How does fascism happen?
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Now the drugs have been replaced by internet echo chambers? So you get the validation you want by people of the same opinion? Sounds dangerous.
Some lemmy instances come to mind
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Lack of education : History tells us what happened and how. But, people find it boring. It is true that what it is in the past must stay in the past but it still teaches so you do not make the same mistake again.
Make one main enemy/villain/ the cause of the problem (even if it is not): The most effective trick ever. (think like you are at work, you hate one colleague, you find out that another colleague hate the same colleague. You become friend.)
Make a second enemy/villain/ the cause of the problem (even if it is not): So you diffuse more problems (safe side - figure of speech.)
As one says: Divide and conquer (always works).
BUT ALWAYS a minority as it works better. You need to please the majority.
In general people are tired of ineffective politics: so they try something new and/or it resonates with them, meaning they see that it is maybe true that the problem is the example (s) given by the fascists/nazis/neonazis etc. But, they will not check if it is true as they think the politicians know what they do. Even if, if you think about it. Anyone can be a politician, you need to know how to speak, to present yourself well, to have a vision, to know how to gather people together, to lead. The rest you delegate to more competent people who know their fields.
Once the hook works, you work with the emotions, some facts (fake or not). You slightly change the narrative so it is matching your "vision", "ideology". This is where, usually, you can get them as you can double-check if it is true or not. This is where you see the true journalists at work. And through asking questions.
Example: LGBTQA+ community (quite a """""trend""""" to bash at (sarcasm)). A lot of politicians say that it is destroying the society, family, we need to protect the kids (the ultimate red flag of all) etc.
One just need to ask them (politicians), the right questions. In what sense it is destroying the society? Etc, etc etc. So, you can show that what they say, their ideology is just fake, anti-human. etc. But, people do not do it or few. You can apply for each point of their speech.(Besides, the most homophobic person is a gay in the closet. Grindr never lies!!!!!!)
Then, control, media, press etc. You slightly divide the majority so better control.
So basically, the same pattern that history teaches.
wrote last edited by [email protected]BUT ALWAYS a minority as it works better. You need to please the majority.
For lemmy it's usually the mythical "one percent"
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I’ve always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power
Mate....
Dude, you are dealing with a liberal, not a moron. Remember, it doesn't matter if you're right if you sound like an asshole. We all were taught in school that Stalin was evil and bad just like Hitler therefore communism = fascism, and some of us were taught in school that Hitler was a socialist.
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Hitler had a paranoid belief that all Jews everywhere had a genetic imperative to subvert and destroy his Aryan race/civilisation, and that his destiny was to wipe them out and create an Aryan Reich.
Stalin smashed Hitler's army. His ideology was Marxism-Leninism based on class analysis. I don't get how you're equating both sides.
All of this is probably true. But it's not exactly fascism. It's nationalism, and racism, and imperialism.
Now Usa for example have always had racism. And ever since they are one country, they have nationalism. And for a long time they have imperialism. But only recently fascism has started there.
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I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
From They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 - 1945, in which the author Milton Mayer got to know and interviewed 10 Nazis (the mentioned "friends") about the rise of fascism:
Because the mass movement of Nazism was nonintellectual in the beginning, when it was only practice, it had to be anti- intellectual before it could be theoretical. What Mussolini’s official philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, said of Fascism could have been better said of Nazi theory: “We think with our blood.” Expertness in thinking, exemplified by the professor, by the high- school teacher, and even by the grammar- school teacher in the village, had to deny the Nazi views of history, economics, literature, art, philosophy, politics, biology, and education itself. Thus Nazism, as it proceeded from practice to theory, had to deny expertness in thinking and then (this second process was never completed), in order to fill the vacuum, had to establish expert thinking of its own— that is, to find men of inferior or irresponsible caliber whose views conformed dishonestly or, worse yet, honestly to the Party line. The nonpolitical pastor satisfied Nazi requirements by being nonpolitical. But the nonpolitical schoolmaster was, by the very virtue of being nonpolitical, a dangerous man from the first. He himself would not rebel, nor would he, if he could help it, teach rebellion; but he could not help being dangerous— not if he went on teaching what was true. In order to be a theory and not just a practice, National Socialism required the destruction of academic independence. In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk- ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self- esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.
Anti-intellectualism isn't the only ingredient, but it's one of the most important. It's a reactionary movement that injects hate into people's hearts in order to consolidate power for the privileged. Those "little men" who support the regime feel that they were elevated above the people whom they hate, and were often the beneficiaries of the cruel treatment and dispossession of the victims.
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Dude, you are dealing with a liberal, not a moron. Remember, it doesn't matter if you're right if you sound like an asshole. We all were taught in school that Stalin was evil and bad just like Hitler therefore communism = fascism, and some of us were taught in school that Hitler was a socialist.
1 - get off your high horse
2 - they asked a double question about how did Stalin and Hitler rise to power and how does fascism take hold in a society, they didn't equate Stalinism with fascism.
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Its weird because we basically all agree its bad but its happening anyway. I keep feeling like someone should do something, but then like I'm someone and cant really do anything.
Are we all just waiting for someone to do something about it?
This. It's such a helpless, defeating feeling. If I looked out my window, and saw people rioting in the streets and fighting the police/ military, I'd immediately be engaging (and most likely immediately getting neutralized), if I had a company of like-minded individuals behind me I'd say let's determine a target. But all of us, you, me, everyone, have the same mindset: If we try, we will win, but if I try, I will die.
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I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
Fascist propaganda is highly effective, and no one is immune to propaganda. Humans are emotional creatures, prone to being whipped up into a frenzy. You identify a(n imaginary) threat, and offer a very simple solution to it. The logic of whether or not the solution sounds morally correct doesn't matter because 1.) The problem is made up anyways and 2.) The propagandist is appealing to the id, not the superego.
Remember that thinking is the greatest threat to fascism, exercise your brain as often as possible.
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I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
Any political extremism is propagated by providing easy answers to complex problems.
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I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Dude just look outside.
Edit: i used to have big long lectures about the psychology of it, or how it exists as a system. But now you can just look outside.
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I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
If you are up for a big, dense piece of 1950s social philosophy, Hannah Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism" is a classic. It covers imperialism, racism, mob violence, antisemitism, propaganda, tolerance for lies, and the development of mythologies. It's got a lot of ideas - many of which have been challenged. It's also excessively wordy.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of the components have been around for a long time -- supremacist ideologies, conspiracy theories, propaganda systems. -
I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
Bigotry, that's how. People have problems, the economy is struggling. They need a scapegoat. So someone like Hitler or Trump convince them that all their problems are caused by jews or immigrants or LGBT people or some other minority group and that everything will be fixed by getting rid of that group
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If you are up for a big, dense piece of 1950s social philosophy, Hannah Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism" is a classic. It covers imperialism, racism, mob violence, antisemitism, propaganda, tolerance for lies, and the development of mythologies. It's got a lot of ideas - many of which have been challenged. It's also excessively wordy.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of the components have been around for a long time -- supremacist ideologies, conspiracy theories, propaganda systems.Thanks. If anything, I have a lot of reading to catch up on!
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I've always been curious how fascism takes hold, and how people like Hitler, Stalin. etc rise to power. Do people not see what is happening? Shouldn't hindsight, foresight and common sense kick in at some point? I used t think they were like mob bosses early on - anyone disagreeing with them ends up in a barrel, but surely were civilized and educated by now?
It seems the people don't want to jeopardize their comfortable livelihoods and individual lives so expect the 'powerful elected officials' to do their bidding. After all, the public gave them the power to do just that. Otoh, the politicians don't want to jeopardize their cushy jobs and accumulated power by challenging the majority, so are waiting for the public to start a jan6 situation so they can point and say, 'see, the people are unhappy so we should act'.
It's a shitstorm of no consequences and a man child hacking away at the country and no one seems to be doing anything meaningful. I'm literally watching fascism take place.
History/ psychology/ sociology majors care to chime in?
Populism
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Dude just look outside.
Edit: i used to have big long lectures about the psychology of it, or how it exists as a system. But now you can just look outside.
Yeah. Trying to put it all into sense, perhaps using the lessons of history as a guide.
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Any political extremism is propagated by providing easy answers to complex problems.
Yes, but along the way, we'd expect there to be questions and common civility perhaps being a guide. It's not happening, so I'm wondering why the masses and leaders sit and do nothing while it unfolds.
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From They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 - 1945, in which the author Milton Mayer got to know and interviewed 10 Nazis (the mentioned "friends") about the rise of fascism:
Because the mass movement of Nazism was nonintellectual in the beginning, when it was only practice, it had to be anti- intellectual before it could be theoretical. What Mussolini’s official philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, said of Fascism could have been better said of Nazi theory: “We think with our blood.” Expertness in thinking, exemplified by the professor, by the high- school teacher, and even by the grammar- school teacher in the village, had to deny the Nazi views of history, economics, literature, art, philosophy, politics, biology, and education itself. Thus Nazism, as it proceeded from practice to theory, had to deny expertness in thinking and then (this second process was never completed), in order to fill the vacuum, had to establish expert thinking of its own— that is, to find men of inferior or irresponsible caliber whose views conformed dishonestly or, worse yet, honestly to the Party line. The nonpolitical pastor satisfied Nazi requirements by being nonpolitical. But the nonpolitical schoolmaster was, by the very virtue of being nonpolitical, a dangerous man from the first. He himself would not rebel, nor would he, if he could help it, teach rebellion; but he could not help being dangerous— not if he went on teaching what was true. In order to be a theory and not just a practice, National Socialism required the destruction of academic independence. In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk- ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self- esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.
Anti-intellectualism isn't the only ingredient, but it's one of the most important. It's a reactionary movement that injects hate into people's hearts in order to consolidate power for the privileged. Those "little men" who support the regime feel that they were elevated above the people whom they hate, and were often the beneficiaries of the cruel treatment and dispossession of the victims.
It's terribly discouraging. Like you're being punished for taking the time to build yourself up. 'And the meek shall inherit the earth' also has these control undertones, as does every skilled worker made to work under the policies and management of an unskilled manager because he 'knew a guy'. 'Inferior' lol.
In my country we sarcastically remark 'its not what you know, it's who you know', while the quality of the workforce abd personal education continues to decline. More true now than ever.
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Yeah. Trying to put it all into sense, perhaps using the lessons of history as a guide.
Shit. Okay, ill type that up at some point when im the right amount of sober.
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Yes, but along the way, we'd expect there to be questions and common civility perhaps being a guide. It's not happening, so I'm wondering why the masses and leaders sit and do nothing while it unfolds.
My impression is that 1/3 of the population is always ready to accept tyranny. On that topic, I have a couple of other suggestions that are easier reads than Arendt, and specifically about the usa:
- Who Goes Nazi (a short, almost fun essay)
- Huey Long is sometimes considered America's fascist governor.
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My impression is that 1/3 of the population is always ready to accept tyranny. On that topic, I have a couple of other suggestions that are easier reads than Arendt, and specifically about the usa:
- Who Goes Nazi (a short, almost fun essay)
- Huey Long is sometimes considered America's fascist governor.
1/3 kinda sounds about right. Some are finding the system isn't working for them, and want a change, no matter how drastic. The other group wants to control the system for their needs.
