10 Steps To Fascism

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Blackwater is just the best name ever for that kind of company - so evocative (the River Styx ie the passageway to hell, oil, etc.)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Also, it can be true that the current bunch of chuckleheads have been busily putting things into to place that perhaps things aren't a fascist state now, but are certainly setting things up for the next time round. As guys like Chris Hedges write, religious totalitarian types need a moment of crisis to come to power. These guy have just been stacking the deck: attacking the notion of an independent judiciary, discrediting science, journalism, and narrowing everything down to an authoritarian set-up. They've been remarkably competent at this; actual governing, no, but setting up this shit, which was their actual goal since they don't believe in public services or representative government, hell yeah.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:09 (seventeen years ago) link

well they're obviously obsessed with consolidating power in the hands of the executive, which is certainly a move towards fascism. combine that with the handy repeal of a couple of amendments and voila Uberfuhrer Schwarzenegger. You know we're in agreement on the current admin's penchant for totalitarian fantasies.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link

By pariahs, I'm referring to the Islamic other; US politics, like most countries, have a long history of using some vague ill-defined and overblown threat to justify a more repressive set of policies. Unlike previously, these people have more traction with US voters because they've done something in the US. Instead of being a phantom, they're more 'real' and so more durable and more amenable to being a justification for some bad shit.

By failure to stop human rights abuses, I'm saying that regardless of who has failed - the media/supreme court/congress/people, it doesn't really matter. They've happened and continue to happen, indicating a failure of really quite important counterbalances to actually do anything at all about a quite dreadful state of affairs.

As for language, I wasn't positing a golden age back in the day, merely saying that from where we are know, you notice an astonishing vacuity and vapidity of US political discourse. Fights seem to take place over the most inconsequential points of linguistic definition whilst the bigger picture never gets a look in. The normalisation of this weird hybrid of martial language and management textbook shite looks pretty entrenched with no-one seemingly able to challenge this and find a new way of talking about things.

― The Boyler, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 20:33 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.mises.org/TRTS/18.jpg

― braveclub, Thursday, 3 May 2007 15:40 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/3/102322/7962

― M.V., Thursday, 3 May 2007 17:28 (seventeen years ago) link

eight years pass...

Has anti-fascism lost its urgency in the eight years since this was published? I grew up with World War II veterans for relatives. My own father was a WWII buff. "Don't be a fascist" was a big thing in my family. Might seem quaint to a younger generation? My own mother was a big proponent of "never forget". Yet on the Internet, I encounter many people -especially younger people - for whom it is more like "never even considered it". Even with a black man in the White House, I think it's important to "never forget".

― Fake Sam's Club Membership (I M Losted), Tuesday, 7 July 2015 16:54 (eight years ago) link

thread title sounds like the evil self-help shadow of

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419KZWFeBcL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:02 (eight years ago) link

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Fascist

― jmm, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:03 (eight years ago) link

thread title sounds like the evil self-help shadow of

Seven Steps to Heaven

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:05 (eight years ago) link

modern states' complete fealty to global capitalism makes fascism look p quaint and outdated

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:06 (eight years ago) link

eight years pass...

Our mission statement is the same as it is on the podcast: that people should be able to understand complex ideas and have fun at the same time. All the knowledge. None of the pain.
— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) May 22, 2024

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2024 08:57 (one week ago) link

'people should be able to understand complex ideas', muses the man who discovered for the first time only months that neoliberalism is a political ideology and not just a slur leftists attach to people they don't like

― katy perry (prison service) (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 24 May 2024 11:49 (one week ago) link

only months AGO

― katy perry (prison service) (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 24 May 2024 11:49 (one week ago) link

Blimey, the person who wrote the article cited at the top of the thread though...

― your mom goes to limgrave (dog latin), Friday, 24 May 2024 20:04 (one week ago) link

Oh, buddy. Ooooof.

― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 May 2024 20:06 (one week ago) link

never forget

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3GORdkXEAskO9P.jpg

― katy perry (prison service) (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 24 May 2024 20:55 (one week ago) link

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