Trial runs for facism are in full swing

[WestMichRad]

Editorial by Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

"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.

"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.

"It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages..."

A bit more at link:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

If this is what will pass in the future as acceptable in our society, I want out.

[dhill926]

1. K & R...

[Karadeniz]

2. These Irish Times articles are so good!,,

[Kid Berwyn]

3. That is a must-read. Should be NYT.

This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

[Dan]

4. Sadly,

I think that we will see and experience World War III before I die, and I am old already.

[Hortensis]

5. Yes. We're seeing this every day. And the more RW followers

have gone along, they more they've needed to demonize liberals/Democrats to "justify" their own behaviors as necessary. Most have swallowed whole the fabrication that we are the fascist threat that must be stopped, even though liberalism is incompatible with fascism. Liberals are the anti-fascists.

Critically, our intelligence services say Russia is trying to ally them and their counterparts among LW populists and anti-Democratic radicals/extremists to form a voting majority.

They're on the left presumably because passions for class warfare and social programs for themselves are stronger than tribal antagonisms toward others, but as we, our traitorous RW leaders, and the Kremlin know very well, as in 2016 many will shift to the RW populist leader when their conservative antagonisms are stirred up.