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Originally posted by wotyzoid I don't know. When he says "they're bring drugs, they're rapists," or "we have to find out what's going on with these people," to me, that's fascism. Even if it's just election talk and he doesn't mean it.

I agree this sort of divisive language is prejudicial to democracy as a whole, and I'd liken Trump to a political cancer in that he slowly corrodes the institution. We've seen it in Italy, in Poland, in Hungary, and of course, in Russia.

The author of this article mentions that the question "Is Donald Trump a fascist?" is not easy to answer, and I agree... Yet, I won't say he's a freedom-loving president. To the best of my knowledge, I've never seen anything like it in the US before. Or here, for that matter (thanks to me being born after the dictatorship, of course).

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Last edited by Lira on Feb-04-2017 at 00:28

That's part of what I'm saying, but what the guy that wrote that totally dismisses is that there are intrinsic links between trump's base and the nationalist sentiments in europe prior to WWII. Whether or not the US is a super power and Italy and Germany were broke and fucked, is irrelevant if his base shares the same type of shame, fear, hate. In this case it's not about what actually is right now, but what is, or was, implied for the future. Fake it 'till you make it.

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Originally posted by Lira Is it a Bannon thing, or has he given signs he's more community-oriented now? His cabinet is a mess, ideologically, as far as I remember (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), with nutcases lumped together with ordinary generals and CEO, so I may have missed a more "community"-oriented turn.

In a lot of things I've read about Bannon, he seems to be extremely concerned about 'white civilisation' and the Western-Christian'way of life,' much more so than he is concerned about any sort of individualism.

Obviously the question of if Trump is a fascist is a difficult one to answer, which seems to indicate the answer is no, but I wouldn't be so glib to dismiss the label. We can argue about how exactly his administration is different than the Nazi's and PNF, but there are extremely worrying tendencies linking them all.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J That's the only difference between "cultural appropriation" and regular globalisation. I generally feel that "cultural appropriation" is often just a load of angry bollocks, wielded by people who are irate about white privilege and don't like white people doing what every culture does to every other culture in the 21st century. There are arguably more subtle distinctions though; for example, what Edward Said dubbed "Orientalism". The West has a way of viewing the entirety of Asian culture as some interchangeable Eastern exoticism, squashing countless distinct cultures down into simplistic and insulting notions of mysticisim and spirituality. Although Said wrote this specifically about Asia, in practise it can apply to anything percieved "non-Western", from African to Aborigean to Native American cultural artefacts.

The great thing about that, of course, being that Said was just as guilty of a form of 'Westernism', making it too into a monolithic culture.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J All this can overlap at times with cultural appropriation, but I would consider it distinct because the offence is not the appropriation so much as the attitude towards another culture. What is charged as cultural appropriation is very often just ignorance; cultural flotsam washing up on distant shores and being picked up by locals who have no real idea or interest in what it originally constituted. That's not racist as such, whereas the ideological flattening of cultural depth to fit with lingering colonial preconceptions very arguably is.

Agree with the 'attitute' part. Cultural appropriation only gets bad, as usual, when the appropriator sees the appropriated as not a real being, or as not being worthy of respect. I do think that when people start to take things completely out of their context and use it in a completely different way, we start to get into worrying areas - eg the aforementioned drunk white girls at festivals wearing Native American religious headwear.

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Originally posted by Lews In a lot of things I've read about Bannon, he seems to be extremely concerned about 'white civilisation' and the Western-Christian'way of life,' much more so than he is concerned about any sort of individualism. Obviously the question of if Trump is a fascist is a difficult one to answer, which seems to indicate the answer is no, but I wouldn't be so glib to dismiss the label. We can argue about how exactly his administration is different than the Nazi's and PNF, but there are extremely worrying tendencies linking them all.

It's not glibness, it's caution. Shouting "fascist" is a lot like "crying wolf". Do it too much, and you may regret it later.

God forbid someone closer to the definition ever rises to power in the US, but this is why I'm so reluctant to use the f-word in this case.

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Originally posted by Lira It's not glibness, it's caution. Shouting "fascist" is a lot like "crying wolf". Do it too much, and you may regret it later.

This argument is also still not airtight, Marcus, because nobody called Romney a fascist. And, also, Bill is totally clueless about one thing. He says Romney wouldn't have changed our lives that much but how the fuck does he know? Good at his job ad he is, he still lives in a hollywood bubble, and it seems like he forgets that Trump's policies are what the GOP have been pushing for, for years now. If you bring up the environment for starters, another 4 years of GOP polute and cash in politics, whether it was under Trump or Romney, could, and I think will, have serious, irreparable effects if you ask me. Seriously, who knows what happens now?

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Originally posted by Lira It's not glibness, it's caution. Shouting "fascist" is a lot like "crying wolf". Do it too much, and you may regret it later. God forbid someone closer to the definition ever rises to power in the US, but this is why I'm so reluctant to use the f-word in this case.

Perhaps glib was not the best word, but I think you're being too quick to dismiss. The whole point about the 'crying wolf' story is that the boy was purposefully messing around with the adults and so of course they weren't going to take him seriously when he was being serious; this isn't a like situation - this is adults looking at a blurry shape in the distance that certainly appears to have a lot of fur and to be menacing sheep, and saying that it really looks like its a wolf, and perhaps we should be wary.

I do think we should be careful about labels and words - I find it hilariously ironic and sad that it appears the Conservatives have made Socialism a more attractive option in America, because they used the term to describe Obama for years - but Trump certainly has many fascistic tendencies, so of course people are going to be wary.

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Originally posted by Lira I get the last bit and its good intentions, but I also find it troubling. To what extent can a member of a culture say that someone from another culture is(n't) eligible to adopt something? Case in point, I'm Brazilian. We dress white clothes for New Year's Eve. This is, to the best of my knowledge, a tradition that comes from Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion. So there you have something (1) with religious undertones and (2) specifically from my culture. Now, if I see a foreigner dressed in white clothes for NYE because they think it looks good and they're inspired by what they saw in Rio, is it my right to "protect" my culture? Or, as someone from a Catholic family, should I be insulted by the cathedral-shaped love hotels I saw in Japan? I find it would be pretty prejudicial of me to complain about either case... But maybe I'm missing the point. (Am I?)

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Originally posted by Lira It's that I don't get what could be wrong about it. Does it really matter what another person is wearing if they're not out to harm anyone?

I don't think you're missing the point, I'm just suggesting a possibly larger angle from which to approach it. You've emphasized harm, offensiveness, and a type of cultural defensiveness all in light of what we commonly understand as appropriation, and while it's up to you and your sensibilities to determine how to react to the shallow, often irreverent mishandling of cultural/religious features (I doubt anyone's culture is realistically 'threatened' by the garden variety types of appropriation we've been discussing here), it just doesn't strike me as a particularly conscientious way by which to live in both a multi-cultural society and an increasingly globalized world. I couldn't detail specifically what kind of harm this causes, but the superficial attitudes from where this comes and plays into certainly can't help.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J That's the only difference between "cultural appropriation" and regular globalisation. I generally feel that "cultural appropriation" is often just a load of angry bollocks, wielded by people who are irate about white privilege and don't like white people doing what every culture does to every other culture in the 21st century.

I think that's certainly part of the difference, but it seems to me that the real meat of the distinction between the two is the way 'cultural appropriation' is more warped around the issue of identity. Take something as inoffensive as sushi. Anyone in any part of the world can learn to make sushi, buy sushi making appliances, and throw their own sushi parties- I can't imagine anyone would object to this as an act of cultural appropriation. Or take the example of the three piece suit, a piece of Western clothing that has since diffused all across the globe to the point where nearly all businessmen in all cultures can be seen wearing them. I think it's reasonable to qualify these as long standing examples of the way culture is imported and exported (though the difference between globalization and colonialism is an often murky one), and they're largely neutral because they've become part of a kind of cultural 'public domain' that has been divorced from a deep rooted sense of 'identity'.

So you contrast these examples with the recent outcry voiced by members of the Polynesian community over a line of children's Halloween costumes based on the character 'Moana,' which was a full body suit covered in tribal tattoos, and I think we can see a meaningful difference between globalized exchanges, and full-on appropriation of cultural features that are significant to its native members. It's also on that distinction that I don't think we can describe this and similar examples as just something that every culture does to every other culture in the 21st century, as it strikes me as a luxury of the privileged to commodify as 'exotic' things they're too insulated amongst other members of their class to have any informed exposure with.

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Originally posted by Paradox Lost I think that's certainly part of the difference, but it seems to me that the real meat of the distinction between the two is the way 'cultural appropriation' is more warped around the issue of identity. Take something as inoffensive as sushi. Anyone in any part of the world can learn to make sushi, buy sushi making appliances, and throw their own sushi parties- I can't imagine anyone would object to this as an act of cultural appropriation.

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Students at Oberlin College are in an uproar about dining hall food. And no, it’s not because of the “mystery meat.” In an article published last month in the campus newspaper, The Oberlin Review, students have deemed the university’s attempts at serving international cuisines—particularly of Asian nations and cultures—appropriative to the point of being patently racist. “This uninformed representation of cultural dishes has been noted by a multitude of students, many of who[m] have expressed concern over the gross manipulation of traditional recipes,” the paper wrote. ... The worst offense was the sushi bar at Dascomb Dining Hall, which, according to Tomoyo Joshi, a Japanese junior at Oberlin, was appropriative due to the lack of fresh fish and grossly undercooked rice. “When you’re cooking a country’s dish for other people, including ones who have never tried the original dish before, you’re also representing the meaning of the dish as well as its culture,” she told the Review. “So if people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative.”

http://europe.newsweek.com/oberlin-...od-407466?rm=eu

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