Literally France right now

For those who don't seem to get it:
No, this meme does not mean that you can't temporarily halt fascist electoral victory, but rather that fighting symptoms and portraying that as a "victory over fascism" completely disregard the root cause (as liberalism often does)...

Tho I'm ngl, the NFP seems to be pretty based, at least relative to the usual neolib bs

ie.: Fascism is a built-in function of capitalism and thus bourgeois "democracy". Capitalism turns to fascism when threatened, so as long as you aren't ready to give up the private ownership of the economy, you will not be able to get rid of fascism (paraphrasing Bertolt Brecht here)

sheesh, I often forget, that libs and revisionists actually believe in bourgeois democracy. If you are open to changing your mind I can recommend "Reform or Revolution" by Rosa Luxenburg

link to wikipedia
link to book at marxists.org (should also be available as an ebook on there, as well as in different languages

EDIT: @trolololol@lemmy.world made me aware of an ebook-specific link

I had to read that a couple of times before I understood what you are trying to say. At first glance, it seemed like you were calling democracy itself bourgeois, but I think you meant it as a specific thing that isn’t actual democracy… e.g. it’s an illusion of democracy because capitalism gives the wealthy the ability to steer the whole ship, as it were. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong.
- I'm glad you took the time to read and understand it in good faith!
  And yes, under bourgeois "democracy" (be it multiparty or bi/mono party dominant) you only get to choose between various representatives of capital
  The system and it's laws are inherently designed in such a way, that no matter whom you elect, you still live under the dictatorship of capital
- Exactly that. Capitalism is incompatible with democracy.
- It seems so. Capitalism fundamentally unequal, which is opposite of real democracy.
Found it If you click on author name it only gives you the web version, for epub you need to go to this page:
https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/#ebooksinenglish
- thx for providing the link!
  (I don't frequent marxists.org, since I get all my ebooks through Anna's archive)
I've learned that using the term "bourgeois" just confuses half of liberals and convinces the other half that you must be a tankie - I just call it liberal democracy and they get it (it does send them into reactionary fits, though).
- That just exposes them as being politically illiterate reactionaries and staunch defenders of capital
  Those who are open-minded will interact in good faith and ask for clarification (the thread of my overarching comment might be an example)
- 1st of all there is no such thing as a communist country, as communism describes a state-, money- and classless society.
  Then I think you are conflating two very different things: what I think you are alluring to, simply describes a more centralised and ruthless approach at achieving and keeping alive a revolution. (and arguably betraying it, but that does not constitute fascism)
  Fascism is a very different thing. Basically it's the act of "unifying" a group of people or nation against a caricature of a "common enemy". It seeks the suppression of proletarian class struggle by forcing collaboration and integrating society into one "corpus". Corporatism is a core tenant of fascism, which is (imo) very well depicted through unions being forced to merge with (or be disbanded into) private companies, because "such distinctions are obsolete when we stand united as one Volk". Those class distinctions never disappear, but the whole charade is basically based on that premise.
  Ofc this all serves the protection of capital by fooling the working masses and suppressing labour or simply "undesirable" elements of society...

Wait, so are you trying to clown on the fact that France managed to stop their neofascist party from gaining any real hold on power?

France managed to stop their neofascist party from gaining any real hold on power?
They didn't stop them - the fascists were already powerful enough to be an election away from the top spot, see? So no... so-called "liberal democracy" has never stopped fascism and never will.
Welcome to a two party system. It gets worse from here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the fascists lost, but this is literally how you end up with two parties. Every election from now on, you'll have two giant camps and eventually they'll just coalesce in to two monolithic parties. Then you get tribalism. And as much as I love the French for their propensity to fuck shit up when the government does something stupid, that might actually cause problems going forward.
I wish them the best, and maybe I'm wrong. I sure hope I am for their sake. But this looks an awful lot like the beginnings of a two party system.
- This is not America dude WTF are you talking about two party?
- Welcome to a two party system
  France doesn't have a two-party system. There are five major party coalitions spread across dozens of niche socio-economic and regional party blocks.
  Every election from now on, you’ll have two giant camps and eventually they’ll just coalesce in to two monolithic parties.
  French politics is far more complex than that, on account of their democratic system having much smaller districts and more ethnically diverse regions than their American peers.
- Fuck, dude, don’t remind me :(
I'm clowning on thee idea that you thinks anything was "stopped"
- We know that fighting fascism requires constant vigilance. But you don’t have to be an asshole about it. Nor do you have to shit on a country’s electorate for, you know, doing the right thing and voting against fascism.
- Fascism is a weed and power is a vacuum. It’s always going to crop back up and we stop it with any means necessary.
  Unfortunately for the US, we’re kinda fucked and being pushed towards the more extreme removal methods.
- Not that it was stopped by waging an actual war against them and toppling their governments. It's a never ending thing, no matter what you do.

Le Pen is an ignorant bigot but she isn’t acting like Trump so I actually do think NR is figuring out its next electoral strategy/how to capitalize on its seats vs. plotting to overthrow a legitimate election and install a dictator.

Make no mistake, the rise of right wing groups is a major problem in Western Europe and people need to be careful. But France is not on the brink like the US is. Le Pen is not Trump.

LePen is much smarter than Trump, she's also very patient. She knows that given the current state of things, she will get there eventually. Her party gained recognition and the right wing propaganda works like a charm.
The victory of the left is good but, we have cancer and I don't think they'll be enough to properly fight it, especially since they have roughly 3 years to the next presidential elections and only a relative majority. The ruling party has already started getting in the way of them forming a government.
- No argument here. Which is why I said America is on the brink and France is not but I also specifically said that they are not out of the woods and the right is clearly planning their next moves. What France just did we needed to do in 2016 as part of a larger effort to stop the rise of right wing nationalists. I feel like all of this was pretty clear in my previous comment.
I don't know France policies but Trump isn't the problem. The far right will continue to push us that direction if they have any amount of power. Once Trump is gone (hopefully) we need to keep voting every time. Never stop never stopping.
- I’m not saying Trump is the end all be all of the problem, but he is the central figure and clearly super on board with overthrowing the government. If if Le Pen plotting the same thing, then she and her co-conspirators are a lot quieter about it that’s for sure.
  I think it is reasonable to assume that everybody on Lemmy knows that Trump is not the only source of the issue. It gets tiresome seeing people repeat this over and over again. We all know there is a much larger issue here and every time somebody “informs people” that there is a larger issue, it’s a needless sidebar that isn’t meant to inform but to correct somebody on the Internet for the sake of correcting somebody and contributing.
ignorant bigot
Oily oil. Buttery butter. Watery water. They are synonyms. But ok.
- She’s ignorant about a lot of other things too
- Yeah, I've had it with all the redundant pleonasms!

This is exactly how it's supposed to work in a functioning democracy.

Where ideally everyone, but at least a critical percentage of citizens is educated enough to recognize the pattern of deceit and false, but easy answers to very complex questions from extremist parties.

Where established parties don't feel the need to pander to the votes of extremist parties by cooperating and adapting points pushed by extremists.

Where the average citizen doesn't feel left out by the system and is tempted to align themselves with extremist parties in order to protest the current reality of said system.

Where the system implements safeguards to not allow the system to be taken hostage by extremists.

Would be nice, eh?

May I introduce you to the idea of POSIWID?
There are more ways to structure a society democratically than with representational democracy. Other, less fundamentally hierarchichal ways of implementing democracy aren't as prone to fascism developing.
- Also fascism is ultimately the grand conclusion of capitalist neoliberal democracies. Fascists seek to amass, consolidate, and wield power. Liberal democracies fail to resist this amassment because the purpose of a system is what it does, and neoliberals ultimately want it to be possible to amass power in the hands of their wealthy corporate cronies. They are ultimately fascists not because they implement fascism but because they are willing to tolerate fascists implementing fascism as long as they get to benefit from it. Obviously this systems theory stuff is complicated. That's the point of studying systems.
  Anyway. This was a long comment when I fundamentally agree with you. I just want people to think about ur-fascism, where it comes from, and what to do about it

What they managed to do is pretty cool though. Like yeah all the structural issues remain but centrists working with leftists to keep fascist out of the gov? Pretty rad! Broad leftist unity on the ballot at least? Pretty rad!

I'm pretty sure the leftists know the stakes, don't shit on solidarity.

centrists working with leftists to keep fascist out of the gov?
This was voters siding with left-liberals when faced with the choice of an unpopular centrist incumbent, an increasingly deranged nationalist movement, and a coalition of moderate progressives. Macron's original stated gamble was to allow National Rally power to govern in order to prove their policies were unpopular. But he miscalculated how unpopular LePen's movement actually was and handed a plurality to Melenchon instead by mistake.
I’m pretty sure the leftists know the stakes
People routinely vote on vibes. Hence the Obama-Trump voter or the wild swings between Tory and Labour in the UK. I would not bank against a momentary coalition falling apart as soon as Macron is asked to compromise on some pro-business policy or step towards increased at-cost domestic production.
I certainly would not bank on the largely right-wing owned domestic media whipping local French citizens into a hysterical lather over the advent of the Evil French Communists taking a few Parliamentary offices. Public opinion can turn hard right with even a marginal economic downturn if news media is there to scream blame at migrants, (((bad actors))), and brown people loudly enough.
- Eh, I don't really bother reading political takes by usasians.

I mean, stopping fascists from gaining power is a pretty good way of stopping fascists from gaining power. If the government is to incompetent and/or uninterested in running the country to actually fix the issues people are pissed off about it's only a stopgap solution, but a stopgap is better than nothing. If you have an actual plan for how to go about the process of creating an actual better system in the real world starting from where we are then by all means feel free to share, but until then voting will save lives.

I think this is where the accelerationists are coming from, and I don't think they're wrong, at least in terms of identifying a problem. From their point of view, the system is the problem; it both inevitably trends towards fascism and actively and forcefully resists reform due to a network of entrenched interests. Thus, whether it arrives today or tomorrow, fascism IS coming, and the net violence could be decreased by just ripping off the band-aid and letting the whole damnable thing burn so that something new can take its place.
I don't think I agree with the solution; there's no guarantee that what replaces it won't be worse. The problem statement makes a lot of sense, though. It certainly feels truthy.
- Sure, yeah, but there are two major problems I see with that. It is a plan that even if it worked correctly would result in the most deadly war in human history if it happened in the US today, and also it wouldn't work. They'd loose.

That's just the first phase of the fight, in the second phase they get a lot more damage resistance and their moveset gets quicker. Much tougher fight.

Second phase of the fight is trying not to lose votes to fascists who pretend to be the democratic opposition while trying to enact socialist policies under neoliberal constraints and inevitably making a mess :(
- Green Party cough
Is there a third phase? I HATE when there's a third phase. I'm looking at you Elden Ring DLC spoiler.
- It's an underwater fight.
Ackhually, this was phase 2.
Phase 1 was won by the far right last week.

It worked because the fascists weren't actually in power yet.

Didn't work with Putin

Probably worth teasing this apart.

There are:

Fascist political candidates

…which can be formally appointed or rejected by voting

Fascist organized groups

…which may attempt to physical seize power regardless of political climate, if the physical conditions seem right, but have a much easier time if the political conditions are favorable too

Fascist cultural concepts

…which proliferate regardless of political and physical conditions, and can really only be managed through social norms, which are themselves often reinforced at the ballot box

Just because voting only directly impacts the first problem doesn’t mean it has zero impact on the other two.

In fact, it’s really hard to win the cultural battle and cast fascism as a niche extremist philosophy if it keeps almost winning elections.

Fascist organised groups who tried to seize power can not be fought with voting but thankfully they still have breakable kneecaps
- They can’t be defeated with voting, but they can be aided by not voting.
  But yes, I also thank the level designers for putting in accessible weak points.
- They do tend to do better when more mechanisms of the state are on their side, though. (But yes that doesn't mean voting alone defeats them.)

Tbh, I think the democrats are at least partly responsible for perpetuating this idea in the US, because they benefit from being the adults in the room relative to the republicans. Basically since '16, a huge chunk of their pitch has been "we're not the republicans". They've relied on the republicans being fascist to make the sell for them, and I think that the centrist auth Dems really love it because it means that they don't have to really make any big, challenging promises that would piss off their corporate or billionaire donors, they don't have to walk back any authoritarian power grabs, they just have to point at the fascists and say (correctly) "these psychos want to kill you, I don't."

If the democrats get elected, they get a mandate to just kick back and not implement fascism. If the Republicans get elected, then the democrats get a sudden boost of engagement and cash as the fear fatigue is replaced by real, actual fear. In either case, the centrist auth faction of the democratic party aren't going to be rid of their fundraising cow, thank you very much, even if the cow is actively planning to murder them.

This has been the DNC playbook since Clinton.

aggressively mashes vote into box