Let's review the original claim. Allegedly, fascism requires meeting this criterion:
- Glorification of masculinity & obedience (softness = sin)
I disagree that the glorification of masculinity is a
necessary requirement for a regime to be fascist. However, I do agree that a strong virtue of obedience must exist within the circle of power, and this logically follows from a strongman leader taking over the government. The continuation of such a system necessitates that non-obedience is framed as
sinful or at least a virtue-compromise.
Non-compliance can sometimes be construed as "soft," for instance, when compassion is valued as a higher virtue than obedience, leading to a refusal to follow orders. However, this is not the only form of disobedience. Disloyalty to Trump can also stem from an appeal to a higher order of "rule of law." As he breaks down institutions, we see that even certain conservatives have been politically targeted, facing "lawfare" and being made enemies of the state. These actions—the elimination of political enemies—are fascist tendencies that continue to move the government along a
spectrum of fascism.
Now, all this said, Dr Z was wise to completely skip the latter part of the criterion he posted because meeting the
obedience requirement is all too obvious. On the other hand, the argument that the MAGA movement and Trump Administration does not glorify masculinity (even if it is not a direct requirement of fascism) is quite poor.
We can clearly observe the
glorification of a specific, narrow masculinity in these features of the movement and/or Administration:
- An ideological attack on trans women, which reinforces a binary gender view.
Wait a minute. I don't think there necessarily was an ideological attack on trans women. It was rather that the pro trans movement had become completely unhinged. The support for trans acceptance had become a cult, that increasingly was becoming detached from reality.
I'm part of the queer community. This is my tribe. I have several close trans friends. I do not know a single one that thinks trans women should be allowed to compete against biological women. Or every thought that. On the contrary, they increasingly over time thought it was so crazy that it was bound to lead to a backlash against trans people. The MAGA reaction came as no suprise to them. I don't know a single one who has a problem with dead-naming. I also know several trans women who are conservative, and do not at all sign up for the liberal trans cult, and never would. No, they're not self hating queers. It's just different values. To the queer community of Copenhagen/Western Europe the woke cult was increasingly seen as white knighting by people with no connection to anything queer. That's when we got the TERFs. Aka, lesbians who now need feel the need to justify not wanting to suck cock, and feeling negatively judged for it.
I think the MAGA backlash against the woke trans issue is completely self inflicted by the left. And it's not just MAGA. It's way wider than that. Trump is a narcisstic vaccuous amoral opportunist who will say anything if it'll get him elected. I think that's why he is having a go at postmodern gender studies and intersectional feminism. I don't think he has a personal opinion in that ping pong ball of a brain.
- An explicit appeal to restore gender hierarchy, where the traditional role dictates that women are subservient to men.
I don't think that is true. I think that's a straw man. I do not know of a single conservative person who holds this opinion. Saying that the genders are different is not to create a hierarchy between them. Just because you can find people on Tik Tok spouting the nonsense doesn't mean it has any traction.
Something intersectional feminists often forget is that in the olden days the entire culture was increadibly hierarchical. Everything was hierarchical. Becuse resources was so limited. It was simply a necessity. Back when women were barred from attending university, 98% of everyone was barred from university. It wasn't down to patriarchal oppression as much as simple simple rules to make society work better.
The short period from grinding poverty being the norm (ca 1870) to starvation being rare (ca 1920) women got the vote and equal rights at lightning speeds (compared to most other social changes).
The problem with wokes and post modern gender study types is that they tend to be historically illiterate and seem to base their entire world view on pithy slogans chanted at demos.
- Orders to create a "warrior ethos" that appeals broadly to MAGA beyond the specific military realm, prioritizing a "hard" national character.
At the moment I don't see the problem. I think the bleeding heart intersectional feminism world of the last 25 year. I think that "a warrior ethos" should be seen more of a course correction than anti-feminism.
I know Swedish and Danish mens group people who also go on about a greater need for a warrior ethos among men. Liberals. I don't think this is necessarily a conservative thing.
I think Trump has just picked up on something in the zeitgeist and parroting it like the retarded buffoon he is.
- Forcing military women to meet male standards, symbolically re-centering the male physique as the national ideal of strength.
What? It's an army. Why would that be a problem? Isn't the point of having an army to win wars? If we adapt army demands to female physical standards we will lose the wars.
I have a close friend who is an officer in a Swedish comando brigade in the extreme north of Sweden. In order to get more women into the core, they're now making the training easier. More coffee breaks, and they don't march as long. I sincearly hope you can see the insanity in this aproach?
Anyway... nobody in high command listened to his complaints until Russia invaded Ukraine. Then suddenly they were all aboard in an instant.
Men are bigger and stronger than women. That's just a fact. If I remember the statistics correct 1 in 6000 women are stronger than the average man. There's obviously military roles that are not suitable for women. Whether we think that's sexist or not is beside the point. The goal of an army must be to win wars. That's just the reality of the world we live in.
I think we will just have to accept that there's military roles not suited for women. Anything else would be ludicrous.
This list is not exhaustive, and
additional features of the MAGA movement include:
- The MAGA movement's soft endorsement of paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys explicitly links the political establishment to an active cult of violence, obedience, and hyper-masculinity.
- Rhetoric casting immigrants, "The Deep State," or liberals as "threats" that only a "strong man" can defeat is a classic trope of hegemonic masculinity used to justify male dominance and strength. To that point, the leader has publicly complained that violent ICE agents have not been violent enough.
- MAGA rhetoric constantly weaponizes terms like "weak," "soft," "cuck," and "beta." This is a direct framing of softness as a political and moral failing, which is the modern iteration of "softness = sin."
These elements alone prove the point several times over.
Doesn't this just make them conservatives?
Dr Z's ultimate response is to admit masculinity is present but then to add arbitrary, unnecessary requirements. The extreme promotion of masculinity was already a sketchy requirement for fascism that he contributed himself. He has now arbitrarily modified his own arbitrarily chosen rule by inserting an unnecessarily narrow definition.
The above data clearly demonstrate that MAGA is not a "healthy" and "progressive" "pushback against postmodern gender roles." If it is a pushback at all—a dubious claim, since it largely grew out of movements that never relinquished ideas about gender hierarchy—it is an extreme, aggressive movement.
Now you are conflating things. I think MAGA's pushback against trans rights and postmodern gender roles is healthy and social correction. But I also think MAGA is an extremely aggressive toxic and unhealthy movement.
What's interesting isn't to speculate on what motivates the core of Trumpists. It's the people on the fringes. The people who traditionally would vote democrat who are now voting for Trump, it's them that are interesting to analyse. And I don't think they sign up for any of the Trumpist Proud Boy bullshit.
Regarding his assertion:
I'm willing to bet that even the most ardent MAGA man thinks therapy is great and thinks pills might sometimes be necessary.
This claim sets a misleading, impossible-to-prove standard. While anecdotal, the fact that some ardent followers have resorted to extreme, destructive acts (like the individual who blew himself up to initiate a "Purge") directly contradicts the image of the emotionally self-aware MAGA man who "thinks therapy is great."
It's not even anecdotal. It's a hunch I have. Which I think I clearly indicated.
Moreover, a larger cultural current within the movement attacks medical science and promotes "natural immunity," aiming toward self-reliance and strength—traditional male characteristics. The implicit requirement that a "real" MAGA man must be opposed to pills is a straw man. Even historical fascists like the Nazis and Hitler used medication. This demonstrates how extreme and irrelevant his extra requirements are.
That's just complete bullshit. A straw man. I suggest listening to what the anti-vaxxers were actually saying.
I was very much on team Vaxx and social distancing. But I took my time to learn what my political opponents were actual saying. If you do you might stop demonising them. The anti-vaxxers were crazy. In hindsight they were right. We would probably have been better off if we didn't lock down and just got on with it. But we didn't know that then. When facing a global pandemic, I like to err on the cautious.
What pro-vaxx fanatics often ignore is the massive economic hit we took when locking down. The reason we have social welfare and are able to help the poor is our very healthy economic system. It's arguable that the lockdown cost more human lives due to lost incomes than people who died from Covid.
I think the world did the right thing in locking down. But I also understand that there's good arguments on the other side.
It's not that conservatives worship self-reliance and strength. It's more that they think that govornment regulation often does more damage than good. That's a different argument. That's down to ideology and values.
I think you are villfying your political opponents and making straw men.
Discussions about Futurism and Dworkin are largely tangents and distractions from the core criterion. Furthermore, requiring that features within modern fascism bear the exact same relationship older fascism had to extinct historical movements is an unnecessary burden. This is, at best, an out-of-context nitpick.
Swammerdami made a post asking people to define fascism. I said that by strict definition fascism is locked to its time and place. I said upfront that it was a nitpick. What I then said was that when people today talk about fascism, then don't mean litteral fascism. They mean things that in various ways resemble the fascist movment. Swammerdami then argued that I was wrong. Now you come across and vindicate me arguing against Swammerdami.
Futurism and Andrea Dworkin are good examples to show how our context is very different from the European 1920'ies. I don't think they are distractions. I think they show exactly what I was trying to prove and you seem to agree.
The current movement's approach to masculinity is a modern, culturally-specific iteration of that fascist feature. The operative question is whether the appeal to promoting a specific masculinity leads to tighter political control and hierarchy, which it demonstrably does. Any debate beyond that is unnecessarily narrow.
I agree. I think that's an interesting conversation.
www.nytimes.com
