Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/30/this-70-year-old-book-about-ra.html
…
9 Likes
Sound familiar?
All too.
And not just in the U.S.:
Like my adopted country Germany, Sweden is allowing far-right racists and xenophobic nationalists and neo-Nazis to drive its agenda on immigration and asylum law. Once a country with a noble policy of providing safety to refugees fleeing persecution and human rights atrocities, Sweden’s government – like that of Germany – is now running scared as far-right anti-immigration parties grow ever stronger. And the older established parties are running not away from the wall-builder vote, but straight toward it and into the open arms of the nationalists, islamophobes, and incipient fascists. The “centrist” strategy for preventing racists and panic-stricken right-wingers from taking control of Europe: to adopt the same policies the governing self-described centrists claim to oppose.
And it is not only right-wingers and nationalists who have decided that the Global North must ratchet up its wall-building, who are falling prey to the flood of anecdotal and hysterical reports of rapes and murders carried out by refugees and immigrants. A great many of those refugees and immigrants – just coincidentally, of course – happen to be Muslims, and islamophobia is now a socially-acceptable form of discrimination among many who once flew the flag of tolerance. While there have been a handful of such actual crimes committed by immigrants, this small number of horrific acts is receiving the laser-focus treatment in the national mainstream press here in Germany, in stark contrast to the amount of attention given to the vast number of attacks on immigrants and refugees committed by racist neo-Nazi thugs and their sympathizers. Those anti-immigrant crimes are mentioned by the presstitutes occasionally in a dry, statistical manner. But the same government and corporate media that devote much of their feverish coverage to the growth of racist political parties which are deemed a “danger to democracy” are far less interested in talking about such violence committed by Germans, and I suspect that in Sweden the same thing is happening.
Source:
“Compassion is So Out of Fashion”
by GREGORY BARRETT
17 Likes
“This seventy-year-old book about cows perfectly describes this cow.”
Assuming that the authors had seen enough racist mass movements to accurately identify their key features, it’s not entirely surprising that their description fits Trumpism to, well, a ‘T’. These movements do tend to resemble each other, because they’re based on a template that has stood the test of time pretty well. Why reinvent the wheel when you can just use a tried and tested formula?
Here’s another relevant observation, this one from 1944:
" … when fascism comes [to America] it will … appear … in the luminous robes of flaming patriotism; it will take some genuinely indigenous shape and color, and it will spread only because its leaders … will know how to locate the great springs of public opinion and desire and the streams of thought that flow from them and will know how to attract … leaders who can command the support of the controlling minorities in American public life. The danger lies not so much in the would-be Fuhrers who may arise, but in the presence in our midst of certainly deeply running currents of hope and appetite and opinion. The war upon fascism must be begun there." [John Thomas Flynn]
16 Likes
Just wondering, has anyone ever compared the crap he tweets to that book of Hitler speeches he was rumored to have kept on his bedside table? Some of this shit seems too spot-on to simply come from even his skintag of a brain. And we know how Melania likes to “borrow” from sources.
Makes me wonder…
10 Likes
27 Likes
Stealing that, thx!
3 Likes
Lol, enjoy! I stole it from an episode of “Bored to Death” a million years ago!
Also been watching “Killing Eve” and the first episode made liberal use of DICK SWAB as an insult. Take that one for a spin!
4 Likes
And this on the metrics of despotism:
5 Likes
The use of the word “Trumpism” is a mistake. They are just a Republicans being Republican. They have been headed here for 40 to 50 years. From Reagan and Goldwater winning the John Bircher vote to their adoption of the racist Dixiecrats to the open-armed welcome of the science-denying bible thumpers this is their logical destination
12 Likes
I second that assessment. Use of the word “Trumpism” allows the Republican Party to escape culpability for their treasonous behavior over the past 40 years or more.
6 Likes
You are right, but I know quite a few Republicans who are voting for Democrats from now on, and I don’t want to discourage them. I mean even George Will, a person I disagree with on too many issues to count, is telling Republicans to vote for Democrats.
6 Likes
I like your taste in TV shows.
1 Like
4 Likes
On similar themes, I found this short series to be very well done:
Goes into the history and structure of fascism; lots of reference to Umberto Eco et al.
9 Likes
I would imagine that Trump’s more articulate thoughts on the organic nation state came from Steve Bannon.
“We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism,” Trump said. “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down.”
2 Likes
We never learn, it’s always the same, it always starts with a state failing its people and a leader who says what should be unsaid.
Look at the GOP base and, if you don’t believe we’re already post-democracy, guess where we’re headed. (Personally, as an old fart at the strange ideas stage of life, I’d argue America was never truly democratic on the federal level and always meant to serve an elite, not actually be democratic.)
2 Likes
You’re not having strange ideas, you’ve merely read and fully comprehended the Constitution. 
3 Likes
Yes, and now it’s going global (neoliberalism being an increasingly common name for it). And the U.S. elite have little of whatever patriotism they once had. Looks like we’d better buckle our seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy century.
