[diana_eva]

Good read: http://www.nybooks.c.../22/ur-fascism/

[PassedOut]

diana_eva, on 2016-November-25, 10:22, said:

Good read: http://www.nybooks.c.../22/ur-fascism/

It is. Thanks for the link.

[Winstonm]

Is this Bingo? (emphasis added)

Quote

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the US, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

[Al_U_Card]

Point 5 refers to seeking consensus...ring any warning bells?

[mikeh]

Winstonm, on 2016-November-25, 13:54, said:

It's this Bingo? (emphasis added)

I loved Eco's novels, altho my one effort to read one of his books on semiotics was a disaster.

He was a brilliant man, and this essay should be required reading even at the high school level. Alas, it won't ever be.

One thought crossed my mind. I know there is no way that Trump would ever have read this, but he ran his campaign almost as if this was the bible that underlay every step he took. Of course, that says far more about Eco's insight than it does about Trump's 'talent'. Trump is simply a fascist asshole, and all fascist assholes, if they are to succeed, must act like such. Eco merely tells us that.

Thank you for the link, Diana. It made me sad to read it, yet also, in a sense, relieved in that we can't really fight fascism until we understand it. I read an interview with Ben Shapiro, a very conservative writer who resigned from Breitbart, and he had some insightful comments about the rise and the aims of the alt-right, and a point he made was that the liberals in the US are making a huge...I almost wrote yuge...mistake in painting all Trump voters as racist or alt-right, and that by doing so, the liberals are driving the angry, but non-racist, Trump voters into the common 'nation' that the alt-right claims to represent. Simplistically put, by me not Shapiro, if you call someone a racist, they will tend to tune you out and go looking for people who endorse their action/vote rather than attack them for it.

So the answer is to avoid building that community. Look for those who voted trump/facist but who did so for non trump/fascist reasons, and approach them non-confrontationally.

Point to Trump's tweeter response to SNL or Hamilton and ask them how they'd have felt had Obama reacted in the same way to those who criticized him (and did so far more severely....birther issue, anyone?)

Point to his conflicts, which will no doubt become enormous once he is in office, and ask how this compares to HRC email issues.

Point to his almost certain about-face on many other aspects of his campaign....will he build anything that looks remotely like a wall? Will he 'tear up Nafta'?

And so on.

Note how this way of combatting Trump's version of fascism relies upon recognition of the causes of fascism identified by Eco. Brilliant man.

[diana_eva]

Seems to me like Trump is all rhetorics, without a clear platform or dogma. He just picks up what masses react to and uses that to his advantage without truly understanding what he's saying bec he does no research before promising stuff. The danger lies with extremists who might get into key positions and be able to use the Trump brand to push their own interests, fractions that know well what they want to achieve.

[mikeh]

diana_eva, on 2016-November-25, 17:50, said:

Seems to me like Trump is all rhetorics, without a clear platform or dogma. He just picks up what masses react to and uses that to his advantage without truly understanding what he's saying bec he does no research before promising stuff. The danger lies with extremists who might get into key positions and be able to use the Trump brand to push their own interests, fractions that know well what they want to achieve.

But wasn't that Eco's point about Italian Fascism? That Mussolini had no coherent ideology? He started as an outspoken atheist (heck, so I have a trait in common ) but ended up invoking god in his speeches and making deals with the Vatican. He claimed to be a republican, and was then a Monarchist.

And, strikingly, let's not ever forget Trump's speech at the RNC where he explicitly cast himself as the only person capable of solving the problems confronting the US.

I'd love to believe that Trump is simply a narcissistic blowhard, whose attention will soon turn to maximizing personal profit from the greatest source of patronage in the world (where he can claim to have 'the best' legal experts telling him that there are NO conflict of interest constraints on him). But I fear that he meant what he said when he spoke, repeatedly, of his 'Movement'. So it is a mass of contradictions. So it has no intellectual underpinnings. So what?

The only good news is that I don't think that the US President has the same power to eliminate the legislative aspects of government as did Mussolini and Hitler, in part because few of the republican senators and congresspeople identified themselves as part of his movement. However, should he gain popularity over the next two years, as I suspect he will, then a lot of republicans will fall into line. Should a trump acolyte become Speaker, and another one Majority leader in the Senate, there is no limit to what may happen, even if the Congress is not somehow 'dissolved'. It would become worse that it was at the height of McCarthyism.

[kenberg]

I keep learning things from BBF.

From the article:

Quote

Unfortunately there was no champagne, but Captain Muddy gave me my first piece of Wrigley's Spearmint and I started chewing all day long. At night I put my wad in a water glass, so it would be fresh for the next day.

This seemed wrong to me, he must be making it up. I have a vivid memory of getting my first stick of real chewing gum after the war. I remember where I was and I remember who gave it to me. It was great.


So a little fact checking. I'll be damned.

http://www.wrigley.c...of-wrigley.aspx

Quote

During World War II, when Wrigley was cut off from its supply of ingredients, it halted production of its flagship brands rather than compromise on their quality, reserving its established products for soldiers fighting overseas while introducing a wartime substitute named Orbit® at home.

I'm a little put out that Umberto got real gum before I did, wartime gum was pretty awful, but all in all this fine article cancels his debt.

And now I know where the gum went.

[Winstonm]

diana_eva, on 2016-November-25, 17:50, said:

Seems to me like Trump is all rhetorics, without a clear platform or dogma. He just picks up what masses react to and uses that to his advantage without truly understanding what he's saying bec he does no research before promising stuff. The danger lies with extremists who might get into key positions and be able to use the Trump brand to push their own interests, fractions that know well what they want to achieve.

Rather interesting you hit on this as the NYT reporter I saw on t.v., who had been part of the meeting with Trump, said basically the same thing, that Trump looks to please the group he is talking to and is quite good at discerning what they want to hear - that said, he then said Trump was quite calm and reasonable when speaking to the Times group - but only hours before he had blasted the Times on Twitter.

[diana_eva]

Winstonm, on 2016-November-25, 18:41, said:

Rather interesting you hit on this as the NYT reporter I saw on t.v., who had been part of the meeting with Trump, said basically the same thing, that Trump looks to please the group he is talking to and is quite good at discerning what they want to hear - that said, he then said Trump was quite calm and reasonable when speaking to the Times group - but only hours before he had blasted the Times on Twitter.

I didn't see that, but I tried looking through his campaign speeches to find his platform and they looked like an incoherent mess.

[diana_eva]

mikeh, on 2016-November-25, 18:22, said:

But wasn't that Eco's point about Italian Fascism? That Mussolini had no coherent ideology? He started as an outspoken atheist (heck, so I have a trait in common ) but ended up invoking god in his speeches and making deals with the Vatican. He claimed to be a republican, and was then a Monarchist.

And, strikingly, let's not ever forget Trump's speech at the RNC where he explicitly cast himself as the only person capable of solving the problems confronting the US.

I'd love to believe that Trump is simply a narcissistic blowhard, whose attention will soon turn to maximizing personal profit from the greatest source of patronage in the world (where he can claim to have 'the best' legal experts telling him that there are NO conflict of interest constraints on him). But I fear that he meant what he said when he spoke, repeatedly, of his 'Movement'. So it is a mass of contradictions. So it has no intellectual underpinnings. So what?

The only good news is that I don't think that the US President has the same power to eliminate the legislative aspects of government as did Mussolini and Hitler, in part because few of the republican senators and congresspeople identified themselves as part of his movement. However, should he gain popularity over the next two years, as I suspect he will, then a lot of republicans will fall into line. Should a trump acolyte become Speaker, and another one Majority leader in the Senate, there is no limit to what may happen, even if the Congress is not somehow 'dissolved'. It would become worse that it was at the height of McCarthyism.

Trump isn't a dictator, and I rather doubt he'll become one (not that I have any solid reasons to back this up, it's just that he seems much into business thinking and little into politics).

[jonottawa]

A load of bunk. A mostly incoherent list of 14 'features', many of which apply as much, if not more, to the regressive left, as to any other political group. An excuse for fear-mongering and 'whoever disagrees with me is a Nazi.' Typical of the discourse rational thinkers face these days.

[Al_U_Card]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-26, 12:31, said:

A load of bunk. A mostly incoherent list of 14 'features', many of which apply as much, if not more, to the regressive left, as to any other political group. An excuse for fear-mongering and 'whoever disagrees with me is a Nazi.' Typical of the discourse rational thinkers face these days.

It struck me as a poetic sort of literary reminiscence, kind of like the musings that are common in the WC. Wasn't the social program of the Nazis the first eco-fascist manifesto? OMG that may mean that we are all Hitler and his cloning experiments worked...