This is how Fascism begins….

just-jim
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by just-jim »

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Heather Cox Richardson’s piece - July 17. WORTH reading.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... dium=email

“A story in the New York Times today by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman outlined how former president Donald Trump and his allies are planning to create a dictatorship if voters return him to power in 2024. The article talks about how Trump and his loyalists plan to “centralize more power in the Oval Office” by “increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”

They plan to take control over independent government agencies and get rid of the nonpartisan civil service, purging all but Trump loyalists from the U.S. intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Defense Department. They plan to start “impounding funds,” that is, ignoring programs Congress has funded if those programs aren’t in line with Trump’s policies.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and who now advises the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. They envision a “president” who cannot be checked by the Congress or the courts.

Trump’s desire to grab the mechanics of our government and become a dictator is not new; both scholars and journalists have called it out since the early years of his administration. What is new here is the willingness of so-called establishment Republicans to support this authoritarian power grab.

Behind this initiative is “Project 2025,” a coalition of more than 65 right-wing organizations putting in place personnel and policies to recommend not just to Trump, but to any Republican who may win in 2024. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, once considered a conservative think tank, that helped to lead the Reagan revolution.

A piece by Alexander Bolton in The Hill today said that Republican senators are “worried” by the MAGAs, but they have been notably silent in public at a time when every elected leader should be speaking out against this plot. Their silence suggests they are on board with it, as Trump apparently hoped to establish.

The party appears to have fully embraced the antidemocratic ideology advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who argue that the post–World War II era, in which democracy seemed to triumph, is over. They claim that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, a market-based economy, immigration, and so on—weaken a nation by destroying a “traditional” society based in patriarchy and Christianity.

Instead of democracy, they have called for “illiberal” or “Christian” democracy, which uses the government to enforce their beliefs in a Christian, patriarchal order. What that looks like has a clear blueprint in the actions of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has gathered extraordinary power into his own hands in the state and used that power to mirror Orbán’s destruction of democracy.

DeSantis has pushed through laws that ban abortion after six weeks, before most people know they’re pregnant; banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity (the “Don’t Say Gay” law); prevented recognition of transgender individuals; made it easier to sentence someone to death; allowed people to carry guns without training or permits; banned colleges and businesses from conversations about race; exerted control over state universities; made it harder for his opponents to vote, and tried to punish Disney World for speaking out against the Don’t Say Gay law. After rounding up migrants and sending them to other states, DeSantis recently has called for using “deadly force” on migrants crossing unlawfully.

Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are both “weaponized” against Republicans. It doesn’t matter that they don’t seem to have any evidence of bias: the very fact that those institutions support democracy mean they support a system that right-wing Republicans see as hostile.

“Our current executive branch,” Trump loyalist John McEntee, who is in charge of planning to pack the government with Trump loyalists, told the New York Times reporters, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

It has taken decades for the modern-day Republican Party to get to a place where it rejects democracy. The roots of that rejection lie all the way back in the 1930s, when Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure. That system ushered in a period from 1933 to 1981 that economists call the “Great Compression,” when disparities of income and wealth were significantly reduced, especially after the government also began to protect civil rights.

Members of both parties embraced this modern government in this period, and Americans still like what it accomplished. But businessmen who hated regulation joined with racists who hated federal protection of civil rights and traditionalists who opposed women’s rights and set out to destroy that government.

In West Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend, at the Turning Points Action Conference, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) compared President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs, which invested in “education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and big labor and labor unions.” She noted that under Biden, the U.S. has made “the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.”

Well, yeah.

Greene incorrectly called this program “socialism,” which in fact means government ownership of production, as opposed to the government’s provision of benefits people cannot provide individually, a concept first put into practice in the United States by Abraham Lincoln and later expanded by leadership in both parties. The administration has stood firmly behind the idea—shared by LBJ and FDR, and also by Republicans Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, among others—that investing in programs that enable working people to prosper is the best way to strengthen the economy.

Certainly, Greene’s speech didn’t seem to be the “gotcha” that she apparently hoped. A March 2023 poll by independent health policy pollster KFF, for example, found that 80% of Americans like Social Security, 81% like Medicare, and 76% like Medicaid, a large majority of members of all political parties.

The White House Twitter account retweeted a clip of Greene’s speech, writing: “Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families.””
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just-jim
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by just-jim »

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An opinion piece by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, who writes in the Guardian,

Five reasons why tiny guilty donnie (and some of the rep party) view’s ARE fascist, they:

- reject democracy and rule of law
- rage against cultural elites
- embrace Nationalism based on historic blood and race
- extoll brute strength
- disdain women and differing sexual identities

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ty-fascism
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Fun CH
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:53 am You're right Chris, Pelosi's attacker used a hammer. My bad.
So I'll give you a moment to gloat.
Now, again, look at the difference in the reaction to the attack on Steve Scalise and the attack on Paul Pelosi. Pretty much says it all because you can't call the responses the same.

https://time.com/6226946/paul-pelosi-at ... discourse/

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/the-r ... -shooting/
you forgot to mention that Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced that violence against Paul Pelosi.

Also consider the majority of Voters in this country are independent, not affiliated with either party. Why do you think that is? And no I'm not gloating. Did my choice of words indicate that?

"Morality is difficult. As Haidt writes on his website, "It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth."

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gu ... ous-minds/

And this one again.

"Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say." J. Haidt
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding--Nick Lowe
Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

You're right Chris, Pelosi's attacker used a hammer. My bad.
So I'll give you a moment to gloat.
Now, again, look at the difference in the reaction to the attack on Steve Scalise and the attack on Paul Pelosi. Pretty much says it all because you can't call the responses the same.

https://time.com/6226946/paul-pelosi-at ... discourse/

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/the-r ... -shooting/
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2023 5:23 am The Rep comeback is always, hey look at the guy who shot Steve Scalise. So, ok, go ahead and do that. Notice the complete difference of the Dem reaction from the Rep reaction, then note how many years ago that was and that the intervening many years has seen instead Rep violence become commonplace.

There's no whataboutisms in your example.

The guy who shot Paul Pelosi was Canadian. And though Canadian he does represent the Qanon crowd as well as the Rep led Trump crowd that has called for her to be hung, the J6 crowd that sought her out with violent intent, the commonplace mantras of hate and violence against Pelosi from Fox, Trump, Newsmax, OAN and the Rep members of the House. The Conservative values that the Paul Pelosi attacker didn't represent died a long time ago. They are no longer the Party of law and order. But Nancy Pelosi sure represents the values of the Progressive Liberals so we take that attack as one against us.
Pelosi was hit with a hammer, not shot.

The point is don't blame the party for the violent actions of a very, very small number of people with extreme ideologies.

Unless you believe that the guy that shot up that ball field full of Republicans represents you and liberal values.Does he represent your values?
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding--Nick Lowe
Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

The Rep comeback is always, hey look at the guy who shot Steve Scalise. So, ok, go ahead and do that. Notice the complete difference of the Dem reaction from the Rep reaction, then note how many years ago that was and that the intervening many years has seen instead Rep violence become commonplace.

There's no whataboutisms in your example.

The guy who shot Paul Pelosi was Canadian. And though Canadian he does represent the Qanon crowd as well as the Rep led Trump crowd that has called for her to be hung, the J6 crowd that sought her out with violent intent, the commonplace mantras of hate and violence against Pelosi from Fox, Trump, Newsmax, OAN and the Rep members of the House. The Conservative values that the Paul Pelosi attacker didn't represent died a long time ago. They are no longer the Party of law and order. But Nancy Pelosi sure represents the values of the Progressive Liberals so we take that attack as one against us.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 8:02 pm There you go again talking about poll workers being threatened by 'both sides'.
that's not what I said.


So that guy that shot up a softball field full of Republican legislators, do you think he represents liberal (left) values just because he may have been a registered democrat or claim to be a liberal?

Or was he just an extremely disturbed person?

Do you think the guy who hammered Nancy Polusi's husband represents conservative values?

Or was he just an extremely disturbed person?

Perhaps we need to stop saying Replubicans are doing the violence or Democrats are doing the violence when its really just disturbed people inspired by a false reality.

In other words maybe not blame one party or the other for the violent actions of disturbed people.

To me that's just more partisan BS.
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Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

There you go again talking about poll workers being threatened by 'both sides'.

Reviewing reports of poll workers being threatened we see extremes from the Right - look at the court case now against Trump by the two GA poll workers.

VS that extremism is not documented from the Liberal side.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

What the are you going on about Jim?

The facts are that both sides have people with extreme views who attach themselves to a political party, but they do not actually represent the values of that party. Both Democrat and Republican politicians as well as ordinary citizens such as poll workers receive death threats.

You can Mamo jumbo the reasoning all you want, we're just looking at facts here.

Now I switch to opinion:Unfortunately politicians stir them up but I doubt any politician except for the most extreme support the notion of death threats against an opponent.

See the difference between opinion and fact?
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding--Nick Lowe
Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by just-jim »

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A good explanation by Heather C Richardson of why the ‘both sides’ argument is b.s.
Claiming both sides ‘do it’ or both sides ‘are guilty of it’ is just, frankly, intellectually dishonest. And it’s lazy person thinking….

In part (my emphasis at the end):

+….CNN has parted ways with Chris Licht, its chief executive officer and chair, who had sought to move the network to what he considered the center of American politics. He had done so by highlighting “both sides” of today’s political arguments, firing leading journalists he thought too far on the left and centering Trump in a town hall that became the former president’s triumphant reentry to the political stage as he lied and bullied the interviewer. Some pundits have taken Licht’s fall as a sign that there is no longer a powerful center in American politics, but my own guess is the opposite: that most of us want news based in reality rather than media giving platforms to people who are openly lying.

Yale scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder today applied this idea to coverage of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine, which has rained down humanitarian, ecological, and economic disaster on Ukrainians as they appear to be launching a counteroffensive to the Russian invasion of their country.

Snyder warned journalists not to “bothsides” the story by offering equal time to both sides. “What Russian spokespersons have said has almost always been untrue, whereas what Ukrainian spokespersons have said has largely been reliable. The juxtaposition suggests a false equality,” he wrote. “The story doesn't start at the moment the dam explodes. For the last fifteen months Russia has been killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, whereas Ukraine has been trying to protect its people and the structures that keep them alive.” “Objectivity does not mean treating an event as a coin flip between two public statements,” he said. “It demands thinking about the objects and the settings that readers require for understanding amidst uncertainty.”.
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https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-7-2023
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

@David

If you only exist in an echo chamber, then you may acquire an inaccurate picture of reality. The fringes of both political parties issue death threats that's a fact. .

"But then steel enters his voice. “I am armed. I am dangerous. And I know where you and your staff are.”

That threat against Madison Cawthorn was just one of thousands sent to members of Congress last year"

Carthorn is a Republican.

https://rollcall.com/2022/01/20/rise-in ... h-threats/

So yea, let's not pretend this is a one-sided issue.

Polls give a good idea of what members of a political party believe vs what a politician does to appeal to a small minority of their voters who have a significant impact on their re-election.

Let's not judge our fellow citizens by the actions of a few on the extreme.

An open mind requires that a person leave the echo chamber once in awhile and listen.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by PAL »

Best commentary so far David and Rideback. It's not the labels, it's what the person does.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by mister_coffee »

I don't get what is accomplished by arguing about labels very much.

Of course Trump and the 2023 Model Republican Party aren't exactly like the Nazi Party. Of course there are differences between Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and the future that Republicans are advocating for the United States. Of course there are. You can always find some differences because the social and political contexts are so dramatically different. The United States is a far wealthier, far more diverse, and far more technologically advanced than either 1920s Italy or 1930s Germany were. It was nearly a century ago, for pete's sake.

The fact remains that what the Republicans seem to be advocating for this country are repugnant to me, and also seem to be repugnant to a lot of other decent people. And the tactics they are willing to use to advance their agenda also are repulsive.

This is not a "both sides do it" situation. Not even remotely. Yes, there are people on "both sides" who sometimes say stupid and intemperate things. But that's about where any similarity ends. During the early days of the pandemic I very much doubt that it was radical leftists who were making anonymous death threats against public health officials, and it wasn't Democratic elected officials who ignored or downplayed or even defended those death threats (this happened right here in Okanogan County, and it seems to slip everyone's mind). And again when kooks were threatening to attack public vaccination events, which happened right here in the Methow in Spring of 2021, I can be 99 percent certain that it wasn't liberals or socialists who were making those threats. You can't even do the mental contortions to come up with even a remotely plausible parallel situation.

David Frum sums it up well in this __Atlantic__ article ( https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... oz/672771/ ):
This is not a “both sides” story. Democratic candidates don’t try to energize their base by “owning the conservatives”; that’s just not a phrase you hear. The Democratic coalition is bigger and looser than the Republican coalition, and it’s not clear that Democrats even have an obvious “base” the way that Republicans do. The people who heeded Representative Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Joe Biden in South Carolina do not necessarily have much in common with those who knocked on doors for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign. Trying to energize all of the Democratic Party’s many different “bases” with deliberate offensiveness against perceived cultural adversaries would likely fizzle at best, and backfire at worst. On the Republican side, however, the politics of performance can be—or seem—rewarding, at least in the short run.
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

Stephen King:
'Book banners, after all, insist that the entire community should see things their way, and only their way. When a book is banned, a whole set of thoughts is locked behind the assertion that there is only one valid set of values, one valid set of beliefs, one valid perception of the world.
It's a scary idea especially in a society which has been built on the ideas of freedom of choice and freedom of thought.'
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

The Vox article was written in 2020 before the election and J6, so it doesn't have the benefit of how hard he worked to steal the election, but if you read the article fully it delineates that he exhibits a penchant towards violence, authoritarian traits but is not the 'leader' of a fascist govt. That's all good background, but leaves out his intent and if read his tweets, listen to his rally speeches and the testimony of people like Cucchinelli it's clear that he may not want to be the next incarnation of Hitler or Mussellini but he does want to rule by dictatorship.

So, the important takeaway is to recognize the process that we're mired in and who it is that is threatening this democracy.

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/are-tr ... -fascists/
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

We are talking about whether Trump and his followers are Fascists. Seems they are not, but still dangerous to women and LGBTQ rights. Using the word "fascist" is just a tactic to demonize the other side, plain and simple. And as I pointed out earlier, the leader of the democratic party wants to end this divisiveness. What part of that don't you get?

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/are-tr ... -fascists/

"Jonathan Zatlin, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of history, is teaching Comparative European Fascism, about Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and similar regimes that trafficked in violence, racism, and repression. He says critics of Trumpers fling “fascist” facilely and without historical reference. "

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... nald-trump

"Is Donald Trump a fascist?"

"At that point, the Muslim ban proposal, I contacted five fascism experts and asked them if Trump qualified. They all said no. Every one of them stated that to be a fascist, one must support the revolutionary, usually violent overthrow of the entire government/Constitution, and reject democracy entirely. In 2015, none were comfortable saying Trump went that far. He was too individualist for the inherently collectivist philosophy of fascism, and not sufficiently committed to the belief that violence is good for its own sake, as a vital cleansing force."
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

What your comment is missing is the difference between public opinion polling and what the Rep Party is actually doing. We see the same discrepancy in women's rights and the abortion issue. High polling approval for women's rights in the abortion issue yet Rep Congress and state legislatures are passing more and more draconian measures. Same goes for gun rights. Americans poll a distinct desire to get better gun control but Rep vote down or don't even allow votes on measures that would meet that desire.
In other words, they vote for power rather than representation. That's a fascist element.

Book bans are rampant, of course looking first to Ron DeSantis' Florida where he takes it multiple steps further with his restructuring college curriculums. But he's only one Red state, there's many following suit.

https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/5/2 ... -book-bans
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

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Rideback wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 6:13 am There are several kinds of attacks that are hanging over us. The first (yes the first) is from the Right. They have demonstrated a clear desire to exclude civil rights from various sectors of the population; whether it be banning books,
Hmmm. CBS poll says otherwise.
book-bans-by-party.png
Unless Books deal with LBGTQ issues then the numbers increase among GOP favoring school book bans. And remember these are school book bans. I don't think that you can take minority opinions or what's being done in a few overreactive school districts and apply them to the whole group and then feel justified in calling them fascists.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-p ... l-primary/

The Mukilteo School District, (Mukilteo voted 58% Democratic in the last presidential election) pulled "To Kill a Mockingbird" from its required reading list. Some called that a book ban but they did move it to their recommended reading. Still because of the racial slurs that book status changed in that particular School District. Are they fascists also?
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

As HCR pointed out in the original piece of this thread, it is critically important to identify fascism whenever and however it arrives, which is why, as she points out, the soldiers we sent into WW2 were given a heads up about propaganda and how it works. Without knowledge of what it was they were facing and why we were entering a war to fight it there is the danger of being sucked into movement because there can be an appeal to having a govt just step up and take care of things. Democracy can be exhausting because it asks for participation.

So, in order to preserve democracy, no matter how noisy, messy, dark or exhausting it is we have to be informed and act because we know that fascism is an alternative. It's arrived before.

There are several kinds of attacks that are hanging over us. The first (yes the first) is from the Right. They have demonstrated a clear desire to exclude civil rights from various sectors of the population; whether it be banning books, curtailing a woman's right to choose what is best for her own body, making it harder and harder for people of color to vote, making it harder for college students to vote, refusing to protect citizenry by adopting legislation that bans assault weaponry, and on and on.

Then there are the attacks by the Right on our institutions. Remembering the methodology of fascism, the Right has been associating the the FBI, DoJ, EPA, CIA, IRS to name a few with the Dark State, just like the Liberal Media. All slogans that become substitutes for real conversations. Trump's notorious comments to Jim Comey where he pushed Comey to declare his loyalty to Trump rather than to the rule of law comes to mind. He and his supporters in Congress want to weaken the democratic institutions as a means to replace them with authoritarian rule.

Likewise, the Right focuses on attacking science. After all, science disproves their fossil fuel donors' premise that climate change is not manmade. Science gets in the way of authoritarian rule by fascist means. And the weather caused disasters are piling up the $ lost and the means to make families whole again.

We also have attacks coming at us from global economic challenges, from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it's done to the wheat supply as well as oil and gas, we face India and China with a myriad of economic and defense worries, the seas are all at risk now not just from climate change but from a defense posture because we have so much trade over the seas and our navy after WW2 promised to protect the traffic.

There's much on our plate, these are stressful times and frustration builds when most watch political games wasting the precious little time we have. But peering through the frustration is important because the bigger picture of where all this leads & what the noise is covering up is the worst case scenario of a fascist state.

This is how Trump speaks to his crowds. I don't know how everyone else looks at this speech but for me the man doesn't represent a democratic ideal. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060238/ ... Wld_scyPTc
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Fun CH »

This whole thread of course is here as another one of Jim's countless tired attacks on the right. The implication of course is that you on the right are Fascists.

I want you to know that Jim and a small local minority are not representative of the majority of people on the left. We are tired of this back and forth between the two extremes of our parties.

Most Americans desire to work together.From 2020 talking about a divided America.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads ... al-divide/

"Americans both see this problem and want to address it. Overwhelming majorities of both Trump (86%) and Biden (89%) supporters surveyed this fall said that their preferred candidate, if elected, should focus on addressing the needs of all Americans, “even if it means disappointing some of his supporters.”

Even President Biden was asking the extreme left to stop to demonization..

"In his speech, President-elect Biden vowed to “work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did” and called on “this grim era of demonization in America” to come to an end"

But Jim and his minority ilk don't seem to be getting that message.Notice how he mixes opinion with historical facts as if those facts somehow make the opinions true.

"Am I bugging you I don't mean to bug you."--Bono
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by just-jim »

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I was thinking more about this topic, and went into an ‘internet dive’….reading various things.

I stumbled across this. From Umberto Eco, Italian novelist and philosopher (1932-2016). His most recognizable works are probably the novels, ‘The Name of the Rose’ and ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’. I had read these, but didnt know much about him.

He was about 10 when Italy allied with Germany and entered WW2. His insights are fascinating!
He calls it ‘Ur-Facism’. His discussion - and the 14 features it exhibits - among them:

- implies the rejection of modernism
- action for action’s sake,
- For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason,
- Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference,
- The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies,
- For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare.
- Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons — doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

And more: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... ur-fascism
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

I've been a big fan of his for years now and I agree with your wife, The Road to Unfreedom is a must read. Bloodlands is a complicated slog to get through but worth the history lessons. Hannah Arendt will always be the great voice of wisdom and her insights make for a slow read just because they make every reader pause.

What Tim Snyder's Substack and his frequent youtubes and, of course, his books do is bring the reader context with history and boy does history ever count with the events of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bloodlands is an apt descriptor.
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by just-jim »

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I read Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” in high school 55 years ago - which is a little remarkable now that I think about. I read it again a few years later for a college history course. It is likely the most most important, and seminal, work about 20th century dictators. I’m re-reading it again, albeit very slowly and with difficulty. It is a looong, hard read.

A few years ago, watching TV in the UK, I first learned about Timothy Snyder, Yale History professor. He’s not only become one of the best Historians of Eastern Europe and the Ukraine/Russia war….he’s an astute observer of all of Eastern Europe (he speaks 10 of those languages). He flies to Kyiv and has the ear of Zelenskyy. Here is that UK TV interview – on one of the UK’s non-BBC TV channels - from 2000. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OwrH_HEZQnc In the very first minutes of the above piece, he says: “…the moment where we move to offense is where democracy really is in trouble. …if we don’t understand that democracy, or more fundamentally, the rule of law requires constant human effort, among other things, at reasonability…..”. Even if you dont care about him or his writings this is WELL worth watching!

More about him: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_D._Snyder

Ive gone on to read more by him. ‘On Tyranny’ is probably his most known work, a small book of short essays on the topic. My wife just finished “The Road to Unfreedom”….more on the subject of the rise of fascist dictators. She was enthralled by it. I scored a copy of his work on the Holocaust - “Black Earth” - at the recent book sale!

‘Bloodlands’ is Snyders work on Eastern Europe – and the rise of Stalin and Hitler- between WW1 and WW2. I’m starting it as my next read. It is the September selection, locally, for Bill Hottell’s history book club.

After reading some about Snyder ….last winter we enjoyed watching his entire 2022 fall term Yale lecture series on Ukrainian history. It was incredible – very insightful (and sort of amazing that you can watch an entire semester of a course from one of the most expensive Universities for free). Check it out…20+ episodes, about 50 minutes each. Whole series here: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh ... Eg8OESGiSM. And, the syllabus and reading list for that course. https://snyder.substack.com/p/syllabus- ... ture-class

I have not delved into his substack writings, yet.

A repeat reminder: “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
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Rideback
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by Rideback »

Your quote of why Comey was fired deals with another subject, it does exonerate Trump from firing Trump, nor did Mueller's statement exonerate Trump from the act of firing Mueller.

President's have the right to fire a FBI director. The reasons that Trump gave were not in line with the protocols that normally attach to such an action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_James_Comey

Regardless, the point of the thread This is how Fascism begins is to recognize how & why a govt attacks whoever it defines as enemies. Leaders in fascist regimes are bullies, they abuse power to the detriment of their country. Trump is a bully, he has attacked our institutions, he has created and nurtured the us vs them mentality. Firing Comey was a long time ago now but I'm remembering how Comey resisted Trump's request to pledge fealty to him. That's something dictators require of their marshalls. Once Trump realized he couldn't get that pledge from Comey it was only a short time later that Trump wrote the letter firing him.
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mister_coffee
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Re: This is how Fascism begins….

Post by mister_coffee »

So if "both sides do it" where are the examples where the current Democratic administration is purging career federal employees or planning to do so? Are they just sneakier about it or what?
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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