Um, what does he think Antifa means? You notice how they almost exclusively use the abbreviation and hardly ever the full name? For those who might actually be unaware, it means Anti-Fascist.
Scott Adams is a fucking moron. He apparently thinks anti-fascists are actually pro-fascist. Dumbass.
Or who conveniently forget about the Southern Strategy and the great party switch. Massive, massive mental gymnastics to put themselves on the 'right' side of history every time
Except Antifa isn't a formal organization, it's a descriptor for an ideology. An organization can call itself anything, even if it isn't a proper descriptor, but an ideology is by necessity defined by its name.
A lot of conservatives have problems understanding words, especially words that apply to political beliefs. It's party ignorance and partly a result of years of indoctrination. One example, thinking that anyone who isn't hard-right is a 'socialist' or a 'commie' and not understanding that those aren't the same thing. Then, fascist... many people seem to think fascist means an authoritarian government, independent of any other qualities or beliefs.
Fascism : a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.
I mean, that's what most people imagine, when they think fascist and I think it's good enough.
Is every fascist government identical? No. But as near as makes no difference they are all the same type of asshole.
The rest of your points stand, however. People do not understand communism, socialism, nor Marxism.
It's not good enough because fascism is specifically a form of right wing authoritarianism which includes hyper-capitalism, close relationship between the state and corporations, sexism, racism, and xenophobia. Otherwise we're back to the idea that a fascist dictatorship and a communist dictatorship are the same thing, which clearly they're not.
You actually just proved their point by defining authoritarianism and calling it fascism. Fascist governments are authoritarian but that's just one aspect of it.
I literally just pulled the first result on google...
And like I said for general conversations this definition is absolutely adequate.
It's like talking about American Democracy and someone goes "well, technically we're a Republic!"... Ok great...
The difference between fascism and communism is that people have generally a good idea of what a fascist government looks like, while they really don't understand the other terms.
I disagree that people generally have a good idea what a fascist government looks like, or else there wouldn't be this level of confusion. I think most people at best, know what countrys had a problem with fascism in the past, without any certainty of what parts of of those governments were where the fascism was, just guesses.
Thats why comparisons to nazis and such are so common I would say. People find it a lot easier to point out similarities to known fascism than to try and concisely point out the exact point where an action became "fascist"
Most of the time, yeah. We take these mental shortcuts to avoid a lot of unnecessary headache and talking.
Problem is, these shortcuts get hijacked by asshole grifters to push their own agenda in todays climate of tiktok and youtube shorts. And this is especially potent when the usual everyday use of the word is not good enough. Want another example: "What is a woman?" Same mental shortcut. Same method to exploit the shortcut. Same bullshit. Nuanced discussion not happening.
Sometimes, we just need to be precise in discourse. These people are intentionally not being precise. They hijack our mental shortcuts.
Yeah but get into a debate with Scott Adams and like-minded morons and inevitably they'll try and pretend that Nazis were actually socialists because it was in their name. Never mind that was a throwback to some early party mergers and everything they said and did was ultra right nationalism. Strictly not fascism (that is the Italian variant) but aligned to it so closely that it broadly makes no odds.