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Please stop framing backward-looking nationalists as conservative. They don't want to conserve civil rights, environmental and protective standards, and other granted at status quo. They want society to go back to the 1930s.
Conservatives never wanted civil rights or environmental protections. What alternate dimension did you drop out of?
As I'm from Germany, our constitution was elaborated by a constituent assembly constisting in the majority of conservatives. It granted and grants a lot of civil rights which are questioned by modern day conservatives, such as the right for asylum or secrecy of mail and telephone. Starting from our first government, led by the conservative party CDU, the politics was also constantly pro-European towards integration. Also our first ministry for environment issues was established by a conservative government in 1986.
This backward-looking stupidity is a phenomenon of the last 30 years. E.g. Franz Josef Strauß, the most conservative politician I can think of, was pro technical innovation. As of today, the state of Bavaria still benefits from decisions made under his government. He would rotate in his grave if he knew how his party has become.
I see, I do tend to forget the term is quite broad in its use dependant on time and place.
A lot of people, including the best of the conservative politicians, take the whole "conserving our traditions" façade very seriously.
Conservatives, from the very beginning, were more interested in conserving their own power, while realizing hiding behind the "conserving our traditions" mask will win them a lot, besides using the "my enemy's hypocrisy is a fatal flaw of their character and ideology, my hypocrisy is human nature" tactic ad nauseum.
It would be silly to pretend the word "conservative" isn't widely understood to mean backwards-looking nationalists. But it's equally silly to call fascists conservative when we have a much better word for them.
It would be silly to pretend the word "conservative" isn't widely understood to mean backwards-looking nationalists.
I agree that it uses to be the norm now, however it was not always like this but the meaning has changed. The horse has left the barn. (Das Kind ist in den Brunnen gefallen)
But it's equally silly to call fascists conservative when we have a much better word for them.
That's my point.
The horse has left the barn.
We have almost the exact same saying in English but it's usually phrased as something about closing the barn door after the horses have left.
The German saying (I've just corrected the false replacements made by spellcheck) literally reads "the kid has fallen into the well", so s.th. has happened and there is no way back.