zlacker

I believe the commenter said "in the US".

>>JohnFe+(OP)
I guess I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that Americans who want age verification laws have some entirely different motivation than people in other countries who want age verification laws.

>>SpicyL+y
I'm more interested in the motives of those who would utilize the fear of pron or other taboos to advance this agenda. The coalitions reacting with fear are less interesting.

>>SpicyL+y
It doesn’t have to be the case that everyone who supports age verification has the same reasons.

In the US however, this campaign came from the same think tanks and strategists associated with Project 2025 (taking cues from folks like Enough Is Enough), who are pretty upfront with their Christian Nationalist views. In Project 2025 they include a bizarre connection of porn with transgenderism that tips their hand on the religious bent to all this, but elsewhere in the plan outright state their Christian Nationalist ideals.

>>SpicyL+y
Oh, no. Same impulses and motivations, Different dress.

>>SpicyL+y
The motivation is the same, power and control, but you need to run a slightly different playbook in different countries. In US, Republicans have been having Christianity as a front for decades.

>>SpicyL+y
They're all would-be fascists in sheep's clothing.

>>SpicyL+y
It can be both. Some Americans can want it because of Christian/moral-panic reasons (there is a stated goal of making porn illegal here by some conservatives), and some can want it for authoritarian purposes.

I expect the make-porn-illegal crusade is more common in the US than elsewhere.

>>alsetm+9o
I'd really like to reconcile the different views expressed by this fascinating chain of comments.

First we hear that the people behind the push for online identity verification are Christian nationalists. Then, after being informed that the British Labour party is also pushing for the same measure, we hear that the common denominator between those factions is their crypto-fascism.

To call the Labour party fascist, you must be some sort of extreme Thatcherite. To call Christian nationalist fascists is somehow even less defensible, as fascism is strongly collectivist[1] and the American political Christian extremely individualistic.

This entire discussion points to a horrific crisis in civics education, which I believe can explain the increasingly authoritarian policies of modern western governments far better than some crypto-fascist plot.

[1] "Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State", The doctrine of Fascism by Mussolini

>>SpicyL+y
I mean, I think you probably have a range of motivations. In the UK, a lot of it will be control-freak-ery, always fairly popular across the political spectrum there. In the US, some part of it will be the lunatic-fringe Christians (a group who don't _really_ exist in meaningful force in most developed countries, but who are quite politically powerful in the US).

>>SpicyL+y
Why?

>>userna+Xu
Christian Nationalists are extremists, nationalistic, and xenophobic. They have a strong desire to force other's to conform to their world view, including the use of force, mis/dis information, and bribery. They work by an in-group which their laws protect and any evil inside is excused, and an out-group which must be converted or destroyed and any evil those people commit is proof of such. They are individuals so long as they conform to the tenets of their religion, They vote as a single block.

So... national socialists and National Christians have a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram... to deny or miss those parallels seems disingenuous or ill informed.

I'm not informed of the British political landscape, so I can't speak to that.

And no, not every Christian is a NACHRIST, and it also isn't a coincidence that NAZI's co-oped and used Christianity opportunistically when it suited them.

>>userna+Xu
American Christians are extremely individualistic... As long as your individual interests coincide with their rigid moral code and what they see as a "good Christian lifestyle". Seems right to me

>>altrui+pI
None of the things you describe are remotely fascist. Winston Churchill was a fairly nationalistic and xenophobic person who was often in the extremes of the British political system. A strong desire to make others conform to your worldview and voting as a block is near universal among political movements.

And it's near universal because fascism is the major exception as it really doesn't desire any conformity from the designated inferior. That's what distinguishes the policies of NSDAP from prior cases of anti-Jewish oppression - the Nazi party wasn't interested in conversions at all.

As such, you really shouldn't call anyone ill informed on political topics.