Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

[Fozzledick]

Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

***
Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.


Moral boundaries

But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375

[RKP5637]

1. None of this is by chance, the tRump cult knows exactly what they are doing. n/t

[bdamomma]

2. this was pre-planned by

Russia, and finding a willing vessel/accomplice and that is Trump.

[RKP5637]

5. Yep! And so many Americans are too naive and ignorant to get what is going on, as they play right

into their plans/hands.

[bdamomma]

21. I hate to say this

but when this POS does anything to us physically or mentally, or infringing on our lifestyle then will people rise up. Or is he doing that now????

[RKP5637]

23. ... boiling frog syndrome IMO. ... day by day. n/t

[struggle4progress]

3. I shall not be moved

[Granny M]

6. Thank you!

Love the Pete Seeger one the best of all! It's going to take all of us together to turn this mess around.

[toofold4this]

4. The base eats hate and non-whites and the tyrant loves it

Bottom line for all the fascist's rants is to do things the "dumbed down Americans" love
(inhuman treatment of non-white and women). The democrats calling out the death camps
at the border appear to help the base who love inflicting pain even when the despot created
false issues.

Concentration camps aren't what existed in Germany; they were
death camps. I had relatives exterminated in them and one who I met that
wasn't exterminated (she had the numbers branded on her arm). I remember seeing
them (and where) about 55 years ago; it's not something I've forgotten.

We know "x" reported number of people died. We don't know how many people really
died. The same applies to what happened in Puerto Rico. The despot is responsible
for those deaths because the things wanted to make a point that brown people are
not human beings. Knew that was going to happen before the hurricane hit.

I agree it doesn't matter how many people hate you - no dictator/lunatic does.
I don't even believe the 40% support means anything because foreign adversaries
have been openly invited to hack our elections. I'm
waiting for the next round-up to be tossed in a death camp.

Last point for the "dumbed downs" calling Obama on this. I wasn't a fan of his but voted for him.
Obama held people for a matter of days. The despot is holding them for months without
treating them like humans and without basic human needs filled (medical, etc.). This
is what we've become.

[58Sunliner]

7. Agree completely.

[hibbing]

8. Strong article, no wonder I can't sleep anymore n/t

[yaesu]

9. 40 to 45% of americans are fascist so they will continue to propagate fascism. nt

[Cosmocat]

20. Another good chunk is perfectly fine

Accepting it.

People dont get that over 1/3 of the country does not even bother to take the one or so hour a year to vote.

Our 30% or so really is the only portion that gets it, and fights it.

Its fucking exhausting.

Gotta be unique to all of human kind, an actual for a real democracy and the people are throwing the towel in on it because mega rich and corporations found it so easy to stoke the biases and hatefulness of people effectively enough to have them virulently vote against their own self interests.

[Saviolo]

10. Anyone who has done even the most surface research into fascism are scared.

Fascism is an intrinsically reactionary movement that typically arises to counter increasing left-wing or socialist ideas in a society. Umberto Eco has one of the most deft definitions of fascism:

From an instructive article here:

While Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism," he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features," writes the novelist and semiotician, "cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”

Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”

The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”

The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

[world wide wally]

11. If it benefits Trump, he is all in

He doesn't have a clue how to plan it or execute it, but he is all for it if it elevates him.

[dhill926]

12. not to mention tanks on the National Mall....

and the rest of the military bullshit that went on...they want us to get used to it...it will escalate...

[bdamomma]

22. They want us to fear them

it's all about controlling the masses. I will not do this

[yellerpup]

13. They wouldn't be breaking laws like they are

if they weren't sure the election was in the bag.

[AlexSFCA]

14. if cultured and educated german population was susceptible to fascism

then Americans are made for this.

[sharedvalues]

15. Love Fintan O'Toole

[warmfeet]

16. The USA has been courting

fascism for a few decades now.

Time to break it off!

The longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes.

[rownesheck]

17. Watch

Black KKKlansman.

[malaise]

18. The sad truth is that it is the Western powers who have orchestrated the trial runs

in other countries.
Until Americans and other wake up and see what your government and other Western powers have done in other countries, you won't understand or make the connection with what is happening at home.

[Grasswire2]

19. kick nt