Regarding the philosophy of fascism

What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been. — Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, 2018

When Trump and the Republican Party attack political correctness, their goal is to normalize demagoguery, insults, lies, deceit and slanders, making them much more tolerable. That helps to pave the way to making authoritarianism more acceptable to the American people, while undermining respect for, among other things, democracy, the rule of law and adult manners. — Germaine, 2022

In 2019, Jason Stanley wrote an essay, The Philosophy of Fascism, which makes some points that most informed people probably want to be aware of. Stanley is a political philosopher and an expert focused on rhetoric and propaganda. Stanley's essay discussed the historical location of fascism and whether it is a localized political phenomenon or not. According to Stanley, it is not. That means some form of fascism can happen to America. 

Fascism is inherent in the human condition, a point I have argued here multiple times. 

To distinguish fascism America from 20th century fascism in Italy, one should call an American variant something like modern fascism, American fascism, neo-fascism or something along those lines. Fascism reflects local circumstances and local societies and it thus has to be adapted for such differences to take hold on societies.

Stanley sees fascism as an ideology and process that normalizes the intolerable. He sees this process underway in the US, Russia, Hungary and some other countries. 

Stanley starts by pointing out that democracy differed in different places at different times. The same is true for other political concepts.

The concept of democracy is not tied to a particular time and place. Even if democracy originated at some point, perhaps 5th and 4th Century BC in Athens, the concept of democracy describes a structure that is realized in different places under very different material conditions. We can understand democracy as a voting system, one that reflects majority rule. We can also understand democracy as a culture, one that values liberty and equality (on some suitable interpretation). Both democracy as a voting system and democracy as an ideology (that is, a culture) have wide generality.  

What about concepts like liberalism, socialism, communism, and capitalism? These are more specific than the concept of democracy; their origin times are more recent. In the case of these concepts, one must be attentive to the possibility that their elucidation reflects social structures local to their origins.

Stanley moves on to fascism, a topic he deals with in detail in his 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Contrary to some experts, he argues that fascism is not a universal thing that can move intact from one place to another, and is thus something not to be concerned about.

.... I argue that the concept of fascism has wide interpretive applicability across societies that otherwise differ quite drastically from one another. If I am right, fascism is not one of [Léopold Sédar] Senghor’s “completely historically located” concepts. I aim to rescue the concept of fascism from the discipline of history and make a case for its centrality in political and social philosophy. Such a rescue would in fact constitute a return; some of the greatest theorists of fascism, such as Theodore Adorno and Hannah Arendt, were philosophers. 

To rescue the concept of fascism for philosophy requires arguing that fascism has the kind of universal significance and centrality characteristic of philosophical concepts. It must have a recognizable structure that abstracts from local historical contexts, and be capable of being interpretively useful in locations that differ significantly from one another. .... If fascism is a historically located concept, however, then we do not need to be worried about confronting it. Fascism cannot reoccur, and political philosophers in recent decades have been right to ignore it.

If I am right, the view that fascism is a historically located concept is not just false, it is dangerously false. If fascism describes a dangerous ideology with universal appeal, representing it as an artifact of particular past historical circumstances masks a real danger. By not studying fascism philosophically, philosophy lends credence to the view that fascism is not a risk. How Fascism Works is a case for revisiting thinking in political philosophy, to reopen the case that philosophers should study fascism.  

If “fascism” is not the right word to use, what is? One of the attractions of the ideology to its supporters is that it promises to provide a strong leader whose decisions will not be filtered through the mechanisms of democracy, discussion and deliberation, but imposed by strength and will and even cruelty. In other words, this ideology involves an element of authoritarianism.

Stanley's vision of fascism matches mine. It reflects normal variation in how the human mind works. It is inherent in people and in societies. What is needed to bring it out and allow it to control societies and governments is talented, charismatic demagogues. By Stanley's definition, fascism normalizes the intolerable, or as I put it, the immoral, the reality-detached and the irrational. That is what Trump and the Republican Party have done to millions of Americans who now distrust or reject democracy, inconvenient facts and truths and appeals to reason. Fascism appeals to base emotions and prejudices to tear societies apart, and to foment distrust, fear, rage, bigotry and etc.

IMO, Stanley is right to argue that fascism (i) isn't just a nasty but one-off thing from 1930's Italy, or (ii) that it requires normalizing the intolerable, i.e., the immoral and anti-democratic. Powerful conservatives in America are working hard to bring their version of fascism to America, whether the majority likes or wants it or not.

For the record, poll data suggests that the majority of Americans do not like or want an American version of fascism. However, some unknowingly support it due to the effective deceptiveness and ubiquitousness of neo-fascist propaganda and its many large sources, e.g., Fox News. 

Pro-Putin authoritarians are pretending they aren't

France's radical right Putin supporter Marine Le Pen 

is now pretending she now isn't as much of a Putin supporter 🤨

Apparently, Putin's mass murder and destruction in the Ukraine is causing a bit of heartburn among not just some radical right Republican authoritarians in the US. Some radical right dictator lovers in other countries are running for cover. They are expressing faux concern over the Russian invasion of and war in Ukraine. WaPo's Editorial Board writes in an opinion piece entitled Right-wing nationalists backpedal as Putin’s Ukraine war worsens:

For years, right-wing nationalist politicians pronounced a dewy-eyed admiration for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a strongman they couldn’t resist. It wasn’t only Donald Trump who rhapsodized about Mr. Putin’s supposed “strength” and “traditional” values. It was also the leaders of similarly inclined movements in France, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic and elsewhere.

Many of those leaders have now been knocked off balance by Mr. Putin’s scorched-earth campaign in Ukraine. Heedless of the Russian leader’s previous acts of murderous brutality — against Ukraine, Georgia and various Russian dissidents who crossed him — the current carnage has triggered a backpedaling stampede. For many Europeans in particular, the unfolding barbarity in Ukraine, alarmingly nearby, has placed nationalist parties and politicians in an unflattering and clarifying new light.

In France, ahead of national elections next month, right-wing politician Marine Le Pen has been embarrassed by a photograph of her shaking hands with Mr. Putin, featured in more than 1 million pamphlets recently printed by her National Rally party. Ms. Le Pen, who previously supported Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea, part of Ukraine, after her party took a 9 million-euro loan from a Russian bank to finance her 2017 presidential campaign, could plausibly have been regarded as a Russian asset by Moscow. As recently as last month, she parroted the Kremlin’s denials that Mr. Putin planned to invade Ukraine, saying she didn’t believe a bit of it. “I don’t see what … would be their interest there,” she declared.

Her eyes having been opened, she now asserts the invasion is “unjustifiable.” Another French right-winger, Éric Zemmour, who also scoffed at the odds of a Russian attack, and made no secret of his admiration for Mr. Putin, has undergone a similar awakening. 

Hungarians, too, have been subjected to rhetorical acrobatics by their nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, who never hid his admiration for Mr. Putin despite his country’s membership in NATO. Mr. Orban, also blind to Mr. Putin’s intentions, said the Russian president’s demands on Ukraine leading up to the invasion were perfectly reasonable.

Now, Mr. Orban, who faces a tough fight ahead of Hungary’s April 3 elections, has changed his tune. Hungarians would be within their rights to question his coziness with a predatory strongman whose naked aggression has now caused more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to flee into Hungary, a number very likely to rise.

In the United States, Mr. Putin’s invasion has prompted some Republicans to distance themselves, uncharacteristically, from Mr. Trump, who termed the Russian leader a “genius.” Some will have their own explaining to do when confronted by their previous remarks. And Americans will have the chance to judge who did, and did not, try to delude them about the Russian leader.

One can reasonably doubt that Republican politician support for Putin and Trump is likely to hurt them. They're in the cult and probably mostly safe at the polls.  

The same will very likely apply to the authoritarian right's propaganda Leviathan. It is unimaginable that professional liars and bloviators like Tucker Carlson will change their tunes in the long run. The liars at Fox and other radical right propagandists probably will tone down their propaganda and lies until Ukraine passes from prominence in the media. Then the anti-democracy daggers will slowly come back to continue the neo-fascist assault.  

Residential buildings in Ukraine that 

Putin attacked and damaged or destroyed

Putin is has stolen billions, maybe ~$70 billion 

Putin should pay for the lives he took 

and what he has damaged and destroyed

Russian censorship extremism is on the launchpad

The NYT writes:

Russia clamped down harder Friday on news and free speech than at any time in President Vladimir V. Putin’s 22 years in power, blocking access to Facebook and major foreign news outlets, and enacting a law to punish anyone spreading “false information” about its Ukraine invasion with up to 15 years in prison.

The crackdown comes as the Kremlin scrambles to contain discontent over the war and to control the narrative as Russia faces its most severe economic crisis in decades as a result of this week’s crushing Western sanctions.

Putin signed a law that effectively criminalizes any public opposition to or independent news reporting about the war against Ukraine. Taking effect as soon as Saturday, the law could make it a crime to simply call the war a “war” — the Kremlin says it is a “special military operation” — on social media or in a news article or broadcast.

Facebook, Russia’s internet regulator claimed, had engaged in “discrimination against Russian news media” by limiting access to pro-Kremlin accounts, including that of the Defense Ministry’s television channel. The decision was a blow to internet freedom in Russia, where Western social networks have remained accessible despite Mr. Putin’s creeping authoritarianism.  

The text of the new law offered few details about what constituted an offense, but Russian journalists and Kremlin opponents take it to mean that any contradiction of the government’s statements on the invasion could be treated as a crime. Besides criminalizing the sharing of “false information,” it makes “discrediting” Russia’s use of its military in Ukraine, calling on other countries to impose sanctions on Russia or protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine punishable by fines and years of imprisonment. (emphasis added)

Woof, that's a good one. 

What's interesting here is Putin's tactic of shutting down information sources that do not allow his propaganda machine access to spread lies, slanders, irrationality and crackpottery. Implicit in Putin's tactic is that his lies and deceit are truth, while sources that try to stop lies and deceit are attacked and blocked. That is true, in-your-face lying and deceit from a pure demagogue-despot. There's not one shred of shamelessness or moral qualm in any of Putin's elimination of sources of inconvenient but actual facts and truths.

Also noteworthy is ambiguity in Russia's new anti-truth law. That leaves it up to Putin to tell the judge who is guilty and who just made an innocent boo-boo. Dictators love ambiguity in their laws. Makes it easy for the rule of dictator to look exactly like the rule of law (because it is). 

Meanwhile back in the grumpy US of A, Republican snowflakes in America whine about being canceled for their lies and deceit, which they falsely call truth. They really should go visit their friend Russia and see what real cancellation of real facts and truths looks like. No doubt, they will be inspired to do the same here. That assumes they don't get caught up in Putin's 'keep your mouth shut' law and sent to a Russian slammer to experience some of the kind of government service they want to emulate here. Or, is that criticism over the top?

Also, it seems reasonable to think that Putin has graduated from creeping authoritarianism to a brutal, full-blown kleptocratic despotism. Or, is it premature to draw that conclusion?

Former Attorney General William Barr explains how Trump fired him

Starting at 4:35 of this 6:11 video, Barr describes the Ex-president's infuriated reaction when he was told there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Trump had no concern whatsoever for truth. Not one iota. That is the mindset of the current leader of the morally rotted Republican Party.

The Russian public comments on war, or not

This 2:32 video says a lot about police state tyranny, the power of propaganda and lies, and the frailty of facts and truth in the face of aggressive demagoguery.

Thanks to Freeze Peach 🍑 for posting this in a comment here. The video merits its own post.

Russia invasion update

Washington Post: 

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin called Friday for the “normalization” of relations with other states, saying Moscow has “absolutely no ill intentions with regard to our neighbors.” .... He said Russia saw no need to aggravate tensions with other countries, claiming that Moscow’s actions in Ukraine came only “in response to unfriendly actions toward Russia.”

That might make sense only for Russian people who are now cut off from real news and information sources. What they are going to get from here on out is mostly lies, slanders and crackpottery. real news sources in Russia are being shut down.

Washington Post opinion piece:

NEAR THE UKRAINE BORDER — Javelin antitank missiles, the American-made weapons that can destroy Russian tanks, are stacked in steel racks awaiting quick shipment into Ukraine. A giant C-17 transport is parked on a nearby runway.

This is what American and NATO support for Ukraine looks like. Every day, 14 widebody jets are landing here to deliver Javelins, Stinger antiaircraft missiles and other weapons for the Ukrainians. A half-dozen of these daily arrivals are American planes.

Watching the Javelins move toward the battlefield Friday is the clearest demonstration of the delicate balance that the United States and its allies are trying to strike in the Ukraine war. They are rushing deliveries of weapons to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian attackers. But U.S. and NATO troops are staying safely across the border, determined to avoid a direct military confrontation with Russia that could turn this into a cataclysmic world war.

One can wonder why is it that Russia attacking Ukraine does not start a world war, but if US troops step over the border, it might. There seems to be a major asymmetry here. Ukraine wants help against an invader, but we are limited in what we can do.

New York Times:

On Thursday, the pillars of Russia’s independent broadcast media collapsed under pressure from the state. Echo of Moscow, the freewheeling radio station founded by Soviet dissidents in 1990 and that symbolized Russia’s new freedoms, was “liquidated” by its board. TV Rain, the youthful independent television station that calls itself “the optimistic channel” said it would suspend operations indefinitely.

And Dmitri A. Muratov, the journalist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said that his newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which survived the murders of six of its journalists, could be on the verge of shutting down as well.

“Everything that’s not propaganda is being eliminated,” Mr. Muratov said. 

Precipitating the outlets’ demise were plans by the Russian Parliament to take up legislation on Friday that would make news considered “fakes” about Russia’s war in Ukraine punishable by yearslong prison terms. The Russian authorities have already made it clear that the very act of calling it a “war” — the Kremlin prefers the term “special military operation” — is considered disinformation.

“We’re going to punish those who spread panic using fakes by up to 15 years,” a senior lawmaker, Sholban Kara-ool, said on Thursday. During World War II, he said, such people “were shot on the spot.” 

Mr. Putin appeared unbowed by the crisis and the Western furor. He told President Emmanuel Macron of France in a phone call that his aim of securing “the demilitarization and neutral status of Ukraine” would be “achieved no matter what,” according to the Kremlin.

Fake news, even when it isn't fake, gets you up to 15 years in a Russian slammer. That's real cancel culture, not the whining and sniveling that snowflake Republicans complain about. Notice that under demagogue despots like Putin and Trump, inconvenient facts and truths are lies and despot lies are official facts and truths and not to be questioned. 

Echo of Moscow staff learning that Putin is 

forcing their radio station to shut down

New York Times on China:

Yet as the world faces one of its most serious geopolitical crises since the end of the Cold War, China let down its digital defenses and allowed Kremlin’s propaganda machine to help shape public perception of the war. No wonder the Chinese internet is overwhelmingly pro-Russia, pro-war and pro-Putin.

If China wants to remain officially ambiguous about whether it supports Vladimir V. Putin’s war — refusing to call it an invasion and abstaining from a U.N. vote to condemn the invasion — its state-controlled media nonetheless makes very clear where China stands. 

The China-Russia information alliance is forged over a shared worldview of two leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin, who, out of deep distrust of the United States, are determined to challenge the West’s dominance in the competition for public opinion.

In a 2013 speech, Mr. Xi urged the country’s propaganda workers to enhance the country’s “international discourse power” under the notion of “telling China’s story well.” During a visit to RT’s headquarters in the same year, Mr. Putin said the network was created to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.”  

The message they are trying to drive home: Russia’s military actions are anti-West, anti-NATO expansion and anti-Nazi — thus justified and popular.

In China’s state media, there’s very little about the international condemnation of Russia; Ukraine’s success in the battle for public opinion, led by President Zelensky; or antiwar protests in Russia.

Clearly, Russia and China both want to pollute the entire planet with endless broadsides of lies, slanders and crackpot motivated reasoning. The story they will tell well will have little to do with the actual story when underlying facts and truths are inconvenient for the despots' false narratives. Lies of omission will be at least as abundant as lies of commission. These two countries are bitter enemies of democracy, democracies, inconvenient facts and truths, the rule of law, civil liberties, and, especially, America.