Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[Lexicus]

Sign of the times that such are taken seriously as political commentators.

I take him seriously as a terribly deformed half-Orc.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I take him seriously as a terribly deformed half-Orc.

That's insulting to terribly deformed half-Orcs. You're obviously racist against Orcs! Orcist!

 

[Hrothbern]

"The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. ... The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
...
American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.
...
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. ... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

— Excerpts from "The Danger of American Fascism", Henry A. Wallace, 1944

I think it makes sense to distinguish between leading fascists, and the fascist followers.
My impression is that follower fascists are not unlike so many other people that just want to live their life, in peace in their comfort bubble.
The difference I think is that follower fascists do not like it when other people want to make more out of their lives, their freedoms, than just that. When others want to explore, want to enjoy thinking and living a (tiny) bit out of the box.

This is felt as a threat.

A threat that is not countered by discussing with the others with arguments, or handled by trying to understand these “others”.
It is a threat where fascist followers, not interested or able to articulatie, just seek the power of numbers, headed up by a leader, consolidated in the State when possible, to eliminate the threat, to impose their own limited way of thinking to the others.

Periods of big changes, of confusions, are perfect to generate the small fears, that increase the need of protection of their comfort bubbles. And fascist leaders offer simple to understand solution and protection.

I think that trying to counter Fascism, by studying and discussing how fascist leaders act, is not very effective, unless it helps to understand where fascist leaders have more to offer to potential fascist followers than other political parties, other philosophies, etc.

Rising fascism in a country is imo most of all the lack of vision and content of other parties: they have not enough to offer, in understandable language, for a good portion of ordinary people that just want to live their life in their world.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Rising fascism in a country is imo most of all the lack of vision and content of other parties: they have not enough to offer, in understandable language, for a good portion of ordinary people that just want to live their life in their world.

Right-wingers have been pounding progressives with regard to salesmanship for decades. Do you know George Lakoff?

 

[Hrothbern]

Right-wingers have been pounding progressives with regard to salesmanship for decades. Do you know George Lakoff?

Did not know him
Watched a few minutes of that vid..... understand I think what you mean.
Gonna watch some vids of him an come back on it.

 

[Kyriakos]

New thread is at https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/great-quotes-Δ-being-laconic-is-being-philosophical.634708/

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: Thread closed.