newacctidk [none/use name]

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2024

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  • I am so curious how the fuck your take away from me stating the age of both symbols was that I was saying it wasn’t fascist. They asked when the dollar sign became a thing and I pointed to it being ancient, tied to the Pillars of Heracles.

    No one is attempting to defend the symbol, you saw people talking about the mere reality of when something was first used and decided they were defending fasces? The fuck is the matter with you?

    But since you did mention it; as a symbol from the Roman Republic it became associated with liberal revolutions and settler worker organizations, obviously the French used it, but so did the Gold Miners Union in Victoria leading up to the Eureka Strike. That strike is pretty on the nose as a white settler workers strike, one with incredibly disputed goals even among those who idolize it.

    But it was also used by some very much non-fascist groups. The cover of the 1918 Soviet Constitution, pre-USSR even being a thing, has fasces

    I hate pedantry and the “well it predates this thing so it is fine” shit, its why I have like 2 copypastas for three arrows shit. However I have to say, you can’t exactly say it was always a fascist symbol. Fascism rose out of modern capitalism, unjust political systems of the past are not fascist just because they sucked and fascists 2,000 years later used their interpretation of them as a basis. Hell it predates the Roman Empire and even the Roman Republic it seems, originally being an Etruscan symbol, so if you want to be a pedant, yes it has meant something other than “imperial state power” because originally it meant the power of a sovereign or monarch. Or theoretically the coming together of 12 Etruscan cities to form what would become Rome according to early Roman historians. It turns out there are different kinds of oppressive or bad societies and governments. That golly gee maybe just maybe something was a symbol of monarchy, became coopted by ancient republican class dictatorships, then imperial power, then modern liberal republicanism, then fascism which emerged from that.

    The whole thing with its components being used by the consuls is actually far more interesting than you made it out to be. It was used interchangeably as a way consuls were protected from rivals, including in the story of Brutus (the original consul) having them used against his sons who wanted to restore the monarchy, as well as symbols of authoritarianism and unchecked power. It was always a symbol of authority, but it is ludicrous to act like we are defending it by even casually acknowledging that it comes from around the same time as the curving line that was the basis for the dollar sign. How the fuck was THAT your take away from me indicating that, yes the dollar sign is in fact probably modeled AFTER or in connection to a fasces.

    Or did you think I was showing that the dollar sign goes back that far…in order to say it doesn’t connect to the Roman Republic weeb shit the founding fathers were on? I would love to know the thought process here because it seems like you wanted to get angry and so misinterpreted literally everything in a one line comment. All the while being anti-materialist for the sake of faux-outrage and obfuscation of fascism as just “authority and a ruling class”, which yes is effectively what you are doing with this simplistic shit.

    You want to truncate everything to from the Roman Republic, to the American Revolutionary War, to the Italian Fascists into this singular blob, instead of asking like OP was, WHY these symbols became used by both. What does it mean that liberal republicans pulled from the same ancient concept that fascism pulled from? Are they both idealizing the same path? How might their idealization differ? How did liberalism pull from the roman republic and its symbols, and then when liberalism failed, the thing it created (fascism) also pulled from those same symbols?

    Almost like these different systems use Rome for different reasons, but in doing so showcase some of their failures. That the seeds for what would BECOME fascism, arise from WITHIN classical liberalism and its view of the past, as opposed to your conception of fascism as this fully formed thing handed down from rome to Mussolini. Which funnily enough regurgitates the exact BS the Fascists themselves thought about themselves. You effectively agreed with their framing of history all because you disingenuously read a one sentence comment. Or maybe the Soviet union was fascist since you have decided that things are absolute and symbols carry an innate quality unto themselves instead of being given qualities by those who use them. And in case you wanna misread that, I am not saying you should adopt these symbols, I am saying there are reasons why certain groups and movements adopt symbols from the past, and it is worth understanding why beyond just vibes. The Soviets wanted to evoke the idea of smaller parts coming together to become unbreakable as in the oppressed, the liberals wanted to appeal to the legitimacy of roman republicanism as they saw it, and the fascist saw it as ordaining them with some inherent power of past glory and the idea of harmony between all classes (the hallmark of Italian fascism) which forms the corporate state - the body made out of multiple parts. edit: also the Australians use of it is indicative of their adoption of traditional symbols of republicanism or enlightenment, that subconsciously reflects their limited approach to rights, one which excludes the rights of Aboriginal and Chinese workers.

    If you look at why the US chose the fasces and why it chose an old Greek symbol and why those maybe together formed the dollar sign, you get a hell of a lot better understanding than if you just say “nah fascism was born in ancient Tuscany and was passed down to America and then to Italy as an intact thing”. There is actually MORE to criticize america for if you take the other path, instead of simplifying.

    We are materialists, stop using vibes and hyperbole.