2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumFascism can't be acceptable
When a group supporting one candidate forces others to leave or shut down a site because they are intolerant of other views, why is this not called what it is? These acts are being openly celebrated when they should be ashamed and condemned. The worst part, people are paid to do this. They are not "correcting" the record. They are bullying and intimidating others.
Censoring others is not the answer. This can't be tolerated. Is this the beginning of the end for our once proud and brave country?
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Arneoker
(375 posts)Cats will consort with dogs...
qdouble
(891 posts)[img][/img]
Response to TrueDemVA (Original post)
rjsquirrel This message was self-deleted by its author.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...that is today in the USA. Bertram Gross saw it coming in 1980:
Before Pruneface Ronnie made his first deal with the Ayatollah, the great professor understood how money and power work, intertwined, to muzzle dissent:
Friendly Fascism - The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
EXCERPT...
Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and other countries of the so-called "free world."
[font color="red"]The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership.[/font color] This drift leads down the road toward a new and subtly manipulative form of corporatist serfdom. The phrase "friendly fascism" helps distinguish this possible future from the patently vicious corporatism of classic fascism in the past of Germany, Italy and Japan. It also contrasts with the friendly present of the dependent fascisms propped up by the U.S. government in El Salvador, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines and elsewhere.
The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others. This trend goes beyond mere reaction to authoritarianism. It transcends the activities of progressive groups or movements and their use of formal democratic machinery. It is nourished by establishment promises-too often rendered false-of more human rights, civil rights and civil liberties. It is embodied in larger values of community, sharing, cooperation, service to others and basic morality as contrasted with crass materialism and dog-eat-dog competition. It affects power relations in the household, workplace, community, school, church, synagogue, and even the labyrinths of private and public bureaucracies. It could lead toward a truer democracy-and for this reason is bitterly fought...
These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly industrialized capitalism. The unfolding logic of friendly fascist corporatism is rooted in "capitalist society's transnational growth and the groping responses to mounting crises in a dwindling capitalist world". [font color="red"]Mind management and sophisticated repression become more attractive to would-be oligarchs when too many people try to convert democratic promises into reality.[/font color] On the other hand, the alternative logic of true democracy is rooted in "humankind's long history of resistance to unjustified privilege" and in spontaneous or organized "reaction (other than fright or apathy) to concentrated power...and inequality, injustice or coercion".
A few years ago too many people closed their eyes to the indicators of the first tendency.
But events soon began to change perceptions.
CONTINUED...
link:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html
Thank you for grokking, TrueDemVA!
reddread
(6,896 posts)until the checks cash.
LexVegas
(6,091 posts)NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)VulgarPoet
(2,872 posts)eom