Notices tagged with peakfascism
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 08:39:02 JST 
simsa03
This thread https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1854030304677073233.html made its way around and everybody freaked out. Calm done, it's pretty much nonsense, born out of the author projecting his fears rather than displaying his understanding.
True, my belief in #peakfascism, utterly justified in early summer, has been smashed by the state elections in Germany and the various elections now in the U.S. I had hoped otherwise and it didn't turn out. Yet.
But that doesn't mean that the nonsense displayed in this thread (esp. posts # 11-17, 20-25) should be taken as reliable prediction or even profound insights instead. It's not based on an informed understanding of facts, but based on fear. Which is, as one doesn't need to learn anything for that, easier to act out and act upon.
Calling T and Musk "the worst men in the United States" [#11] and conveniently ignoring Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, Mitch McConnell, some of the Supreme Court justices, etc., is just silly.
Anyway, NATO will not cease to exist [#12] (although perhaps shrink); most of Gazans will not be killed [as claimed in #13] (although Israel will, in my opinion, annex the West Bank and leave Gaza to international administration); the EU will not shrink in size [#14] (no arguments given for the preposterous claim it would); a "new axis of evil" [#15] (rather: its enlargement) especially with the "new members" mentioned is so utter and uninformed nonsense that I don't even know where to start debunking that claim. Suffice perhaps that most of these new members are too poor and weak to pose as a threat.
With regard to the horror porn the author sketches of the U.S. turned end-Weimar Republic [# 20-25] with all the screeching of martial law and police murder rates sykrocketting due to police activities, stock market crashes, and all, seriously, man, on what does the author base such fever dreams? Esp. when most of the stuff he is in the prerogatives of the individual states and not the federal government.
Where I think the author is partly right is that nuclear weapons will get proliferated to more states. The author mentions Saudi Arabia, the Emirate of Dubai, and Egypt [#16] but ignores, e.g., the aspirations of Turkey. He also ignores that the UK and France think about sharing their nuclear weaponry with the European countries and even Germany thinking about acquiring nuclear deterrence, and all not for the authors beloved reason, i.e., T playing with witholding the U.S. nuclear shield, but for the other main reason, i.e., the imperialism of Russia and Putin. Which, of course, the author fails to mention; as he fails to mentio the other imperialism in China and Xi. (With that the author lands in the lala-land of conspiracy theories which all fail because they neglect or ignore the complexities they are supposed to explain.)
The author is likewise partly right, in my opinion, that there will be a "new axis of evil". [#15] But definitely not the one he thinks of. (Venezuela, El Salvador, and Israel are in this new axis, but Iran is not? Seriously?)
What emerges with T's second term of office, in my opinion, is an emerging and balancing alliance of oligarchic families, crime networks, states turned to mafia organisations,¹ greedy autocrats, influential billionairs, surveillance capitalists, etc., trying to run states like corporations, transgressing state boundaries and replacing international treaties with oligarchic accords and influence spheres. Their main goal is wealth, sweetened with power. In order for them to get rich and their activities unrestricted, they will use the means and institutions of national states to advance their aspirations. If Ukraine stands in their way, they will obliterate it. If not, they will find a more cost-efficient way around. One that is better for "business". (Imagine a Russian movie gangster's heavy English.)
Financial greed does not need to be the sole motivation; finding meaning and purpose beyond, esp. when combined with a reason to fight and exert power, is a second one. Putin is a good example. Greedy like hell he still invests heaviliy in historical romaticism. Money doesn't provide meaning and purpose. Neither power. Meaning comes from somewhere else. Virility too.
But all that does not mean that "fascism" (in lack of a better word) is now on the loose. It means that many oligarchic endeavours will turn out not to work or to work better when not combined with violence, when climate crisis is taken seriously, etc. That is: The rising and increasing worldwide oligarchic interconnectedness that results in reshaping whole national states into mafia organistation (with the president or leader as the Capo dei capi of such a mafia organisation) is far more likely than "the end of the world" as the author of the thread knows it.
And if that outcome or development is the more likely scenario, than the instabilities that we will confront is less so in the civic spheres of societies than it is in the hierarchies of such crime syndicates posing as states themselves.
What most people ignore when looking at such mafia systems is that they are intrinsically volatile and insecure to all of their members. Violence, paranoia, alliances, mistrust, and constant power struggles make not for the stability of such entities but for the violent character of these. And as one can see in the history of Russia of the past 30 years: Leave the mafia organsation and the Capo unchallenged, and life can be pretty normal for the burgeois peasant.
That does not mean that I prefer such a life. But it means that I think the author of thread misplaces the area where violence will occur. The end is still far away. From that arises hope and obligation.
¹ This is not about a state being infiltrated by some mafia activities – and thus in part being harmed and in another capable to fight back – but a state that is turned completely into a mafia organisation: a criminal enterprise that uses the resources and legal perogatives of a national state in the service of the criminal entity. Or put differently: a mafia organisation that poses as a national state.
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 04-Nov-2024 13:53:05 JST
simsa03
Moldova!
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 10:55:29 JST
simsa03
I still think we experience #peakfascism although the latest developments in my country (of all) have delivered a kind of counterpunch that I still struggle to digest.
The country is Germany, the unified or perhaps rather so-called unified Germany. In two of its Eastern states, Saxony and Thuringia, the fascist party AfD ("Alternative for Germany") and the neo-Stalinist party BSW ("Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht") had tremendous successes in the state elections on Sunday, with the AfD about 30% of the ballots in both states and the BSW with about 12% in one and 16% in the other.
It is the first time since 1945 and the end of WW II that in a state election a fascist party has garnered such an amount of votes. But more horrific: The elections took place on Sunday, September 1st, 2024, which by happenstance is the 85th anniversary of the German assault on Poland that started the Second World War.
Can you imagine what that means? That in Germany, in two state elections, on the 85th anniversary of Germany's assault on Poland (and all that came after), a fascist and a leftist authoritarian party can achieve their biggest political successes. That East Germans, in their disgust and thirst for revenge, tried to stick it to the West by enabling those political powers which (at least in the West) decades of education and culture of remembrance have tried to make impossible to ever regain power again.
We failed. Our education system, our efforts to remember, to accept the guilt, to somehow make something new out of it, all those efforts now look as having been in vain. Which is to say: The East won, the West lost.
After reunification people of Eastern Germany often felt unappreciated, lost, looked down at, their biographies dismissed and put aside. The demolition of a broken industry and infrastructure in Eastern Germany went hand in hand, in their opinion, with a demolition of biographies, of ways of living, values, of social nets and communal bonds, and the feeling of safety and a predictable future that comes from communally shared values. Even (or: especially) this sense of safety of the future itself was torn apart. By the West. (They thought.)
The greedy inconsiderate West. "Not everthing was bad in the GDR!" was the slogan of defiance. Still. And over the years, as the West pushed billions of Euros into the East, the East Germans moved to the West. And here the values and cultures mingled, and the West learnt from the East.
In the 1970s to 1990s the counterculture, the alternative movements, the various grassroot movements took place and changed the outlook in Western Germany. Then came the late 1980s, early 1990s, and austerity cut off the money that had made possible the times and spaces for alternative lifeystyles and experiments. In politics the "Kleinbürger" ("the petit bourgeois") came to occupy the highest posts in political power, starting with Helmut Kohl, then followed by Gerhard Schröder, only to make room for Angela Merkel. That all three could follow on each other was mostly due to the fact that they were from the same stock. All three had the style and upbringing of "Kleinbürger", and the rollback into the stiff Adenauer era at the end of the 1980s was only a natural consequence under Helmut Kohl. And into this time of reaction fell the reunification and with that the movement of many from Eastern Germany to the West.
Role models reverted swiftly, with a return of dumb machismo in the male/female role games. Today's Puritanism and Machismo have replaced most of the developments and successes of the 1970s to 1990s. The East won against the West before there were even enough migrants and refugees to blame it all on their "archaic cultural traditions and values".
There have been a lot of discussions in recent weeks why "the East" is so different from "the West", and why is doesn't share what the West deems self-evident cultural stances and values. Why the East seems to be so anti-democratic and authoritarian. The chatter is of the experience of two dictatorships, one Nazi, one Sowjet, without a re-education like the one Western Germans (and Japan on its soil) had to undergo, forced upon them mainly by the Allies, that is, from "outside". I'm not that sure.
True, the GDR was based on the assumption that "the fascists" of the Third Reich were now in Western Germany. The East, the GDR, the country of the anti-fascists, simply by defintion and its history of resistance, could not be the country (or: a country) of past crimes and enduring guilt. That was Western Germany. As there was no guilt (that wasn't already atoned for by "reparations" to the U.S.S.R. whose army deindustrialized Eastern Germany after the war), there was no need for some re-education. The Culture of Remembrance was a project of the West, not the East.
But I guess herein lies some (reasons for the) smugness of Eastern Germany, something that Eastern Germans find pride against and a feeling of superiority over Western Germans. The Western Germans are whiners, in their eyes, while they, the Eastern Germans, are the tough guys, the real ones, although unlucky and unsuccessful. (The parallels to Russia of today springs to mind.)
In 1992 there had been riots in the Eastern city of Rostock-Lichtenhagen that led to arson attacks on a refugee centre and a rooming house for Vietnamese contract workers (remnant from the GDR). The then former party head of the SED, later of the Die Linke/PDS, Gregor Gysi, famously remarked: "What did I miss in my education that I did not learn that I do not set my neighbours on fire?"
It is this decency that seems missing in many who provided the fascists with a spectacular success at the ballot box. Decency, not re-education, seems lacking. To repeat: A success of the fascists at the ballot box, on the anniversary of the most catastrophic war that Europe has seen for, well, a couple of centuries. And young people, Gen Y and X in particular, voting far-right as well. And they don't feel like they are rightwing or extreme or fascist. They think they are "taking their democracy back", from parties they seem to identify with and blame for the problems they feel cutting off their outlook and prospects in life. The "Old Parties", of "the old people".
Still. This lack of decency. The monstrosity of voting far-right or neo-Stalinist authoritarian. These people who are not different from any MAGA in the U.S., or UKIP and Farage in the UK. It doesn't make me sad, it doesn't even make me angry. Rather it makes me embittered. The East has won, the West has changed. And decades of efforts to return from the abyss of cruelty and slaughter have been in vain.
This week in my town a tourist woman carrying a pin with a Israel flag and one saying "Bring them Home" on her T-shirt has been stopped by two men, demanding from her to take off the shirt. When her husband intervened, he was slapped in the face. In May of this year the police was able to foil a planned attack on the local synagogue. My town is in the West, not the East. It reminds me that #peakfascism is more like the crest than the wave that roams the ocean until it reaches land. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 02-Sep-2024 02:30:06 JST
simsa03
Ok, Putin scored a major victory today in two state elections in Germany. This is definitely not #peakfascism. -
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simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 27-Aug-2024 23:18:29 JST 
simsa02
@es0mhi
#peakfascism came to my mind when I contemplated these events https://gnusocial.jp/conversation/3337367#notice-6572128And it was intensified with the changes in the U.S. when Biden chose not to run for a second term: https://gnusocial.jp/conversation/3414551#notice-6715437
And, of course, the growing conviction that Russia will lose this war, one way or another. The main question is: Will Ukraine survive as state, nation, and society in the final downfall of the Russian empire?
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 27-Aug-2024 22:43:42 JST
simsa03
@es0mhi was so kind to send a succinct and thoughtful reply on what may come *after* #peakfascism (something I haven't thought about yet): Is some form of "Progressive nationalism" on the horizon? https://mastodon.social/@es0mhi@tilde.zone/113033694230263851
I replied with a more verbose text, as always (taken in two screenshots to avoid an endless and unreadable thread): https://mastodon.social/@simsa02/113034221705706284
FYI. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 09:31:26 JST
simsa03
Fascism, in all its brutal and brutalist appearance, is staging and enactment. It's show biz. The audience needs to be captured in order to be seduced into crime and guilt and genocide. Our repertoire of antidotes against fascism is not just education, moral clarity, courage, but also: our capacity to get bored. On a collective level, boredom kills fascism.
#peakfascism
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 26-Aug-2024 09:16:04 JST
simsa03
John Stoehr, "Trump is losing his audience" https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-audience/
Good oberservations!
We live through #peakfascism but haven't properly realized yet that people are not tired but *bored* by the current era of fascism. And so it melts without fight. Lovely. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 24-Aug-2024 07:12:39 JST
simsa03
So we have #peakfascism even in the U.S., Putin's Russia losing the war against Ukraine, *and* Half-Life 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36gF6eiCsqU at the same time? What gorgeous times ahead! "Solving" climate change will be a piece of cake after that :-) -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 10-Aug-2024 11:21:33 JST
simsa03
https://newrepublic.com/post/184729/donald-trump-nick-fuentes-white-supremacists-support
And now white supremacists abandon Trump and his campaign. Sweet is the scent of #peakfascism -
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simsa02 (simsa02@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Aug-2024 07:17:29 JST
simsa02
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Aug-2024 07:16:51 JST
simsa03
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Aug-2024 06:51:59 JST
simsa03
Watching Gov. Shapiro in his fervent speech in Philly and I wonder: WTF took you Dems so long? How you could allow the shabby amateurs of Republicans devastate the U.S. for so long? Dems are roaring, and why didn't you earlier? Anyway, fight the forced-birthers, the union haters, the Christian nationalists, the orange clown. #peakfascism is here! -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jul-2024 09:50:57 JST
simsa03
It is said (at least reported so by MSNBC) that various times this day to U.S. Democrats the excitement and energy in the air compares to the year 2008. Which, I think, is an understatement. I sit in a different continent and already I have the feeling of a major breakthrough, a final push through an immense roadblock of agony and despair. To me it feels like #peakfascism is really here (with all the good developments in Europe and even Iran), that this year 2024 will finally see the turning of the tide, with Democrats winning the White House and both chambers of Congress, with Russia losing the war, with international tensions calming down. It already feels like the worst is behind us (it is not, keep working) and that the last two decades of growing authoritarian rule and ubiquitous despair come to an end. And not early enough: Climate change isn't waiting, conflicts need to be resolved, trade needs to be balanced, our alignment with one another strengthened. Perhaps in a few years we will see that this push-through that opened the world again, was finally achieved, made possible, by a lone old man accepting to step aside, to swallow pride, and instead cherish the dignity of all. This is a good day because it is such a day of relief on so many levels. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2024 03:55:33 JST
simsa03
Updated projections even better:
Left-green New Popular Front: 180-205
Macron’s allies: 164-174
Far right National Front and allies: 130-145
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jul/07/french-election-2024-results-latest-france-news-marine-le-pen-national-rally-emmanuel-macron?page=with:block-668ae05b8f08b8c654ee7662#block-668ae05b8f08b8c654ee7662
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2024 03:24:25 JST
simsa03
And France did it! #peakfascism
The extreme-right Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen lost the second round of the parliamentary elections in France and came in third (!) place, behind the left-wing National Popular Front (NFP) (a coalition of various parties), the centrist coalition of President Macron (a coalition of various parties)
Projection of seats:
NFP : 172-192 seats
Macron's coalition : 150-170
RN : 132-152 seats
Turnout was historically high, more than the turnout for parliamentary elections in 1981.
https://aje.io/b4bw4z?update=3032221
https://aje.io/b4bw4z -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 06-Jul-2024 14:32:53 JST
simsa03
TL;DR : Don't panic.
• In Poland the far-right Prime Minster Mateusz Morawiecki from the Law and Justice party was defeated in the November 2023 elections and Donald Tusk was elected on 11th of December 2023, his coalition government was sworn in on 13th of December.
• In April 2024 the far-right Geert Wilders in the Netherlands failed to form a coalition government and stepped down as candidate for Prime Minister.
• In April 2024, in Turkey the AKP party of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lost dramatically in the municipal elections; the Social Democratic Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi won in a landslide in all major cities.
• In Italy, the neo-fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been very reluctant to establish far-right policies.
• In May 2024 large protests took to the streets in Hungary against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his cabinet.
• In June 2024, prior to the European elections, Marine Le Pen of the French extreme rigth Rassemblement National refused to meet Alice Weidel, co-chair of the German fascist party AfD about its plans to "deport" migrants and refugees.
• Also this June, the elections to the European parliament had high voter turnout for far-right parties in various member states. But missed in the national outbursts of angst over that was that in the EU parliament 1) the German extreme right party AfD was expelled from the extreme-right parliament bloc/faction ID, 2) that even with the gains of some such parties in some member states of the EU, the parliamentary bloc of the extreme right (ECP and ID) in fact lost five seats (2024: 130 seats, 2019: 135 seats), whereas the bloc of centrist parties (Conservatives [European meaning], Liberals [European meaning], Social Democrats) still kept their vast majority (2024: 407 seats, 2019: 444 seats), while Greens and left-leaning parties gained more seats.
• On 4th of July, Labour in the UK defeated the Tories in a landslide election victory, handing Labour the absolute majority and Keir Starmer becoming the new Prime Minister.
• In the second round of elections for the Presidency of Iran, the (relative to Iran) "moderate" and "progressive" candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, promising to renew ties with the West, defeated the hardline conservative candidate Saeed Jalili by more than 3 million votes.
Obviously, the second round of parliamentary elections in France on Sunday is still out but even here the extreme right party of Marine Le Pen is likely to lose ground and miss an absolute majority of seats, not the least because of a broad alliance of centre and leftist parties to prevent the RN where possible (by dropping the candidates where the candidate of the other party of the alliance has had more votes in the first round.)
And there is still the big question of the November elections in the U.S.
But I feel it's more than a hunch to claim that we are indeed at #peakfascism : That the height of authoritarian rule, of autocracies, of far-right populism has been reached, their power waning, not increasing, and not only in Europe but in other parts of the world as well.
This is quite contrary to the general opinion and ubiquitous despair. Which is why I mention it at all.
I'm more confident than I have been in a very long time. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 05-Jul-2024 08:27:38 JST
simsa03
Perhaps still a bit early to say but given the voting results and trends across Europe (and hopefully in the US in November), #peakfascism is about to become a pretty likely reality. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 10-Jun-2024 11:53:41 JST
simsa03
To be more precise:
In this EU election the far-right ECP+ID parliamentary groups are projected to gain 130 seats combined (down [!] from 135 seats in 2019), the centrist-liberal coalition of EPP+S&D+RE is projected to keep its vast majority of 407 seats (down from 444 seats in 2019). Thus even with major influence campaigns by Russia the coalition of centrist parties did not crumble. And that is indeed a further sign of #peakfascism. Lovely! -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 10-Jun-2024 11:14:58 JST
simsa03
"Far-right makes gains as Ursula von der Leyen says 'centre is holding' but world in 'turmoil' " https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jun/09/eu-europe-elections-2024-results-news-updates-live-latest?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-666630eb8f08d846f761bfd0#block-666630eb8f08d846f761bfd0
Yes, the rightwing "European Conservatives and Reformists" parliamentary group and the far-right "Identity and Democracy" parliamentary group are projected to gain 72 seats and 58 seats respectively. But compare that to the projection of seats for the the center-right "European People’s Party" (189 seats), center-left "Socialists and Democrats" (135 seats), and liberal "Renew Europe" (83 seats) who form a coalition bloc and will keep the majority. I still count that as #peakfascism
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