Huh, I hadn't considered that chauvinism doesn't have to be demographic-based. Yeah, that makes a difference.
Sure. Be warned that my arguments aren't rock-solid here. I'm not a professional debater, I'm a casual who prefers to portray my thoughts more honestly rather than filtering out the inconvenient.
Fascism that isn't covered by VSC
See 1984. Even though they don't directly target minorities (or maybe I missed that part, either way it's not prominent,) they still check all the other boxes of fascism and are very evil. If you think chauvinism is a necessary component of fascism, you might delude yourself into thinking a movement is okay because they're not fascist (especially if they portray their enemies as fascists, making them the lesser of two evils,) and unknowingly become a fascist yourself.
VSC that isn't fascism
The definition you gave includes a systemic combination of power imbalance, chauvinism, and violence. Totalitarianism is not necessary there. You could take an otherwise normal country, and if anyone with the authority to do so tells them "anyone who's not a straight white person is lesser and not protected by the law," it immediately fits the bill of VSC (if I interpreted it correctly.)
Don't get me wrong, this is dangerously close to fascism, but the key difference is that straight white people are allowed to disagree and perhaps even campaign for equal treatment. They're not being coerced into violence, just encouraged by the statements and lack of punishment for doing so.
I don't have a problem with condemning this just as much as you'd condemn fascism, and it's definitely fascist-adjacent. But I don't want fascism redefined to include fascist-adjacentism, because then there's a new ring of fascist-adjacentism ready to get redefined in as well, and no clear stopping point.
I know this is a bit of a slippery slope, but if you're able to frame an ideology such that everything evil to you is fascist, then it becomes convenient to think that only fascism is evil, and miss non-fascist evil. I don't expect you to fall into that pitfall, but I expect that if this trend continues, some people will. That's where it's utility-negative.
Thanks for mentioninng Umberto Eco's 14 traits of fascism. I hadn't seen them before, but the summary was a good read. I'll list them out here, with a few tweaks to the phrasing because I'm like that:
- Tradition has all the answers.
- Rejection of modern culture.
- Action for action's sake.
- Disagreement is treason.
- Fear of difference - and different people.
- Middle class vs lower class.
- The enemy is always scheming something.
- The enemy is both dangerous and weak.
- If you're not fighting, you're with the enemy.
- Chauvinism.
- Everyone must be a hero of the cause.
- Machismo.
- The common will, as interpreted by the leader, subsumes individual opinions.
- Control of language to control thought.
I can accept this definition. It's notably not meant to say "it's only fascism if it covers all 14 points." Eco states that fascism might coagulate around only one of these points, but I don't think that should be taken to mean "if it meets one point, it's fascism," just that it could be. Otherwise, an order of knights is a fascist regime for meeting point 11.
I think it's also valuable to take these points and do a little introspection to make sure you're not being fascist (or fascist-like) yourself. I know my beliefs can be construed to hit around 2-5 of the points partially.
All that said... What you defined is violent systemic chauvinism (I'll call it VSC for short.) There's definitely major overlap between that and fascism, but I don't think it covers all of fascism, and I think it covers things that are fascist-adjacent without technically being fascist (even though they're still very evil.) For example, you could have a more communist flavor of VSC where the majority demographic of the middle class actually rules themselves and gets violent against anyone else, but it's not fascism because there isn't a placable dictator or even oligarchy. Or you could theoretically have a fascist regime without chauvinism, which doesn't meet VSC.
It's a war on teens!
More like a war on the poor if you wanna go there, which has a lot of overlap with teens. But also stores are not really meant to be hangout spaces.
A group of unsupervised teens probably can't just hang out in a Wal-Mart. That's probably the kind of thing this is about.
Why you'd want to hang out in a Wal-Mart is something I don't understand, but different people have different ideas of fun.
You think I'm arguing in bad faith, I think you're arguing in bad faith. None of us is going to convince the other, so I'm dropping out here.
Matthew 25:41?
Not gonna lie, this sounds like:
"I've never heard of any Christian saying anything against being evil in this way."
"That's because you don't hear from Christians. Try asking one."
"There's no reason to hear from Christians, they're evil in that way."
Frankly, this sounds like it's going to be a long and tiring conversation. If you militantly believe that something so simple as telling a friend that Jesus loves them is an act of fascism, I don't think this is going to be productive or enjoyable for either of us.
Fascism is when a Christian believes Hell exists?
Try asking your nearest pastor. It's hard for real Christian statements to get around. Where are you going to hear it?
The news? They won't share it because it's not really news. They don't share much besides events, and news networks are biased towards negative events and crimes, which would generally be perpetrated by fake Christians (like christofascists.)
Social media? Christian statements don't trend because there are too many Christian-haters that downvote and argue. The closest you get is "look at these evil christofascists" kind of stuff like this.
Word of mouth and one-on-one conversations is by far the best way.
Can you describe what it is? When you use the word evangelical, is that a synonym for christofascism, or something more specific?
I don't know DuckDuckGo, but what's the purpose of trying to compete with it? This is not a rhetorical question. Is there something wrong with DuckDuckGo, something you feel you can do better, or are you just making a competitor for the principle?