Notices tagged with peakfascism
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Jun-2025 02:16:29 JST 
simsa03
After reading and thinking lot on democracy, esp. via its nemeses totalitarianism and authoritarianism, I feel like its procedures and structures are like externalities which cannot on their own safeguard but presuppose a certain attitude of people for it to work. And so I reach back (and thus forward) for Susan Griffin, "Wrestling with the Angels of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen" (2008). Here I find a paragraph that sounds right on time:
«It is not a history I write, not even an exposition of democracy, I am aiming at neither a definition nor a catalogue of qualities. It is the inner states that generate and are generated by democracy that interest me, and the purpose lies in the journey itself too.» (p. 6)
The decline of democracy and the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes feels like one phenomenon, the ubiquitous counter-movement of #peakfascism with the continuous rebuttal of authoritarianism at the ballot boxes like another. Or rather: Both display to me a search of what connects people with their fellow men, and that this search, confusedly but deliberately placed on externalities of the political body, is a search not only for mutual communal alignment but for a sense of how to be a reciprocal and mutual individual.
Politcal constellations, and societies moved thereby, not only presuppose certain "mental" states of those who live under them; not only impact or change them as well; they are ways for people to individualize, to gain sense of their being, and to enact the communal aspect of their psychê.
Put differently: People not only reach an understanding of themselves by grasping how they differ from others but likewise by grasping what they have in common. That psychê (in contrast to the "I") is a communal thing, a flock of birds of other voices past, present and future, is one aspect of this. That psychê entails morals, agency, and responsibility, and thus often the deliberate disregard for one's individual goals and gains, is another.
Democracy not just requires but fosters mutual alignment but what may loosely be called one's grace. Not just the graceful disregard of one's personal egoism but the grace that is bestowed when one acts or refrains accordingly. To me, the current political struggles of demcracy are also a search for and regain of this peculiar grace. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 01-Jun-2025 01:32:19 JST
simsa03
Go, Poland! #peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 19-May-2025 04:00:28 JST
simsa03
Before Europe can finally move to a new self-image, a new identity, something that is already forged by the Eastern European nations and triggered by Russia's imperialism, sins of the past need to be resolved. And that means that Germany needs to open up to demands of reparations from Poland, from Greece, and others. To build this new Europe that is no longer defined by its past but by its future and our common aspirations and hopes, the silent conflicts of the past need to be addressed in the open. Please, Germany, accept your "Erinnerungskultur" to the fullest. Approach your neighbours and negotiate lasting agreements. The new Europe that is already in the making needs it. Without that Europe will keep being a volatile, evanescent, and instable compromise.
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 19-May-2025 03:17:23 JST
simsa03
Liberal candidate Nicusor Dan seems to have won the presidential elections in Romania.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c74q57kydget
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 21:07:00 JST
simsa03
Jakub Krupa, "AfD plans to challenge extremist classification, calls it 'defamatory'" https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/may/02/russia-ukraine-us-minerals-romania-vatican-conclave-europe-news-live-updates?page=with%3Ablock-6814a13e8f08a7e30609f609#block-6814a13e8f08a7e30609f609
Finally. #peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 07-Apr-2025 07:45:55 JST
simsa03
Ben Ansell, "Twilight of the Populists? Perhaps it's possible that, despite it all, we have reached peak populism" https://benansell.substack.com/p/twilight-of-the-populists
The first time I read someone who seems to concur with me that we (may) have reached #peakfascism. Nice. Still, there are differences.
For one, Ansell speaks of "peak populism" and I won't use that term as he only names the populism and authoritarianism from the right while ignoring the populism from the left.
And second, Ansell places the change his hunch tells him is in the air with the advent of Trump's "chaotic authoritarianism" which puts European rightwing and authoritarian parties in an uncomfortable bind of siding with Trump and with Putin – a no go for countries like Poland.
I do think we are in times of #peakfascism and that as Ansell suggests it is Trump who lately made the parties of the middle in Europe stronger. But at least in Europe this tendecy has started long before Trump
Anyway, unless we're blown asunder over the next months or years in one way or the other, we may look back at our present time at one of risks, turmoil, and struggle – like every profound change always is.
«Defeating populism in democracies requires an enemy. But it can’t be the populists themselves. That is their very fuel. Of course, they will say, the elites want to destroy us to protect the corrupt swamp. So populists alone won’t do the trick as an enemy.
Populists who actually side with an existing foreign enemy though. Well that clarifies matters. Now every decision the populist takes can be tied to the foreign enemy. It becomes harder for populists to deflect, to dissimulate effectively. They become glued to the very thing they usually denounce - an outside, foreign force. And they cannot easily unstick themselves. The old lines lose their impact. The mainstream parties see a weakened populist opposition. And they go in for the kill.
That’s one story. Perhaps not the most likely. But over the past weeks it has become a possible narrative. And if there’s anything that the mainstream parties need, it’s a narrative. With good guys and bad guys.» -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Apr-2025 11:08:43 JST
simsa03
Wisconsin Supreme Court: Susan Crawford wins.
#peakfascism and fuck you #musk -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Apr-2025 08:29:35 JST
simsa03
And this is why the U.S. isn't done yet: Cory Booker. The regime has its opposition, the moral authority of decency.
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 31-Mar-2025 23:09:47 JST
simsa03
Angelique Chrisafis, "Marine Le Pen barred from running for French presidency in 2027" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/marine-le-pen-barred-from-running-for-french-presidency-in-2027
« The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for president in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect. [...]
Judges handed Le Pen a five-year ban on running for public office with the added provision that it will take immediate effect and will apply despite the fact that she is appealing against the verdict. »
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 07:12:19 JST
simsa03
Serbia's president Aleksandar Vučić has resigned!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67654166
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 02:54:54 JST
simsa03
Protests in Serbia and Hungary, now in Turkey where Islamist autocrat Erdogan has put his main rival in the upcoming presidential elections, Ekrem Imamoglu under arrest, stripped him of his university degree. (To apply for candidacy, yevery presidential candiate needs a higher education degree.)
#peakfascism -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 13-Feb-2025 01:25:55 JST
simsa03
Stephanie Liechtenstein, "Austrian far-right leader's efforts to form a new government collapse" https://www.yahoo.com/news/austrian-far-leaders-efforts-form-135840689.html
Nicolas Camut, "Geert Wilders left stranded as Dutch coalition talks collapse" https://www.politico.eu/article/geert-wilders-stranded-dutch-government-coalition-talk-collapse-netherlands/
After the state elections in Germany in 2024 and the presidential elections in the U.S. I began to doubt. But now I read the news that the extreme right's attempts to form a coalition government in Austria as in the Netherlands both collapsed.
Even with setbacks, these are times of #peakfascism. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jan-2025 02:19:37 JST
simsa03
In 2025 I keep insisting on #peakfascism, regardless the few (but important) setbacks of 2024. -
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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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