We were sort of fighting against fascism in WW2, in that a lot of Americans thought the Nazis made some really good points when the war started, and Nazism was inspired in no small part by the U.S., and it was really fighting the war that made America stridently anti-fascist.

April 09, 2026 - 15:03 UTC

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So it was sort of on all three accounts. In each conflict, we started in a more ambivalent, nuanced place, trying to avoid an ideological confrontation, but it was the course of the war itself that hardened that ideological resolve and made us see the war as a fight for something bigger.
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Ahh, gotcha gotcha. Well, the Revolution is distinct, I think, in that our *enemies* weren't really fighting for monarchism at all

Whereas, yes, the Confederates were fighting for slavery, and the Nazis were fighting for, well, Nazism
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That’s important to know as a matter of historical accuracy, yes, but as stories to live by, it’s better to take the more radical attitudes that we came out of those conflicts with than the nuanced ones we entered with: no truce with any king, slaver, or fascist, not now, not ever.
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