Re: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow Archived Message Posted by brooks on December 23, 2018, 5:09 pm, in reply to "Re: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow" I agree with this generally, but not as a criticism of the article - which I thought was very good - and was focused, not on the underlying economic causes of fascism, but on the modalities of its roll-out. I've had similar thoughts for a long time about trial balloons and pushing limits...chilling signposts on the road to where western "civilization" is headed. Trump may not have an ideology, but he definitely has been an instrument of the move towards fascism in the US, testing how far the population can be made to accept it, and unleashing the forces that might be called on to implement it. How much he himself is conscious of the goal of all this is an open question. I thought this was right on the money: But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination. This "blooding" and instilling a "taste for savagery" has all kinds of facets, from the the glorified violence of organized sports, to the sadistic violence, sadism and degradation in contemporary porn which Hedges writes about in his latest book (and it is shocking), to the cheerleading for US bombing and military aggression by the liberal class, to the things O'Toole writes about here. It's all about testing boundaries, and degrading the population by "undermining moral boundaries". Message Thread: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow - dan December 23, 2018, 3:24 pm Re: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow - dovetailjoint December 23, 2018, 4:13 pm Re: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow - Keith-264 December 23, 2018, 4:48 pm Very insightfully put. Nm - Shyaku December 25, 2018, 9:00 am Re: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow - brooks December 23, 2018, 5:09 pm Re: Irish Times - Trial runs for fascism are in full flow - Keith-264 December 23, 2018, 5:39 pm What was especially refreshing was the lack of sneering tone nm - focus December 23, 2018, 7:16 pm "It doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed." - marknadim December 23, 2018, 7:54 pm   Searching