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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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I cannot think of a better way to actually facilitate the birth of a real American homegrown fascism than killing or jailing Trump and successfully using extralegal methods to suppress the maga movement and stifle their (very popular) core political agenda.

Yes, but so what? Why can't they then just crush said "American homegrown fascism" like Hitler was crushed?

And I remember a comment on Tumblr from someone arguing that "fascism" is hard to pin down. First, because many fellow leftists use it as a boo word meaning "anything I don't like." But more, that to the extent that it has a narrower, more concrete definition than that, but a broader definition than "the specific Italian ideology of Mussolini and co." (such that even Hitler and the Nazis "aren't really Fascist), then it refers to a sort of cluster with overlapping traits (what, per here, was called a "family resemblance" by Wittgenstein), where no specimen has all the associated traits, and no trait is shared by all members — Hitler and Franco had different positions on religion, Mussolini and Pinochet on economics, Imperial Japan lacked a clear "strongman" figure, Orban uses electoral democracy differently, and so on. But it is a cluster, which includes (but is not limited to) Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Salazar, Hussein, Pinochet, and Orban (and, according to some people, China from Qin to Qing); and thus, Trump — particularly as he is now — fits into that cluster; into what, if you reject the label of "fascist" for the whole thing, is still a space containing fascism, and other unacceptable right-wing regimes adjacent to it.

This is again, a position I encounter from people all over the multi-dimensional political spectrum, from old school conservatives to libertarians to progressives to self-described "fascists," that it's acceptable (or at least tolerable) to be socially right-wing, as long as you're also in favor of "free markets" and "small government" — to the point you prioritize those over social issues — and categorically opposed to actually ever trying to use government power (as opposed to the classic libertarian bits about "seizing power and ruthlessly leaving people alone" and "drowning government in the bathtub"), but the moment right-winger actually try to wield power — rather than just block the left from using power and "standing athwart history yelling 'stop'" — they've gone in to forbidden territory, too close to Hitler to ever be allowed.

Why can't they then just crush said "American homegrown fascism" like Hitler was crushed?

Same reason America lost in Vietnam and to the Taliban. Occupying America would be enormously harder.

Same reason America lost in Vietnam and to the Taliban.

I wish I could find again the essay I read a couple years ago by a retired general, talking about the risk of civil war in America, and why it needs avoided at all costs because neither side could win, and would thus grind on forever.

The key part I would reference was the part where he reasons that whichever side the US military goes with cannot lose, because the US armed forces cannot be defeated. He specifically mentions Vietnam and Afghanistan, arguing that the US military did not lose, was not defeated, in either of those cases, they were forced to quit and go home by politicians more sympathetic to the commies/Taliban. He then notes that in a civil war, you can't "pack up and go home" because home is where you're fighting; any politicians more sympathetic to the other side are on the other side, are part of the enemy you're fighting and not people who can give you order; and no one's just "calling it quits" while not losing militarily, because while nobody in the upper levels suffered any consequences for the Afghanistan withdrawal, giving up in a civil war has much more dire personal consequences.

Of course, he then went on to argue that the US military could not win a civil war either, taking a position much like yours, except that the reason he gave for the US's failures in counter-insurgency operations was…

…that counter-insurgency is and has always been completely impossible. Indeed, he went on to make arguments about the inevitability of the populace perpetually rising up to throw off any occupier, such as to imply that military conquest is impossible. Do I need to point out how ahistorical that is? Per his view, we should expect present-day England to be wracked with violence from Anglo-Saxon insurgents still fighting to throw off the Norman yoke. It was reading this essay that led me down a rabbit hole of looking up and reading works on Roman methods of suppressing rebellion, as well as a few discussions of why Anglo-Saxon peasants didn't rise up against the Norman conquest, and some of the "fourth-generation warfare" experts on why American counter-insurgency strategies are so terrible (basically, that there are two effective strategies, but since we lack the patience for one and the stomach for the other, we try to do something half-assed in between that ends up the worst of both worlds; and also over-focusing on technological superiority and "precision" strikes as the go-to "solution").

Most of the material I've read on the history of guerrilla warfare points out that guerrillas usually lose. Further, that the image of their effectiveness in the popular imagination is mostly a holdover of Communist (and particularly Maoist) propaganda of the "invincible Marxist guerrilla." Also, they "work" best as an adjunct to a professional military force — for example, despite the over-inflated reputation of the Viet Cong, they were mostly gone before the war was over, and pretty much all the real damage and progress against the US was accomplished by the North Vietnamese Army.

I can't remember if it was Max Boot, or someone else's work citing his, but I recall reading a work on guerrilla warfare that laid out three preconditions, which are necessary but not sufficient, for a successful insurgency.

  1. At least one foreign ally providing material and financial support to the guerrillas

  2. At least passive cooperation from the general population

  3. and to be fighting against a foreign occupier.

That last one is the most important. No "guerrilla" or "terrorist" insurgency has ever won a civil war against a domestic enemy.

And beyond all this discussion of insurgencies and military matters, why would crushing "American Nazis" ever even rise to that level? Why couldn't it just be done by civilian law enforcement, with each "cell" of "real American homegrown fascists" getting Waco'd the moment the state learns about them?

After all, AIUI, the reason there "hasn't been any more Wacos" isn't that, as some would have it, that the government was soundly deterred from ever trying again by what happened there, and by Oklahoma City. No, my understanding is that local law enforcement wanted to arrest Koresh and a bunch of other leading Branch Davidians, and had various opportunities to do so, but were held back from doing so by the Feds, because Janet Reno wanted to make a big show of rolling the whole group up all at once. And thus, what the FBI, ATF, etc. learned from the resulting debacle was to let local law enforcement break them up.

The reason we don't "see more Wacos" isn't that the government has stopped trying to shut down groups like the Branch Davidians, it's that its become so effective at shutting down such groups, with arrests by local cops, long before they ever reach the "armed compound" stage, that it never makes the news.

I would not see the lineup for the breakdown towards which the US is currently slouching to feature guerilla insurgents operating on their own -- there are an awful lot of big powerful States that are diametrically opposed to each other. (as with v1.0, of course)

Wouldn't a more realistic scenario be various Red States snatching up military assets within their borders, and using them in support of both set-pieces and terrorism/guerilla activity nibbling at the (vast) rural regions of the adjoining Blue ones? (VC/NVA would be a pretty realistic model actually)

The only one of your three points not potentially present in rural Blue States is the first one -- and if a true break were to occur in the Union, that one manifests in about ten seconds.