I ain't a lawyer. I presented a rational argument that disagrees with your own. If that's "just lawyering" to you, then I don't want to hear you talk about "ecofascist." If you want to be anti-fascist, great, I'm right there with you, but that means you have to tolerate disagreement when it's presented rationally, at least enough to engage with it rationally, instead of dismissing it with trite little catchphrases like "that's just lawyering."

It seems you're the one who doesn't know the meaning of "aesthetic." Aesthetics are surface-level appearances. If something is purely aesthetic (or should I say solely), then it's superficial. But an aesthetic can go hand-in-hand with function or ideation. An aesthetic can emerge organically.

There's always an aesthetic, so criticizing something for having an aesthetic falls short. Criticize things for having a sanitized aesthetic divorced from the philosophy or politics of the movement it represents, sure. If you go around dressing lile Little Bo Peep but you bought the costume on Etsy because you don't even know how to sew, that's not cottagecore. That's Little House on the Prairie cosplay.

That doesn't say anything about cottagecore as a movement, anymore than someone wearing plastic "steampunk" goggles with useless gears to a convention says anything about "steampunk." It's just an appropriated aesthetic.

IMO if you're using it as supplemental to your way of life, it's aesthetic to me, in that it's a hobby, and not political.

That's not what aesthetic means. An amateur golfer wearing sperries, chinos, and a polo isn't doing it just for the aesthetic. He has the aesthetic, sure, and if he wasn't a golfer you could say he's cosplaying as one. But if golfing is just a hobby to him, that doesn't mean he's only doing it for the aesthetic.

If someone mends their own clothing or has a cottage business, that supplements their way of life, yes. That's more than a hobby. It might not be political, but it's certainly more than an aesthetic.

In fact the closer to political you get, the closer you tend to get to the kind of libertarian, ecofascist, white supremacist ideology.

That sounds like an assumption. You can cherrypick a few examples, sure. Someone could also try equating punk with fascism by cherrypicking a few examples of neonazis. It would be a false equivalency, and those neonazis would get their asses kicked if they showed up at most punk venues.

Cottagecore has been integral to black history, whether they know it or not. They might not call it that, but part of poverty is that you learn to make do with what you have, do more with less. You learn to mend your own clothing, make food from scratch. Maybe they don't dress like this is Tudor England, but the underlying philosophy is there, even if they think about it in different terms. So calling it close to white supremacy is kinda wild.

And it's pretty funny that you would share a youtube link right after preaching about politics as a lifestyle...