I still have that fantastic graph you made bookmarked

from the discussion we had

Mobile cactus

Hey! My day’s always brightened when I see your posts!

As long as people enjoy my reposts, I count my time well-spent!

Fire the Senator, replace him with his dog.

An amazing shot!

!inhabitedbeauty@piefed.social

That’s the sort of thing that starts talking to the protagonist in a dark-comedy/horror movie that takes a turn for the existential and depressing near the end.

… basically, whatever you name it or it names itself, DO NOT TAKE ITS ADVICE

That’s… actually really incredible and I love it. I feel like it’s a little wasted this far down in a comment chain, you should post it somewhere on the Fediverse!

I think I would swap Portugal and South Korea.

South Korean opposition unity fell apart during the presidential election (which luckily didn’t screw them), but getting a bunch of otherwise ideologically unrelated parties to present consistent pressure on a military regime, and have the people turn out in huge numbers to support it, is a pretty good showing for opposition unity; and the military regime of SK showed weakness at a bad time (or a good one for those of us who prefer democracy; bad for them), whereas the Portuguese Estado Novo simply failed to react to gradually changing public opinion.

I think I’d also slightly lower India’s opposition unity, in relation to USA (FDR), and increase the fascist self-sabotage of USA (FDR).

The Dems during FDR’s administration showed significant backbone and party discipline (at least compared to what we normally see in the States, since we don’t have a parliamentary system), and managed to get crossover support in some cases even from their own opposition, which itself never strongly aligned with the fascists (being terrified that fascism might be bad for business); while in India, the opposition parties united in message (“Dictatorship or democracy”), but all ran effectively separate campaigns. At least to my understanding, the history of India, modern or otherwise, is certainly not my strong point.

The fascist self-sabotage in the USA I’d increase because of the consistent failure of the fascists to organize in a coherent way. By the time they hit on “America First” (😬) as a good screen to pull in some useful dupes, they’d already long-lost their window of opportunity, and never even managed an independent presence in the legislature, at a time when even socialists managed a small presence in Congress. They also never had their necessary central figure or long-lasting party organization to make good their agitation, though if the Dem response had been less competent, God only knows what could have developed.

Also, arguably, depending on how one interprets the Business Plot, they literally tried to approach a fucking socialist disillusioned veteran to head a pro-business fascist regime, lmao. General Smedley Butler immediately sold the plotters out, because while he hated what the USA had done and was doing, that didn’t mean he wanted it to get worse. That’s some hefty self-sabotage on the fascists’ part.

I definitely agree with Japan’s opposition unity being at the very bottom. PM Osachi’s party would flip entirely after his assassination and support the military regime, even though the military hadn’t significantly increased its power in the wake of Osachi’s death.

It seems, like successful resistance to fascism has less to do with how effective and organized the fascists are, and more to do with how unified the resistance to fascism is.

I think that’s a fair assessment. Once the fascists reach a certain level of influence, they’re like a blunt weapon - finesse helps, but even flailing around aimlessly can ‘get the job done’.

Where would you rank the US, currently on this scale?

Oh, Lord. Fuck, where would I put us?

Realistically speaking, our fascists are, astoundingly, even less competent than the Austrofascists, who could at least cobble together a cunning legal argument and use a crisis to its full potential. But I would like to think even as fucked as our opposition is, that we are in a better position than “Shrug and go home when the government is couped”.

If I was trying to be hopeful, I suppose I’d say 2, 9. The current party is cartoonishly incompetent, even by the low standards of fascists, while as bad as the Dems are, I feel like we’re only dealing with the Moderate-SocDem divide, rather than the Moderate-SocDem-Communist three-way chaos that Weimar Germany had - Dems still broadly feel they’re on the same side, even if political junkies like us tense and give each other nervous glances.

If I was trying to prepare for shit to hit the fan, I’d say 3, 10. The problem is that institutions take time to degrade, which means all the incompetence in the world won’t immediately piss away the very refined bureaucracy of the Federal government, which then is a tool in the hands of the fascists. And if we lack the three-way fight in the Dem Party, our ‘Zentrum’ is more influential, and like Zentrum, may prefer self-extermination to compromise with the progressive wing of the party.

I don’t think anything could justify putting current US opposition above 8 (at 8 only if you feel very optimistic) or fascist self-sabotage above 4. We’re on the fucking knife’s edge.

… I know I said this already, but I really love that entire chart/idea. Seeing it has really brightened my night, it’s fantastic

I suppose one more difficult component might be time, and being in the eye of the maelstrom, it’s hard to tell what phase we’re at in regards to totalitarian collapse. But if Hitlers ascent to power is on one end of the spectrum, and like, even that showed a stronger internal political resistance…

As Napoleon once noted, conflicts are resolved not according to genius, but who makes the fewest mistakes. Certainly, our fools making mistakes are less brave and less competent than the SDP. We can only hope the same counts for our Nazi Party.

We live in a comedy of errors that would be much funnier if we were not fucking living in it.

Wow. That’s fascinating about North Korea. I know you’ve got your day job and all, but if you had to stack rank say… 5 regimes that went full blown fascism, and five that maybe were near misses, by where in the “the internal powers resisted”, I think it could make for a very interesting if brief article.

Unfortunately, modern history isn’t my main field! I could probably give a quick attempt at it, though. I don’t know that I can sort them, because every situation is a unique clusterfuck of successes and failures, but you might have a preference you can order the summaries in.

(Note: some of these are ambiguously fascist because of a lack of revolutionary elements; however, in the same spirit of the South Korea example, I think it counts for the purposes we’re talking about currently)

Fallen To Fascism By Internal Forces:

Japan: God, this one was slow-motion. There was no single event, just a long, slow decline from the pressures of an overpowerful traditional and business class, and cowardly politicians. It was something like 20 years before the final pieces fell into place, each part being pushed forward by another group of meek moderates who preferred to yield to threats from the far-right than put up a fight. One of the figures who actually DID push back against the military’s demands and forced his party to go along with it, Prime Minister Osachi, was hamstrung by the oncoming Great Depression and little economic success in alleviating it, and was assassinated in any case.

Austria: A complete failure of the political class. A not-particularly-charismatic man with a one vote majority in the legislature managed to pull a legal coup over the fucking government. The legislators were scared away by armed cops preventing them from entering the legislature, and the president was too chickenshit to dismiss the fascist as prime minister despite having the legal power to do so and having over a million Austrians petition him to do so before something irreversible happened, like, say, the destruction of Austrian democracy.

For that matter, the Austrian people themselves were incredibly lukewarm about the whole affair, in terms of intensity of feeling. The Social Democrats and Communists joined together to call for armed resistance and a general strike, and just… no one bothered. So the SocDems and Communists were crushed by the armed forces inside of a week.

Italy: Just an utterly humiliating and embarrassing series of events. The Italian liberals supported nationalist chestbeating that was more popular on the right than the left (😬), the socialists and Communists were more interested in fighting each other than the fascists, and Mussolini effectively slipped into power with a minority government of like, 1/5 of the legislature, just by making a large partisan demonstration on the fucking capital. Jan 6 but immediately successful.

The prime minister advocated to fight back initially (after letting fascist thugs suppress anti-fascist strikers - surely these fascists would never turn on ME!), but resigned when he didn’t have the support of the king instead of at least going down with a shred of fucking honor. Mussolini headed the government, and the legal institutions failed to stop any further behavior performed by/passed in the legislature that was unlawful by the Kingdom of Italy’s own laws.

Weimar Germany: Agh. I think most of us know this one. The Social Democrats got isolated by both the ‘moderates’ and the Communists, weren’t numerous enough on their own to do jack shit, and while they went out (literally) fighting (with the formation of paramilitaries to challenge Nazi paramilitaries), it wasn’t enough.

The (largely religious) moderates claimed definite opposition to the Nazis, in the spirit of a moderate and democratic Germany! Until the Nazis were in a good position, at which point they immediately started licking boots.

The Communists were taking marching orders from Moscow, and Stalin preferred a Nazi victory in Germany to a Social Democrat victory, so the Communists refused cooperation with the SPD and even made political alliances of convenience with the literal fucking Nazis to weaken Social Democrats.

The conservatives handed over power once it was apparent that no one was going to stop them from doing so. Anything to crush the filthy poors and minorities.

Resisted Fascism By Internal Forces:

The USA: Yep, we’ve been through this song and fucking dance before. Though with the president in opposition, rather than support of the fascists. The US was in uncertain straits at the beginning of the Great Depression, with both the dissatisfied working class and big business interests eyeing the idea of an overthrow of democratic governance. The Silver Shirts were something of a joke, but figures like Coughlin had significant influence over the opinions of the electorate.

Luckily, the Dems didn’t shit the bed for once, and nominated a charismatic (if moderate) progressive reformer to head off trouble - FDR. After FDR’s election, and the control and cooperation of the legislature, the New Deal gradually reduced workers’ grievances and business independence to the point where fascist and fascist-adjacent movements to a tiny minority that were formally suppressed come WW2. It was touch-and-go, requiring a great deal of skirting and bending rules without breaking them and destroying the government’s legitimacy, but the Dems (and even some Republicans) were desperate enough to risk that kind of brinkmanship.

You could also point to Nixon, back when the system was still semi-functional, and Nixon’s own party was willing to demand a resignation from him over him breaking the law and then trying to argue that the president has unlimited legal power to do whatever he wants.

Interwar France: The Communist, Socialist, and liberal parties all sucked it the fuck up and worked together, forming a popular front that shut out the fascist movement, with the liberals offering concessions to the working class and the left-wing offering legislative support, while simultaneously stringently enforcing the law against fascist paramilitaries who had been boldly skirting (or passing) the edges of legality.

Unfortunately, all three groups turned on each other before long. While it didn’t lead to a resurgence of fascism, WW2 was so close on the horizon that it didn’t much matter in the end.

Boulangist Crisis in France: This is one of those comedy of errors things, except this time the fascist (or proto-fascist) is the one who makes the most mistakes. The fascist had basically set up all the pieces for a successful coup, but decided to wait instead of striking immediately. This gave the French non-fascists time to unparalyze themselves from their shocked stupor, and actually do something about the fascists, directing their justice department to actually prosecute the criminal, despite having won a recent election (😬), causing him to flee and commit suicide.

India: Despite Indira Gandhi’s genuine and enduring popularity, the opposition parties all uniting to condemn the coming election as the last chance to choose between dictatorship and democracy (😬) resulted in a crushing victory for the opposition. While Indira Gandhi would return to the position of Prime Minister later, she would not regain the political support to repeat her initial ‘rule by decree’ period that risked total autocracy and the dissolution of Indian democracy.

Spain: After a pro-democracy leader came into power (King Juan Carlos I had been playing the long game under the fascist regime), there was an attempt by pro-fascist forces to coup the government and restore a far-right regime. They literally stormed the legislature and took the representatives hostage. However, while the King’s actual power under the new system was limited, as a figurehead, his voice still carried great weight. Juan Carlos went to the radio and condemned the coup in no uncertain terms, resulting in most of the rank-and-file abandoning the cause.

Who is in the driver’s seat, however little formal power they may have, matters greatly. Appeals to national unity and expressing confidence in the democratic process can go a long way from the lips of a respected figure.

Reversed Fascism By Internal Forces:

Pinochet’s Chile: The people voted fascism out. Yes, literally. Most dictators still rely on elections for the illusion of legitimacy to the dumber portion of the population that’s willing to lick boots, but not necessarily comfortable with naked dictatorship (sadly not insignificant). Pinochet held an election that he tried to clamp down on as tight as he could, but popular opinion was so overwhelmingly against him at that point that he couldn’t suppress or falsify enough results to be believable. Mass protests demanding the implementation of the results of the election were coupled with the military refusing to back Pinochet having blatantly and unambiguously lost an election, and Chile returned to democracy after nearly 20 years under dictatorship.

Legitimacy is a big deal, and sometimes people who focus too much on the ‘raw’ policies and personalities of governance forget that. Even kings can be felled by a loss of legitimacy; dictators are no different.

Portugal: Basically, even in a dictatorship, opinions matter. Militaries are recruited from ordinary people - and when the ordinary people become dissatisfied, generally, so too does the general population of the military. The cruelty and incompetence of the fascist regime, and the influence of outside politics pushing democracy and socialism, led to a pro-democracy conspiracy being formed amongst mid-ranking officers, and then executed with unexpected mass civilian support, which probably prevented pro-government forces from engaging with the revolutionary forces. No one wants to fire on their neighbors, friends, and family.

South Korea: See above comment.

Resisted Fascism Internally, Fell Externally: Special shout-out to the Spanish Republic, which didn’t let even a military coup dissuade it from resisting fascism. The parties of the Republic (initially) rallied together, despite their differences and called on the people to support them in the war for the soul of Spain. Unfortunately, several years of civil war wherein major powers (Italy and Germany) funded the fascists did result in their eventual defeat by force. Also, there was infighting after like, a year. Not good.

Party cohesion and the relative strength of the party are key factors. In a two-party system like our’s, the Dems should be well-placed, nominally, to resist (if not necessarily stop) the rise of fascism, since the division of the opposition and uniting with useful idiots is often a key tactic in fascist consolidation of power. Italy and Nazi Germany alike.

… but the Democratic party has no cohesion. Neoliberal ghouls try to milk the far-right for all its worth, like Zentrum in Weimar Germany, while the socdems and demsocs in the party actually trying to resist fascism are reduced, by their extreme minority status, to nothing more than admitting that they are defenceless, but not honorless when the hour of reckoning arrives.

For example, in South Korea in the late 80s, while not strictly speaking an expression of fascism (which is generally considered to combine totalitarian revolutionary with reactionary ideas, while South Korea was just a bargain-bin authoritarian military junta), the opposition parties fought the long-lasting authoritarianism of South Korea even without holding a majority. Even in the immensely repressive environment of a police state, they managed to not simply resist the expansion of authority, but reverse it entirely. But it required the diverse opposition groups to present a united front on at least the singular issue of opposition to authoritarian abuses.

And a lot of people taking to the streets. A lot of people taking to the streets.

Ok? When did the English become Danish?

… do you know where the term ‘English’ comes from?

Can you point to me on a map where the Anglo-Saxons came from?

Do you know what a ‘Briton’ is?

It’s like you understand every era by the definition at the end of it. And soft power is soft because it can be denied - it’s just influence.

Okay cool, so your argument is now nothing more than “soft power exists”, not “The Catholic Church had any serious amount of soft power”, fan-fucking-tastic, glad you’ve spent all this time to say absolutely nothing.

Let’s go back to the source then… Who had institutionalized assimilation before the Romans? I don’t just mean there was assimilation…I mean a group comes in and converts others into becoming them in a systematic fashion

The Ancient Hebrews, for one, whose process of assimilation was far more ritualized and rigid, and mandatory for existence in the polity, than Rome’s. The Assyrians. Han China in the Warring States period.

Hard and soft power. You really don’t get it.

Hard power is the ability to impose one’s will by force; soft power is the ability to impose one’s will by persuasion or subtlety. In no case does it mean “Utterly failing to push an objective forward”. That is a lack of soft power.

Rome split. The pieces continued to act like Rome behaviorally.

In what sense? Your entire bizarre view of Rome is based around an idea that their assimilative institutions were somehow more rigid and formalized than previous ones. European polities after the fall of the Western Empire not only lacked any rigid assimilative institutions, they often rejected assimilation altogether, and numerous ethnicities were born of the lack of institutions capable of assimilating or even maintaining cultural hegemonies in the post-Roman polities.

The remaining institution of Rome, the Roman Catholic church, had incredible power over many of these pieces,

No.

then later soft influence,

The hard power of the Papal States was minimal and regional at best, quarreling with other Italian states and sometimes the borders of the HRE; the only Europe-wide power the Catholic Church had was always soft power.

, over most of Europe known as the holy Roman empire.

…

The HRE was not most of Europe, even at its height as the Carolingian Empire.

The soft power of the church faded with the rise of capitalism.

The soft power of the Church died in the Thirty Years’ War, as increasingly centralized states began to deal with issues of pluralism and national unity; itself derived from the Protestant Reformation. The soft power of the Church was dead in the most backwards states of Europe even before the bourgeoisie became ascendant.

We still act like Rome. The behaviors never ended. That’s the through line

Your core objection to the unique influence of Rome was that it ‘conquered’; you defined conquest by assimilative processes, but your points have absolutely nothing to do with cultural assimilation or, for that matter, reality.

Jesus… They’re the same damn group! Yes the power of the Pope waxed and waned. The church and the nobility were intertwined! The Pope doesn’t matter, the institution does!

The same Catholic Church whose dictates were repeatedly ignored by both the common people and the nobility?

And every coronation was done by at least an arch bishop. Who were a compromise between the church and the king.

That’s not even close to true. In many coronations in many kingdoms, bishops presided, or even no clergy at all. You really don’t have the slightest clue about what you’re talking about.

And do you have any idea how incestuous the royal families of all of Europe were? Not just individually, but between each other

For most of the Medieval period, not very. The intensified incest was largely a product of consolidated royal families and increased international travel in the Early Modern Period.

Your don’t seem to understand the difference between hard and soft power. And my whole point is people in power flowed from Rome, to the church, to the aristocracy of Europe, to capitol

No, my point is that your perception of the soft power of the Church and of Rome is utterly bizarre conspiracy shite with an extremely modern view of how society functioned at a basic level during the Medieval period, and thus having no fucking relation to the reality of the Medieval period.

Okay, this is just objectively how the holy Roman empire worked. That’s not even a slightly controversial statement

The HRE was one player in European politics in the Medieval period and Early Modern period. There was no ‘secret club’ of European royalty; dynasties ruling European polities rose and fell all the goddamn time. The HRE in particular was infamous for being unable to control its aristocracy, or its bourgeois, for that matter.

Legitimacy of other European royalty was not significantly connected to the HRE or to Rome.

How do you think the Pope was able to dictate terms to royalty? They controlled coronations, marriages, and pacified the people.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The only coronation the Pope nominally controlled was that of the Holy Roman Emperor himself. And that only nominally. The Pope was involved in royal marriages only insofar as issues of consanguinity or dissolving marriages was concerned. The Pope’s control over the common people was fucking marginal, considering how many kings were excommunicated and considered it only a minor annoyance.

The Pope didn’t ‘dictate terms’ to royalty. Fuck, the Pope was literally imprisoned and overthrown by royals numerous times throughout the Medieval period, including by the Holy Roman Emperor.

The nobility tolerated this because there was a give and take, their relatives were given high rank… It’s the origin of the term nepotism

The origin of the term nepotism is from Popes appointing their own nephews as cardinals. Nepos.

This is also very basic European history.

A lot of this I can excuse as you being a too literal and uncharitable, but there’s no two interpretations on this one

I don’t know if you have a hard on for Rome or what, but I don’t think you’re being serious

Nothing about this discussion, regarding the Medieval period and the HRE, has anything to do with the Roman Empire. This is purely over some really bizarre Da Vinci Code level perception of the Catholic Church and Medieval period that you have.

There was war, there were other empires. People intermingled and intermixed, sometimes under rule from another group. There was assimilation, but in an organic process

And… what part of the process was less organic about Roman assimilation?

I do think the HRE was more Rome than Germanic - what language did they speak? Not Greek, Aramaic, or any Germanic language - it was Latin.

Are you fucking kidding me right now?

The HRE was overwhelmingly a German-speaking state.

And in the East you had the Byzantine empire doing the same damn thing, spreading soft influence to Eastern Europe

This… this the same Byzantine Empire whose cultural footprint outside of religion is negligible outside of the Greek heartland it clung to?

Jesus said we don’t need temples or coin.

That is a profound misunderstanding of early Christianity.

Constantine rebranded the Roman religion under Jesus’s name, and carefully picked it’s practices to control the people

… except the practices and values of Nicaean Christianity differ radically from traditional Roman religion, traditional Hellenic religion, and the Neoplatonism of the 3rd century AD.

The HRE kept control over the aristocracy through marriage, ceremony, and through relatives in the clergy. They let the kings have their kingdom while controlling the secret little club of European royalty. They held the legitimacy of all of them in Rome.

Fucking what.

And even now, a few family lines always seem to be the ones in power. The meeting places and the titles change, but each rising and falling empire goes back to Rome

Jesus fucking Christ.

Genital mutilation, cannibalism, rape, racism, all put onto this perverse kink pedestal.

Definitely not the Centurii-chan I’ve seen, and I follow their art. The worst of their’s I’ve seen are some jokes about colonization that could be seen as in bad taste, and a joke about people using slurs when playing multiplayer games.

Hyper fixation or not some things are messed up to be so obsessed over.

Uh, okay.

You’re describing what I said with more words

“Romans were the first to do conquest.”

“No, they weren’t.”

“You’re just saying what I said.”

???

The difference between Vikings (or wherever else, they’re just an example) and Romans is the assimilation.

… do… do you think pre-Roman peoples didn’t practice assimilation?

That’s why there were so many more Romans, because they constantly expanded what it meant to be Roman. There were concentric circles of Roman-ness starting with just the city inhabitants down to the newly conquered territory at the fringes

By the time that people on the fringes of the Empire were considered Romans, Romans had lost the cultural hegemony necessary for assimilation, which makes this a very dubious claim.

Also, Rome was around for a long time. Their practices changed drastically during that time. It ranged from much worse than what I described to completely peaceful assimilation.

I can honestly think of no period of Roman history in which the scenario you described was the norm.

But my real problem wasn’t the violence, it’s the wealth extraction… That model lived on through the holy Roman empire, then “the West”. There’s so many horrible knock on effects to this, ones we’re living through now

…

… do you think wealth extraction doesn’t predate the Romans? For that matter, you think the HRE is more rooted in Roman practice than Germanic practice? For that matter, you think the West demonstrates the most horrific form of wealth extraction in the modern day?

No one really did conquering - they would take land, take slaves,

… that’s what conquest is.

But Vikings were Vikings, even if they occupy a settlement, the people of the settlement do not become Vikings

… only because the Vikings were typically small numbers of warriors? And post-Roman, for that matter.

When Rome conquered a place, they’d levy most of the men into the legion, and when they finished their service they became Roman

That’s… not how it works.

First, the Legions were for citizens only. Non-citizens were not permitted to enlist.

Second, the Auxiliaries, what you’re probably thinking of, were partly conscripted, but mostly volunteer, and very selective about their recruits. In no reality would they have taken most of the men of a region.

Third, the process of Romanization was gradual and largely unenforced - the Romans did not care if the native provincials became Romans or kept their native culture. The Romans, in fact, held a worldview wherein other peoples were better at certain things than the Romans, and that this was a good thing, because it meant Rome could organize their superior efforts for the greater good of the Republic.

Fourth, most regions after Roman conquest retained a great deal of self-government, as the Romans did not want the trouble of overturning local practices, unless they interfered with something like collecting taxes.

Fifth, Roman conquest was rarely so simple as “The Romans have conquered this place now” - there were often many graduations of Roman control which regions went through, and few regions had the same journey. The moment of conquest you’re imagining, where the Legions march through after putting the enemy’s armies and leaders to the sword, is not very common.

Sixth, the process of ethnic cleansing and assimilation are both widely attested to in the pre-Roman world, by peoples much more brutal about it than the Romans.

What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens, but this, that mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered? Our founder Romulus, on the other hand, was so wise that he fought as enemies and then hailed as fellow-citizens several nations on the very same day. Strangers have reigned over us. That freedmen’s sons should be intrusted with public offices is not, as many wrongly think, a sudden innovation, but was a common practice in the old commonwealth. But, it will be said, we have fought with the Senones. I suppose then that the Volsci and Aequi never stood in array against us. Our city was taken by the Gauls. Well, we also gave hostages to the Etruscans, and passed under the yoke of the Samnites. On the whole, if you review all our wars, never has one been finished in a shorter time than that with the Gauls. Thenceforth they have preserved an unbroken and loyal peace. United as they now are with us by manners, education, and intermarriage, let them bring us their gold and their wealth rather than enjoy it in isolation. Everything, Senators, which we now hold to be of the highest antiquity, was once new. Plebeian magistrates came after patrician; Latin magistrates after plebeian; magistrates of other Italian peoples after Latin. This practice too will establish itself, and what we are this day justifying by precedents, will be itself a precedent.

The Roman Emperor Claudius, who was also a scholar of history (his writings are sadly lost)