one thing I've noticed all fascists have in common is this belief that the other side won't fight back.

-recent example would be putin expecting the ukraine war to be a pushover that would last maybe a day or so, because he didn't think the ukrainians would put up a fight.

-trump, before election, famously said he would "make mexico pay" for "the wall"- and his bright idea to make this happen was to charge higher on exports to mexico. mexico immediately retaliated by charging more for their exports to the US. everything suddenly cost more and the US ended up paying for the wall.

-I read a few years ago, when the US evacuated afghanistan, an internet comment by a random fascist who said if they were in that situation they would just "simply" go to afghanistan, shoot all the afghans, and rescue all the americans. and it's like yeah try that, because you would get shot the minute you tried to start firing but I digress

-elon musk upon taking over twitter operates under the belief that not only will all the users stay exactly where they are, but also pay money to keep using the site. instead, users made an exodus elsewhere

....fascists are solipsists who don't believe anyone else is alive, and this is one of their core personality traits across the board (see also the "NPC" meme, where they outright state they do not believe anyone else is truly alive)


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in reply to @thewaether's post:

I think you’re right and it might be connected to their (obvious) lack of empathy. never considering how other people would feel about and react to your actions, because you don’t think of them as real people = being shitty at predicting the outcomes of your actions.

This is IMO the strongest observation in Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism: the enemy is simultaneously too strong and too weak. such as, the enemy is responsible for sinister plots woven so finely they're almost imperceptible, but also will certainly fold to even the smallest amount of direct action.

It creates an urgency to act, an imperative to stop their schemes, and also removes all the risk of doing so, making the target of the propaganda angry that this action hasn't already been done, since it's so obvious and so easy.

What strikes me is that modern fascists, even those in high places, always seem to be the targets of propaganda instead of the authors. But I suppose Hitler and Mussolini also thought their wars would be easy.

Fascist theories of change basically all boil down to "we will simply have a monopoly on both violence and the will to act", like schoolyard bullies. And centrist libs are generally happy to concede that!