Friday, July 13, 2018

It's Long But It's An Important Read To Remind You What We Are Up Against

The most stupid thing the fascist does these days is trying to repeat a failed experiment in meglomania. Worse yet to try to achieve this with Donald Fucking Trump in charge this time. You retards almost make this too easy. Talk your shit now because everyday of this buffoon will energize those who hate him in ways you can't possible imagine in your worst Hillbilly nightmares. The arc of history always bends towards justice. WE always win in the end. This time lets nip this bullshit in the bud long before it gets to the point where I have to disguise myself (again) to get into enemy occupied territory. But I am not a young man anymore. I would hate to hurt a hip after a bad parachute drop.


Fintan O'Toole wrote this yesterday in The Irish Times:

“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.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

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 forty percent 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 forty percent 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.

 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.

People have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group.

It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.

To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”.

And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious?

Second, the hardcore fans loved it: Fifty-eight percent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.

 This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable.

So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow."

Let us protect our freedom with all our democratic power, and continue to be brave with everything we must face.”
 

11 comments:

notaleftie said...

Just a little clarification Calvin.
Fascism takes guns from citizens.
Fascism takes the freedom of speech away.
Fascism puts the government in full control of business , medical, media and personal rights.
Sounds like the radical left are the fascists to me
Fascism involves centralized control of business through the mechanism of heavy government regulation. Trump is deregulating. Ergo, Trump is not a fascist. He's an anti-fascist. The fascists are the people in the mobs that protest him and break stuff.

Christopher said...

Just to reinforce Calvin's (re)post.

Definition - Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. Sounds like your comment is confusing Fascism with Communism.

Just replace the word Fascism with Trump's Administration and you have identical actions. His war on the press; his dehumanizing of the press, non-US citizens, and the weak (disabled and POW's); his control of the economy (business), not by regulation, but by breaking trade agreements, creating trade wars through tariffs, and delivering tax breaks and business opportunities for the elite and wealthy, are all actions of a controlling, authoritarian despot.

Trump, in every definition of the word, is a Fascist.

Debra She Who Seeks said...

The Trump Administration is undermining everything that is good, just and freedom-enhancing in the USA.

notaleftie said...

Christopher,
"Forcible suppression of opposition" , among other things is exactly what Maher, Hillary, Obama, Hollywood, antifa,Pelosi and most of the left is doing now to all of the right, you only need to go to the campuses of the American universities and how Hollywood treats its conservative actors. Throwing people out of businesses because they have differing political leanings, burning public property because your candidate didn't win, using the government to spy on political opponents. The left still cannot comprehend how Hillary lost with the deck stacked so firmly in her favor. They are suffering severe cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome, thus the 24x7 Trump hate-fest.

notaleftie said...

One more thing Christopher,
Just replace the word Fascism with Obama's Administration and you have identical actions. No war on the press because they were too busy kissing his ass. Obama sabotaged our efforts to stop Hezbollah drug-running; his control of the economy (business), regulation after countless regulation, driving the cost of owning a business through the roof, and giving terrorists pallets of cash are all actions of a controlling, authoritarian despot.
Obama, in every definition of the word, was a Fascist. How this nation survived eight years of this deranged, Marxist twat-waffle is mystery and a miracle.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Thanks Chris, you nailed it. This muppet will never get it because he is still so mad at the Magical Negro who took all his guns and put him into FEMA camps. You don't even know what the terms you are using even mean. I am sorry that a competent black man hurt you so and that a spoiled idiot, who is ACTUALLY hurting you gets a pass. You hillbillies are just fucked up and that is why you are losers. This is why the world laughs at you and protests you. I think we all can do without your contribution to Earth Culture for awhile. Go built your white utopia so you and the rest of your crackers can butt fuck each other without anyone telling YOU what you can and can not do. But no gay marriage if you enjoy it. Remember, you guys are against that because of your fear. You masterbate to your guns for the same reason.

notaleftie said...

Deluded liberal minds thinking alike.

notaleftie said...

Calvin, I am a 49 year old black man (that has never played the race-card, unlike you) you liberal piece of shit.

MDJackson said...

I call bullshit on notaleftie's claim to be black. His profile has no photo to confirm his statement, so it's just so much smelly hot air, as are his other arguments and tortured logic.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

I know I know. It is fun to kick a hillbilly around no matter his color. And that card never works from me because I have known dumbasses from all races of people. Even Inuit have their dull and uninteresting people too.

jester59388 said...

Wow. What alternative reality does notaleftie live in? Dude, if you truly ARE black, then don't you realize you will be among the first that that fuckwad in the White House will geld and ship off to the extermination camps? Don't you realize that "Make America Great Again" is really just a euphemism for "Make America White Again"?

Those of us who live in the sane center -- i.e. those of us who believe in both fiscal accountability AND social responsibility -- think both the far right AND the far left are out of your fucking gourds. Neither is any way to run a country because indiscriminately spending money we don't have, even for the best of reasons, is a recipe for fiscal collapse -- as is believing that cutting taxes to the point where we are unable to pay for ANYTHING that isn't an implement of war will result in both cultural and structural collapse. As things stand right now, don't be surprised if the privileged elite one day go the way of the Romanovs and Marie Antionette. What pisses me off is that you will probably take me with you, since I LOOK like you in many ways to the masses even though we couldn't be more different ideologically.

The far left is equally as nuts and are often just as divorced from reality as their counterparts on the right. An example, Obama wanted to increase unionization by doing away with the secret ballot that decides whether or not to have union representation. He wanted to it to be based on a majority of authorization cards alone. BUT anyone who knows anything about organized labor knows they are highly corrupt organizations that get many card signatures through misrepresentation, intimidation, including threat of physical violence, and exploitation of the uneducated. Obama's plan would have legitimized that. The secret ballot is the ONLY way for employees to voice their true feelings about whether or not they want representation without fear of reprisal from either the union or their employer. Doing away with that would have led to freaking Animal Farm in our workforce, as the pigs got fatter and the rest got screwed, and to economy-crippling strikes on a massive scale. Obama (who I generally admire) should have been smart enough to know better.

Bernie's ideas won't work either because they similarly refuse to take off the rose colored glasses look at the reality of the situation. You can't give away everything for free. And you can't tax the shit out of everyone who works in order to give things that aren't necessary for life to people who don't. And Bernie, the vast majority of homeless people that are not mentally ill are so because they are worthless individuals who somehow managed to alienate every single friend, family member and good Samaritan who would otherwise be willing to help. How big a piece of shit do you have to be that you don't know SOMEONE who wouldn't even let you sleep in their garage? How many times do you have to steal from or freeload off of them without making any contribution whatsoever, before even people who cared about you tell you to get out and go sleep on a subway grate? Until recently, at least, the system worked if you made any real effort. But there's no motivation to do so if you're just going to give it away. Food, shelter, basic health care - sure - those are necessities and should be addressed. But socialism is not the Utopia you envision.

All that said, though, the biggest difference to me is that the far left, while misguided, is at least good-intentioned. Can't say that at all about the far right. They are the epitome of selfishness, gluttony and hypocrisy. So if someone is going to call me a piece of shit simply because they don't like my opinion, I guess I'd rather be called a liberal piece of shit (even though I'm NOT a liberal). It's still better than being a Nazi.