the whole "fascists make things work" thing is based on a bunch of bullshit from Mussolini and stereotypes about German efficiency and has nothing to do with empirical reality
fascists do nothing but lie and hurt people, and the efficiency myth is nothing but another fascist lie
Folks really need to internalize this more. Fascists don’t make the trains run on time. They don’t make garbage collection smoother or roads better. They’re very very dumb! They do one and only one thing well: inflict pain on their perceived enemies.
you can see this very clearly in the Fox News model
even when their guys are in power, there's a constant drumbeat of supposedly terrible things happening that can only be "solved" by giving them ever more power
Fascism as a model requires blame. It requires dissatisfaction to "solve." Fascists don't want to solve your problems, they want to highlight them and then position themselves as the solution. Once that's complete, they want to make a treadmill where they're always making progress but never done.
it's a neat cycle
fascists take charge, break things, and then - because "things are broken" has always been a major driver of support for fascism - use that to take further charge
It doesn't help that Democrats take over with a "time to look forward, not back" message that ends up sending the message that what the other side did must not have been that bad. Then, if/when they do something good, they're terrible at trumpeting their achievements. It's like they're embarrassed.
helped an elderly relative set up a new tv this weekend and a several-minute glimpse into their media diet was an eye opener. And I read a lot ABOUT conservative media, but the uncut dope was nuts! A lot of it was a high-pitched urban crime blotter.
One of my many theories is that even basic, local news with no clear political slant is pretty good at making fascists. I'm on the email list for a local paper and if I were less self-reflective, the fact that they mostly want to tell me about murders would do a number on me too
Hell, even local news is poisoned by Sinclair who bought up a good chunk of it. I was half listening to what was upcoming on the local news at 5 at my moms one day and it was something like "we investigate Chinese communist influence on college campuses, should you be concerned?". Like, WTF?
Same relative moved out of NYC in the early eighties and told me with a straight face that they think NYC is in worse shape now than it was then, and they've gone there maybe a handful of times in the past decade.
I think Police Depts. should be treated as the experimental social welfare programs they effectively are
So if government won't spend the money required to do oversight, then journalists should do it, and ideally scrutinize them as closely as if they're a new charity or NGO receiving taxpayer money
There have been some really fascinatingly disturbing papers on how Fox News in particular has cooked up a recipe where even passive exposure causes people to unthinkingly echo things they've heard as facts later, and how that has changed behavior in voting, courtrooms, and businesses.
Yeah, this is what I've seen in Texas since I started paying attention to politics. R's have full control of the state but all your problems are the fault of those godless heathen Democrats and you've gotta keep voting R to fix it.
Trump 2016: BUILD THE WALL
(is president for 4 years)
Trump 2020: BUILD THE WALL
I'm always curious if the MAGA crowd thinks he's getting blocked by Dems (who alternate between impotent & all-powerful within the same Trump speech) or if they understand it's all a bit
There always has to be a group to hate, and once that group is silenced/driven out/eradicated, a new enemy is pointed out and pursued.
And fascists move the goal posts. Constantly. You will know them by these things. :(
and the fash constantly scare people in rural/exurban places out of visiting cities lest they realize that those mostly do just fine being led by lefties, mainstream moderates, and coalitions thereof. (not just in the US. too many ppl from my hometown think Amsterdam is scary.)
Dogs catching up with the car is a charitable description, it’s usually more like how the chief Brexitiers vanished right after their grand crowning referendum because they knew it was going to be actual work instead of complaining about the EU.
For various projects, I’ve had to do a ton of research on the interwar period and Nazi Germany and… much like today, much like Robert E Lee, they are only remarkably efficient compared to their fumbling rivals of the day.
1/2
I understand the need to paint the Nazis as unstoppable supermen… but so much of the mythology of things like U-Boats and the Luftwaffe falls apart when you read up on reality. They were very impressive if you still had horse cavalry and biplanes, though. 2/2
Fascism as a model requires blame. It requires dissatisfaction to "solve." Fascists don't want to solve your problems, they want to highlight them and then position themselves as the solution. Once that's complete, they want to make a treadmill where they're always making progress but never done.
SOOOOOOO basically North Korea right now IRL? That really sounds like you just described North Korea to the fucking letter.
Hey kids know what might be fun, lets spot things in our own countries that look a little like north korea.
Also I really hope North Korea gets its shit together, sucks.
Nazi Germany was wildly, stupidly inefficient on a whole bunch of levels. Partly because the boss was insane, partly for ideological reasons (women should not work outside the home, say, and much much darker reasons...), and partly because Teutonic efficiency bullshit has always been bullshit...
right, and in Italy
a) the post-WW1 train system was a shitshow and all the improvements were completed before Mussolini took power
b) it still did not actually run anywhere near as well as he claimed
Germany had a whole parallel network of party bosses who were interfering with city, state, and national government decisions, diverting resources to pet projects, etc right up to the bitter end of the war. "Efficiency" LOL.
The trains always worked perfectly on time, for Mussolini.
His private trains operated to his schedule, and often caused massive disruptions on connection rail lines for everybody else.
Under Hitler's rule the unemployment rate in Germany plummeted...
...since they stopped counting any social group they considered should not be working (including all women, Jews, 'Negros', 'Slavs', homosexuals, etc.) as 'unemployed'.
IIRC, the Germans would make small upgrades to their tanks while they were still building them, which lead to each tank being essentially custom-made which made repairing them in the field a PITA because their replaceable parts weren't so replaceable.
Wages of Destruction makes very clear that the German economy operated on lies, political collusion, and force to make the numbers dance, but huge amounts were lost to graft and corruption and very little of it was at all running on the rails as it were
Fascists make things work, huh? Well let’s check in with all those fascist governments from 80 years ago and see how they’re doing!
/taps earpiece
folks…I have some news
Even fucking Pinochet fired the Chicago Boys and started implementing some of the shit that got Allende couped because the Chilean economy completely collapsed in the 80s.
The one great thing the bureaucratic Germanic mentality did was that the Nazis had meticulous record-keeping down to the minutia level of all their doings, which made prosecuting them for war crimes a slam-dunk
Or, in the case of for instance apartheid South Africa, they make things very efficient for, er, 10% or less of the population (while looting the state coffers, just like Jesus said good Christians should do *listens intently to incoming message on earpiece* Sorry, I hear Jesus didn't say this.)
connected is the enchantment with things like nazi tanks, which were actually shit because they were inefficiently designed and nobody there believed in interchangeable parts so when they broke down in the mud you couldn't reliably scrap them for spares
Lets not forget the resources drawn towards nazi "superweapons," most of which were useless prestige projects that harmed their war effort. Even the potentially useful ones were ruined by nazi incompetence: the Me-262 was delayed and made worse cause Hitler wanted a multirole to do revenge bombing
As an Italian, thank you. I fight this bullshit all the time
"Fascists make you say that things work unless you want to be killed", that should be the quote
(we stilll have a bunch of those, sadly)
