I really appreciate that someone took the time and effort to videotape this, and I really appreciate that mr. McCarthy provided the full text of the talk.
But, dear videographer, for the next time, please consider investing in or making a small parabolic mike or a shotgun mike. I managed to snag a now-discontinued Sony ECM-PB1C a few years ago. While itâs not completely insensitive to side audio, itâs small, light, fits in a smallish camera bag, and can be mounted on top of the camera. A hand-built version, built onto a flash/tripod mount could be made from dollar-store items.
I donât know. It seems to have capably picked up the disgusting eating/drinking sounds starting at around 17:00.
Yes, but the transcript is perfectly readable.
Iâm really glad that he calls this fascism, b/c everyone needs to understand that it IS fascism.
I canât get past 1:00. He probably makes some valid points, but his speech is so sloppy I canât take him seriously. Fascists? Really? Didnât we get over calling the authorities fascists around 10th grade?
âExistential problem of ubiquitous surveillance?â In what way is this problem âexistential?â Is that word just like Tabasco, making everything it touches better, or does it mean something? And war = murder? Isnât that another one we⌠well, most of us outgrew in high school?
I just canât stand liberals who make liberals look bad.
Nope, the term has a precise meaning, and heâs using the term quite precisely. Fascism is the centralising of political power within an alliance of Big Government and Big Business, with a concomitant loosening of the restraints on either. The alternative term is corporatism - it was Benito Mussolini who coined the latter term to describe his type of government. Hitlerâs relationship with corporations like IG Farben and Krupp illustrated it to a tee. Now, what part of that doesnât apply to current situation in the West?
- Internal surveillance? CheckâŚ
- Erosion of a relatively impartial judiciary? Check⌠(Think here of the ubiquity of plea bargaining (to avoid Draconian mandatory sentences) to convict the less well-to-do elements of society, because they canât afford the chance of losing a court battle - thatâs an erosion of judicial impartiality before a case even reaches a judge. Thatâs over and above decisions like Citizenâs United, etc.)
- Regulatory capture? CheckâŚ
- Usurpation of democratic functions by the Executive branch? Check⌠(whether of the functions of the judiciary when assassinating American citizens overseas, or of those of the legislature when enacting domestic policies through the Office of the Trade Representative by means of treaties like ACTA or TPP.)
- Usurpation of governmental functions by private industry, with the governmentâs full connivance? (Hell, yeah! The privatisation of prisons is a classic example, and that certainly is not having a beneficial effect on society.)
- Policies that favour Big Business to the detriment of the nationâs citizens? (Too numerous to count - anything from banking regulatory policies to IP regulations.)
Iâm using examples from your country. My own country has similar shenanigans going on, although itâs a little harder to see the usurpation of power by the executive in a pure parliamentary system (which doesnât mean it doesnât happen or isnât happening - bien au contraire.)
Right now, most of the exercise of power is soft (and/or sneaky) because there is an entrenched culture of civil rights that needs to be quietly bypassed, but it doesnât mean that we arenât already on the slippery slope. I think weâre in the situation of the frog placed in the pot of tepid water, and the burner was turned on a while ago.
ex¡is¡ten¡tial
ËegziËstenCHÉl/
- LOGIC
(of a proposition) affirming or implying the existence of a thing.
Not quite where Iâd use it, but not really used incorrectly either. McCarthy is Icelandic. They donât have a prejudice against sounding intellectual. Unlike a modern French philosophe, however, his language is quite clear.
In either case, I donât think McCarthy is using the words loosely, and I think that refusing to read or listen because you donât like a word is rather foolish. I think refusing to face the possibility that a ânot-niceâ, overused word may well apply to a modern situation correctly is extremely foolish.
Fascism does not, and never really has had, a precise meaning.
This definitional problem was exacerbated after the end of WW II when âfascismâ became an open-ended insult. As Orwell put it, the term quickly became a meaningless pejorative.
Mussolini and other fascists were not deep political thinkers carving out a new theory of government, but rank opportunists who radically changed their own definition of fascism wildly in a short span of time to accommodate their political ambitions.
Fascism in Italy, for example, went from being explicitly anticlerical to seeking the Roman Catholic Churchâs blessing in a span of less than two years.
Thereâs nothing wrong with using fascism as a generic term for any right wing nationalist authoritarianism, but trying to line up correspondences between one country and Italy or Nazi Germany and saying âaha, see, theyâre both fascistâ is absurd as in your attempt to compare the judicial system in the United States to that of Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany.
There are a lot of features to dislike about the American judicial system, but to compare it to Nazi Germanyâs is to stretch that attempt past the breaking point.
I believe SmĂĄri McCarthy meant âwhat is the effect of ubiquitous surveillance to the meaning on human existence and our ability to make sense of itâ.
His mistake is that he figured that his audience would understand academic language. His bad, I suppose.
Itâs always a shame to see something like this where probably a lot of work went into a recording that is unwatchable.
Iâve gone even cheaper than that and just used a portable digital recorder like the Zoom H1 for cases like this where the speaker doesnât leave the podium much.
Unfortunately, a lot of university lecture halls are difficult to capture audio well without more expensive solutions or a lot of cooperation from the speaker.
O snap! I guess Iâm not intellectual and academic enough. When I was a college sophomore I could sure throw those words around, but I guess Iâve regressed. My teenage son confirms this.
Kind of what I was trying to say. On the one hand, Hannah Arendt, but on the other, Godwin is lots more fun.
Almost! Aaaallllllmost!
That âO snap!â should have been in the last paragraph.
gah, i know! itâs gross and distracting enough that i cannot listen to the talk. 
Fuck Godwin.
Fascism is anything but dead. Why not just think of it as democracy multiplied by -1.
ETA: I thoroughly endorse the recommendation of Bob Altemeyerâs The Authoritarians.
PS. Memo to camera guy: THERE WILL BE NO SLIDES
PPS. Oh hey, look - we even have neoblackshirts on the scene.
[quote=âjetfx, post:12, topic:33150â]
Silicon Valley libertarianism is sliding towards authoritarianism[/quote]
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