I think he was a little too far up his butt on this one. Laws are created by people and followed (or not) by people. It doesn't matter what the internal logic of the system is, fascism means dismantling it and replacing it with direct power.
robertlagrant•1h ago
> fascism means dismantling it and replacing it with direct power
Is that true? Why is that the label and not "monarchy" for example?
twright•1h ago
They are not necessarily mutually exclusive terms, you could have a fascist monarchy as much as you could have a liberal one. Monarchy describes the system of government as ruled by a regent. Fascism describes the attitude of a government (or movement) to conserve an existing social order, or regress to one. This is done with mechanisms of direct power e.g., single-party rule (totalitarianism), military power (military-dictatorship/police state), or via the commands of a single individual (dictatorship).
ratelimitsteve•1h ago
I agree, this is full of the engineer's tendency to treat the law as a system whose rules are inviolable natural extensions of the universe and not things that can be enforced or ignored by humans on a case by case basis. Fun for thought experiments, but in the consensus reality the tendency is much less like designing a magic the gathering deck that carefully exploits the rules and allows you to amass tons of power in a way that your opponents have no choice but to concede to you and much more like just organizing more violence than the people trying to stop you from doing what you want to do.
hearsathought•2m ago
> fascism means dismantling it and replacing it with direct power.
Fascism is created by people and followed (or not) by people. Every government/system is created by people and followed (or not) by people.
twright•1h ago
Article V is likely the loophole he saw. It is however monumentally hard to amend the constitution even with the extreme gerrymandering of today. I was surprised it has actually been done once within my lifetime but I doubt it will happen again without a cataclysmic change of public opinion.
m-hodges•33m ago
There was a lot of consternation about this in 2017: "Article V allows an alternative method of proposing constitutional amendments, which cuts Congress out entirely: two-thirds of the state legislatures can call for a constitutional convention. To be in a position to do this, the G.O.P. needs to gain control of just one more statehouse".¹ At the time, Republicans controlled 33/50 state legislatures.² Today they control 29/50.³
sdwr•1h ago
robertlagrant•1h ago
Is that true? Why is that the label and not "monarchy" for example?
twright•1h ago
ratelimitsteve•1h ago
hearsathought•2m ago
Fascism is created by people and followed (or not) by people. Every government/system is created by people and followed (or not) by people.