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Margaret Anna Alice's avatar

I had an unmitigated blast with our first letter exchange, David, and I can’t wait to see where our conversation leads us. Thank you for crafting such a thought-provoking prompt freighted with your considerable literary, cultural, and historical knowledge. I appreciate your deeply nuanced thinking and am grateful to you for sending me to invigorating destinations I would not have arrived at on my own.

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Zac's avatar

I’m not too sure who made the point comparing left and right fascism, or if it was simply referenced from another author, but the conclusion that left fascism was willing to go further because of a willingness to go further during covid (response) was missing two points. First, “willing to go farthest” seems to cut short and might be better served by adding “before killing them” as this ultimate violation of civil liberties doesn’t seem a problem for either fascist. When this point first came to mind I immediately wondered if it was actually going further or was it an extra step for left fascists whereas their right fascist counterparts would have been willing to eliminate the person? Or perhaps the extra ‘level’ of violation makes a left fascist violate civil liberties faster than a right fascist?

Second, and I think this might inform my first point, is whose hobby cause is the fascist embracing while executing their exercise in tyranny? During covid, the vast majority of horror-fear propaganda was targeting the left. If you dispute this, I’d urge you to create a new browser profile and social media account, “like” some traditional pre-covid (response) liberal content then try to find factual information. Although I haven’t done this for a year or so, I regularly used this to gauge the propaganda and it was so bad that I’m pretty confident someone looking will still be able to see what I mean. If you’d rather take my word for it, I found it impossible to find informative dissent and assuming the person was jabbed, they would almost certainly be forced to wade into a sea of “you are going to die” claims. I think this onslaught of propaganda helped turn covid into the left fascist’s “hobby cause” and so how does this impact the lengths they were willing to go? Does the right fascist have their hobby cause which they would create a ‘level’ further than the left fascist or, as I mentioned before, might it help them reach the ultimate civil liberty violation sooner?

I can’t say either way but I can say when you include the full picture it doesn’t paint either as the lessor of two fascists lol. Personally, I think people are people are people and given similar conditions, including but not limited to motivational causes, censorship and targeted psychological warfare, you’ll face comparable fascists.

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