Several laws have been passed targeting transgender people over the past year. Now, a Data For Progress poll shows that 24% of all transgender adults have seen their care disrupted or discontinued.
I re-read that summarised list of Umberto Eco’s common features of fascism a few days ago and this time it just hit differently.
I realised this “fascism” thing, this “nazism” thing… we (speaking for myself at least) were taught, sure, it’s a potential in the collective mass of all societies of people… but it’s a potential that is exploited by a big #rare unique dude who sometimes appears and brings out the worst in everyone, was what I believe I was taught.
But no. I’m coming to understand that fascism and its ilk are emergent. These traits can and do arise on their own without much meddling and certainly not always with benign intentions on the face of them. But you get enough at the same time and it’s not a #rare unique dude seizing the day. It’s the masses who create the dude. It’s collective brainrot. It’s why these “great leaders” are always so fkn pathetic in retrospect and through the eyes of anyone not mesmerised. It’s what happens when we let ourselves and our fellow beings stop tending to our mental gardens etc.
I fear some of these traits are even fostered on this site*, despite the very best of meaning and intent, I fear we are all creating a monster we can barely comprehend.
* not tryna have a struggsesh, this is the best site on the internet. Just, mildly alarmed at the notion that perhaps this shit is so inevitable it will even pervert our good will.
I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about the effects of isolation, echochambers, the compounding effects of low quality education, simple heuristic solutions for group problems, irony poisoning, conditioned in-group responses, thought terminating cliches… a whole milieu of factors great and small that sorta “till the soil” of the mind leaving it easy for anything to take root. While there are especially virulent things looking to take root, where good ideas are perhaps a bit less aggressive and invasive by nature.
With the virus analogy, I guess how I’ve been feeling is that even as early as my primary schooling, we were not effectively vaccinated against the fascism virus and in some respects it seems like we were/are primed for it.
The thought which I haven’t yet really figured out how to articulate or conceptualise is this notion that fascism and liberalism are so inextricably linked that liberalism might more or less always lead to fascism. Like perhaps it relies on the same sort of tilled soil that fascism requires to take root, to continue stretching that metaphor to the end.
Not that this is some fresh revelation for a socialist community. I’ve just been feeling the “reality” of this lately, rather than it being an intellectually understood fact. It’s hard to describe. Like even the best meaning efforts from within the liberal project bend towards a fascistic failure state.
I re-read that summarised list of Umberto Eco’s common features of fascism a few days ago and this time it just hit differently.
I realised this “fascism” thing, this “nazism” thing… we (speaking for myself at least) were taught, sure, it’s a potential in the collective mass of all societies of people… but it’s a potential that is exploited by a big #rare unique dude who sometimes appears and brings out the worst in everyone, was what I believe I was taught.
But no. I’m coming to understand that fascism and its ilk are emergent. These traits can and do arise on their own without much meddling and certainly not always with benign intentions on the face of them. But you get enough at the same time and it’s not a #rare unique dude seizing the day. It’s the masses who create the dude. It’s collective brainrot. It’s why these “great leaders” are always so fkn pathetic in retrospect and through the eyes of anyone not mesmerised. It’s what happens when we let ourselves and our fellow beings stop tending to our mental gardens etc.
I fear some of these traits are even fostered on this site*, despite the very best of meaning and intent, I fear we are all creating a monster we can barely comprehend.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
* not tryna have a struggsesh, this is the best site on the internet. Just, mildly alarmed at the notion that perhaps this shit is so inevitable it will even pervert our good will.
deleted by creator
I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about the effects of isolation, echochambers, the compounding effects of low quality education, simple heuristic solutions for group problems, irony poisoning, conditioned in-group responses, thought terminating cliches… a whole milieu of factors great and small that sorta “till the soil” of the mind leaving it easy for anything to take root. While there are especially virulent things looking to take root, where good ideas are perhaps a bit less aggressive and invasive by nature.
With the virus analogy, I guess how I’ve been feeling is that even as early as my primary schooling, we were not effectively vaccinated against the fascism virus and in some respects it seems like we were/are primed for it.
The thought which I haven’t yet really figured out how to articulate or conceptualise is this notion that fascism and liberalism are so inextricably linked that liberalism might more or less always lead to fascism. Like perhaps it relies on the same sort of tilled soil that fascism requires to take root, to continue stretching that metaphor to the end.
Not that this is some fresh revelation for a socialist community. I’ve just been feeling the “reality” of this lately, rather than it being an intellectually understood fact. It’s hard to describe. Like even the best meaning efforts from within the liberal project bend towards a fascistic failure state.