this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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I do not believe fascism can function without ethnic hatred. Nationalism within imperialist countries always takes on a racial character, and it has to, because otherwise cross racial solidarity destabilizes the oppressive apparatus.
I'm Portuguese a country which had a Fascist dictatorship until 74.
I was very young at the time and don't remember anything of the dictatorship directly but did heard the stories and saw what came out of it.
The country was definitely colonialist and the people and natural resources of the "colonies" (which were all in Africa) were definitely being exploited but there was no messaging of racial superiority and no racist hate even when the people over there started rebelling and there was war. In fact so little was the racist indoctrination that immediately after the Revolution all "colonies" were left to gain their independence as nations and all of them became friendly nations with democratic Portugal within a few years.
From all I've seen the focus of the Fascist propaganda was all about the Greatness Of Portugal (all the while it was a shithole) especially old "greatness" like the various achievements of the Portuguese during the time of the Maritime Discoveries in the 15th and 16th centuries.
That shit is nowhere near what Nazis and Zionists do and even during the wars of liberation of Portuguese colonies there was never any mass targeting of civilians over there, much less a systematic massacre and a long list of babies murdered by the Portuguese Military.
As soon as racial supremacy and racist hate gets into the picture, even in war you go from an atrocity here and there generally done remotely (as you see Russia do in Ukraine) to systematic massacres with snipers seeing children through their scopes and choosing to shoot them in their heads (as you see Israel do in Palestine) - traditional Fascism has Sociopaths leading the military, ethno-Fascism has the entire military all the way down to privates acting as Sociopaths.
Colorism still existed and exists in Portugal. I'll grant that this is a more fluid system of discrimination than white supremacy which seems to make integration easier due to having less rigid sociopolitical structures, but it's still present!
I'm not at all denying Racism in Portugal.
I'm denying Racist Hate, even back in Fascist times: people were prejudiced about those in the "colonies" and even looked down on them but they didn't at all hate them.
People did (and still do, though less) go around with all sorts of prejudices about different looking people or people from other places, especially "Colorism" (though, curiously, in present day Portugal it's more the Brazilians that are discriminated against than people with Black African ancestry).
My point is that even during Fascism and the peak of the wars of liberation against Portugal in the "colonies" people didn't went around thinking that "Africans are human animals" or that "we should wipe them out" and ditto for the figures of the Regime, whilst the shit coming out of Israel and especially from the mouths of Ministers and politicians of the governing coalition is relentlessly racist and some form or other of mass murder are common suggested as "solutions" for the "Palestinian problem".
That level of extreme hate along racial lines is simply not the kind of thing traditional Fascism tries to indoctrinate into the population, whilst it's the core of ethno-Fascism and its Propaganda.
This is far from a "just Portugal" kind of thing: even the most violent traditional Fascist dictatorship - that of Franco in Spain - didn't engage in widespread violence against different ethnic groups (or, in fact, in any kind of "white supremacy" ideas) and its violence was mainly the period of Civil War at its start, which pitched mainly Spaniards against Spaniards.
I mean, if you want a present day example of traditional Fascist violence, just look at Russia in Ukraine: they're mostly trying to take Ukrainian shit and have the Ukrainians become Russians and work for the Russian regime, not to wipe them out in Ukraine. The violence is because the Ukrainians naturally refuse and there are certainly atrocities in war by the Russians and even vengeance against civilians using missiles following Russian defeats, and that's it. There is no such thing as a campaign to get rid of Ukrainians in by any means necessary no matter how murderous.
Absolutely, that too is evil shit. It's however more of a nation state version of Theft and Pillaging whilst what the Zionists and other ethno-Fascists do is Extermination, a whole different level of Evil.
I don't know enough about Portugal to argue with this. I know about French colonialism and the horrors they inflicted, and British colonialism and the horrors they inflicted, and those examples make me suspect that all colonialisms are going to produce the same horror.
But, I don't know for sure. Haven't read that history yet. I know there's a lot of extremely violent racism in Brazil's history, but that's technically not Portugal so I can't say for sure that reflects on Portugal itself.
Basically, I don't know enough to argue about this 😅
(also pay no attention to that down vote you got - I promise it wasn't me!)