Thread by @LtHarker

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj Right, I've been meaning to return to this, in among the fray.

The well established Ur Fascism by Umberto Eco lays out succinctly fourteen characteristics of fascist movements.

What you're describing is authoritarianism, or totalitarianism. Your thesis is garbled but regardless

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj "Intolerance of dissent" is, in fact, not a feature of Fascism as it grows. Most fascists are acutely aware of how distasteful the public finds their views, and will form alliances with conservative and other liberal actors in order to further their ends. The ends being genocide.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj "forcing people to believe things that aren't true" is in fact a feature of almost all political systems. For instance, liberal capitalist systems force, through media and education processes, to believe that it's the normal system.

But regardless, trans people are their gender.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj "and the bullying, totalitarian drive to enforce your political views."

Like, for instance, spreading leaflets filled with at best half truths in order to try and encourage a growing hatred of trans people?

These reactionaries were so awful that cis women staff wanted them gone

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj But you're going to be misled into reactionary movements if that's what you think they are.

Based on Eco, there's fourteen descriptive elements of fascist movements.

First is the "cult of tradition". You can see that represented clearly through the use of suffragette colours, —

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj This is an attempt to declare TERF politics as part of a century long tradition of rights activists. You also see this in the way these reactionaries speak on the campaign for women's spaces being won in the 1800s.

And when they're among friends, they're bemoaning progress, too.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj The next feature Eco calls "irrationalism", but it's a rejection of modernity.

Many transphobic actors, like yourself, will accuse us of youth and naïveté, without knowing our age, and without consideration for such. @AbigailShrier does this constantly. The irrationalism is odd—

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Atypical, in the recency of the past being called to, but we've seen stranger things happen

So thus the next feature is action for action's sake. Like going and leafleting any old pub

Action for action's sake is centered around " Distrust of the intellectual world", and oh boy—

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Do TERFs do that. Queer theory, emerging from feminist theory, is frequently decried. Arguments about fifth grade biology are used against actual biological study, and even the social sciences are attacked as illegitimate when they don't support the central cause.

Thinkers have—

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier A role to play in fascist movements though. "Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in
attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia" says Eco, and we are that in books by Joyce and Shrier, among others.

Now, we reach analytical thinking and the rejection thereof.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Fascism cannot withstand critical analysis. It falls apart under the slightest scrutiny

It thus must attack critical analysis of fascistic talking points, or critical understanding of the construction of fascism.

That's what we've seen over the last while with my post, so... ✅

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier "Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference"

I mean that's the thing that transphobia advocates do. From Linehan to Stock to Joyce to Millar. It takes the fear of how trans and cis people differ, and exacerbates it.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Historical fascism appeals to a frustrated middle class, however in contemporary times the middle class is dramatically shrinking. Instead it appeals to middle class values, in the social rather than economic sense. And in the UK, that's stronger than ever.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier The next item is obsession with a plot, and for that just read any TERF talking about anything. Transphobia Advocates believe that there is a secret or public plot to destroy sex as a concept. Some believe that vaccines and mRNA are taking over the world. Bindel thinks it's Jews.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier "by a continuous shifting of
rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak" is the next feature of Ur Fascism.

One could consider that the argument saying that trans people are a machiavellian plot to overthrow women and also are misled children.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Fascism is a death cult. Its principle of "life is permanent warfare" is critical to that. Perhaps that's why Millar's crowd were wearing TERF shit and ready to leaflet bathrooms.

Under this fascistic element, the next group to be targeted are other queer people, bisexual men, —

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Then bisexual women, then lesbian women, last, gay men.

We can see that order of attack in the way that lesbian women who dare to date trans women are demonised, by the way, because "pacifism is trafficking with the enemy".

And don't get me started on non-binary people like me.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism.

That means that it's only through the use of 'commonsense' arguments and apparent creation of the 'right' sort of population, fascism builds its power.

To that end, butch women, intersex people, and especially enbies are an enemy.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Under fascist systems "everybody is educated to become a hero". For a reactionary group attempting to enact fascism, that looks like people endlessly discussing how to target and destroy trans people living public life. This happens on Mumsnet, and in private Facebook groups.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier I mean, look at all you "heroes" who saw a discursive threat and attacked

Good little lapdogs that you are.

Next up:

"Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist
transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier (which
implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality)."

In this we see several points in the reactionary fascist movements of transphobes. Firstly, nonconforming women are attacked. Queerness too.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier There's a bizarre worship of transphobic men like Linehan within the movement, and indeed the disdain for trans women and nonprocreative cis women is shown in the endless discussion of fertility issues for GNC and other trans health issues relating to fecundity.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier okay where was I...

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Next up, Ur-Fascism is built on a Selective Populism. That's not a common term, so we'll unpack it.

Quoting Eco: " For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will."

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier By contrast to under democratic rule, where individuals do have rights, and express their rights by numbers. With TERF rhetoric, we absolutely see that individuals are not conceived of as having rights, instead the conception of people as a qualitative group with a common will.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier We see this in the argument that TERFs make about "Sex Based Rights" (rights which are, in fact, structured around gender and not related to sex, and in fact sex-based rights were used to eliminate women's right to vote, but anyway). They are arguing that women are a monolithic

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Monolithic cultural entity. They'll phrase things as expressing the common will of those women.

Eco predicted:

"There is in our future an Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People"

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier With qualitative populism, fascist movements develop a belief in the fundamental corruption of governments. TERFs focus on how Stonewall trains governments on how to be less shit to LGBTQIA+ people, & how the Mayor of London restructured advisory councils and Joan's job was gone.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier Last of all, the development of newspeak. TERF movements have developed a whole host of newspeak, from "transwoman" to "ROGD" to "TRA" and even "Adult Human Female" and a bunch more subtle and less subtle statements that redefine or recreate language to attack trans people.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier So yeah. If you're gender critical, and you're feeling a bit leery of how these definitions, there is an easy way out. Come and chat, hang out with more trans people. Learn about our lives.

And maybe to everyone around, have a read of Umberto Eco's Ur Fascism. It's a good essay.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier pegc.us/archive/Articl…

For Ur Fascism

(oh and youtube.com/c/harkerthesto… ) if you like my arguments.

@robjessel @HJoyceGender @bindelj @AbigailShrier @threadreaderapp unroll