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[deleted] wrote

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

They did something good for self serving reasons. While it's nice to know that corporations value the business of those opposed to white nationalism; they do so because they stand to gain from it. It's simply makes them more money to exploit minorities than to kill them off.

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[deleted] wrote

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

If anti-fascist policies gain popularity within industry it is inevitably going to centralize power and disarm grassroots movements.

I don't think you'll have to worry about anti-fascist policies becoming popular in industry. Corporations are an inherently liberal construct; they'll only be about as pro or anti fascist as liberalism would allow. Airbnb permitting white supremacists to use their services would be a PR nightmare, so in order to protect their profits and reputation, they cut them off. Don't think of this as anti-fascism, think of it liberalism upholding a status quo that it benefits from.

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[deleted] wrote

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

You're a lot more of an optimist than I!

My argument was grounded in more cynicism than anything else; nothing optimistic about the status quo reasserting itself. I believe that corporations co-opting anti-fascism isn't impossible, just highly unlikely.

Hijacking and obscuring the original intent and definition of any threat to industry is obviously a much preferable method. Things like pink and green -washing are examples of institutions exploiting the ambiguity of ideas and terms that the environmentalist and queer liberation movements present. Institutions are then able to redefine these ambiguities, and I see no reason why anti-fascism won't/can't just be co-opted by capital in the same way that all my examples have been.

That's a great argument, actually! I guess I can't (or couldn't) really see anti-fascism defined as anything else; failing to account for the fact that corporations have the power to shift narratives and definitions to their favor. It just struck me as a bit odd, there's a huge difference between a corporation selling anti-fascist merchandise and actually acting against fascism. The latter is an entirely alien scenario to me, but I won't deny that it could happen.

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