I came across a post on Reddit showing Mussolini at the end of his career, specifically him hanged from his ankles in the Piazzale Loreto. I left a comment, “we didn’t get the chance to do this with Hitler, but we should make this traditional.” Yes, not the most benign comment, but far “threatening violence or physical harm,” at least I think so. A bot must have come across that and thought “beep boop,” because suddenly my account was permanently banned. It’s honestly insulting that a human took no part in this process.
I’d say that it’s not about fascist appearing neighbours it’s about preventing the normalisation of fascism, like it’s just another mainstream political viewpoint.
I think what can be achieved is the splitting off of the unthinking mass who support curbs on immigration (in practical terms fascism can only do without immigration because it intends to institute some form of indentured or slave labour) from the hardcore fascists by making it clear that fascists are abhorrent.
Amen on preventing the normalization of fascism and on trying to split the unthinking mass the same as the Nazi intellectual.
But i am a bit confused about the argument here. I believe you are in favor of calling for violence against fascism in a wider sense. And therefor interpret ops message in the same way.
I am in a somewhat mirrored perspective where i feel strong about pacifism and freedom of speech. Words can hurt but to me can be never be labeled as violent, so i read op as valid but colorful expression. They also themselves express that they do not see their own message as a call to violence.
Fascism is naturally abhorrent, but how does threatening fascist expression show that abhorrence to those trapped within? If our threat is general and op meant indeed a call to violence against all including non violent fascist express then we do the opposite of splitting those groups and actually mostly the unthinking will be targeted. Then Violence calls for more violence and only those rich enough to fly away will be unharmed.
OK let’s return to OPs original example. Mussolini strung up. Good job and all. I don’t particularly like talking about deserts because it’s a childish misunderstanding of the universe. Nobody deserves anything. They get what they get. Having said that, if you’re a Fascist dictator who uses violence and fear on your own population, you’re going to store up some resentment and if said resentment finds an opportunity and an outlet you can reasonably expect a bad outcome.
I would go one further than OP and say that if you materially aid and abet said Fascist dictator, as for example his girlfriend, you should reasonably expect to share that bad outcome and happily she did.
There were a great many partisans who took revenge on the fascists at the end of the war and this also should not have come as a surprise to them.
OP is using Mussolini as an object lesson here, to use the modern way of putting it: Fuck around and find out. Which Mussolini did and modern fascists may also expect to also.
The January 6th ‘protesters’ were pardoned but they also spent a deal of time in jail. They fucked around and they found out.
If the full weight of Trump’s Republic protects them they may feel emboldened but eventually the fascist regime always falls because they are economically illiterate, their inner circle fight like rats in a sack, they are incompetent and once the leader dies the whole collapses. And at that point fascists who have been doing fascist stuff should expect not clemency or mercy or any of the things they denied other people. They should expect to be upside down in a petrol station or something equally unpleasant.
It used to be that even the most unthinking and, frankly, racist people that I came across in work and the various places I used to drink would have been appalled to be lumped in with fascists and Nazis who were characterised as social misfits and considered beyond the pail. Everyone who was racist knew it was wrong. And now it has been normalised. If we’d been less tolerant of people presenting the racist arguments year after year and rather than trying to educate or reason with them had offered them violence or the credible threat thereof we’d be in a better position now. They’d have never reached the mainstream because they’d have been seen as losers still by the unthinking.