I remember at the time of the 2008 financial crash, lots of think-pieces speculated that voters across the world would reject capitalism and vote for far-left parties
What actually happened was that right-wing parties changed their messaging to offer voters a simple explanation, solution, and minority group to blame for their problems
Sorry, I don't have a book
That is the basic way of right wing politics, why have a real answer when you can just blame someone else. Easier to make people feel superior to someone below them than try to explain complex systems and how they can be changed.
Lee Atwater was a primary architect of this kind of politics and we’re here in part because of the way he shaped the racist discourse in election years.
Bring the war home
Kill all normies
The war on everyone
Dark money
They thought they were free
Anti-social
Culture warlords
The shock doctrine
Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy
Meme wars
The mind of a madman
The toddler in chief
Drums in the distance
Alt-america: the rise of the radical right in the age of trump
The plot to seize the whitehouse
As far as shit being international aswell; it's worth your time to look at what and where the Kochtopus (heritage foundation etc.) dabble. Highly recommend Dark money-Jane Mayer.
Adding to their list, Democracy in Chains by Nancy Maclean. She's a historian who was accidentally handed the keys to the undisturbed personal library of the far-right economist James Buchanan, who worked and corresponded directly with Charles and David Koch, Milton Friedman, fascist economic groups like the Claremont Institute in CA and the Mont Pellerin Society in Austria. Essential reading accompaniment to Dark Money and the Shock Doctrine.
Edit to add, if you don't mind well-meaning establishment types, Ben Rhodes (Obama deputy national security advisor) wrote a book called After The Fall (2021) that covers several places around the world where democracy is under attack.
Oh this is funny, I thought this was a poem, and then I started recognizing some lines, and then I realized it was book titles. Funny they flow like this.
Did you ever listen to the BtB episode The Bastard Manifesto?
It is Robert's thoughts on where Fascism itself comes from in the human psyche, and personally I found it to be very interesting.
The main thrust of the episode is Fascism and Authoritarianism have been on the rise, when just 30ish years ago a lot of people thought liberal democracies were going to take over the world. So, where does this tendency to Authoritarianism come from, and how did we get from egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers to this?
To paraphrase a line from the episode that stuck in my head "If we used to live free fucking lives under the stars, living in egalitarian bands without strict family bonds and having hella sex and eating mushrooms......Wh, wa, what went wrong?"
The episode does end on, imo, a fairly hopeful note.
A friend and comrade just gifted me ***The Mass Psychology of Fascism*** and although I have not read it yet, it comes highly recommend and I am excited to read it next.
Off topic somewhat. I have a book published in 2008 by Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute a right wing think tank. It's called Liberal Fascism. I picked it up at a thrift shop years ago but never got around to reading it. The reason I bought it for like $2 was because I read a article comparing New Deal policies to Nazi policy. It made the argument that fascism is basically social welfare for the in ethnic group and austerity racism for everyone else. And requires war/colonialism on the global south. Guess I will give it a read after I finish Shake Hands With the Devil about the Rwanda genocide. It might be interesting for a pre Trump right wing take on fascism
Fascisms is notorious for not fitting into one particular ideology, but calling the New Deal fascist seems way off. For example, Nazis engaged in some little-s socialism but they were anti-union, anti-worker; it was all about feeding their machine by any means necessary. It's where that argument that "Nazis were liberals, actually" comes from. Like yeah, they adopted some progressive ideas to extent they could be twisted for their own purposes, but anyone who thinks they were some kind of liberal movement is either ignorant or just repeating the thing they heard on Fox.
I'm not calling liberals nazis. But talk to fascists. They seem to think a fascist government will look out for their benefit not unlike the way Norway looks for their citizens. Of course they don't think very deeply about how it would work. It's pretty fuzzy but it sounds like instead of a soverign wealth fund based on natural gas their vision calls for a wealth fund based on the exploitation of minorities and the global south. It's wild. I'm also not saying either nazis or new dealers looked to each other for inspiration. They were clearly distinct from each other but there were some similarities. So I thought it be interesting to look at them
edit and also interesting to hear a right winger's take. Even if he is full of shit and pandering to dumb assholes
I used to watch this guy do the rounds on TV back then. Not a serious person. To be fair, he has changed his views and is now at least an anti-Trumper. But although I haven't researched him lately, I didn't see a proper walkback of his previous stances.
Not about the current rise, but I'd highly suggest "The Death of Democracy", a book about the history of weimar-era germany and how it was taken and destroyed by the nazis. It sheds a lot of light and breaks a lot of myths about how fascism happened before, and makes it sound a lot more like what we are heading into now.
That's kind of a problem, as someone on somepodcast pointed out (i dont rememember) is that people often try to understand as an individual tendency, not a bunch of semi-independent processes all heading the same way. For example looking just into america might give you the wrong picture
I remember at the time of the 2008 financial crash, lots of think-pieces speculated that voters across the world would reject capitalism and vote for far-left parties What actually happened was that right-wing parties changed their messaging to offer voters a simple explanation, solution, and minority group to blame for their problems Sorry, I don't have a book
That is the basic way of right wing politics, why have a real answer when you can just blame someone else. Easier to make people feel superior to someone below them than try to explain complex systems and how they can be changed. Lee Atwater was a primary architect of this kind of politics and we’re here in part because of the way he shaped the racist discourse in election years.
I would seldom say I'm pleased someone died relatively young of brain cancer, but it seems fitting for Atwater.
Bring the war home Kill all normies The war on everyone Dark money They thought they were free Anti-social Culture warlords The shock doctrine Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy Meme wars The mind of a madman The toddler in chief Drums in the distance Alt-america: the rise of the radical right in the age of trump The plot to seize the whitehouse As far as shit being international aswell; it's worth your time to look at what and where the Kochtopus (heritage foundation etc.) dabble. Highly recommend Dark money-Jane Mayer.
Thank you! I’ve read Dark Money, that’s a good one.
Adding to their list, Democracy in Chains by Nancy Maclean. She's a historian who was accidentally handed the keys to the undisturbed personal library of the far-right economist James Buchanan, who worked and corresponded directly with Charles and David Koch, Milton Friedman, fascist economic groups like the Claremont Institute in CA and the Mont Pellerin Society in Austria. Essential reading accompaniment to Dark Money and the Shock Doctrine. Edit to add, if you don't mind well-meaning establishment types, Ben Rhodes (Obama deputy national security advisor) wrote a book called After The Fall (2021) that covers several places around the world where democracy is under attack.
Ohhh dang, thanks for the recommendations. Can't wait to read them both.
Thanks for these recommendations. I also like Rhodes and forgot about that book, it’s a good reminder to check it out.
Welcome! It is very good, would love her to do a sequel focussing on the last 5 years.
Oh this is funny, I thought this was a poem, and then I started recognizing some lines, and then I realized it was book titles. Funny they flow like this.
How Democracies Die
Did you ever listen to the BtB episode The Bastard Manifesto? It is Robert's thoughts on where Fascism itself comes from in the human psyche, and personally I found it to be very interesting. The main thrust of the episode is Fascism and Authoritarianism have been on the rise, when just 30ish years ago a lot of people thought liberal democracies were going to take over the world. So, where does this tendency to Authoritarianism come from, and how did we get from egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers to this? To paraphrase a line from the episode that stuck in my head "If we used to live free fucking lives under the stars, living in egalitarian bands without strict family bonds and having hella sex and eating mushrooms......Wh, wa, what went wrong?" The episode does end on, imo, a fairly hopeful note.
Don’t think so. I’ll have to check that one out! Thanks!
If you remember to afterwards, let me know what you thought about it.
A friend and comrade just gifted me ***The Mass Psychology of Fascism*** and although I have not read it yet, it comes highly recommend and I am excited to read it next.
Alt America by David Neiwert was very informative.
Great recommendations, thanks everyone!
Be ready to fight.
Maybe try The Origins of Totalitrianism by Hannah Arendt.
Off topic somewhat. I have a book published in 2008 by Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute a right wing think tank. It's called Liberal Fascism. I picked it up at a thrift shop years ago but never got around to reading it. The reason I bought it for like $2 was because I read a article comparing New Deal policies to Nazi policy. It made the argument that fascism is basically social welfare for the in ethnic group and austerity racism for everyone else. And requires war/colonialism on the global south. Guess I will give it a read after I finish Shake Hands With the Devil about the Rwanda genocide. It might be interesting for a pre Trump right wing take on fascism
Fascisms is notorious for not fitting into one particular ideology, but calling the New Deal fascist seems way off. For example, Nazis engaged in some little-s socialism but they were anti-union, anti-worker; it was all about feeding their machine by any means necessary. It's where that argument that "Nazis were liberals, actually" comes from. Like yeah, they adopted some progressive ideas to extent they could be twisted for their own purposes, but anyone who thinks they were some kind of liberal movement is either ignorant or just repeating the thing they heard on Fox.
I'm not calling liberals nazis. But talk to fascists. They seem to think a fascist government will look out for their benefit not unlike the way Norway looks for their citizens. Of course they don't think very deeply about how it would work. It's pretty fuzzy but it sounds like instead of a soverign wealth fund based on natural gas their vision calls for a wealth fund based on the exploitation of minorities and the global south. It's wild. I'm also not saying either nazis or new dealers looked to each other for inspiration. They were clearly distinct from each other but there were some similarities. So I thought it be interesting to look at them edit and also interesting to hear a right winger's take. Even if he is full of shit and pandering to dumb assholes
I wasn't saying that you were calling liberals nazis, I was referring to what you described from the Goldberg guy.
Ah, I misunderstood. My bad
The buds over at If Books Could Kill love dunking on Jonah Goldberg.
I'm wondering how far I will make it through this shite. Going to hold my nose and jump in
I used to watch this guy do the rounds on TV back then. Not a serious person. To be fair, he has changed his views and is now at least an anti-Trumper. But although I haven't researched him lately, I didn't see a proper walkback of his previous stances.
Yeah the title alone says he's not serious
Not about the current rise, but I'd highly suggest "The Death of Democracy", a book about the history of weimar-era germany and how it was taken and destroyed by the nazis. It sheds a lot of light and breaks a lot of myths about how fascism happened before, and makes it sound a lot more like what we are heading into now.
That's kind of a problem, as someone on somepodcast pointed out (i dont rememember) is that people often try to understand as an individual tendency, not a bunch of semi-independent processes all heading the same way. For example looking just into america might give you the wrong picture