I hope this doesn’t sound completely idiotic, but I recently saw Mr. Beat’s video where he tries to come up with a simple and easily digestable definition of facism. He first started off with the definition "conform, or else..." but through the video he changes the defintion to "the idea that the group is more important than the individual."
Basically, facism is the idea that individualism should not be encouraged unless it somehow benefits the larger group. In Nazi-Germany, the "group" was the white aryan germanic people, and anything that didn’t benefited them was frowned uppon or illegalized. And from this defenition and idea of facism, it looks like Sparta fits the part.
Am I missing something? Maybe something related to the politcal landscape of the time? I asked a friend of mine, and he said "no, because facism was a reaction to individualism", but spartan society was kind of a reaction to the fact that they were laconic and foregin, while the rest of greece was not.
Please, explain to me if I’m wrong or if I’m missing something. ~Thanks
Mr Beat's video for anyone curious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQbFgszFaZg
He first started off with the definition "conform, or else..." but through the video he changes the definition to "the idea that the group is more important than the individual."
these are both terrible definitions of fascism. Fascism is an actual ideology with actual tenents, it's not a slur for anyone vaguely on the right someone don't like. fascism certainly upheld the idea that the the good of the trumps that that of the individual, but the same is true of most forms of socialism, social democracy, every military service, modern progressivism, and practically any other ideology that's not some sort of anarchism or libertarianism.
Fascism is about a particular form of group identity, corporatism, and idea with a long history on both the left and the right. Fascism was an outgrowth of the failure of pre-ww1 socialism, and the destruction of european society that it wrought, and the nature of industrial society it's a mistake to project it back in time past the 20th century, much less to ancient greece. It's like asking if Julius Caesar was a democrat or a republican. The categories just don't apply.