mondogarage
Blotreport: YESByron C. Clark: "Many people don’t recognise fascism because they think fascism will arrive selling oppression and tyranny, but if you’re part of the privileged group, fascism is selling you safety, normalcy, and tradition."
Martin Farrent@Blotreport And fascism has always thrived on selling some kind of (fake) freedom... abstract national freedom, freedom to go on discriminating against people, freedom to remain a jerk.
Doug Kappeler@Blotreport
Toot of the day! well put
Toot of the day! well put
@commonsensepaine And it is so true.
DNAvinci@Blotreport similarly, privileged groups don't recognize corruption but they, "know a guy" who can "get it done anyways"
@dnavinci That is one of the things wrong with current politics.
Chad Bruner@Blotreport
Like the word communism, the word fascism has lost its potency due to intentional propaganda. The truth around those terms has been obscured, distorted, and sadly, very successfully. Much like the truth around systemic racism in america which persists to this very minute.
Like the word communism, the word fascism has lost its potency due to intentional propaganda. The truth around those terms has been obscured, distorted, and sadly, very successfully. Much like the truth around systemic racism in america which persists to this very minute.
sortius@Blotreport oh god, how many times do I have to explain this to people. It's like we don't teach it in schools 😬
Bouriquet@sortius @Blotreport It’s only taught in schools as something from the past, not put in context today
John Caveney woke is me🛠️@Blotreport too late I fear in the palaces of Westminster.
@jaycee With any luck those muppets will be voted out in a big way. It happened here in Australia.
ex or current IDF unwelcome@Blotreport “taking back control”
Frank Vehafric@Blotreport Exactly and that's why the fascists promote the things they do. Out of control guns and alienated young white men help them. School shootings help them. A decaying infrastructure, homeless camps, broken public education, terrible public health services help them. Employer brutality and poverty help them. Anything that promotes chaos, insecurity and fear helps them. Seen through that lens, Republican policy making makes perfect sense. These people aren't stupid.
@fvehafric Spot on. The merchants who promise stability are those creating the chaos.
modest_engineer@Blotreport tell that to sympathisers of Israel
SocialistStan@Blotreport Wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
Dr. Lola PolitickaIf you PERCEIVE yourself to be part of the privileged group, that is. Half of the deception -- more than half really -- is the selling of the idea that you are part of that group. When you are not. No one is. Watch tfg and his ilk betray their followers, refuse to pay their debts, and generally use people to get whatever they seek in terms of power, money, influence and self-gratification. NO ONE is safe, "normalcy" is a fairy tale, and tradition is twisted beyond recognition.
Nathanael NerodeAn interesting point is that that's the *sales pitch* of fascism, but it's not what the fascists actually provide once they get into power.
The monarchy and traditionalists in Italy and Germany and Japan allied with the fascists in the leadup to WWII. What did they get from the fascists? Lunatic behavior leading to utter destruction.
The myth to watch out for is that only the extreme right and extreme left continue to exist. That's the excuse once given by German conservatives to explain their support for Hitler. It was rubbish then and is rubbish now... but I'm starting to hear it again, quite a lot, especially from US citizens.
Todd Vierling 
@MartinFarrent @neroden @Blotreport
In the US, there are nearly no leftists in political office. (The vast majority of Democrats are *centrists*; the Overton window in this country has slid so far to the right that it has distorted the narrative in popular culture.)
So don't believe the lies. Fascists gonna fash, and they will characterize anything other than them as "extreme left" even when it's anything but.
sitnuok@MartinFarrent @neroden @Blotreport
The extremes may be gathering the donations…
But most people aren’t extreme. They may be passionate and full of piss and vinegar… but if they have to go die on a hill, they will wait for just the right one.
John Shirley@Blotreport well I know what you and Byron Clark mean but fascism in the US today is selling you PROMISES of safety, normalcy and tradition. Of course it's actual produce is danger, abnormality (utter intolerance), and faux tradition. See, they will use remarks like Byron's there to claim the resistance is
"opposed to safety, normalcy and tradition". Some of resistance is about how to provide clarity to those who need to be convinced.
"opposed to safety, normalcy and tradition". Some of resistance is about how to provide clarity to those who need to be convinced.
SomersetWhovian 🇺🇦💙@Blotreport
Really interesting duscussion here. And Clark is of course right: at its heart fascism is framed as protecting a way of life against those "others" who want to destroy it. That's its appeal to many, and it's why it is so insidious.
Really interesting duscussion here. And Clark is of course right: at its heart fascism is framed as protecting a way of life against those "others" who want to destroy it. That's its appeal to many, and it's why it is so insidious.
Bradley 
@Blotreport Is he saying you can't have safety, normalcy, or tradition without fascism?
@Bradley_JF No; that is what the fascists tell you. That is their sales pitch, but it is bovine ordure.
David Wells“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
@MisterWells Conservatives are consumed by fear and hatred. https://blotreport.com/2022/12/13/fear-and-hatred/
@MisterWells @Blotreport ... and there is usually also a vast pseudo in-group, consisting of those duped into thinking that conservative policies protect them, when in actual fact they enjoy no substantial protection at all... except for their reactionary cultural preferences (which are commonly the reason why they feel unbound and unthreatened by those policies).
@MartinFarrent @MisterWells That is where gullibility comes into it.
@Blotreport I don’t think it makes too much sense to call the German working class of 1920s “privileged”. If anything, they were “underprivileged” and were promised to become “privileged”.
@mplaneta It is not so much about the reality. It is about what they are being sold. To believe it you have to be gulled into it. That is why conservatives create so many boogey-men; where they be the poor, the unemployed, immigrants, ethnic or religious minorities etc.
@Blotreport can you rephrase your statement? I don’t understand it in relation to my statement. German working class was underprivileged to most reasonable definitions of “privilege” both in reality and in Nazi and Commi propaganda. And in both propaganda campaigns they were promised to become privileged. So, at least Nazism is not that much about keeping the privilege for the privileged.
@Blotreport I am not even sure if you can call Nazis conservatives, because they wanted to change society to make a specific underprivileged group privileged. Not very conservative.
@mplaneta It depends on your definition of conservatives. These days the conservatives seem to havbe thrown their lot in with nazis, religious bigots and other fruitcakes. They all want to privilege their group. As David Frum said: 'if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy'. In that way they are much like the Nazis.
@Blotreport you correctly separate conservatives (who want to keep things the way they are, which may sound reasonable for the currently privileged) from nazis/fascists (traditionalists who want to “return” to the imaginary glorious past, where “they” were privileged). Such union, when happens, is situational, volatile, and not ideological. That’s why I picked on claiming that fascists appeal to “privileged” people.
@mplaneta The problem with the current crop of conservatives is that they want to return to a 'glorious' past where the young were seen and not heard, women knew their place, the religious were privileged, etc. https://blotreport.com/2017/11/04/conservatives-shouting-21st-century/