Historically, there have been authoritarian societies that placed Party Loyalty above all else.

[Igel]

66. There's a frame of reference issue.

Don't know how the OP would respond. Might find out. I probably won't check back.

Some of his points reduce to one. He leaves some off. His point's valid, even if I can't remember his moniker and have no idea if he's even a he.

In such societies, it's not that partisans put party loyalty over good and fair policies. They don't value party over the country.

They conflate party and country, government and party, the need for a strong figure to implement good and fair policies over an opposition that is not just wrong but morally condemned as evil.

These types of parties always include a strong moralizing component. "Practicality" is seldom sufficient motivation for true oppression--you have to have history or God or something bigger and justifying on your side. Only those believing themselves utterly righteous can be evil through-and-through. Only a messiah can come and reduce the population by 90% with wr, famine, disease, and call it "good." Your policies can never be self-serving--they're only to help "the people", but coincidentally the party members are always the "people" and non-party members, even if they're a majority, aren't really (the) people. The fiction must be preserved, the delusion kept intact. It's a trivially facile delusion to maintain. We're all humans, after all.

Often--most often--the party loyal assume that whatever their leaders (who are good, and smart, and pure, and for what's right and just) say is what is good and fair. Many can't actually argue beyond repeating what their leaders say. But their logic is always, to themselves, impeccable--and there can be no other facts or argumentation. Not for nothing was a leading Soviet publication called "Arguments and Facts" ... for helping the true believers persuade those of little faith in the party. The partisans identify with the party and find their self-image in the party. To disparage their party's leader--which may be a person or may be a group--is to disparage them personally. To disparage the party is rather like having a Muslim go into a Jewish synagogue to sacrifice a pig and use its blood in to establish communion with Buddha. It's blasphemy in so many different ways as to boggle the mind.

But none of this is to just help the party, except incidentally. The reason to help the party is because the party is, ultimately, the country--the savior of the country, the only good force in the country, the only way for the country to move forward. There is only One True Path, and that is through the party. (It's Stalin's line, so the Christ imagery is his.)

Now, most partisans tend to hold some of these views. What's important is that the true partisans insist that party members hold *all* of these views consistenty. To defend the enemy as "people," to say that the party leader doesn't embody goodness and justice, to say that some of the policies are wrong or wrong-headed--or to simply fail to support each party plank--heck, even to say that an argument is unconvincing, is to be branded an enemy of the people. Or a sockpuppet. Whichever.

To say that the party should compromise in the interest of the country is blasphemy. There can be no truck between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

These aren't "fascists." They're a kind of totalitarian of which fascists are often a subtype. They includes Mugabistas, Chavistas, Stalinists and Hitlerites. Any person in a party that doesn't content himself or herself with general adherence to the party's premises and policies on the part of others veers in this direction. More than a few populists, when the movement is organized, fall into this category. Some folk here over the summer--and a few linger--not only veer in this direction, they're at the door of that destination checking IDs and doing retina scans and background checks.