This is how Fascism begins….

Rideback
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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Fun CH
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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Rideback wrote: Wed May 31, 2023 7:15 am The attacks on the institutions
https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.c ... email=true
You posted a link to Another opinion "story" in the echo chamber.

Quote:

"He corruptly fired FBI Director James Comey way back in 2017, prompting the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. "

While the firing of Comey did lead to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, quote from PBS reporting:

"William Brangham:

Mueller's report concludes that the evidence doesn't establish that the termination of Comey was designed to cover up a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Mueller says there's substantial evidence that the catalyst, the thing that pushed the president to do it, was Comey's unwillingness to tell the public that the president wasn't under investigation."

Also keep in mind that many Democrats wanted Comey out after he announced an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails weeks before the 2016 election, which is not standard procedure and likely influenced the election.

GOP Mike Pence supports the FBI so the premise is not a majority opinion.

Also keep in mind the outrage the left had when Portland BLM protesters were being snatched up off the streets by unmarked vans.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... l-arrests/

And I'm old enough to remember the files the FBI kept on Vietnam era protesters.

So now when it benefits the left, the FBI is a trusted Institution? When was it ever, says the ghost of J Edgar Hoover.

If I were you guys, I'd try to figure out how to keep from losing independent voters who are sick of all this partisan nonsense.

Perhaps it would be better to focus on the good things the Democratic party, is doing at the moment, and not play into Trumps game.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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mister_coffee
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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Just a thought here.

Fascists and their ilk are notoriously thin-skinned. Which is why almost all fascists are big on
lese majeste laws or their equivalent.

On the other hand, most of our better presidents (e.g. Lincoln or Roosevelt) were mercilessly mocked by their opposition. Even amongst the next tier down (Truman, Eisenhower, Obama) they were also treated roughly by the press and the opposition. That level of mocking seems to do them little harm.

Bluntly being a public official in a democracy is a largely thankless job, and you should expect pretty vicious criticism, being blamed for things you have no control over, and little credit for the good you manage to do. That's why you get paid the big bucks and get all of the prestige, power, and responsibility.

Also note that elected officials are in charge. That means they are responsible for what happens on their watch. There is a difference between being in charge and in control. Fascists don't seem to understand that.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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just-jim wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 8:05 pm
This is why it is important to a) keep pointing out the logical fallacies, b) resist the attempts to make any of this bs appear to be ‘normal’ politics, and c) call out and belittle these efforts. Entirely. All the time. Endlessly.

Jim Archambeault
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Jim, many on the left are normalizing Trumps behavior.As I've pointed out in the past you are a part of that process by your use of (and the lefts use of) derogatory language to demonize the "others". Hillary Clinton did exactly that demonization of the others by calling them "deplorable", and look at the result. Your tactics are NOT working as we become more divided.

Calling our fellow citizens on right facists, racists or cult members, just to name a few popular insults, is not pointing out a logical fallacy, it is a logical fallacy.

The left is not going to win support for their ideas by constantly doing battle with the right using your tactics. When you demonize others, that is a fascist ideology.

Calling someone a racist or a fascist is not an argument and that is exactly the behavior of Trump. Mimicking Trump normalizes that behavior but that's something the left just does not understand. Do better, be better.

Consider these quotes from leftist social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

"If you are in a university that puts you into interaction with diverse ideas, that makes you smarter. You can solve more problems. You become a more critical thinker. The more you hang out with people who think like you, especially if they enforce orthodoxy, the lower your IQ gets.”

"Social media is not real communication. It’s an excuse to show off your gang signs.”

"if you think it's virtuous to always be fighting, in the long run, you are harming your own side"

"More commonly in the U.S., tribalism manifests in politics and culture. We view life as left versus right, good versus evil, us versus them. This sort of thinking leads people to cut out members of their families for voting on the wrong political candidate, and it creates echo chambers that are so deep and impenetrable that we have no idea what’s happening outside our own bubbles. "

https://www.thestranger.com/books/2019/ ... optimistic

Well since Jim has announced he has me on ignor and closed his mind to new ideas, he may not read this and his Echo chamber is secure.

Research points out diversity makes us smarter, and I'd add, stronger as a Nation.

Fighting hate with hate only results in more hate.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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Yep, you dont have to look too far to find an example…..

Today, lying, guilty, shi*t-bird, Depends donnie says that; on day one of his new administration, he’ll make it illegal for US born children of immigrants and asylum-seekers to hold US citizenship.
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https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/stat ... ilipkowski
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Guilty fat-azz fascist donnie thinks the 14th Amendment, law for 150+ years, now…. “All persons BORN or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside….” Doesn’t apply to his contemplated rule.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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This is what Fascism and Totalitarianism looks like…..

About a week ago, a Spokane “minister” preached the following. These events have been widely reported and video can be seen on social media (twitter, et al). https://www.newsweek.com/video-pastor-s ... al-1801663

This minister’s calls were that:
-All LGBTQ people should be put to death,
-Parents of kids wanting sexual re-assignment treatment should be ‘shot in the back of the head and hanged from a bridge’,
-Federal troops should be dispatched to WA State to arrest WA lawmakers,
-People should then stone WA lawmakers

This is EXACTLY how Fascist/Totalitarian efforts began and part of what lead the world down the path of accepting fascism and totalitarianism in the period between WW1 and WW - 1915-1940. Then, it was a case of people being either amused - or only mildly scared of, or just sort put off - by Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, but few standing up against it. “Oh, he’s just a buffoon, he won’t last” was applied to Mussolini. As for Hitler - ‘Well, he might be a bit mad, but hey, the trains run on time’. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought ‘oh, he’ll be satisfied if we let him have Austria and Czechoslovakia’. By the time he invaded Poland it was too late.

If you read much about the rise of totalitarianism and dictators - Hannah Arendt and Timothy Snyder are historians to start with - there are major tenets of fascism worth noting.

One, as Rideback pointed out elsewhere, is the Big Lie. “Russia Hoax”, “Stolen Election” need to be repeated over and over and over. “If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will come to believe it”, said Joseph Goebbels.

‘Make America Great AGAIN’ is a classic, also, as Mr Coffee points out. This harkening back to the ‘good ol days’ is required. It’s what current dictators like Orban, Lula, Maduro and Lukashenko keep reinforcing.

Another is the idea of The Other. Timothy Snyder says it pretty well (paraphrasing here): ‘fascism ascribes ALL agency to THE OTHERS and that therefore absolves the fascist of responsibility for their own actions’. ‘THEY are making me do this’, ‘THEY are making me act this way’, ‘THEY are….’.
So we end with things like ‘The blacks in the BLM marches are……’, ‘The Jews (George Soros) are behind the Manhattan DA…’, ‘The gays and the trans people are sexualizing our kids so we must….’, ‘The University professors are teaching dangerous ideas, so we must deny them tenure,’ ‘The globalists want to do x, therefore we must…’

Heather Cox Richardson said it quite well in a column from early April. She says, in part (my emphasis in one spot);

“The position of those embracing a post-liberal order is a far cry from the Reagan Republicans’ claim to want small government and free markets. The new ideologues want a strong government to enforce their religious values on American society, and they reject those of both parties who support democratic norms—for it is those very norms they see as destructive. They urge their leaders to “dare to rule.”

Those who call for a new post-liberal order want to “reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” as Christopher Rufo put it after Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed him to the board of New College as part of a mission to turn the progressive school into a right-wing bastion. “If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory,” Rufo told Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times, “we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States.”

To spur that process, Republicans have turned to so-called culture wars, but as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo notes, issues are becoming heated not in some vague way, but because Republicans are deliberately making normal processes partisan to destroy consensus about them. So, for example, Rufo pushed the idea that the legal framework “critical race theory” was being pushed in public agencies and public schools in order, he told Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker, “to politicize the bureaucracy.” He hoped to “take some of these essentially corrupted state agencies and then contest them, and then create rival power centers within them.”

The Republican attacks on Bragg reflect this process. They are quite deliberately destroying public faith in the justice system, declaring Trump’s looming indictment a political attack even before we know what’s in it, and attributing the indictment to a single man—a Black man— rather than to a jury of ordinary citizens. That attack, as Raskin pointed out, is their own attempt to politicize the Department of Justice and then take it over.

It is important to understand the pattern behind these attacks on American institutions. They are not piecemeal; they are a larger attack on democracy itself. Republicans are wrong, not only in their attacks on Bragg, but also in their premise that liberal democracy is immoral. It has not destroyed families or communities, or ended self-sacrifice: just the opposite” https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ril-1-2023

A quote from Hannah Arendt sums it up; “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt - The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.

This is why it is important to a) keep pointing out the logical fallacies, b) resist the attempts to make any of this bs appear to be ‘normal’ politics, and c) call out and belittle these efforts. Entirely. All the time. Endlessly.

Jim Archambeault
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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Quote from article: "Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘"

Both sides accuse each other of being facist and both sides have a legitimate concern.

Many on the extreme left wanted to force vaccinations during the pandamic depriving citizens of the right to decide what medical care is best for their bodies.

Many on the extreme right are similarly interfering with civil liberties by making women into criminals who leave their State seeking the right to decide what's best for their bodies.

There are of course other wedge issues like gun, trans and educational rights under fire.

Here are a few slogans detailing the divide.
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If only we could discuss these issues without involving derogatory name calling trying to demonize the other side. That's just not right.
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mister_coffee
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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References:

"1984" by George Orwell
"It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis
"Parable of the Talents" by Octavia Butler

Bonus: the President in Ms. Butler's book uses the slogan "Make America Great Again." Her book was published in 1998.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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One thing that was noted on Twitter yesterday was a contrast between Trump's and Biden's memorial day tweets. It was pointed out that its not proper to wish a "happy" memorial day because its a solemn day of remembrance. For many people who lost a friend or family member in the military service of our country its a rather sad and painful day.

Here are those two tweets.
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FxTKjXvacAEwoCY.jpeg
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This is how Fascism begins….

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Heather Cox Richardson’s column, today, Memorial Day. It’s a good history lesson. And a reminder….
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https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-29-2023
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Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” And if “we want to make certain that fascism does not come to America, we must make certain that it does not thrive anywhere in the world.”

Seventy-eight years after the publication of “FASCISM!” with its program for recognizing that political system and stopping it from taking over the United States, President Joe Biden today at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, honored those who gave their lives fighting to preserve democracy. “On this day, we come together again to reflect, to remember, but above all, to recommit to the future our fallen heroes fought for, …a future grounded in freedom, democracy, equality, tolerance, opportunity, and…justice.”

“[T]he truest memorial to their lives,” the president said, is to act “every day to ensure that our democracy endures, our Constitution endures, and the soul of our nation and our decency endures.”
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