You got to vaccinate people against the hate.
November 30, 2022 2:22 AM   Subscribe

Why Fascism's Returning to the World - "It was the great John Maynard Keynes who pieced it together best. Fascism, he discovered, was the result of sudden, sharp plunges into poverty, especially unexpected ones, ones where people's expectations of upward mobility collided with the grim reality of downward mobility."[1,2,3] (previously)

  • @alfred_twu: "The growing protests in China reminds me of the research that revolutions are most likely when the standard of living rises but then goes in reverse, causing anger due to unmet expectations. China's last 20 years have got to be one of the most extreme versions of this."[4,5,6]
  • @wjhurst: "Since 1989, we've seen 5 main strands/repertoires of contention in China: 1) labour protest; 2) rural protest; 3) student protest; 4) urban governance protest; 5) systematic political dissent. Each of these has usually been disaggregated locally and separated from the others... By taking up slogans and frames of generalised dissent, as well as at least implicitly signally solidarity with workers' and students' mobilisation, these crowds are crossing a boundary and helping merge four of the five strands/repertoires outlined above."
  • @danwwang: "Shanghai's protest intensified today and the situation feels fairly volatile. Everyone today has something to be mad about: factory workers, students, urban parents, shop-owners, etc. Meanwhile the state is ramping up censorship and boosting police presence. These protests are remarkable because the virus is a key actor. Nearly everyone is already exhausted by three years of zero-Covid. Attempts to contain people would incite greater pushback... and yet it's hard to see how the state will tolerate outbreaks or public demonstrations."
  • @YashengHuang: "Protests are rare in China because there is no coordination mechanism. In other societies religion, NGOs, and technology serve that coordinating function. One folly of COVIDZero is that it supplies a coordination mechanism across regions and socioeconomic classes. Irony is rich."[7,8]
  • @tony_zy: "When police ask the protesters not to chant 'no more lockdowns', so they chant this instead: 'MORE LOCKDOWNS! I WANT TO DO COVID TESTS!'"
  • @Noahpinion: "How did Deng make sure China wasn't roiled by repeats of Tiananmen? By refocusing the country toward economic growth. To this end, he liberalized the country's economy, making it very publicly clear that growth in living standards was the goal."
  • @LetaHong: "Pay attention to all the young women on the front lines of China's protests, being the first to take action. Their discontent has been mounting for many years prior to this moment."
  • Young Women at Front Line of China's Sweeping Covid Protests - "The wider participation of women in the latest wave of large-scale protests underscores their changing role in a conservative Asian society. Even as they expand their share of the labor force in the world's No. 2 economy and pursue their personal life choices, they've been battling workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Women have a particular reason to be angry about the Covid restrictions as they end up handling bulk of domestic chores plus childcare, said one in her 40s after participating in a Shanghai protest. Some women also faced domestic violence, she added, declining to provide her name for safety reasons. 'They have less to lose from protesting, and more to gain potentially' in China's patriarchal society, said Maria Repnikova, an assistant professor in global communication at Georgia State University. 'Autocratic regimes tend to construct their legitimacy around conservative family values that don't favor women and women's participation in politics,' she added." (Under Xi Jinping, Women in China Have Given Up Gains)
From Twitter to Terrorism, the Far Right Isn't Taking No For an Answer - "What did America just do? It just rejected the far right, in a big, historic, even globally singular, way. Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins more or less across the board. Americans said 'we've had enough,' loudly, firmly, and they meant it. Enough of what, though? Enough of the childishness of the fanatics — and enough of the hate, too. Americans seem to want a return to civility, to decency, to a society where people aren't at each others' throats... They want a functioning society grounded in norms of comity again. That's remarkable stuff, because the world is going the other way. But — and it's a big but — the far right isn't taking no for an answer. You see, it begins from a place of anti-democratic pseudo-philosophy — so why should anyone's consent matter?"[9]

What the Battle for the Soul of Our Societies Is Really About - "What it means to (really) be on the side of civilization and democracy."
What is our truth — on the side of democracy, civilization, and all their values? Well, it’s that those are the great projects of humanity, and they have a certain set of values. Peace. Justice. Truth. Beauty. Goodness. Kindness. Mercy. Being welcoming and warm and gentle people, full of grace, brimming over with acceptance for all...

Saying that being a civilized person is being a loving person is a serious thing: it means that one must practice, enact, the great virtues, the timeless values, of care, concern, gentleness, warmth, truth, peace. Unswervingly, even when it’s not easy. And if this bar isn’t lived up to, then, well, one is failing in an equally serious way. And therefore, to live the opposite of these values — to preach and practice hate, brutality, violence, repression, bigotry, and so forth — this is an even deeper failure, which is anathema to really being part of the projects of democracy and civilization.[10,11]
also btw...
  • @Noahpinion: "As for empires and whatnot, it's just not true that the world is a struggle for power and dominance between rival groups, and that some groups will prove themselves superior and others inferior. That is just not how things work. That is a dark and destructive fantasy."
  • @Noahpinion: "To put it crudely, my interpretation of Fukuyama is that although liberal democracy is the GOAT, each generation is driven to fuck around and find out."[12,13]
  • @Noahpinion: "Perhaps instead of an End of History, what we get are fluctuations around a trend -- cycles of illiberalism and conflict when each new generation forgets the lessons of the old, but each cycle taking us a little more in the liberal direction."
  • @kamilkazani: "Crisis and Jubilee: What's happening in Russia? Russia's spiralling into a deep crisis. It was visible before the war but now it's rapidly accelerating. And every major crisis entails mass redistribution of power, property and status. Because crisis is essentially a Jubilee."
  • @Noahpinion: "As Russia, Iran, and now China have all stumbled, and the liberal democracies are looking more resilient, we're still far from proclaiming that the End of History is back. But perhaps this is the end of the beginning."[14,15,16]
  • The end of the system of the world - "A critical point has been reached; decoupling is for real this time... a largely but not completely bifurcated global system of production and trade, with two technologically advanced high-output blocs competing head to head — seems like the most likely replacement for the Chimerica system that dominated the global economy over the past two decades."[17,18] (A big sweeping theory of modern history)
  • @Noahpinion: "People love to think of themselves as the inheritors of a great civilization. But I'd rather think of myself as the ancestor of a great civilization yet to come!"
  • A futurist sets the stage for the next 1,000 years - "Our telos should be to always think: 'Am I becoming a great ancestor?'"
Taiwan Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang's Conversation with Noah Smith - "Love Boat for everyone."
Noah Smith: Because when you really think about what the world is dividing into political blocks. In World War I, the political blocks didn't really stand for different things. At least at first, Woodrow Wilson pretended they did, but really like Germany, Britain, and France.

These countries were not that different, in terms of values, they didn't really think about values. Then by World War II, people really defined the struggle as a struggle of values. They dramatically exaggerated how different how those values were.

It still held power and people still fought for it on both sides. Now we're seeing, unfortunately, I never wanted to see this again in my life, but we're seeing another era of great power conflict and I hope that would never return.

[Taiwan is] in the epicenter. Yes. It's really bad. There's only bad guys and worse guys when it comes to great power conflict, there's no real good guys. The last couple of times we had great power conflict, the less bad guys won. The guys who were less bad won the conflict. That shaped the destiny of the world.

The fact that the allies won World War II and even though the allies have plenty of bad guys on our side, including Mao, I mean he was on our side.

The fact that the allies won and that those that had the most influence over the allies and demanded that like the British Empire give up its possessions and wanted universal declaration of human rights, United Nations and all this stuff, had a real important effect that shaped the world for the next whatever.

...

Anyway, we're on the less bad side I hope. We've got to define what that means. Like what values? ... I think that the first person I saw who was able to articulate what these different sides stood for was you...

Audrey Tang: Yeah. It dawned on me in 2014 during Sunflowers.[19] Not just the PRC and Taiwan, everywhere has contracted the same retweet-button virus. That at the same time actually led to the Arab Spring and all that.

The PRC at the time had some civil society, especially online. They decided that this is too toxic, that this virus is like SARS, only worse. They clamped down and remained in lockdown for social media, putting in more budget than their military budget to this day.

Whereas we discovered that, maybe we can find a cure, or vaccinate against this kind of virus of the mind, and then we went on bright side, or at least the brighter side... More love, as opposed to zero hate.
Taiwan Ruling Party's Election Drubbing Could Ease Tensions With China [ungated] - "Local election results on self-ruled island could persuade Chinese leaders that they can peacefully influence politics there, analysts say."[20]
Yeh Yao-yuan, who teaches international relations at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, said the election results would likely encourage China to intensify its efforts in using information warfare and economic incentives to lure swing voters into favoring China-friendly candidates in the 2024 presidential race.

Taiwan already ranks as the world’s top target of foreign disinformation, according to V-Dem, a Swedish institute that produces annual reports on global disinformation. Taiwanese officials say most of it comes from China.
Eleven days in Taiwan - "Why should a peaceful, prosperous, gentle country like Taiwan be forced to prepare for the threat of invasion and bloodshed? There is no principle of human morality or justice that says they should have to. Instead, it's purely the law of the jungle;[21] there are predators in this world, and they will conquer what they can until they are stopped. China's leaders want to conquer Taiwan not just because they want to rival the old Qing dynasty in territorial extent, but because Taiwan represents something to them that they can't abide — an alternative blueprint for Asia. Perhaps even more than Japan or South Korea, Taiwan shows people in China and its satellite states what they're missing — a way of life where people can just be themselves, instead of living in service to a grand empire."

Taipei. A Portrait. - "Today, Taipei feels less like the roaring heart of an Asian Tiger and much more like a communal village. A village within a city within a mountain range on an island. A hidden gem. However, this nostalgic nineties façade is just the external enclosure to something much more elaborate. A cocktail of Chinese heritage, colonial-era Japanese influence, and a palpably more progressive, liberal outlook than many parts of Asia. This cultural collage is noticeable in many facets of day-to-day life."
posted by kliuless (37 comments total) 74 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've always made an association between the rise of fascism and new communication technologies. With new communication comes an audience who is more susceptible (less immunized) to propaganda: for example, radio in the 1920s used effectively by Mussolini and then Hitler (or Father Coughlin and others).
The KKK in 1910s took advantage of the new storytelling method of film (Birth of a Nation).
In the 2010s, the weaponization of social media is part of the subject of the current stories along with the fractionalization that can come from the clustering of interest groups.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:30 AM on November 30, 2022 [41 favorites]


China's protests: Blank paper becomes the symbol of rare demonstrations

Sometimes old tech is best.
posted by chavenet at 3:42 AM on November 30, 2022


I left television off the list because television when first introduced was a fairly expensive technology and not a technology of the masses like radio. This site tells part of the story of the cost of television in 1950 (over 99% cheaper today).
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:09 AM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


Un-paywalled
posted by CaseyB at 5:18 AM on November 30, 2022


Fascism always claims to be a new broom,
That will sweep away corruption and solve intractable problems.
But in every case it is supported by oligarchs, mafias and the billionaire media:
In other words, the forces that created the mess it claims to solve.
It's a con.

George Monbiot
posted by lalochezia at 5:27 AM on November 30, 2022 [25 favorites]


It's my understanding that television also developed as an offshoot of radio because of the required infrastructure. In the U.S. all the existing radio networks immediately established a television presence and the one television network which didn't have a connection to radio (DuMont) failed to gain much traction and quickly disappeared. I agree that television in the post-war period didn't represent the same kind of new media frontier that radio did pre-war.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:48 AM on November 30, 2022


Lot of assertions in that first link. Not a lot of data. Unsupported arguments are convincing only to those who already believe.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:41 AM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


We have tickets to Taiwan in February of next year and are just biting our nails at this point about whether it will be safe to use them by then. Such a frustrating, sad situation.
posted by potrzebie at 6:57 AM on November 30, 2022


How about the situation in China? I worked in China in the late 90s/early 2000s and was really struck by all the nice new buildings on campuses, etc, when looking at video clips of the protests, so that's good, the campuses I was on were either run down nice buildings or very low-grade new buildings.

I don't really have anything smart to say about it - when I realized that I couldn't go back due to life stuff, I scaled down following the China news because it made me too sad. As ever, I notice that US coverage tends to be either tankie coverage or weird, misleading anti-communist coverage. A lot of this is purely ideological but some of it to me seems to reflect the way China remains "far away" mentally to the US even as communication and travel have improved. I think this is a bit different for younger people because of Tik-Tok/twitter/social media in general - we've all seen various Chinese influencer types. But it feels like US people don't have as much of the intuitive sense of "people don't really like being pushed around in terrifying circumstances regardless of the government's ideology" when China is the subject.

People did say to me when I was in Shanghai that Beijing has always been afraid of Shanghai because it's rich, cultured, relatively far away while still being on the coast and has a long history of its own interaction with other countries and regions - so for instance, there were massive protests in Shanghai in 1989 but the crackdown was much weaker.
posted by Frowner at 6:58 AM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


This is interesting... But I don't think he really backs up the claim that sudden poverty = fascism. Keynes' "Economic Consequences of the Peace" does not attempt to generalize his theories on the impact of the Versaille treaty on the German state, the argument is very specific, that economically punishing the Germans for the first world war will tend to encourage them to want to go to war again. But Fascism didn't even really exist yet in 1919 and Keynes was dealing with the specific context of an alliance of victorious foreign countries forcing a kind of poverty on the nation who lost through the imposition of debts. Not just, you know, bad economic conditions. Also, the poorest nations in the world are not fascist? Some are even communist! Just saying that I don't think the connection between poverty and fascism is really all that rigid. With the right leadership, sudden poverty could lead to socialism, and has in the past. The difference between impact of the devastation of war on the Germans and the Soviets is instructive.
posted by dis_integration at 7:15 AM on November 30, 2022 [11 favorites]


I wrote one of my whole ass dissertations on American right wing political attitudes on immigration*. F that s.

Fascism is easy and lazy. That’s it. In the face of complicated issues and hard problems some folks are attracted to a system of thought that externalizes the source of those problems and then offers obviously dumb hateful solutions. Being part of a party takes effort and cooperation- so that’s why they just call themselves libertarians or classic liberals or alt dumb. Easy. Lazy.

The only acceptable change they want is the promise of a new magic fishing lure, every thing else is an imposition, even their religion. Staying a member at grandmas old church on the corner is hard, the easy option is to go see a show at the prosperity mega church made out of ticky tacky on the edge of town. In the face of social flux the easy option is to retreat to the patriarchy and bigotry of modern fundamentalism. Of course all their website will say is something about the inaccuracy of the bible, what truly upsets them is being accurately described in plain language. And the lazy option is to just call yourself a christian but not actually be a part of any church. Just pick everything up via osmosis from Fox.

It’s purely reactionary pablum that they eat up because the only work it involves is hating and blaming the same old villains.

*Lots of time considering the political utility of populism, xenophobic, and nativism as an electoral strategy and the inevitable conflict with the institutional and governance of immigration policy. I even embraced the strength of the major arguments like a proper academic. And look at that wordy summary. Worthless.
posted by zenon at 8:15 AM on November 30, 2022 [23 favorites]


> Lot of assertions in that first link. Not a lot of data. Unsupported arguments are convincing only to those who already believe.

> I don't think he really backs up the claim that sudden poverty = fascism.

not a full defense! but see notes 1, 2, 3 :P
posted by kliuless at 8:19 AM on November 30, 2022


There isn't one specific cause of a rise of fascism, and attempting to pin it down purely to matters of economics and loss of economic status is short sighted.

At least in the US, Fascism is tying in deep with long-standing racial animus among whites who have a high economic status but are upset that they're losing their social status to the wrong people: people of color, queer people, non-Christians, etc. If you look at the sorts of people who were involved in the January 6th coup attempt, it's very stark. Someone who can afford to travel to DC, stay multiple days in a hotel, and own several semi-automatic rifles is not someone who is economically struggling.

The loss of their real or imagined social status is what creates that animus to the existing social order and pushes them towards the people promising the easy fix of just putting the boot down harder on all those horrible people who are not like them.
posted by SansPoint at 8:38 AM on November 30, 2022 [14 favorites]


Can't really move forward from the first link.

The folks driving the “Freedom” movement in Ontario have trucks, rec vehicles, large homes and farms (some employing “guest workers”). I think a big part of it is a personal aspiration to US bravado/machismo that's become part of rural culture.

I know a lot of the older ones were the type to run around the schoolyard in the 70s going “Ayyyyyyyy”, like Fonzie. At least in Ontario, Fascists are a bunch of little Fonzies.

Governments bend to corporate power at the service of “growth” and eventually lose the power to exert any sort of healthy regulation or momentum. Gullible people only respect power. More of a feedback loop than cause and effect.
posted by brachiopod at 8:39 AM on November 30, 2022 [8 favorites]


Fascism comes from those who are successful at getting power having opportunities to get even more power. As our economy of mergers and takeovers and buyouts leaves even fewer people in charge of a higher proportion of our lives, the stronger and more inescapable the tide is.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


Wow, thank you kliuless for putting all of this together! I'm looking forward to digging in.
posted by MiraK at 9:33 AM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


But — and it's a big but — the far right isn't taking no for an answer. You see, it begins from a place of anti-democratic pseudo-philosophy — so why should anyone's consent matter?
...
At least in the US, Fascism is tying in deep with long-standing racial animus among whites who have a high economic status but are upset that they're losing their social status to the wrong people: people of color, queer people, non-Christians, etc.


Precisely. It bears repeating, so I'll repeat it; America's history is a long one in which much of the populace has been taught, and believes wholeheartedly, that a certain kind of American (WASP cis het conservative males) deserve privilege, status, and sole control over leadership. Those who don't check all boxes can gain access -- much of the time, anyway -- by bending the knee to those who do, by espousing that the aforementioned racial-ethnic-religious-gender combo platter deserve that privilege and that it should remain unchallenged.

The last sixty years of American history are where that privilege system has begun to break down, thanks to cultural changes, court rulings on Constitutionality, and a general awareness that diversity is a strength, not a defect. Naturally, those who have counted on our legal and judicial systems to maintain their privilege are infuriated by this. Cue a forty-plus-year sustained bombardment of our airwaves, including regulation changes ensuring that said bombardment can happen, expressing anger over the Other gaining degrees of equality with Real Americans (and stealing all of the money, power, jobs, rights, privileges and whatnot) and inciting the listeners to anger and action.

Some want to re-seize control via judicial rulings, from SCOTUS on down. Some want to do it via control of legislative bodies and Governorships. Some want to shatter federal protections altogether and allow individual states to become old-style fiefdoms. Some want to use guns and violence to simply take it back. But they all use the same method to build their power base; they declare that your current state is Somebody Else's Fault, that they will fix it, and all you need to do is vote in the fascists en masse and put your check in the mail...
posted by delfin at 9:36 AM on November 30, 2022 [16 favorites]


I'm not sure America has rejected the politics of Trump as emphatically as described. I see clips of embittered Arizona residents at town hall meetings opening calling for the death penalty for elected officials, without being arrested. Republicans like the House majority leader still have not unequivocally rejected Trump for meeting with a white supremacist who has called for dictatorship. Republicans won't even condemn the terrorists behind the January 6 attack on the government. Half the country is still comfortable with considering Fascism as a legitimate path forwards, and that should be making everyone else wary as hell.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:40 AM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


I've read good work by Haque & Smith in the past, but the linked pieces left me unimpressed. Portentous and vague, they read like rain-making gestures. I get that their job to (re-)imagine the world in a way that aligns with their political commitments and mollifies the audience, but this "all you need is love" stuff is saccharine and coy. The US-led world order is not a club of boy scouts pinky-sworn to protect ❤️ our values ❤️. It is a domineering military and economic power, exporting a disruptive brand of consumption-driven individualism, that induces & celebrates obscene inequalities, and has ravaged ecologies & communities the world over. It's really not a big mystery why it has its detractors & discontents.

Don't get me wrong. I would prefer US-style liberalism to Soviet-style communism or strongman authoritarianism, if that's a choice that needs making. The question is whether that's the case. We can acknowledge that US-style liberalism does an abundance of good together with a plethora of bad, and strive to improve the good while we limit the bad. But I don't think you accomplish that by anguished hand-wringing over "the Darkness" and the "Battle over the Soul of Society". I think you accomplish that by recognizing that fascism in the US didn't start with Trump and doesn't end with him. It started with Manifest Destiny and slavery, and continues to this day in the hypertrophied, globe-spanning military, the sprawling intelligence agencies, and the prison-industrial complex.
posted by dmh at 10:55 AM on November 30, 2022 [12 favorites]


Fascism is a reaction to any sudden social change which threatens one's pride of culture. Fascists compete by asserting an idealized hierarchy, uniting people under a mythic banner, avoiding doctrinal divisions. Then it unleashes the scapegoating, because they use a negative image to positively identify themselves. Nationalism leads to state-corporate alliance. They don't need to sell a new idea to motivate crowds, just an old feeling of prejudice. Contrary to wishful thinking, fascists aren't going against their deepest held beliefs to become haters of other groups.
posted by Brian B. at 11:20 AM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


George Seldes, a journalist who lived to be 104 and met with a lot of people from Teddy Roosevelt through Hitler through Errol Flynn, wrote a book saying among other things: Fascism doesn't make the trains run on time. He said that was based on a single stunt performed in Italy for publicity. The Italian trains went back to not running on time immediately after.

I guess that's obvious enough in retrospect. Trump didn't get anything to run better. All that fascism does is try to silence those who point out that it doesn't work.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:49 AM on November 30, 2022 [11 favorites]


Noah Smith is not a credible voice on almost any topic and I am surprised by his prominence in this post. In particular, Tiananmen was to a great extent a protest by workers against some of the economic consequences of liberalization!
posted by derrinyet at 12:31 PM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


The last sixty years of American history are where that privilege system has begun to break down, thanks to cultural changes, court rulings on Constitutionality, and a general awareness that diversity is a strength, not a defect.

the other change in american history is that local and regional powers, some of whom were quite fascistic, have been slowly losing control to the federal government, which is why the far right loves to talk about state rights so much

it doesn't help matters at all that covid restrictions had a much more severe effect on small businesses than it did on the corporations - they're mad as hell over this and it's not over yet
posted by pyramid termite at 12:33 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure America has rejected the politics of Trump as emphatically as described. I see clips of embittered Arizona residents at town hall meetings opening calling for the death penalty for elected officials, without being arrested. Republicans like the House majority leader still have not unequivocally rejected Trump for meeting with a white supremacist who has called for dictatorship. Republicans won't even condemn the terrorists behind the January 6 attack on the government. Half the country is still comfortable with considering Fascism as a legitimate path forwards, and that should be making everyone else wary as hell.

The one good thing about insanity is that the more intense it gets, the louder its possessors become, but that does not also make them the most numerous. The big rally demanding a revote in Arizona, for example, is more like dozens of people than thousands. This is a small comfort, of course -- it only takes one lone nut with a gun to do irreparable harm, and they still keep electing the likes of Wendy Rogers and Paul Gosar -- but the high-office nuts all losing their 2022 campaigns is at least encouraging.

Here's the thing, though. You don't have to actively believe in voting fraud and Communist insurgencies in government and Jewish Space Lasers to recognize that people who do have enormous influence in the current Republican party. You have witnessed the fate of most Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the House or to convict in the Senate, or whom have broken with Trump on major issues in other ways. To exist in an environment side-by-side with Trumpoids requires a sort of polished indifference, rather than any signs of principles.

People like Mitch McConnell didn't particularly care for Trump, or for the torch-and-pitchfork populist waves that brought in him and many of McConnell's current contemporaries. He expended zero effort towards getting the likes of Dr. Oz or Herschel Walker elected, for instance, and openly complained about "candidate quality" in the aftermath. But when nutjobs do get elected, he will not work against them; he will simply require that they vote with the herd and refuses to rein them in in any meaningful way. McCarthy in the House is even more vulnerable... and thus even less outspoken about his qualms, and more likely to simply quote the Trumpoid talking points of the day.

Eric Swalwell spoke of Ted Cruz as an example of someone who thinks that this is all a big game, that lying and evasion and entertaining batshit conspiracy types is all part of the push-and-pull necessary to maintain control of Congress. The kind of guy who would compliment him in private on making a strong case for Trump's impeachment, for example, and then deliver a full-throated repudiation of that case with flimsy justifications on the Senate floor.

That's the fever that needs to break to make any progress.
posted by delfin at 12:34 PM on November 30, 2022 [6 favorites]


Noah Smith is an idiot and not an authority on China in the least. His main contribution in life is to make an inane pronouncement, have someone who is actually an authority on whatever he is talking about chime in and show how Smith is completely wrong, and then that scholars work is more we’ll known. He’s a moron of the highest order.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:59 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


Noah Smith is an idiot

I did crack up a little bit while reading his recent Against 'Polycrisis': "In other words, I look out in the world and I don’t see a polycrisis; I see an emerging polysolution. The looming threats of climate change and authoritarian revanchism, combined with the shocks of Covid and inflation, have stirred both policymakers and businesses to action. And many of those actions will end up addressing multiple crises rather than just one. Nor am I alone in my feeling that the narrative of the world suddenly seems to be improving."
posted by mittens at 1:14 PM on November 30, 2022 [3 favorites]



I'm not sure America has rejected the politics of Trump as emphatically as described.


Completely agree. The House was the one that stuck it's neck out to impeach Trump and review Jan 6, and that's one the Democrats lost. And two people who participated in Jan 6 were elected to Congress.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:27 PM on November 30, 2022


I like the George Monbiot quote @lalochezia!

"Fascism and Big Business" (excerpt) is an interesting read by Daniel Guérin that outlines similarities in the rise of fascism in Italy & Germany.

I found it very insightful as the concept that fascism is directly related to capitalism was new to me when the book was recommended and I read it about 20 years ago post 9-11-2001.

thank you for the post and comments!
posted by gkr at 2:30 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Here's a comment I took from a video about Trump ranting in all caps in the middle of the night on 'Truth Social':
David, I was donating blood this morning at a hotel conference center and a man walked in, asked the Vitalant Coordinator, "Can I vote for Trump here?" She replied, "No. This is a blood drive." The Trump disciple asked her, "Can I come back at 2 and vote for Trump?" She obviously didn't want to anger him and just said "yes". He left. It's 2:17 pm. I'm afraid of what is happening there right now
From a medical point of view these people are ill, legally they are insane, but neither medicine nor law offers us a means of dealing with them when they have been allowed to become up to a third of the population by the extremely naive and utterly foolish politicians and businessmen who think they can use them to get what they want.

Fascism is quite literally a collective nightmare.
posted by jamjam at 2:54 PM on November 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


In particular, Tiananmen was to a great extent a protest by workers against some of the economic consequences of liberalization!

A possible rail strike in the US seems to come from a kind of a nexus point of a lot of frustrations of working class folks, a number of whom feel betrayed by Biden for not standing up against Buffett/BNSF, other rail company shareholders, and a pro-business Congress over basics like sick leave.

Where those frustrations ultimately lead here remains to be seen, but (Hilary) Clinton did lose worker votes to Trump in numbers sufficient to lose the larger election, and we very nearly lost the United States to a dictatorship over that. (Protest) voting has consequences.

Diminished standard of living over liberalization of jobs (and subsequent cost of living increases via inflation caused by 2008 bank bailouts) is only one grievance at hand in what rose to Trump's ascension, but it's one that can't really be denied except by the most stalwart (economic) liberal.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:25 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


The guy that wrote the first link on this post is REAL good at writing stuff that sounds smart and may be very clickable but really it’s liberal cotton candy - hit it with a single drop of water and the whole thing is running down your arm.
posted by chinese_fashion at 7:15 PM on November 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


jamjam - I think I read somewhere that it’s always about a third of the population supporting cruel and authoritarian views. (Around the same proportion supported the Nazis in Germany, for example.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:20 PM on November 30, 2022


I'm sorry to keep harping on the point of the early cost of television, but I thought this was a definitive way of expressing it.

Mean US household income in 1950 was 3,300 dollars. Median 3,000 dollars. The cost of a television in 1950 was $499 for a Philco 12 inch (the only example I could find, the site lists only one choice for that specific year.) In 1948-1949, $499 was the minimum of several choices. For median, this makes a television 16.6% of median income.

Median household income 2021 was $69,717. (Mean is $97,692, skewed because of the wealthy being more wealthy.) So, that would make the 12 inch television set of 1950, by percentage, equal to a purchase of $11,753 dollars in 2021 for the median household.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:17 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]


Clinton did lose worker votes to Trump in numbers sufficient to lose the larger election

Yes and vilification of Hillary Clinton by the right for a solid decade had more to do with that than her economic positions.

Diminished standard of living over liberalization of jobs (and subsequent cost of living increases via inflation caused by 2008 bank bailouts) is only one grievance at hand in what rose to Trump's ascension, but it's one that can't really be denied except by the most stalwart (economic) liberal.

I can deny that, even if I regularly argue that the policies enacted by Obama in 2008 were straight up dumb. Again, Trump voters and Jan 6 participants are wealthier than average so suggesting they en mass suffered in 2008 is incorrect. I'd go so far as to say that if they were en-mass were hurt at all by 2008 policies is debatable.

The Fed just came out with a paper suggesting that housing price growth is a major driver of inflation during the post COVID19 period, and considering that prices have been growing longer than that, very likely that many of these fools got their money directly because of stupid 2008 policies.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:20 AM on December 1, 2022


Even if you accept that those economic positions are important to facist Trump supporters, then why do they continue to vote for people who
1) denied the extra child care tax credit funding
2) vote against the individual dividend
3) vote against student loan forgiveness


Because these things help economically precarious people more than they help them.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:23 AM on December 1, 2022


Trump himself realized that giving money to people helps them vote for and approve of you - that the rest of the Republicans were so against all these during an election year was a hilarious self-own.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:24 AM on December 1, 2022


“Unmusked: How Elon Musk is Using Twitter to Destroy the Concept of Objective Truth,” Heidi Cuda, Byline Supplement, 11 December 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 12:02 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


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