Czech President Petr Pavel on Thursday signed an amendment to the country’s criminal code that criminalises the promotion of communist ideology, placing it on the same footing as Nazi propaganda.
The revised legislation introduces prison sentences of up to five years for anyone who “establishes, supports or promotes Nazi, communist, or other movements which demonstrably aim to suppress human rights and freedoms or incite racial, ethnic, national, religious or class-based hatred.”
The change follows calls from Czech historical institutions, including the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, to correct what they viewed as a legal imbalance.
[…]
Why does it always hold true for fascism? If communism can be done without the bad stuff, so should fascism.
Are you serious right now?
Yes. E.g. with the minimal definition of a corporate state, fascism can respect human rights and doesn’t have to “incite racial, ethnic, national, religious or class-based hatred.”
“The bad stuff” is the very definition of fascism:
“racial, ethnic, national, religious or class-based hatred” is pretty much built-in. No, it doesn’t actually say “hatred” in that text but if you don’t see the implication I can’t help you.
Why is hatred implied? It’s one of the easiest means to control people but not necessary.
But even with hatred, the central identity doesn’t have to be built on racial, ethnic, national, religious or class based values. Fans of sport teams are united without those values.
You’re basically arguing “if you remove all the things that define fascism, then fascism isn’t so bad”.
I think you somewhat confuse totalitarianism with fascism. As I said in another comment, while dictatorship is pretty much always part of fascism, the opposite does not necessarily hold true.
I can equally say that if you add bad things to the definition of fascism then it is inevitably bad.
Totalitarianism also has to work for communist dictatorships. Why is fascism not the name for rightwing Totalitarianism that used to use hatred but at least in theory could do without?
Hypothetical:
What about a fascist state that has a dictatorial leader and centralized autocracy that has the sole aim to move its people (and anybody else) to a ecological sustainable state. Perhaps the hypothetical fascist leader in this scenario has seen that the necessary steps to avoid climate based collapse (and so the end of modern society) can never be applied in a democracy and uses his (or her) dictatorial powers to form the world in this way? Militarism, furcible suppression of opposition and so on would be very handy in such a hypothetical “ecofascist” society.
Still bad? Even if it “saves humanity”?
I see what you’re getting at, but not every dictatorship is necessarily fascistic. If it wants to save all of humanity it cannot be purely fascistic because Othering is a substantial part of fascism. And that’s where your hypothetical falls apart. Also the militarism, which - together with othering - leads to expansionism by war, which cannot be good for our ecosphere.
I have played with the thought of global totalitarianism to save the planet from climate catastrophe myself. It might be our only chance, but it is extremely unlikely to happen before the climax of the catastrophe, and afterwards as well tbh.
If that’s what you’re going for, just call it something else. You won’t be doing your ideas any favors by calling them fascistic.
The opposition will. Would it be easier to argue that the organisation is not fascist or that fascism isn’t inherently bad?