George Takei 
🏳️🌈🖖🏽The fascism playbook hasn't changed—only the speed we're flipping through its chapters.
Soozcat@georgetakei Because we've read this book before, and some of us know how it ends. They have to blitzkrieg their way through this as quickly as possible if they are to have any "wins" at all; gradual, incremental changes would be recognized and swatted down.
The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉@georgetakei The full quote: "The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
This technique is as old as the hills; it was practiced in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale."
-- Bertrand Russell, 1940
Andrej@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei Dividing the population into fools and intelligent should disqualify you from being an authority on the rise of fascism. In fact many who we consider fools turned out to offer way more resistance. And after the war suddenly everybody successfully pretend to be a fool. So much for that.
@SholemAlejchem @georgetakei I quoted Bertrand Russell for context.
Joyful Jonny@SholemAlejchem @ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei huh? It takes my heart away how easily people supposedly "resisting" turn on each other on a fine and yet disguise it through "intellectual debate."
Paul Healey@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei Also from 1940: ‘If, however, we assert positively that there are true propositions that are not verifiable, we abandon pure empiricism. Pure empiricism, finally, is believed by no one, and if we are to retain beliefs that we regard as valid, we must allow principles of inference which are neither demonstrative nor derivable from experience.’ From ‘Truth and Verification’ The William James Lectures, Harvard University.
So it’s agreed, the analytic philosophy of British and Austrian German logicians have no right to be imposed by the elite and neither do dialecticians, with their speculative philosophy to be denied to the people? #Logicians vs #Dialecticians
@Dialectician @georgetakei Or we can go with Scottish-born David Hume or Austrian-heritage Karl Popper's rejection of inductive reasoning and "empiricism", if you really want to get into it. Hopefully the sheer speed with which I replied convinces you that I've read all the books and don't need to consult a search engine.
Reply Guying me on epistemology isn't helpful to anyone.
I will take your point about calling people fools because they were hoodwinked is perhaps also not helpful.
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei I would go with those like Margret Cavendish, Mary Shepherd, Thomas Hill Green, Gregor Cantor and L.E.J. Brouwer. Living ones, philosophers of interest are Holly Moore and Dmetri Gallow, but many others. The point is not that the people were hoodwinked, but since the death of Socrates few have stood up to the oligarchs abuse of power and the wanton destruction of their Empires. It is not a trickle down effect, but an all encompassing negative-sum game. Either the people end it, or it will end them in any one, or sum of possible ways!
@Dialectician @georgetakei Well okay, I agree with you...kinda. I certainly have no appetite for this being a dick-swinging contest about who's read the most books (spoiler...).
So I'll just approach this from a different (linguistic) perspective: yes we do need resources in language to describe people who are easily-led, or we can't explain important social phenomena.
So what do you propose? I got evolutionary biology/psychology, in-group/out-group perspectives sat right here in the bag...)
@ApostateEnglishman @georgetakei Navigating a path not caught between formal abstractions and empirical psychology has been anything but easy. If it is easier for future generations, so much the better. Not being afraid to challenge presuppositions has helped.
Maggie Maybe@ApostateEnglishman @Dialectician @georgetakei I guess a hit dog hollers. Why is reply guy mad about a quote?
@maggiejk @Dialectician @georgetakei I've stopped wasting energy on trying to understand. 😆
But we ended up being in close enough agreement for it not to be worth arguing, so...that's something.
Ain't no beef here. 🤷♂️
cqd_sosReminder that from Hitler being appointed chancellor to the signing of the enabling act, aka Ermächtigungsgesetz, which effectively ended democracy it took barely two months.
demi7en 🎗🇪🇺@georgetakei It's worth remembering that Russell was initially quite enamoured with the ideals of soviet communism, that is, until he learned about its obscene brutality.
The far-left fools and their ilk became "tankies", commie mouthpieces hailing communist "peace tanks" liberating peoples...
A dictatorship is a dictatorship, whether fascist or communist.
I also wonder what he'd make of russia and china turning fascist third reich students in the 2000s...
(He'd already seen American hitlerites marching and rallying in the late 1930s so the signs were already there, not forgetting prevalent segregationism...)
Patrick Schmitz@georgetakei too bad that there are people that don't treat this as a warning, but as an instruction manual.