07-29-2020, 09:41 PM
(07-29-2020, 11:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. Even fascism of the neo-Nazi and KKK types (the two are merging) has more mass support in America. Those are sick people, the leaders of fascist cliques typically sociopaths and the followers hard to find unless as duplicates.
Duplicates? I have a vision out of the Star Wars Clone Wars of a bunch of identical people populating a Klan rally.
Ugh.
I'm not familiar with that part of Star Wars... but in the evil of the Empire I see the pathological conformity that one associates with Nazis and Ku Kluxers.
By duplicates I can imagine people who seek to be members of similar fascist cliques that offer much the same... two or more organizations at once. These people go from one such group to another as the leaders lose enthusiasm because they have bills to pay and must do legitimate work, family members take offense, or in rare cases come to recognize that what they are doing is unconscionable.
There is no single unified Klan and has not been one since the Feds shut down what remained of the Second Klan of 1915-1942 due to tax violations. That America was at war with a political entity (you know which one!) remarkably similar to the Klan in ideology, style, and symbolism mattered far more than the collection of back taxes on a for-profit movement. The Second Klan, fading in attractiveness since the late 1920's, did not get to pay its back taxes to keep itself alive.
Until a couple of decades ago, Klan groups often had WWII veterans who wanted nothing to do with the Nazi stuff because Nazis were German and thus exotic and alien. I have seen Klan leaders appear on stage (on TV) with Nazi swastikas. Meld two of the vilest causes in history, and one usually gets the worst of both. Klan groups and Nazis are similarly antisemitic and are involved in such shared concerns as Holocaust denial and opposition to 'race mixing'.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
