i’m going to try to define some words i see people misunderstanding. a thread.

globalism, globalization. neoliberalism. nationalism. internationalism. socialism. marxism. anarchism. fascism. libertarianism.

while words do have meanings, these meanings are socially constructed and shift over time. these are how i understand them. i didnt go to school for this shit so it took me awhile to wrap my head around some of these, so maybe it will be useful.

“globalism” is an antisemitic dog whistle used to reference the quite false concept that jewish people secretly run the world’s economies.

why that’s false, a brief history: jewish people were historically set up as scapegoats for this sort of thing going back to when the catholic church banned usury: moneylending at profit. moneylending was often one of the only jobs allowed jewish folks in medieval europe.

this worked GREAT for powers that be. when poor people got upset at their plight, lords blamed the moneylenders, who suffered. rinse and repeat.

in 1903 some russian antisemites published a fake book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, claiming that jewish people were trying to take over the world, which they used to justify pogroms. Hitler was into it. Henry Ford printed like half a million copies. the myth remains.

compared, “globalization” is the neoliberal ideal, of a world in which there are no economic borders between nations. free trade. not free people. this allows richer countries to continue to exploit the poorer countries. it also fucks over the poor even in richer countries.

“neoliberalism” isnt particularly related to being “liberal”. it gets its name because awhile ago, “liberal” meant capitalist, not “doesn’t hate queer people” or whatever. not long ago, both democrats and republicans were fairly neoliberal as i understand it.

leftists, progressives, etc fought against globalization (not globalism) around the turn of the millennia, in an attempt to stop this neocolonialism.

trump is also not a neoliberal. this break from tradition is part of his appeal. he’s a nationalist. he believes in setting up trade barriers. trade barriers are in themselves not inherently bad, but since he’s functionally a fascist, he is doing so in ways that aren’t good.

i mean “fascist” in a technical sense, not just as a slur, though of course fascism is shit.

nationalism is a very blurry word but general means promoting a sense of national unity, of presenting a single national identity for people in a country (or of a specific ethnicity who lack a country).

nationalism when practiced by the countries in power is universally bad. people taking pride in their position of power has never led to anything good.

nationalism of oppressed countries, in particular of countries seeking to rid themselves of colonialism (traditional colonialism or economic, as expressed through neoliberalism), is more complicated and not something i, as a white american, am in a good spot to have an opinion on

i will say i am more interested in such resistance movements that express themselves as internationalist, instead, like the zapatistas in mexico and the struggle of people in northern syria and kurdistan more broadly.

internationalism is a response to nationalism. as i understand it, internationalism is the idea that our struggles are interlinked, all people of all nations. it doesnt however seek to erase difference or identity. internationalism is great.

capitalism does not mean “an economy where you get paid for doing work.” it actually means something close to the opposite of that. capitalism gets its name from capital. “capital” is the resources someone owns that they can leverage for money without working themselves.

capitalism is the ability of some people to make money with their money instead of through work. investment, banking, landlording, employing others for waged labor, etc.

some alternatives to capitalism use money and markets. some don’t. some allow for individuals to run businesses, some don’t.

socialism is the broad umbrella term for societies in which the means of production (factories and large farms classically) arent owned by individuals (who would use them as capital to make money). there are an enormous number of possible socialist societies. some good. some bad.

communism is a smaller subset of socialism that still contains several possibilities. other people know this stuff better than me, but the ostensible ideal of communism is that power resides within individual communities, called communes, who work together for common cause.

this was originally envisioned as a society without a “state” government. all communists historically agreed on this as an end goal and just disgreed on how to get there.

marx, and marxists, believed/believe it is necessary to seize state power and have a transitional state until society is ready to move to “full” communism (stateless communism). this position, of the need for a transitional state, can be called “state communism.”

anarchist communists believe that power cannot be seized, it must be dismantled or dispursed, because those who seize power will hold onto it. i’m an anarchist, so my bias is that the state communist revolutions of the 20th century proved us right.

in the 19th century, we called ourselves Libertarians because we were distinguishing our libertarian communism from the authoritarian variety. in some places “libertarian socialist” is still used to describe anarchists.

the american conception of libertarianism (which is closer aligned to neoliberalism, and is ardently pro-capitalist) is more recent. they consciously took the word from us.

then there are the people who unapologetically seem to be into the not-really-transitional, dictatorial state communist societies like the USSR. the derogatory word for these people is “tankie.” Stalinists fit into this category.

then there’s fascism. fascism is a messy, blurry word other people have defined better than i’ll be able to, but i’ll say that it is nationalist and it is authoritarian.

in some ways it is the nationalism that distinguishes it from other authoritarian systems like stalinism (which is internationalist, at least ideally). of course, nationalism is all about an “us” and you can’t have an “us” without a “them.”

the nazis were called the “national socialists.” they were not functionally socialist. however, its important to understand that they started off with a large leftist side as well, who WERE national socialists (and still fuckers). the right wing of the party murdered them all.

anyway hope that helps.