September 7, 20206 yr Active Members Have you seen this anywhere? A right-wing form of government that opposes liberal democracy, Marxism, socialism, and anarchism, and attempts to forge national unity under an autocratic leader with a totalitarian program advocating stability, law and order, and more and more centralized power, claiming all of this is necessary in order to defend the homeland from internal as well as external enemies, and to respond effectively to economic instability. The mobilization of a mass base through deliberately constructed fear and hatred as preparation for armed conflict and permanent war. An appeal to patriotic nationalism. The supremacy of military and police power, and the militarizing of all aspects of society. The agitation of “popular” movements in the streets, apparently spontaneous (but in reality well-funded and highly organized) based on bigotry, intolerance, and the threat of violence, all of it fueled by the demonization of targeted, distinct racial, religious, or gendered vulnerable populations and the creation of convenient sacrificial scapegoats who are repeatedly blamed for every social or economic problem people experience. Disdain for the arts, for intellectual life, for science, for reason and evidence, as well as deep contempt for the necessary back and forth of serious argument or discussion. The suppression of labor and the protection of corporate power. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Protectionist and interventionist economic policies as corporations are entangled with the state. You have? It's the textbook definition of fascism.
September 10, 20206 yr Active Members My understanding of the Putin model is how opposition eventually grows tired of resisting and arguing against the corrupt leader. Quit Facebook. My thought for the day.
September 10, 20206 yr Active Members 11 hours ago, Pete1111 said: My understanding of the Putin model is how opposition eventually grows tired of resisting and arguing against the corrupt leader. It helps if you can routinely imprison, impoverish, or outright MURDER the opposition...
September 11, 20206 yr Active Members 8 hours ago, JKane said: It helps if you can routinely imprison, impoverish, or outright MURDER the opposition... Especially murdering journalists. Seems to be a trend.
September 15, 20206 yr Active Members My young journalist friend, Christopher Allen, was killed in South Sudan three years ago. Before South Sudan, he wrote from Ukraine and, briefly, Turkey. Chris barely lasted a month in South Sudan, with a government quite unfriendly to journalists. I still keep in touch with his parents and his first cousins in Britain. I contribute to several journalist sites now. Chris also lived in Philadelphia, But I met him as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. He invited me to his college graduation. And I followed his advice to visit Bosnia and Croatia and Slovenia.
September 15, 20205 yr Active Members Between his junior and senior year at the University of Pennsylvania he traveled from London to Turkey on his own. He was interested in my experience in Vietnam. And I was interested in his Independence while still keeping in contact with his parents. The day before he was killed in South Sudan, he talked to his parents who told him to please leave that very dangerous country.
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