The only problem I have is with the whole “foreign backed” language. It’s technically not wrong, but please, as a reminder: It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA. It is a homegrown problem, fascism has been smouldering in the US for a long time, and just as another reminder, it is also glimmering in the EU as well.
The country is “occupied” by its ruling class, and in this case, a specific clique of them benefitting themselves even against other capitalists, but overall, this is much more about class-, than it is about nation-dynamics.
We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.
The human race is a bunch of smouldering fascists. Balkans, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Darfur. Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and other countries in the Sahel region. Take a look at this list of ethnic cleansings.
World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.
We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.
World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.
Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.
Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.
Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don’t think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here’s just one example from NPR.
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.
The only problem I have is with the whole “foreign backed” language. It’s technically not wrong, but please, as a reminder: It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA. It is a homegrown problem, fascism has been smouldering in the US for a long time, and just as another reminder, it is also glimmering in the EU as well.
The country is “occupied” by its ruling class, and in this case, a specific clique of them benefitting themselves even against other capitalists, but overall, this is much more about class-, than it is about nation-dynamics.
We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.
The human race is a bunch of smouldering fascists. Balkans, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Darfur. Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and other countries in the Sahel region. Take a look at this list of ethnic cleansings.
World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.
capitalism is smouldering fascism. the signs are mostly on the capitalist world (which tbf is most people).
also, humans doing bad things does not necessarily equals fascism.
Okay Karl
i wish, comrade.
Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.
Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.
Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.
Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don’t think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here’s just one example from NPR.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.