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Comparing fascism and communism is more nuanced than most people would think I would agree. but do you think the average American is likely to think of their household as fascist, regardless of what critical theorists think?
We're talking about people's perceptions here, remember.
Nope, but the reason for that is not because their family arrangement is more similar to communism than fascism, their perception is due to the cultural signals they've been inundated with their entire lives and have thoroughly internalized. Those cultural signals were indeed influenced by the perception of the Critical Theorists, so what the Critical Theorists thought actually does matter because of its influence on culture and academia.
Or is it because of the national mythos and about defeating Nazism in WW2? Being integrated into the founding mythos of being the beacon of liberty and justice, combined with having direct examples in the US of racial discrimination and making the connection to what Nazis were doing in Europe?
Did Critical Theorists invent that connection or is it a logical one? I don't think Critical Theorists have had a great deal of influence on church going, conservative rural Americans. I think their own ideology and experience is enough to explain why they would reject fascism but have some non-negative views of communal living. Leftish Social welfare policies are popular in poor areas because they benefit from them, even if they are otherwise conservative. You don't need to explain that with critical theory, just as you don't have to explain why struggling people in high immigration areas might be against further immigration. Some things just follow.
Well yes, I certainly believe that public perception of Fascism versus Marxism is downstream from the national mythos, that was my point. It's not related to Marxism feeling closer to an organic family structure, because it isn't. The "national mythos" in turn comes from the institutions most influential in creating myth, culture, and academia, it doesn't come from a grounded reality.
What the Critical Theorists did was develop a framework that pathologized the traditional family structure, traditional values, and white ethnocentrism. It's the same thing the Marxists do, they take organic hierarchies like class and assume them to be artificial figments of some injustice. They did not invent the connection so much as they falsely pathologized it and developed a therapeutic framework that greatly influenced cultural movements into what we now call Wokeness.
Yeah, it's really incredible how Western democracies waged an unnecessary world war that destroyed Old Europe, killed tens of millions, and handed half the continent to Stalin and turned that outcome into being the foundational story of the US as a beacon of liberty and justice. They saved Hitler from conquering the world, a truly audacious claim made by the alliance of the USSR, United States, and British Empire.
The "lessons" learned from that conflict are just more mythos: Hitler gassed Jews in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, so that means White people cannot have their own spaces and White people cannot advocate for their ethnic interests.
These ideologically-motivated culture-creators created the foundational mythos, the foundational mythos did not create them.
Are you sure? I don't think anyone creates it, it's a gestalt entity that evolves over time, and is largely immune to individuals trying to push it. And I say that, as someone whose job used to be to try. My experience is that you can't create or control what large groups of people think, at best you can tap into things they already believe and maybe, maybe nudge it slightly. And that is with modern tools and communications technology. Being the all-conquering heroes who saved Old Europe is a narrative that makes us feel strong and powerful and moral, so of course that will preferred to one where we handed power to an even worse tyrant. You don't need anyone pushing that, it pushes itself. Hitler gassed Jews? Well that fits, that just means we were even more right! The people who spread those ideas are not (in a viral meme sense) the infectors, they are the infectees.
So I guess that is a long winded way of saying I think you are exactly incorrect, no-one created it, and no-one can. We created it collectively, out of our own inherent desire to be the good person, reinforced by our neighbors and their neighbors. It's human nature.
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