Everyone’s like “this can’t be fascism it’s too dumb” but they don’t understand that fascism is in fact almost always very dumb! Fascist dictators are cruel and stupid men. And it’s popular because many people are cruel and stupid!
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And that's the thing. Damage is easy. It's building things or maintaining them that's hard. Musk and his incel hitler youth are all stupid people, and look how much damage they're doing.
My 12 yr old just said this the other day about cartoons he liked as a little kid. "There's always one main bully who's actually mean, and then a bunch of guys who follow him around being stupid. And they're always named Pickle or something." 😆
While working on my history thesis on antifascist resistance, there were so many times when I thought, “God, what an idiot Mussolini was! How did people fall for that?”
Banal then, banal now, with more banality to come.
> The "banality of evil" is probably Hannah Arendt's most famous phrase. She coined it when she attended the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961.
Maybe the best example being how Mussolini himself seems to have started out as a fairly okay guy for his era, but once the mask slipped and he chose cruelty he just got dumber and dumber.
The place where he died is now a McDonald's. An appropriate monument to the banally evil stupidity of fascism.
This is the thing! Fascism is perpetuated by puny, small-minded, pathetic, and really uncomplicated people! Fascism is, at its core, uncomplicated! It's just being a schoolyard bully on a really big fucking scale! These aren't criminal masterminds! Fearing them makes them seem bigger than they are!
Mussolini and Hitler had smallish frames, but we’re masterminds. They had brilliant oratory skills, charismatic, shrewd politicians, extremely convincing propaganda and utilized the cult of personality.
There's a reason there was so much comedy during and after WWII lampooning Hitler and the Nazis. Part of that was catharsis and chest-beating, of course, but part of it was because Nazis genuinely did stupid shit that was easy to poke fun at.
Iago was a character in his play Othello. In this play I guess I was wandering if this is the origin for why we conflate mendacity and intelligence. I honestly can't remember a word from it but that whole play is specifically about this. He probably planted the wrong seed in our phyches I reckon.
I mean no offense to Chaplin, but look at the goofy mustache hitler chose. They are stupid and cocky, and people mistake that overconfidence for strength.
Hermann Goring was a corpulent dandy who designed his own uniforms with dozens of medals and tooled around on a gigantic yacht while the Luftwaffe got shredded over W. Europe and was so fat by the end of the war the Allies couldn’t fly him to his trial.
When I read Primo Levi's account of his imprisonment @ Auschwitz, that was 1 of the things that struck me. Here's someone who suffered at the hands of Nazis, saw their cruelty up close & personal, but instead of portraying them as evil monsters, he made them come across as dumb, lumbering simpletons
People need to watch some documentaries on the nazi leadership below Hitler. These guys were cruel buffoons with zero style or taste. Actually not that dissimilar Trump and most his guys.
They need to keep it dumb so their followers can understand it. If they made it sound smart, assuming they could, they would lose the masses. What's most surprising is just how dumb Musk sounds most days.
Cruel and stupid go together like hate and fear - these are fearful, unloved little boys. Followed and supported by the weak, selfish and wilfully ignorant
I have been impressed with just how politically stupid he’s been, though. He does not have popular support for most of what he’s doing, and it’s quickly starting to show.
This is what human societies keep refusing to face. There are aberrations among us that take joy in CAUSING pain and suffering. It may classified as a "social or mental" illness, but it is an illness that needs to be treated like an illness. It's not merely a difference of opinion.
Couldn’t agree more. That’s what’s so incredibly difficult for some people to admit, or to understand: a huge swath of our fellow humans *actively want to cause suffering and destruction.* It makes no sense, it’s completely insane, and it’s bound to end tragically for all of us. But it’s a fact.
This is actual discussion humanity needs to have. I totally agree. Less than 5% of the population is neurologically defined as phychopathic/aspd. But they steamroll over the rest of us which are overwhelmingly empathetic. It seems 2 just go unsaid how much bad shit actually comes from this dynamic
Hitler, Mussolini and Putin are not dumb men. Putin for example, is a brilliant politician and he has fooled and out maneuvered most of the world’s leaders and dozens of billionaires, over the last 20 years.
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Gives one some hope that they step on their d*cks before they figure out how to burn it all down.
> The "banality of evil" is probably Hannah Arendt's most famous phrase. She coined it when she attended the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961.
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/hannah-arendts-lessons-for-our-times-the-banality-of-evil-totalitarianism-and-statelessness/
The place where he died is now a McDonald's. An appropriate monument to the banally evil stupidity of fascism.
Or point me towards one?
I'd really love it.
The OG Nazis were clowns just like MAGA Nazis
https://youtu.be/MRYxck2Q2ak?si=GTEe0u8HEH6gPKoL
https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/agent-based-evolutionary-game-dynamics/chapter/iii-3/
I honestly think that the Nazis' lean into sharp Hugo Boss uniforms made people think they were more sophisticated and suave than they were.
They were thuggish pig farmers and losers.