Gosh! Nazis are cool and shit, again.
Sometimes it feels like the situation is so precarious. Considering that drought was one of the main triggers for the uprising in Syria, we should get used to the idea of accepting refugees - I consider this a stress test.
Ugh.
This really disturbs me. I can kind of understand why cops and politicians become fascists, as they have a lot of money and power to gain. But where are the rest of them coming from? Why are 90% of comments on YouTube or Facebook threads about hate crimes, cop murders or terrorist attacks pro-facism/racism? Why are young people, college students, even in well-educated, liberal countries, suddenly saying âYou know what? Fascism turned out really well in World War II. I want THAT to happen again!â How is this shit even still existing, let alone rapidly taking over? Is there a massive, secret clone factory somewhere endlessly pumping out ready-made brownshirts, or what?
A college degree doesnât stop you from being an arsehole.
So, like the Swedish GOP?
Because large swaths of the country never came out of the last Depression (I mean ârecessionâ) and have been primed by various politicians, religious leaders, and preferred media (Fox News) to think it is all somehow the fault of liberals, women, minorities, and dem queers.
Apparently the party really hates Romanians; they put up this advert in the Stockhom metro a few months ago:
Apropos of nothing, one of my favourite stories was when some Romanians broke into a private country club in England, stole the nets from the tennis court and used them to trawl the private lake for fish. It just seemed so deliciously Marxist that I couldnât fail to be impressed.
You can tell that one guy is a member of the elite, because heâs wearing a bow-tie.
Fascism taps into a number of weak points (for want of a better phrase) in the human psyche:
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Itâs an extension of the same instinct that leads children in the playground to gang up on the weakest.
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It tells you that the frustrations of your life are not your fault. Theyâre the fault of those damn Jews/Blacks/Pakistanis/Muslims/asylum seekers/gays/feminists.
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Itâs a perversion of the sublimation we feel in losing our sense of individuality in the group, in say group dance, or playing in an orchestra, or marching in a parade, or karate kata, or a Mexican wave, or any mass co-ordinated action to a common end.
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Itâs a side-effect of our apeness: at some primal level, we want to submit to the monkeys above us while dominating those below us.
@anon15383236 recently summed all this up with a quote from Michel Foucault:
The strategic adversary is fascism⌠the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.
I think youâll find that was Honey Boo Boo:
Thanks for the correction. Honey never seems to get the respect she deserves.
As another item to the excellent replies here, I think that part of this recent wave of broader anti-pluralistic/anti-democratic youth sentiment (see also: neo-reaction/Dark Enlightenment) is that fascism seems like this really far-removed thing that just Happened A Long Time Ago and that no person is capable of feeling now.
Itâs the same logic when people in America say that racism is over because we have a black president. âRacists,â in the minds of people like this, are pretty much only slave owners and people who murder non-white people completely based on their melanin level.
The notion that simply disliking a predominantly non-white culture, associating it with crime and civil strife, and saying that its presence in your country will destroy the âauthenticâ (white) culture of that country could be racist is simply preposterous.
(You can see that in the video above where Ms. Ohlson punts on the question of Jewish people.)
âŚSorry for the long post. Tl;drâyoung people buy into this shit because they have convinced themselves theyâre not racist because they donât feel racist.
Sounds like one of the many bullshit stories that appear in Britainâs newspapers on a daily basis that turn out to be distortions of the truth, completely bogus or sensationalised exaggerations. Have you got a link to the source?
Agreed. And along with that usually comes the claim that the only racism anymore is that supposedly faced by white people (which comes up in regards to affirmative action, âpc language,â black student unions, sports mascots, ad nauseam).
While addressing transphobia, The Onion put it rather perfectly this week. (See entry two.)
Outside of elaborate conspiracy theories involving Magnificent 12 and vaults of Rothschild gold; is it even possible to be âthe elite in societyâ if nobody knows it?
I always got the impression that, while tactfully held family fortunes and such are all well and good; you arenât really elite unless the peons are aware of their inferiority.
There are a number of similar stories out there; here are two from my home town in the UK:
Water-keeper Chris Harvey, aged 61, of Birches Head, said: "Less and less people have fishing licences. We have always put fish we have caught back, but some people, mainly from Eastern Europe, are taking the fish to eat them.
âI have caught two Eastern European lads with a net and a carrier bag to put the fish in, and another group was dragging a huge net through the lake.â
Of course illegal fishing is seen as hugely important nowadays and you suddenly get interest in conservation from people you wouldnât expect.
As a kid growing up in the 50âs and 60âs there was no question about the horror of fascists and Nazis. We saw it in the faces of our friends and relatives, We saw it in families that had a hole where there used to be a son, a father or other loved one. You really could see those holes even if no one said " they lost a son orâŚ"). We heard our parents, our adults talk about the mindset that caused people to seek a final solution. And we were little and trusting and we thought that all that had been beaten, that now we could grow up safe. And lots of us were little white boys and just assumed everybody else must be ok with how things were. We assumed mom must like to spend all those hours in the kitchen while dad read the paper or listened to a ball game. Some of us had so much to learn. Some of us chose to learn nothing. I wonder how many years weâll wait to act. Maybe weâll understand how good people in the '30âs sat and watched that monster grow. And maybe some of us are the monsters.
âIllegalâ fishing is SUCH a racist issue!
Up here, in cottage country, its a powder keg!
