ThisMachine/What is it like to get polarized?
18 Oct 2025 - 18 Oct 2025
- This post continues from ThisMachine/agonizes about killing fascists riffing on Scott Alexander's, but I'm not setting out to critique him or sneer or anything. Just exploring the questions he is raising from my own perspective.
- It is definitely true that using the word "fascist" to describe someone is not mere description, it's got this politically performative quality. It denotes and also helps create a certain state of affairs. How to characterize that state?
- Well, it certainly does include something like "it is OK to hurt this person", as Scott points out. But it also says "this person is trying to hurt me". If it creates a permission structure for violence, it isn't the first step in that process. The buildup of hatred and polarization is already underway, and the namecalling is just a step along a path towards more serious violence.
- One rather useful fact about the present moment is that the other side is not very imaginative, so is using "antifascist" in exactly the same way. They are trying to turn "antifa" into a scare term, something that labels someone as an anti-american terrorist who of course should be subject to the full violence of the state.
Trump's puppy killer sycophant Noem: "One of the individuals we arrested recently was the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) October 8, 2025
Organization against fascism also known as Antifa began around 1920 when fascism became the state ideology of Italy in 1922 & Germany in 1933. pic.twitter.com/I5v6YzsJ9C- They are to be "rooted out" and "eliminated from society", comparing them to ISIS and MS-13, they have "an agenda to destroy us", etc. Put aside whatever the actual nature of "antifa"might be and look at this rhetoric, what is being done. The word "antifa" is being deployed in exactly the same thing as "fascist" – labelling people as dangerous enemies. Demonizing them, othering them. It is not just permitting violence, it is encouraging it, implying that it is necessary and possibly inevitable.
- Here's where I find myself in perfect alignment with Scott, whatever quibbles I have with the details. He is (a) noticing the above phenomenon (b) getting quite justifiably worried about it (c) proposing a response to this state of affairs.
- I've been known to label various speech acts, physical acts, and people as fascist. Here's the earliest public example I could find Omniorthogonal: A whiff of fascism where,
Meta
- my god this is boring. Don't over-focus on him and his dire beige outlook.