How fascism works A Yale philosopher on fascism, truth, and Donald Trump.

[applegrove]

How fascism works

A Yale philosopher on fascism, truth, and Donald Trump.

By Sean Illing at Vox

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/19/17847110/how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-stanley

"SNIP.....

Sean Illing

So fascism isn’t a discrete category — it’s a spectrum? Or a sliding scale?

Jason Stanley

Right. And my book identifies the various techniques that fascists tend to adopt, and shows how someone can be more fascist or less fascist in their politics. The key thing is that fascist politics is about identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group), and smashing truth and replacing it with power.

.......

Jason Stanley

In the past, fascist politics would focus on the dominant cultural group. The goal is to make them feel like victims, to make them feel like they’ve lost something and that the thing they’ve lost has been taken from them by a specific enemy, usually some minority out-group or some opposing nation.

This is why fascism flourishes in moments of great anxiety, because you can connect that anxiety with fake loss. The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power. Almost every manifestation of fascism mirrors this general narrative.



......SNIP"

[unblock]

1. K&r

[procon]

2. Chillingly close. How will we get past this? nt

[applegrove]

3. Recognizing the pattern and then teaching it to others is half the battle.n/t

[brush]

4. trump's base is not the dominant cultural group. And he is not...

the sharpest fascist to come along, even if he thinks he is.

We can beat him. Polls are already showing the majority will not vote for him.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

5. tRump and the GOP focus on the dominant racial demographic....

and that has the same fascist effect.

WASPs are dominant and also control most of the money.....

[brush]

10. He doesn't have the support of all the WASPs though.

A good portion of them are progressive and independents, and along with them and POCs, those numbers beat him just as in 2018. That fact mirrors his favorability numbers, the lowest of any modern president and it never rises, just stays in 30-40% range.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

11. Agree, but I feel that's who he tries to appeal to.

Supporting guns and lower taxes (a lie), promoting xenophobia and misogyny, catering to primitive fears and instincts and trying to appeal to them as the alpha white male. Far too many fall for it.

That, and the fact that most of those guys who succumb to his bullshit drag their wives and children along with them because Jesus and the preacher or their boss at work.

Then there's also their instinctive need for an all-male authoritarian structure......

[brush]

20. Unfortunately most of that is true. The only thing where there isgood news for us...

and it was borne out in the blue wave election of 2018, is that many white women ignored their husbands and ministers and bosses and voted for Democrats. trump hasn't done anything IMO to get those women back.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

21. And that could be our 2020 salvation.

...........

[WhiteTara]

19. white male privilege

or white dominance - republiconned women too.

[KG]

6. that degenerate sewer rat has no clue what fascism is.

he has no core beliefs, no need to assign him any.

[Martin Eden]

8. That may be true, but ...

Trump doesn't have to embrace or even grasp the ideoligy of fascism in order to behave very much like a fascist. Nearly everything he says and does fits the mold.

If it walks like a fascist and talks like a fascist, it's a fascist.

[EleanorR]

15. His creators and handlers know very well what it is

Steve Bannon is running around Europe, with the help of Cambridge Analytica data and a gang of social media trolls, pushing his propaganda to further his fascist agenda.

And trump knows what the goals are if not the name, power and money for he and his family. The idea he spouted about someday being president for life like Xi and getting rid of the media didn't come from his pea brain.

[Achilleaze]

7. k and r

[Hortensis]

9. Valuable post. We're in another "moment of great anxiety"

of course.

In the 1930s, great anxiety lead to the rise of both right- and left-wing extremist movements, with fascist, communist, and socialist groups all trying to take over our government. Fortunately, most voters channeled bipartisan anxiety into empowering the established government under FDR to make huge improvements and additions to our existing liberal democratic systems. And, of course, those ushered in the greatest era of prosperity in our history.

We are having another moment, and fascism especially is not just beating at our national door but has breached our national walls.

So once again we have a big job to do, with great dangers and wonderful opportunities. If the Republicans want to burn down our outdated kitchen, like our grandparents' generations we're not going to just replace it but rebuild to serve us much better.

[ProudLib72]

13. I would argue that our moment of great anxiety is completely fabricated

and promoted by RW hate radio. What does it consist of really? A little financial anxiety tied to a lot of social anxiety about losing hegemonic status? We should have a nationwide poll about which scenario people would chose to live in: 1. White people are in power, and you make barely enough to survive 2. POC are in power, and you make a very comfortable living. I'm betting 'the base' goes for option 1 every time.

[Hortensis]

14. Agree (but not with the "completely"). Creating anxiety

and division are major fascist tactics for taking over power promoted as you say for decades.

At the same time that they're encouraging majorities to see themselves as victims of imaginary existential threats, though, there are genuine reasons for anxiety, such as accelerating climate crisis and the imminent disappearance of millions of jobs.

For 20,000 years people were able to "see" that, barring or even with the usual, understood disasters, their descendants off into the future would be living as they and their ancestors did. Now many people trying to imagine only 10-20 years into the future can't, and that's creating tremendous anxiety, and resentment.

[ProudLib72]

16. I agree.

What is even more unbelievable is that Americans are not able to look 70 years into the past and see the obvious analogy. Instead of imagining solutions, we are stuck making the same mistakes.

[Hortensis]

17. And new ones. That's the point of divide and conquer, after all.

Conservative, fascistic plotters literally started working decades ago to keep us from uniting to stop them as we did in the New Deal era. The current politically suicidal levels of partisan loathing of "the other side," or in too many pathological cases loathing of our own side, is their product.

Oh, well. In spite of everything, majorities of concerned citizens did vote for competent, cooperative government in the midterms. Just have to do it again but more...

[smirkymonkey]

12. It's all about the lies. Trump is a master at this.

Sean Illing
There’s a great line from the philosopher Hannah Arendt, I think in her book about totalitarianism, where she says that fascists are never content to merely lie; they must transform their lie into a new reality, and they must persuade people to believe in the unreality they’ve created. And if you get people to do that, you can convince them to do anything.

Jason Stanley
I think that’s right. Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from reality. You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality, usually a nationalist narrative about the decline of the country and the need for a strong leader to return it to greatness, and from then on their anchor isn’t the world around them — it’s the leader.

Sean Illing
This is partly why I think of fascism as a kind of anti-politics. I remember reading a quote from Joseph Goebbels, who was the chief propagandist for the Nazis, and he said that what he was doing was more like art than politics. By which he meant their task was to create an alternative mythical reality for Germans that was more exciting and purposeful than the humdrum reality of liberal democratic politics, and that’s why mass media was so essential the rise of Nazism.

Jason Stanley
That’s so interesting. The thing is, people willingly adopt the mythical past. Fascists are always telling a story about a glorious past that’s been lost, and they tap into this nostalgia. So when you fight back against fascism, you’ve got one hand tied behind your back, because the truth is messy and complex and the mythical story is always clear and compelling and entertaining. It’s hard to undercut that with facts.

Sound familiar?

[Hortensis]

18. "Freedom requires truth, so to smash freedom you must smash truth."

Stanley. And yes. We're seeing it all around us.