honeyontoast

I think it's important to listen to both sides. I'm team boki.

I will preface this by saying I am a novice and only started reading theory a few weeks ago and could be way off, but this is my current understanding.

I read Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds, and two quotes stood out to me:

What distinguishes fascism from ordinary right-wing patriarchal autocracies is the way it attempts to cultivate a revolutionary aura. Fascism offers a beguiling mix of revolutionary-sounding mass appeals and reactionary class politics. The Nazi party's full name was the National Socialist German Workers Party, a left-sounding name. As already noted, the SA storm troopers had a militant share-the-wealth strain in their ranks that was suppressed by Hitler after he took state power.

Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled.

As I am British, I have been applying these ideas to the UK. It aligned perfectly with Reform.

'cause the thing is, fascists, more often than not, do actually see and talk about real problems, but then they misplace the blame to further their own interests. See the short snippets from this BBC Question Time where the Green party leader Polanski replies to Zia Yusuf, a higher up of the fascist Reform party: https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2025/10/10/zack-polanski-bbcqt/

The capitalist Tory government spent the last decade and a half gutting public services in the name of private profits, but instead of blaming current problems on that, Reform blame immigrants because they have no interest in fixing the problem, they just want to be the one to profit from it.

TLDR: The same factors that drove you to communism drives fascists too, the difference is communists want solutions but fascists want to profit from the problems.

In the UK we call them gammons, because their puffy red faces resemble gammon (ham).

Interesting how they're all food related!

I don't think that's fair. Were the civil rights sit ins of the 60s liberal slacktivism? The non aggression makes the violent retaliation all the more stark. Sitting down and dressing like a frog aren't a million miles apart in that regard. They're both proving they're not a threat and trying to highlight the violent response they're receiving. Being dragged out of libraries, being tear gassed through a vent.

At least they're trying to do something.

Do hotdogs and fish fingers confuse you, or are you perfectly capable of understanding hotdogs aren't made of dog and fish don't have fingers?

I absolutely understand where you're coming from, but one upside to it is it makes it harder for the right to frame these protests as "look at these ruthless, aggressive leftists!" when there's a dude dressed like a frog frolicking about.

On the other hand it does undermine the seriousness of the protest too so it's a double edged sword.

Coconut milk has been called milk since forever and nobody's surprised a cow wasn't involved.

This only became an issue when alternatives to meat and dairy got popular because these restrictions on naming has nothing to do with clarity and everything to do with mega farm owners wanting to crush the opposition to their racket. They don't want to replace "oat milk" with "oat enhanced water" because they care about you, they do it because they hate competition.

Personally I see value in these sorts of policies not because I actually want it, but because it highlights the present hypocrisy and gets people thinking about what it means. Policies like this could indeed get people demanding the law change.

Don't forget the time they sent some signage to a Welsh translator, and they put up a sign with his out of office message thinking it was the translation...

Wow you weren't kidding it really is just a shitty looking 3d clone of vampire survivors

No and I think I need to step up my game on it. When I first started reading theory I was doing it on my computer, and if something jumped out at me I'd paste it into a big doc I have of quotes, and then write a little something to accompany it.

But reading from a computer screen felt limiting, I couldn't do it for long, so I've since switched to physical books. I don't record quotes or thoughts because I'm usually reading away from my pc, like the living room sofa, and I don't like making notes on my phone. I ought to get a physical notebook and keep that on me!

The last week of news has made me so angry. The UK going even more authoritarian on the right to protest, the treatment of the activists Israel illegally detained, the brownshirts of America waging war against civilians.

I wish I could do more but I am also really struggling to find a group in the UK with their shit together.

It has really been infuriating to witness and feel so powerless!