Interesting how Sharlet actually used the word fascist. I read one of your articles a couple weeks ago that was about critiquing his book (I have it as well, yet to read it) and he seemed to refrain from calling a spade a spade, (a fascist a fascist) so to speak. At least the word fascism finally made its debut on pbs, although definitely not enough....
When the Trumpist-fascist idiot base stops with all the verbal threats and actually starts beating the bushes looking for "traitorous fuckstains" to kill with their AR-15s, they may be shocked at the huge volume of bullets coming back in their direction and appalled at the realization that the bodies stacking up "are mostly the shit-stained carcasses of the real traitors--Herr Trump's mindless, reactionary backers. Much to the Shitstains' chagrin, many of the Fuckstains will be wielding M-79 Grenade Launchers and other exotic weapons, upgraded versions of the one's they were trained to use in Vietnam and the other neoliberal "forever wars" that they are veterans of. There's no doubt It'll be a bloody civil war to end all civil wars, this Holy ordeal between the Fuckstains and the Shitstains, and it will ruin the summer, but the good news is maybe it will fulfill the only prophecy that makes any sense to anyone with an IQ over 40 who respects evidence-based information about the issue of climate change: The Fuckstains and Shitstains will succeed in annihilating each other and the Marxists shall inherit the Earth! As a Marxist pilgrim of Peace and Love I suggest that we avoid all the bloodshed and become Marxist brothers and sisters together, dedicated to gently dismantling Capitalism for the benefit of Pacha Mama and all her sentient beings, and living happily ever after. Viva La Revolution!
If January 6th taught us anything, it is that the reactionary popular Right does not have the organization or true radical gumption to go blackshirt and start making *organized* strategic violence against the system. They're fractured, uncoordinated groups with no cohesive structure or party organization and large amounts of Fed infiltration. The most dangerous and violent fascists are still the ones actually currently running the system (the Neoliberals and Neocons).
The neoliberals retain a commitment to fading and weakened bourgeois democracy and rule of law. Neocons is an obsolete term from the Bush-Cheney years. Try Republifascists --- the Reichmost party.
Neoliberals respect corporate power and 'the market' (and lately, the military industrial complex and intelligence state) before they respect democracy. For Neoliberals the 'rule of law' means persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists, and serving corporations and property rights of the rich before 'democracy'. Neoliberals have absolutely no commitment to democracy as anything other than a thin veneer to provide a sense of legitimacy.
well, bourgeois democracy has never been socialist or real popular and egalitarian democracy; it has always cloaked the class rule of capital. I didn't say democracy, I said bourgeois democracy, a venerable term in Marxist analysis. Deeply complicit in appeasing and surrendering to and opening the door for and generally enabling fasccism but not itself fascist. Hence they are in fact prosecuting the nation's top fascist leader. No love at all for the dismal dollar drenched Dems here, to say the least, but they are not the same as the nation's Recihmost party.
True, good fine distinction of terms. I would say though that when Neoliberals and Neoconservatives use the term 'democracy', they actually believe the US democracy represents the good, noble, and ideal kind of 'democracy'. They do not cynically distinguish bourgeois democracy from an actually representative democracy. Maybe truly elite oligarchs do distinguish (which is how we get things like the 1971 Lewis Powell Memo), but I really think a lot of the PMC and comfortable middle class do really think we live in a pure and good democracy.
I was reading The Spanish Holocaust (Franco's Empire of Death) by Paul Preston where Preston describes the Spanish fascist ideology of the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy and how it was deployed against the trade union movement and the landless peasantry to justify repression against the working class including mass murder, torture and indefinite imprisonment. For home grown US fascists Q Anon has replaced the Masons in the conspiracy but Jews and communists remain part of the equation.
I don't think there will ever be enough people willing to give up the little comforts, security & whatever privilege they may have now, to take to the streets in massive numbers and stay in the streets, till the fascist Republicans and the dismal dollar drenched Democrats are scared enough to actually start representing the 99%, start fighting the fascists and dismantling the ecocidal oil and gas companies in order to at least start mitigating the climate disaster the earth is experiencing.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
It truly is incredible/sad/frustrating on how ignorant a good amount of the US population is with regard to history. I guess I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that fascism literally had to be killed off (WWII)in order to stop it. Tens of millions of people died because of one man, and that’s what fascism will lead to, death, an incredible amount of death and these rabid assholes will never be able to grasp that they will cause it all, all over again. If one mantra truly sums them up it’s admission by accusation. Anything they accuse their “enemies” of doing is exactly what they are carrying out, time and time again.
The republifascists have no problem gaslighting the rabid Trump base as long as it keeps them continuing this absurd minority rule that they will NEVER concede. That rabid base is so willfully ignorant at this point they are beyond reach and reason. The bullets will continue to fly, one mass shooting at a time, until the majority actually rises up and forces the government’s hand. That’s how it’s worked throughout history and that’s what needs to happen now. Time is running out I fear...
Well, German fascism and Nazism were bigger than Hitler alone though is my only dissent here. It's a counterfactual and so we can never know but I suspect someone else would have led a Third Reich if Hitler had been bumped off in the Beer Hall Putsch. But then again, maybe not. In a similar vein, the orange hued monster could have a fatal heart attack tonight and I suspect Ron deFascist steps up to number one Reichmost Party candidate to very possibly defeat ridiculous Weimar Joe Biden in 2024.
Jeff Sharlet: "We have got to get away from saying — this is not conservative rhetoric. This is — and I will use the F-word — this is fascist rhetoric." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/violent-rhetoric-escalates-online-after-latest-trump-indictment
Please all view/read this Sharlet interview on "P"BS. It's important.
Interesting how Sharlet actually used the word fascist. I read one of your articles a couple weeks ago that was about critiquing his book (I have it as well, yet to read it) and he seemed to refrain from calling a spade a spade, (a fascist a fascist) so to speak. At least the word fascism finally made its debut on pbs, although definitely not enough....
Re-read my.review!
I note and praise his use of the world fascism!!
You’re right Paul, my bad. I was convoluting a different dissent with another one. I stand corrected.
When the Trumpist-fascist idiot base stops with all the verbal threats and actually starts beating the bushes looking for "traitorous fuckstains" to kill with their AR-15s, they may be shocked at the huge volume of bullets coming back in their direction and appalled at the realization that the bodies stacking up "are mostly the shit-stained carcasses of the real traitors--Herr Trump's mindless, reactionary backers. Much to the Shitstains' chagrin, many of the Fuckstains will be wielding M-79 Grenade Launchers and other exotic weapons, upgraded versions of the one's they were trained to use in Vietnam and the other neoliberal "forever wars" that they are veterans of. There's no doubt It'll be a bloody civil war to end all civil wars, this Holy ordeal between the Fuckstains and the Shitstains, and it will ruin the summer, but the good news is maybe it will fulfill the only prophecy that makes any sense to anyone with an IQ over 40 who respects evidence-based information about the issue of climate change: The Fuckstains and Shitstains will succeed in annihilating each other and the Marxists shall inherit the Earth! As a Marxist pilgrim of Peace and Love I suggest that we avoid all the bloodshed and become Marxist brothers and sisters together, dedicated to gently dismantling Capitalism for the benefit of Pacha Mama and all her sentient beings, and living happily ever after. Viva La Revolution!
Lmao..the Fuckstains vs the Shitstains!
If January 6th taught us anything, it is that the reactionary popular Right does not have the organization or true radical gumption to go blackshirt and start making *organized* strategic violence against the system. They're fractured, uncoordinated groups with no cohesive structure or party organization and large amounts of Fed infiltration. The most dangerous and violent fascists are still the ones actually currently running the system (the Neoliberals and Neocons).
The neoliberals retain a commitment to fading and weakened bourgeois democracy and rule of law. Neocons is an obsolete term from the Bush-Cheney years. Try Republifascists --- the Reichmost party.
Neoliberals respect corporate power and 'the market' (and lately, the military industrial complex and intelligence state) before they respect democracy. For Neoliberals the 'rule of law' means persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists, and serving corporations and property rights of the rich before 'democracy'. Neoliberals have absolutely no commitment to democracy as anything other than a thin veneer to provide a sense of legitimacy.
well, bourgeois democracy has never been socialist or real popular and egalitarian democracy; it has always cloaked the class rule of capital. I didn't say democracy, I said bourgeois democracy, a venerable term in Marxist analysis. Deeply complicit in appeasing and surrendering to and opening the door for and generally enabling fasccism but not itself fascist. Hence they are in fact prosecuting the nation's top fascist leader. No love at all for the dismal dollar drenched Dems here, to say the least, but they are not the same as the nation's Recihmost party.
True, good fine distinction of terms. I would say though that when Neoliberals and Neoconservatives use the term 'democracy', they actually believe the US democracy represents the good, noble, and ideal kind of 'democracy'. They do not cynically distinguish bourgeois democracy from an actually representative democracy. Maybe truly elite oligarchs do distinguish (which is how we get things like the 1971 Lewis Powell Memo), but I really think a lot of the PMC and comfortable middle class do really think we live in a pure and good democracy.
I was reading The Spanish Holocaust (Franco's Empire of Death) by Paul Preston where Preston describes the Spanish fascist ideology of the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy and how it was deployed against the trade union movement and the landless peasantry to justify repression against the working class including mass murder, torture and indefinite imprisonment. For home grown US fascists Q Anon has replaced the Masons in the conspiracy but Jews and communists remain part of the equation.
I don't think there will ever be enough people willing to give up the little comforts, security & whatever privilege they may have now, to take to the streets in massive numbers and stay in the streets, till the fascist Republicans and the dismal dollar drenched Democrats are scared enough to actually start representing the 99%, start fighting the fascists and dismantling the ecocidal oil and gas companies in order to at least start mitigating the climate disaster the earth is experiencing.
And yes that is probably a run on sentence.
Thanks for another excellent essay Mr. Street.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
It truly is incredible/sad/frustrating on how ignorant a good amount of the US population is with regard to history. I guess I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that fascism literally had to be killed off (WWII)in order to stop it. Tens of millions of people died because of one man, and that’s what fascism will lead to, death, an incredible amount of death and these rabid assholes will never be able to grasp that they will cause it all, all over again. If one mantra truly sums them up it’s admission by accusation. Anything they accuse their “enemies” of doing is exactly what they are carrying out, time and time again.
The republifascists have no problem gaslighting the rabid Trump base as long as it keeps them continuing this absurd minority rule that they will NEVER concede. That rabid base is so willfully ignorant at this point they are beyond reach and reason. The bullets will continue to fly, one mass shooting at a time, until the majority actually rises up and forces the government’s hand. That’s how it’s worked throughout history and that’s what needs to happen now. Time is running out I fear...
Well, German fascism and Nazism were bigger than Hitler alone though is my only dissent here. It's a counterfactual and so we can never know but I suspect someone else would have led a Third Reich if Hitler had been bumped off in the Beer Hall Putsch. But then again, maybe not. In a similar vein, the orange hued monster could have a fatal heart attack tonight and I suspect Ron deFascist steps up to number one Reichmost Party candidate to very possibly defeat ridiculous Weimar Joe Biden in 2024.
"Reichmost" is a great description. And thanks again for capitolcene - a truly excellent creation!