Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism
Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 05:00
by Fintan O’Toole
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375
Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.
One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.
If you look at the Con's numbers, he hovers right at 40%, regardless of what happens domestically or internationally. No other modern president has had that kind of consistency. Scroll down to view chart.
https://news.gallup.com/interactives/185273/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx
2020 is critical for this country.
= new reply since forum marked as read