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers
The weimar republic courts were infiltrated by nazi (starting in 1928) and the judges/attorneys were all used to aristocratic courts, were you don't judge a person the same depending on his social position, so the nazi only had to eliminate the "due process" part of any arrestation, but overall did not change the institution.
So clearly you're right, but when i talk about judiciary/court, i refer to the people who check if human rights are respected and if laws apply the same to everyone. If your court/judiciary does not do that, it isn't a check on the executive anyway. (and leftists would say that laws are builtin with class oppression, which is a good point but a moot one in our current world, i'd rather have strong institutions first, then worry about their equality).
I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or any kind of pacifist, non-antagonistic action can be taken to lower that threat.