likeHungarians, as the British realized many years ago, have a great sense of humor. I imagine they are crapping themselves laughing at the new Hungarian translation of Jason Stanley's worthless book.
What follows is an interview with Jason conducted by one Atilla Piroth. Incidentally, Stanley's parents are described as 'Holocaust survivors' though his father, aged 5, had arrived safely in the US a couple of years before the gas chambers got going, while his mother had been in Siberia, suffering under Stalin not Hitler, during the War. The plain fact is neither Jason, nor his parents, had any real experience of Fascism.
Your book, How Fascism Works, was published in Hungarian in mid-December. The book describes various interconnected aspects of fascism. It presents a wide range of examples – both classical and contemporary. Let us start with the definition. You write “I have chosen the label ‘fascism’ for ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf.” How does this definition compare to others?
So Washington was a Fascist as was Eamonn da Valera and Jomo Kenyatta and General De Gaulle.
The definition of fascism that I am giving, the definition of fascist politics or fascist propaganda is the whole book, all ten chapters. You need all these ten elements. If I wanted a shorter definition, what I would give is: “Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation, supposed humiliation, by liberals, homosexuals, immigrants and minorities.
So, Fascism does not really exist. Hitler would have looked a fool if he had banged on about how homosexual Canadian immigrants were humiliating the German people by making them wear assless chaps. Mussolini never mentioned 'immigrants' or 'minorities' till he signed up with Hitler in the hope of grabbing territory. As for 'cults of the leader'- Gandhi had a cult but Salazar didn't. The guy was a deeply boring economist.
And he promises that he will gain revenge for this humiliation and restore the glorious order, a glorious previous lost order.”
Hitler was promising something Germany had never had before- a vast Empire to its East. Lots of newly independent nation-states had no fucking lost glory to restore. Some were Fascist- when that was the fashionable thing to be. Look at Turkey. Attaturk never promised to restore the Ottoman Empire. In the Thirties he was happy to look a bit Fascist and even 'Aryan'. But his regime went for multi-party elections when that looked like the fashionable thing to do.
That definition, if we go through the book, encompasses really a lot and it interconnects very well with other definitions, like the one that insists on the central role of financial capital.
But 'financial capital' had a more central role in Britain and Holland etc. How come they weren't Fascist? The gnomes of Zurich are swimming in financial capital. How come they aren't strutting around in jack-books giving each other stiff armed salutes?
Right, good. So, the other definition is: “nationalism in the service of finance capital”,
OMG! Biden is a Fascist just like his pal Obama and the Clintons etc! In fact, America has been Fascist since the Civil War and Britain has been Fascist since William of Orange and Holland was the first Fascist country coz that's where modern financial capitalism got its start. By contrast, Germany could never have gone through a Fascist phase because Finance Capital was always subordinated to the interests of the State. The same is true of Japan. Both countries could only go on the gold standard after they got reparations payments from France and China respectively.
which fits Hungary very well, where you have, essentially, nationalism being thrown to the people to get electoral support for just money going into the pockets of a leader and his friends.
If that's how to get rich, why doesn't everybody do it? Just throw some nationalism to the people and the billions will flow in.
What I was trying in the first instance to characterise was a certain kind of politics, fascist politics.
But Jason knows shit about politics. He can't characterize what he doesn't know.
We can talk about a fascist regime, we can talk about fascist policies, but I was talking about fascist propaganda.
Which is fascist if and only if you get shipped off to a concentration camp if you don't pretend to buy into it completely.
The definition “nationalism in the service of finance capital” is kind of trying to characterise what the aim of fascism is or what the overall goal is, rather than the way the propaganda is structured and the way that the politics works.
One could say that Stanley Baldwin's policies had to do with securing the interests of the City of London in 'the sterling area'. But Baldwin wasn't a Fascist. Hitler was. But he wasn't furthering the interests of any bunch of Bankers anywhere. He was pointing a loaded gun at German bankers and industrialists who scurried to do his bidding.
I think there is still a lot of work to be done with my book,
because it is shit
my book is about fascist propaganda.
but doesn't get that Fascist propaganda is stuff you have to pretend to swallow if you don't want your head kicked in. The reason you tune into it is so as to know what slogans to repeat at work and on the bus and in the pub so as to keep yourself safe from the secret police.
And now what we are seeing all across the world is leaders who took power using fascist propaganda starting to transform or having transformed their country, as in the case of Hungary.
What you are seeing in democratic countries is leaders taking advise from advertising agencies and marketing guys. Orban heeded 'the Fink' Finklestein who advised him to target Soros. The thing was pure Madison Avenue not some Orwellian Ministry of Truth.
My first time in Hungary was in 2009. It was being transformed into a liberal, cosmopolitan, democratic country,
Nope. Hungary had been lying- like Greece- about its finances. The Premier, who was as crazy as a shithouse rat, had admitted it on tape. It faced severe austerity under an administration which had become a global laughing stock.
there was no thought that the free press would be eliminated and everything that [Prime Minister of Hungary] Viktor Orbán has done.
Orban had been Premier between 1998-2002. What changed in 2008? The financial crash hit Central Europe hard. But the political career of Premier Gyurscany, a crony-capitalist of incredible stupidity- he called the Saudi foot ball team terrorists!- had already imploded spectacularly. Whatever you may say about Orban, he is smart and doesn't put shrooms in his goulash.
When I am thinking about labelling, it is the relationship between fascist politics and fascist reality. What happens when a politician gains power? And you see them using fascist politics as a way to blind the people and pocket the profits. That is what it is about.
This guy has had an expensive education. He is a Professor at Yale. Yet he talks like a brain damaged bar fly. 'Biden, right? He dun blind us- yeah? Now he be steal all the money- get me? That's what it's all about. No that there aint no feces discoloring the seat of my cargo shorts. It's...like... Fascism- feel me? That's how come brown stuff keeps leaking out of my anus while Biden robs us blind.'
All over the world, you see money, a lot of money. China has a lot of money, Russian oligarchs have a lot of money, and they are funding the destruction of democracy because democracy is dangerous for them.
Also they are making me shit my pants.
Because democracy involves making sure everyone gets something, that the entire country is materially benefitted.
Is this guy Rahul Gandhi's speech writer?
Maybe democracy would involve a country cracking down on business practices, making sure state contracts are fairly distributed.
But 'anti Fascist' Gyursany had got rich off those contracts. He was the alternative to Orban. In other words, there was no alternative to Orban.
The fascist leaders are doing constant culture war and then you have to ask why.
Actually, this guy is more incoherent than Rahul.
Well, they are doing a culture war so that they do not have to deliver on any material things. And they can take it all for themselves.
China got money- right? And them Rooski oligarchs- they be loaded sho' nuff. So, obviously, they dun blinded the democracy and dun some Fascism which is why feces is leaking out of my anus- feel me?
My book is about the culture war.
as is the feces leaking out of my anus.
How a fascist culture war looks.
is like feces leaking out of my anus
Fascist culture wars start to create a fascist culture.
which causes feces to leak out of my anus
One where people do not question what the leader is doing.
Coz they are focused on the vast quantities of feces leaking out of Jason's anus
One where labour unions are weak.
with laughter coz this guy just won't shut up though vast quantities of feces are continually leaking out of his anus
Workers’ rights are weak – because they challenge what the leader is doing.
Coz Teamsters are well known for using advanced forensic auditing techniques and game theoretic simulations to challenge what leaders are doing in terms of fiscal policy and military doctrine. However, if a State become 'right to work', then the proles suddenly lose higher cognitive functions and feces starts leaking uncontrollably from their anuses.
So, my book is about fascist culture, fascist politics, the structure of the culture war that is all the fascist politics.
and all the finance capital and them oligarchs and the money and the feces that keeps leaking out of my anus.
What you have to do is ask yourself some questions like why have your politics been 100% all about culture war?
In the opinion of a cretin
You do that when you have a material interest. When you are protecting the money.
Money has got magical powers. China's got money. Them Hollywood Liberals- they got money. Post Office has money- coz they rip us off by charging for stamps. The question you have to ask yourself is if culture war is protecting the money, who is the money protecting? The answer is it is the fucking Post Office which is nothing but a cover for a pedophile ring.
Yes, ideology serves as a mask of self-interest. In a conversation, you mentioned that a visit to Budapest had given you a strong push to write this book. Can you tell us a bit more about this?
Yes, I ran two summer schools in Budapest, one in 2009 and one in 2010 for the Central European University.
A good enough reason to close it down.
When in 2009 I went to Budapest, everyone was saying, Budapest will be the next Berlin, it is going to be the next international city, it is going to draw investors and tech companies.
Had Soros set up a STEM subject University- sure. But his outfit was providing PhDs in gender studies. Fuck sort of Tech spinoff would that generate?
People from abroad were buying apartments there.
Prior to the crash. They were also buying apartments in Bulgaria. Then the shit hit the fan.
It is a beautiful city, it is a wonderful place, you know, evenings on the rooftop of Corvin… It felt like the next Berlin.
According to Jason, it was the next Berlin- circa 1932.
It felt like a place where capital would flow,
In 2009? Is the man utterly mad?
where there were great universities, Central European University was the finest European university in Eastern Europe,
it did have a bit of STEM stuff but nothing spectacular. The 'soft subject' shite may have been of average or even above average quality but shite it remained.
and frankly, emerged as a better university than many Western European universities.
Which, in non-STEM subjects, were peddling shite.
And there you have this great university in the middle of a great city, why would it not attract business interests, why would it not be the Budapest of the past, the cultural capital for intellectuals? Central European University was going to bring back the great Hungarian traditions of intellectual life.
It failed to do so. That's why Orban took 'the Fink's' advise and attacked Soros.
When I came back in 2010 after Viktor Orbán had won, it was an entirely different mood, I felt. In the discussions in 2010, the level of hatred of Roma became very open, the kind of openly anti-Western ideas… people were talking about Orbán’s campaign, which sounded like a fascist campaign
So the guy knows shit about Hungary. The cretins at Soros's University had invited him a couple of times but, obviously, the locals thought the fellow a raving nutter. So they'd bait him in various ways. This is the Jimmy Carr side of the Hungarians.
The attitude towards the Roma scared me, they were so open and so widely shared, and when you have a minority hated that much… then I saw a poster of St Stephen, standing with a menorah over a map of Hungary, and I asked Hungarian friends, “What does that say?”,
Jason doesn't get that Catholicism had taken over both the star of David and the menorah for use in Church decoration centuries previously all over Central Europe.
and they said, “Hungary will not be another Palestine”.
In other words, the Hungarians would keep out the Muslims. They must have assumed Jason was pro Zionist.
So, there was this mood, this sort of anti-cosmopolitan mood.
Because of the recession. If you think all sorts of foreigners are gonna pour money into your neighborhood, you're for cosmopolitanism. Then you realize nothing of the sort is going to happen. The only foreigners who will flood in will be poor and needy.
There were all the elements, there was Trianon, and everybody was talking about Trianon. And I was like “Trianon? I have heard about it, but why are you talking about Trianon, that was a long time ago!” Greater Hungary… I mean it was crazy! Why were we talking about Trianon in 2010?
Because Romania has a large Hungarian minority for whom Orban made it easier to get Hungarian citizenship. Trianon was reinstated at the same time that Fascism died. If Jason can bang on about the latter, why shouldn't Orban bang on about the former?
So, all that ultranationalism… and then Orbán seemed to me an openly… he did not seem to have a Christian bone in his body, he seemed openly just. Friends of mine have known him, and said, oh, yeah, religious? You know, he was funded by Soros, liberal, so he seemed to me a cynical opportunist. And so, this cynical opportunist ran an anti-Semitic, anti-Roma campaign, harkening back to Trianon, restoring Greater Hungary.
But the Trianon thing had been around since the Seventies when the regime decided that it was cool to hate Romania (Ceausescu had condemned the suppression of the Prague Spring in '68) and to care about the 5 million Magyar speakers in other countries.
It was just nuts, it was insane to figure this in the heart of Europe. So, I said to my friends, this man is very dangerous, your country is in trouble, and I am not coming back. And people thought I was crazy. And they were like “That is ridiculous, it is Viktor Orbán, he is a liberal. He is just making it up for the cameras, there is no way… you are in Europe! There is no way Hungary is ever gonna be threatened… You know, we could say whatever we want, there is no way the media is ever gonna be muzzled.” People laughed at me saying, it is just the question of how big the Central European University is going to get.
The laughed even harder when Trump was elected. Orban can't do much. Trump had his finger on the nuclear trigger. What a lot of feces must be leaking from Jason's anus as he rants and raves about Fascism so close at hand?
But people forget that Orbán was very new… That Orbán was the person who went there in Europe. Who did an anti-Semitic, an anti-Roma, ultranationalist campaign, knowingly and cynically, and I knew that there were no bounds to that. Because if you do that in a country that had killed so many of its Jewish and Roma citizens, you are awakening things that cannot easily be put back to sleep and if a person does that to win an election, they have no conscience at all.
Does Jason really not know that it was Jobbik which spearheaded this by doing well in the 2009 elections? Incidentally, Krisztina Morvai- one of the Jobbik MEPs- a feminist human rights lawyer, had been sacked from the UN Women's anti-discrimination committee for her pro-Palestinian views which antagonized Israel. It may be she was already an anti-Semite or it may be that her anger at the Zionist opposition to her efforts pushed her over the edge into truly demented Jew-baiting. Incidentally, the lady had previously taught Law in America as a Fulbright PhD scholar.
And the naivety of Hungarians in Budapest who thought their democracy was safe, the idea that media could be shut down was inconceivable… So, I did not go back to Hungary until 2019 because everything that happened I had expected to happen, and thankfully things did not get as violent as I thought they would get. But he forced Central European University out of the country. Orbán has perfected the tactic of using the courts just as his personal fiefdom. Right now, Hungary is an autocracy, is an authoritarian state in Europe and Orbán is being treated as a model for other countries. So, for me, that was the first sign.
This is crazy shit. Nobody thought Hungarians would stop being Hungarians- i.e. crazy but charming- just because of Communism or Capitalism or whatever. Thanks to Trianon, it is highly homogeneous in population so it can't really fuck up too badly.
I am the child of two Holocaust survivors,
in the same sense that I am the child of people who survived the Holocaust because they were thousands of miles away from the thing.
and I am not from Hungary, so I did not have the sense that Hungarian Jews I talked to had. “Oh, that is Hungary, we trust our neighbours: they are never gonna be anti-Semitic, they are never gonna be… that past cannot come back.” They seemed so naïve. Because for me going back was like this is the Europe I heard about. This is the Europe my parents were talking about.
The Magyars weren't against Jews as Jews more especially if they spoke Magyar. Thus Hungary did not represent his father's Germany or his mother's Poland.
So, I went back in 2019 and saw Freedom Square and all the statues.
and it was like blowing my mind dude as increasing amounts of feces pumped out of my puckered anus
In 2009, what is essential for democracy is looking back on your past clearly.
while clearly pumping out feces from your backside into your cargo shorts
And taking responsibility.
Them be your feces, don't let the Fascists get their hands on it.
And that was happening in 2009, you had powerful exhibits like the shoes on the Danube.
I told you the Hungarians have a Jimmy Carr sense of humor.
When I went back, what I saw in 2019, you were almost a decade of this. So, you had the centre of Budapest transformed. You know, your kids go to school where they are gonna be fed nonsense by the government.
Don't go to skool. The Government is trying to turn your kids against you. 'Daddy', they cry, 'shit is leaking out of your anus and dribbling down the sides of your cargo shorts. People have stopped laughing at you. They are complaining about the smell. Why not take a break from telling everybody about Fascism and just go hose yourself down?'
The reason in 2010 that I said I was not going back was that although I love Hungary – beautiful country, amazing history – although I love Hungary, I just thought, at the time, Orbán was the first politician. I mean there was Kurt Waldheim. There were far-right: Jörg Haider. Well, not really Waldheim, he did not really fake, had a bad fascist past, a Nazi past – but Jörg Heider.
But Soros's University relocated to Vienna at a time when Heider's party was in the ruling coalition!
But Orbán was not really very charismatic, and yet he was doing this kind of politics. And I have always believed this kind of politics is really powerful, it is very very potentially successful.
Nonsense! Orban is successful because the alternatives are worse.
The reason that we do not have fascism in more countries is that politicians avoid it.
The reason there is no fascism anywhere is because Communism aint a threat.
And so, you really have to be an unprincipled human being to use this politics. And if you are an unprincipled human being you will not stop at anything to take control of the country.
What's more, you will be so unprincipled that you will cause feces to leak out of Jason's anus in a manner ever more copious. This is because of finance capital.
In addition to philosophy, you also have a background in linguistics
Which is how come Jason expresses himself like a fucking retard
. In How Fascism Works – just like in your previous book, How propaganda works – you use insights from linguistics and cognitive sciences. You describe language as a potent and subtle tool.
There is nothing subtle about Jason
You cite Ernst Cassirer, who wrote:
“If we study our modern political myths and the use that has been made of them we find in them, to our great surprise, not only a transvaluation of all our ethical values but also a transformation of human speech….New words have been coined, and even the old ones are used in a new sense; they have undergone a deep change of meaning. This change of meaning depends upon the fact that these words which formerly were used in a descriptive, logical, or semantic sense are now used as magic words that are destined to produce certain effects and to stir up certain emotions. Our ordinary words are charged with meanings; but these new-fangled words are charged with feelings and violent passions.”
Like calling Orban a Fascist and Trump a Fascist and the Neighbor's cat a totally Nazi feline in the pay of Finance Capital.
A couple of months ago the government campaign for the latest “national consultation” survey in Hungary involved billboard ads with questions like “Does Brussels make you angry?” and “Are you outraged by illegal immigration?” – accompanied by emojis to suggest the appropriate emotional reaction – perhaps you have seen some pictures of that.
Where would you put this campaign – and infantilisation in general – in the landscape of present-day propaganda?
It is cheap, tawdry shit. But why bother hiring a decent Ad agency? Nothing much is going to change.
Well, it is just a set of cultural issues. What is happening in Hungary is the government is stealing – I mean Orbán is robbing the country blind, selling it out to China, and he just goes back to this cultural playbook, to this cultural war playbook. And most Hungarians only speak Hungarian, so they do not have access to international media.
Which does not give a shit about Hungary. Indeed, fewer and fewer smart Hungarians do. Nothing much is going to happen there.
He is giving this set of emotional things, you know, things to be afraid of: immigration, Islam, homosexuality,
being buggered by immigrant Muslims who say uncomplimentary things about your prolapsed rectum
like trying to make them afraid and promising to protect them from these things. And he will protect them because many gay people will not want to live in Hungary. Immigrants are not that interested in living in Hungary, they are fleeing from places like Hungary.
Don't hold back. Tell this Hungarian dude what you really think.
I mean, Hungary is OK, it is in Europe, that is great, but if you are going to be in Europe, you would rather be in Germany or Sweden or in places where there is a functional system, where they are not trying to steal your money all the time.
Do you get the feeling that when Hungarians tell Jason how much they hate the Roma, they are broaching the subject of how they feel about him?
That is not that corrupt. So, these things, immigration, these cultural matters, they feel alien.
Because Hungary is a shithole. Let me be clear. It is in Europe- that's good, Europe is good- but it isn't in the good part of Europe- the North. That's why it is utterly fucked.
I mean how many Hungarians have a lot of immigrants in their towns? Very few.
Because their towns are shit. As is their country. Why can't this Atilla dude just get it into his head that Jason thinks he is a big smelly turd who lives in a country which is nothing by a big smelly turd the Devil shat out to the East and South of the good bits of Europe?
Because it is not a site destination. So, he is playing this fascist emotional playbook. And he is doing it to rob the Hungarian people, and to sell the country to China.
Fuck would the Chinese want with it?
Is immigration a problem in Hungary? Are there immigrants? Immigrants go through Hungary. Tolerance for sexual minorities will economically benefit Hungary.
Coz Gays are so into goulash- right?
Tolerant societies, tolerant liberal societies tend to be more open to change and technology, which is not always good.
coz of financial capitalism and the way it cause feces to leak out of anuses with the result that Fascism arises
It is an emotional politics: here are the enemies, here are the things you are not familiar with to be afraid of, and I am protecting you from that. And so, it is meaningless because the real issues Hungary faces are corruption, corruption and corruption. Corruption and democracy and freedom of the press. Authoritarianism and corruption. But you get people afraid so they will hand their liberty and their pocketbooks and their children’s future to the person who promises to protect them from these phantom fears.
Jason thinks Hungarians are very very stupid. Also they are arrant cowards. Thus anybody who lies to them can get very rich by looting the country. Indeed, that was probably Atilla the Hun's tactic. He told the people then living there that the homos were coming to fuck them in the ass. They were so terrified they let the fellow steal everything in sight.
The subtitle of the book is “The politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’”. A very common example for a systematic split between “us” and “them” is spectator sports. They play an important role in ultranationalist regimes – the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games being of course a classic example.
The Soviet Union wasn't 'ultranationalist'. They placed a lot of emphasis on getting more medals than the US. But they were Communist, not Fascist. However, it was in the UK and the US where modern spectator sports most burgeoned. Stamford Bridge Stadium- up the road from me- was first constructed in the 1870s. I suppose you could say Britain and Ireland and America were 'ultranationalist'. But which nation isn't nationalistic?
They effortlessly achieve many goals cherished by fascist politics: with competition as their essence, they create new idols, heroes, myths.
This was happening in Liberal late Victorian England. W.G Grace started playing first class cricket in 1865. Does this mean Disraeli and Gladstone were Fascists? Of course not. It was Queen Victoria who used to go goose-stepping all over the place.
They introduce meritocratic hierarchies and they support ableism.
Unlike the Yale Philosophy Department which supports this retard.
Sports results continue to be a source of national pride – justifying a disproportionate budget for spectator sports, often at the expense of social spending.
Very true. Guys buying tickets to a baseball match are robbing disabled lesbian single mothers of color of the money they need to buy cat food for their precious little babies.
When looking at sports, what warning signs of rising fascism should one look for?
If you see a guy with a Hitler tache whom everybody keeps saying 'Heil' to- that's a giveaway.
So, if you look at Brazil right now, the Brazil soccer team with Germany and Argentina are the world’s great soccer teams. Brazil has every reason to be proud of its soccer team. Bolsonaro did something very smart.
But Brazil first became a soccer superpower while still a democracy.
He got his supporters to wear the Brazilian national soccer jersey, as a symbol of his support. So now, supporting the Brazilian team, wearing the Brazilian national soccer team’s jersey means you are a Bolsonaro supporter.
Because the yellow jersey became iconic in 1970 under the military junta when, it is only fair to say, economic growth was very rapid. Still, the yellow jersey design dates back to the democratic Fifties.
So, in Brazil we really see this point coming together. And it is a real tragedy, because kids end up being drawn into supporting the person that is destroying their country. So that is what you want to do, you want to tie yourself to it.
Jason does not understand that kids whom he doesn't teach aren't as stupid as him. They get that soccer is great, politicians aint.
If you look at the images of Donald Trump, our would-be fascist leader. He is always shown muscular.
To Jason. Not to the rest of us.
He is very fat. In the United States, Colin Kaepernick
whose white mother gave him up for adoption (by a white couple) after his biological father abandoned her
got kicked out of football for taking a knee, he never got a job in football again.
So he wasn't kicked out. He just wasn't re-hired after his contract ran out. Apparently, not standing for the national anthem is not well liked. African American players raised by African American parents don't seem to have a problem with it.
Trump went after him because he is attacking football.
Very true. Trump also denounces gun-ownership and drinking beer and eating pretzels. Name anything liked by American voters and Trump attacks it.
In general, stadiums are places in which you have a crowd, a mass acting as one, you have the national team. I know Orbán has a soccer stadium in his hometown, at a great price. I do not know enough about that situation and why he did that.
Coz he wants his homies to lurve him. That's why.
But if a national leader affiliates themselves with sporting success and the national team. Well, everyone loves the national team.
They also love their nation. That is why leaders take pains to appear more nationalist than their rivals.
That is something that non-controversially adds to his success. In Brazil, it is very intense. Everybody loves the Brazilian national soccer team. The whole world loves them. And now that means loving Bolsonaro.
For Jason. But he is already all hot and bothered about Trump's muscles which only he has been shown- probably to make Pence jelly.
Noam Chomsky noted that “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum” – and spectator sports look like an ideal terrain for this.
Chomsky must have heard of the Nika riots. The Byzantine Emperor was destabilized by fighting between the Blue and the Green Chariot teams. A football, or other sporting, riot can quickly turn into a spontaneous revolt against the regime. The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is by keeping them malnourished and killing them from time to time. Lively debate is a nuisance.
Yet the link between fascist politics and spectator sports may go far beyond a simple “bread and circuses” approach.
Which the Byzantines realized was stupid fifteen hundred years ago. How fucking ignorant do you have to be to teach Philosophy at Yale?
Namely, a loud and intimidating minority of supporters may express racist and other far-right ideas
or far left ideas
or be mobilised to support an authoritarian power.
or bring it down.
There is macho maleness about it, so it fits very well with the anti-gay politics.
Coz gays are never macho or butch- right?
Absolutely. We saw that very recently when anti-gay messages were shown in soccer matches and so on. But also, such groups – just like the Night Wolves in Russia or other bike gangs in many countries – allow fascist parties to outsource intimidation and violence, and we have seen that.
So Fascism is a bit shit compared to Communism. Why rely on bikers or football hooligans when you could have guys in uniform packing people into cattle trucks and sending them to Gulags.
We know from the United Kingdom, for instance, that violent right-wing vigilante groups are often located in soccer clubs.
But the UK has never been Fascist. There is no relationship whatsoever between football hooliganism and authoritarianism.
What about Churches? Surely, lots of peeps going to Church means they are all worshipping the Mammon of Finance Capital and thus marching around in Brown Shirts.
Many aspects of Trump’s US are described in your book. Trump’s most faithful support base has been the white evangelical Christian movement – a particularly conservative form of Christianity.
Which Korean Christians would consider hippy-dippy. But the strictest Christians now are in Africa or African diaspora communities. That's why they are so quickly rising up educationally and professionally and financially.
The example is not unique. Can organised religion be used, or rather how can organised religion be used by authoritarian leaders?
Always, always, because, read Joseph Goebbels’ speech “Communism with the Mask Off,” a 1935 speech. The fascist propaganda always appeals to religious conservatives, it says, “Look, the communists and the gays are out to grab your children, we are going to protect you. We are going to protect your religion from the communists, we are going to protect your property from the communists, we are going to protect your children from people who are gonna turn them gay or turn your boys into girls.
The problem here is that Communists really wanted to burn down any Church they didn't turn into a museum. Raping nuns and killing priests was considered a good thing. It had happened already in Russia. It would happen in Spain. Jason, with typical stupidity, couples Homosexuals- who weren't trying to take over the State and kill the 'bourgeoisie'- with the Bolsheviks who had eliminated entire classes of people or shipped them off to Gulags.
This is old-school fascist propaganda.
Jason isn't even capable of old-school, Bolshevik, anti-fascist propaganda- which, of course, encompassed the Social Democrats.
You speak to the religious conservatives. You tell them that their identity is at risk, you tell them that the communists are coming for them,
Communists had already come for the Hungarian Churches. They killed priests.
that they are at a mortal threat, and yes, fascism is not a very Christian way to defend them but it is the only way.
Unless there aint any Communists in which case there aint any Fascists. There are just center-right politicians vs center-left politicians who get damaged by their anti-Zionist circular firing squad.
Is it also possible that if you want to build an unquestionable leader then it is very useful to have a model where you have an unquestionable entity?
In other words, if you want to get elected you should model yourself on Hitler- because he won the Second World War- right? What's that? He lost? Do people know about this? They do? In that case, if you want to be elected it is better to model yourself on guys who won Wars and got re-elected- FDR, Churchill, De Gaulle and so forth.
Oh, yes, this comes out in the last chapter of my book as well, you always have a model. Religion gives you a model where there is a boss on top.
Yale has a President. Schools have Principals. Every fucking private sector or public sector firm or department has a boss. But, for Jason, evil politicians need to look to the Church for a model. They research Catholicism and discover that the Pope is their Boss. Then they tell the voters that Communists are gonna fuck them in the ass and turn their kids homo. Voters will declare you to be their Fuhrer so that you can serve Finance Capital by invading Poland.
And the boss is just like the boss of the fascist nation. Any fundamentalist version of religion is anti-democratic.
But plenty of religious fundamentalists oppose Episcopalian religion- i.e. they have no Bishops or 'Bosses' of any sort.
Now democracy requires religious liberty,
No. A democracy can suppress any religion it requires- if that is what the majority wants.
but fascism is a governmental system that is based upon organisations like businesses with the CEO, or fundamentalist organised religion, which is often patriarchal.
All extant governmental systems are based upon such organizations.
Authority is key and central.
The heads of government of all states have authority.
Antidemocratic authority and hierarchy, all those values are central in religion.
Nonsense! Hinduism is a pretty big religion. It has no hierarchy whatsoever. I can tell the Sankaracharya that he is wrong about matters of Faith as well as matters of Fact. He is perfectly at liberty to accept my view if it is indeed justified. Jason is simply lying.
So is patriarchy: the fascist leader is the father of the nation.
George Washington was Fascist. So was Mahatma Gandhi. But Hitler wasn't. He was merely the Fuhrer.
The sort of hierarchical structure of religion. They train you for an anti-democratic political sphere.
Which is why the Christian Democratic Party is totes Fascist. Merkel was much worse than Orban. Indeed, her Daddy was a clergyman.
What support can Orbán expect from his American allies in the next elections?
So, the American Republican Party has turned explicitly anti-democratic. Very fascist. The national conservative conference have become a fascist social and political movement whose leader is Donald Trump. And Orbán has very much provided the model – but we expect it to be much more violent here.
So, Orbán will get an enormous amount out of this.
Jason does not seem to be aware that Orban's challenger is a genuine Christian who lived and worked in the US for four years. That's the guy Evangelicals should get behind. On the other hand, he has Canadian dual citizenship. That's a Communist country- right?
Oh, this is a Fascist International, just like from the late 1920s, the mid-1930s.
The first Fasicst International Conference was held in 1934. Germany was not invited. The last was held in 1935. There was a Communist Interntional. Fascists didn't.
The same thing happened then. There was a Fascist International. You gonna get these tensions, … the tensions in the national conservative conference the main people, like Yoram Hazony, who argued that America should be a Christian country, were Israelis.Majority cultures have the right to establish the ruling culture, and minority cultures have the right to be decently treated,” he said. “To take the minority view and say the minority has the ability to stamp out the views of the majority—that seems to me to be completely crazy.”Sign in
They are Israelis because they do not care about people like me, American Jews, they want America to be a Christian country so that Israel can be a Jewish country. They are fine with Orbán being anti-Semitic especially against leftist Jews or liberal Jews because if Hungary is a Christian country, Israel can be a Jewish country.
No. Israel can only be a country if Jews are willing to give their lives fighting for it.
Where you are really going to get tensions is corruption, because fundamentally, Orbán is not ideologically a fascist, he is just a kleptocrat.
His slogan was 'vote for me. I will rob you blind.'
So, where you will get tensions is his selling out the country to Russia and China.
It seems appearing to sell out to Soros is worse ballot box poision.
Specifically, Hungary foots the Fudan University campus: you are selling your country out to China. It is going to be obvious that it is not nationalism after all.
There might be a referendum on this. But the issue is not nationalistic. The Hungarians are worried their tax money might be wasted.
There are some hopes like with Poland versus Russia… You know, Russia is so involved in these ultranationalist movements that when you have a long history of tension and conflict with Russia, as we have seen in the case of Poland, that is a case where if you really care about your country, you are not going to want to sell it out to China and Russia.
Taking money is not selling. It may be swindling or simply taking advantage of the other guy's stupidity.
So, since China and Russia are so much the force behind the current Fascist International, they want to destabilise democracy, undermine democracy
why undermine it in Hungary where Orban is an ally?
so that there is no viable democracy it is all just nationalist posturing,
like that of Churchill during the Second World War- right?
and they want to make money out of it, too. Maybe there is a hope that people will see that finally. But right now, we have a Fascist International.
which is causing Jason's anus to leak in a prodigious manner.
As Howard Zinn said, “what distinguishes democracy from the totalitarian state is its belief in the rights of the individual over the rights of the state”.
Sadly, this ceased to be true when Britain introduced conscription during the Great War. Some totalitarian states- the Raj in India for example- granted superior rights though they turned a blind eye to what was in fact forcible or coercive impressment.
The human body – especially the female body – is the ultimate battlefield:
No it isn't. Nor is Finance-Capital greatly concerned with cornholing us.
once you deprive people of their physical autonomy, you dominate them.
No. You dominate people if they submit to you. Indians submitted to a dude named Mahatma Gandhi. Contrary to Jason's thesis, the guy wasn't constantly tying up women and raping them in between sodomizing their men-folk.
As you describe in your book, the hetero-cis-normed patriarchal family model is central to fascism.
Churchill's Britain and FDR's America were notoriously populated by same-sex couples.
Abortion rights are systematically under attack, as are sexual minorities.
Most democracies were pretty shitty to homosexuals when I was born. Abortion too was illegal at that time.
How can these issues be kept on the fascist agenda despite the major progress made in the past decades?
Ban Christianity. It is totes Fascist.
We know this in America, we should know this in America, but when Black people had the right to vote for 12 years after the Civil War and then lost it for another hundred years. Look at Germany: Weimar Germany was certainly one of the most important cultural centres of the world before the Nazis.
Which is why the Nazis rose and rose within it. The sad truth is that there was a cultural element to Fascism and Nazism and Bolshevism and so forth.
You know, progress comes, and it goes. It does not stay. The US shows: Black Americans could vote from 1865 to 1876. And then that ended.
In some places, not others.
They could not vote for 90 years. People have rights, and then the rights will go.
Rights are only meaningful in the long run if the remedy is incentive compatible. Ukrainians have the right not to be butchered by Putin's minions. They have to enforce that right themselves.
Progress does not rule out regression.
Yes, it is just a conceptional confusion. The thing is that the rights stay.
Not if remedies are incentive incompatible or the vinculum juris collapses.
The last chapter of your book, “Arbeit macht frei”, focuses on the role of work in controlling society.
Controlling stuff involves work. But so does reassigning control rights. But then, staying alive too involves work. Sad.
The myth of black welfare queens popularized by Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan’s “makers” vs “takers” split, and the success of similar rhetorical tactics show that it is easy to garner support for a “work-based society” instead of a “welfare society.”
But it is not easy for Jason or Soros to garner support because they are raving lunatics.
Such rhetoric often serves as a façade to underlying racism – against African Americans and Latinx in the US, or against Roma people in many European countries, and so on.
This cretin doesn't get that America was founded on racism. Africans were brought there as slaves. Indigenous or mixed populations were dispossessed and ethnically cleansed.
During an economic downturn, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, already vulnerable minorities may be disproportionately affected –
during a pandemic, those who are medically vulnerable are disproportionately affected.
and that may easily reinforce the above rhetoric. Yet, crises like these can also create unprecedented solidarity. What factors determine whether one or the other path is taken?
Disintermediating shitheads like Jason always improves outcomes.
That is a great question. I do not know, if I knew I would have told the Biden administration. People need to feel some hope for the future, they need to feel less fear, they need to feel like their future is taken care of. But right now, we are seeing the American public – even though we have had a lot of economic help – turn sharply to the right.
People are running away from Jason's smelly shite- that is true enough.
And against democracy. You need a sense that we are in this together. And what fascist politics tries to do is it tries to tell you that: “No”. What they try to do in fascist politics is to say that there is just a small pie, and immigrants, Roma, they are trying to steal parts of it. So, they have this model of this fixed amount of goods. And that’s not true, like immigrants grow the economy and there is more stuff.
It is certainly true that European immigrants caused the American economy to grow. But this meant that the indigenous population had to shrink.
So, what you have to do is to combat this idea that there is a fixed number of resources.
At any given time, this is indeed the case.
And a fixed, never changing economy.
This is never the case.
And you have to point out that in fact more people and more liberties means more businesses and a better economy and more choices for everyone.
Sadly, no such magic obtains. More people with more and more liberties may mean businesses run the fuck away and the economy collapses.
So, more people paying taxes.
Or claiming benefits
So, in times of fear, like a pandemic, you have to make people not do zero-sum thinking. Zero-sum thinking is the cause of the “us” versus “them” mentality.
But Jason's thinking is zero sum. He has a bigoted 'us' versus 'them' ideology of a puerile sort.
Yeah. One last question, Howard Zinn said: “democracy is not a spectator sport”.
Representative democracy is. You can tune into parliamentary debates and support your favorite team and make a hero of the orator who most appeals to you.
You also write, “It remains for us to join that struggle [against fascism], realising that it is not to overcome a moment, but rather to make a permanent democratic commitment”. How? What specifically can a citizen do to join that struggle?
Stupid shit.
Support labour unions, where you are working with people who are different from you. Support the rights of others as if they were yourself.
If the clock-watcher's union comes out on strike, all workers everywhere must down tools.
So, join groups, join civil society groups, join organisations, be involved in your country at the local level.
And then watch the economy collapse.
Acts of involvement – so that you feel that no one is doing things for you and it is your country, you should not be handing it off to someone else to run it for you.
Don't go to Collidge. Educate yourself. Don't 'hand off' to Jason the onerous task of filling your brain with shit
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