01-13-2017, 02:48 AM
(01-12-2017, 05:51 PM)radind Wrote:(01-12-2017, 05:29 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:(01-12-2017, 03:30 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(01-12-2017, 09:29 AM)radind Wrote:(01-12-2017, 05:44 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: I agree, you should abandon all hope.
I now have great hope.
you like fascism.
At least he's hopeful. I mean, say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, AT LEAST it's an ethos!
I have no use for fascism. I don't see Trump as a fascist.
We tend to lump all manifestations of fascism together, which means that we often confuse a traditionalism-with-a-human-face, like that of Kurt Schuschnigg, with the genocidal tyranny of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was the ultimate demagogue, but there is nothing demagogic about Agosto Pinochet.
Surely most of us would far prefer Kurt Schuschnigg to Adolf Hitler.
It is possible that there is 'a fascism' to fit any culture, and any American fascism would have no use for the adulation of Imperial Rome, Wagnerian bombast, or samurai shtick. American fascism would exalt the Indian fighter, the pioneering slave-master, the brutal boss of the sweatshop, and paradoxically, war heroes all eras of American history. To be sure, there is nothing fascistic about Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Wilson, Roosevelt (either one), Eisenhower, or Kennedy. But fascism usually twists a national culture to the benefit of the fascist cause. It might even be able to twist Abraham Lincoln into a fascist.
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.