This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Let’s start with the easy legal difference- the Saudi state, and indeed the whole country, is the personal property of the house of Saud, and they deserve to have it as their property because of their family history of guarding the ‘correct’ type of Islam. In a fascist state, the country is personified by the state which answers to no one and it is the state’s power which justifies this personification.
The Saudi model in western societies is similar to the Ancien Regime, Hapsburg empire, old Spain, etc. fascism in western societies is, well, Hitler and Mussolini. Interestingly, there are examples of Arab fascism- Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al Assad. You’ll notice that, while perhaps the level of oppression was similar between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in, say, 2000, the direction and amount were very different, with Saudi oppression aimed at religious conformity and Iraqi oppression aimed at ethnic distinctions which could provide a conflicting loyalty to the state.
Fascism (like communism) was a movement primarily in response to the dissolution of states where power lay in the hands of a hereditary elite, who would maintain that power by doing things for the commoners that they thought the commoners needed, while extracting wealth and making the commoners do things for them. Downtown Abbey is a good example of a show that celebrates the old world order, with the hereditary rich living in mansions and being served on; taking their cut from the farmers, while justifying their position by arguing that they create jobs, help those in need and organize feasts (where they themselves expect to get applauded by the commoners). Saudi Arabia is pretty much like this, with their system of patronage depending on clan relationships.
The actual cause for the social changes that led to the rise of communism and fascism was the Second Agricultural Revolution, which pushed very many people out of the farming life, which in turn enabled the Industrial Revolution. These technical revolutions led to urbanization and capitalism, both of which were much more brutal than today, causing much unhappiness and therefor revolutionary spirit. The elites that ran these countries were seen as doing such a bad job that very many people wanted something different.
Communism in theory sought to abolish the elites, instead of replacing them, by means of radical democracy & shared property. Although in practice this could not work for various reasons and so communist regimes inevitably just descended into authoritarianism, based on power games rather than hereditary power. In that sense, the statement that 'true communism has never been tried' is true, although true communism can't actually be tried and inevitably seems to devolve into what it was intended to fight against.
Fascism sought to replace the hereditary elite with a technocratic elite that would seek to improve society by aligning people towards a societal improvement, rather than their selfish desires. Hence the bundle of sticks, the fasces. All people in the nation united for a common purpose. Unlike communism, it rejects the idea of radical equality, so it accepts wealth differences and differences in hierarchy, but only in so far as to help achieve the common goal. The fascist capital owner may own a big factory, but is not supposed to hoard wealth, have an excessive lifestyle or take advantage of others. Fascism rejects democracy, as it considers the common man to be stupid. It doesn't really answer the question of how the right goal and right leadership is selected. In practice, the autocratic nature of the leadership and lack of goals within the ideology itself, tends to lead to fascism being easily combined with other extremist ideologies, like Hitler's racial beliefs.
This lack of inherent goals within the fascist model tends to lead to a lot of confusion about what fascism actually is, which why it is so easy to claim that something is fascist, as there is no pure fascism. It's always fascism plus some other ideology or some other goal, that is not inherent to fascism itself.
"If you don't know the difference between fascism and theocratic absolute monarchy you have nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic and should just be ignored" is the correct reply.
You can. It’s just that people have a tendency to defend even bad arguments if they feel it comes from their side, because in their view losing one argument weakens all the others(arguments as soldiers). So a dishonest actor like jewdefender can make a side look silly.
And all the opponents can’t resist smacking down the silliness for some easy status points, even when they know that the argument is coming from a suspicious source, and the dumb argument has been dogpiled to death already. So the corrupted discussions look like one-sided routs even though in general, the two sides could be equally correct/credible.
Fascism and Absolute totalitarian monarchies have their means and ends flipped, fascism is an extreme form of nationalism and uses authoritarianism to inculcate nationalism amongst its subjects; absolute totalitarian monarchies aim to preserve rule by fiat of the king/emperor and use nationalism to achieve their authoriarianism.
Confusing the two with each other is like believing wet streets cause rain, and someone who thinks that way is not to be trusted on much other stuff either.
What is the practical purpose of distinguishing between "inflicting nationalism to inflict authoritarianism" and "inflicting authoritarianism to inflict nationalism" for the purposes of living there? Either way, the inhabitants get both.
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
Words do have meanings, just not a single one for each word. And handpicking the meaning you like to imply the interlocutor is unaware of it (as opposed to "doesn't care") is the kind of pointless wordcelery that should be dismissed. It offers no new information.
An interlocutor who doesn't care is even worse than one who is unaware, they should be shamed and ridiculed even more. Ignorance is bad but deliberate carelessness is worthy of punishment. If they wanted to say "totalitarianism", then they should have said "totalitarianism", not mangled up the meanings (I absolutely agree Saudi Arabia is extremely totalitarian).
Plus you have offered no response to my large list of differences in what life is like for an ordinary person living under fascism vs absolute totalitarian monarchy.
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Notes -
For some, the easy retort here is "what's the difference?"
Let’s start with the easy legal difference- the Saudi state, and indeed the whole country, is the personal property of the house of Saud, and they deserve to have it as their property because of their family history of guarding the ‘correct’ type of Islam. In a fascist state, the country is personified by the state which answers to no one and it is the state’s power which justifies this personification.
The Saudi model in western societies is similar to the Ancien Regime, Hapsburg empire, old Spain, etc. fascism in western societies is, well, Hitler and Mussolini. Interestingly, there are examples of Arab fascism- Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al Assad. You’ll notice that, while perhaps the level of oppression was similar between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in, say, 2000, the direction and amount were very different, with Saudi oppression aimed at religious conformity and Iraqi oppression aimed at ethnic distinctions which could provide a conflicting loyalty to the state.
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Yes, ignorance makes for easy retorts.
Fascism (like communism) was a movement primarily in response to the dissolution of states where power lay in the hands of a hereditary elite, who would maintain that power by doing things for the commoners that they thought the commoners needed, while extracting wealth and making the commoners do things for them. Downtown Abbey is a good example of a show that celebrates the old world order, with the hereditary rich living in mansions and being served on; taking their cut from the farmers, while justifying their position by arguing that they create jobs, help those in need and organize feasts (where they themselves expect to get applauded by the commoners). Saudi Arabia is pretty much like this, with their system of patronage depending on clan relationships.
The actual cause for the social changes that led to the rise of communism and fascism was the Second Agricultural Revolution, which pushed very many people out of the farming life, which in turn enabled the Industrial Revolution. These technical revolutions led to urbanization and capitalism, both of which were much more brutal than today, causing much unhappiness and therefor revolutionary spirit. The elites that ran these countries were seen as doing such a bad job that very many people wanted something different.
Communism in theory sought to abolish the elites, instead of replacing them, by means of radical democracy & shared property. Although in practice this could not work for various reasons and so communist regimes inevitably just descended into authoritarianism, based on power games rather than hereditary power. In that sense, the statement that 'true communism has never been tried' is true, although true communism can't actually be tried and inevitably seems to devolve into what it was intended to fight against.
Fascism sought to replace the hereditary elite with a technocratic elite that would seek to improve society by aligning people towards a societal improvement, rather than their selfish desires. Hence the bundle of sticks, the fasces. All people in the nation united for a common purpose. Unlike communism, it rejects the idea of radical equality, so it accepts wealth differences and differences in hierarchy, but only in so far as to help achieve the common goal. The fascist capital owner may own a big factory, but is not supposed to hoard wealth, have an excessive lifestyle or take advantage of others. Fascism rejects democracy, as it considers the common man to be stupid. It doesn't really answer the question of how the right goal and right leadership is selected. In practice, the autocratic nature of the leadership and lack of goals within the ideology itself, tends to lead to fascism being easily combined with other extremist ideologies, like Hitler's racial beliefs.
This lack of inherent goals within the fascist model tends to lead to a lot of confusion about what fascism actually is, which why it is so easy to claim that something is fascist, as there is no pure fascism. It's always fascism plus some other ideology or some other goal, that is not inherent to fascism itself.
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"If you don't know the difference between fascism and theocratic absolute monarchy you have nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic and should just be ignored" is the correct reply.
What is the difference that's meaningful to the poster who conflates them?
Don’t waste your time defending the idiotic utterances of this troll. He is not on your side.
Which one?
"jewdefender"
Even if jewdefender doesn't really believe in what he's saying in defense of Israel and jews, why can't I?
You can. It’s just that people have a tendency to defend even bad arguments if they feel it comes from their side, because in their view losing one argument weakens all the others(arguments as soldiers). So a dishonest actor like jewdefender can make a side look silly.
And all the opponents can’t resist smacking down the silliness for some easy status points, even when they know that the argument is coming from a suspicious source, and the dumb argument has been dogpiled to death already. So the corrupted discussions look like one-sided routs even though in general, the two sides could be equally correct/credible.
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Fascism and Absolute totalitarian monarchies have their means and ends flipped, fascism is an extreme form of nationalism and uses authoritarianism to inculcate nationalism amongst its subjects; absolute totalitarian monarchies aim to preserve rule by fiat of the king/emperor and use nationalism to achieve their authoriarianism.
Confusing the two with each other is like believing wet streets cause rain, and someone who thinks that way is not to be trusted on much other stuff either.
What is the practical purpose of distinguishing between "inflicting nationalism to inflict authoritarianism" and "inflicting authoritarianism to inflict nationalism" for the purposes of living there? Either way, the inhabitants get both.
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
Words do have meanings, just not a single one for each word. And handpicking the meaning you like to imply the interlocutor is unaware of it (as opposed to "doesn't care") is the kind of pointless wordcelery that should be dismissed. It offers no new information.
An interlocutor who doesn't care is even worse than one who is unaware, they should be shamed and ridiculed even more. Ignorance is bad but deliberate carelessness is worthy of punishment. If they wanted to say "totalitarianism", then they should have said "totalitarianism", not mangled up the meanings (I absolutely agree Saudi Arabia is extremely totalitarian).
Plus you have offered no response to my large list of differences in what life is like for an ordinary person living under fascism vs absolute totalitarian monarchy.
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