Fascism, Autocracy, Oligarchy Clearinghouse

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

I performed a rudimentary search and there does not seem to be a topic devoted solely to the nature of governance worldwide trending toward undemocratic rule. It seems useful to have a topic separate from the GOP thread. Both domestic and global institutions are in disarray and the pandemic is not the sole reason. Many Americans are rightly concerned with the attempted coup on the Capitol, a slower and more subtle rise in fascist authoritarian style actions have been taking place or have been revealed (SEE: US Dept of Justice circa the Bill Barr years). A place where some of these actions will not get buried in the daily outcries.

Anne Applebaum wrote a piece for The Atlantic and it's worth a read. As she states and I paraphrase: it isn't the tanks, it's the slow takeover.

It is the mission creep slowly creating cracks in our nation right now as we argue over Fauci or Gaetz's harem of teens or Greene's aversion to evolution and science.

Tweet for the link but the article is spoilered as well:

 

 

Spoiler

 

The Disturbing New Hybrid of Democracy and Autocracy

In Poland and elsewhere, rulers—and the oligarchs who help them—have figured out how to create a one-party state without the hassle of staging a coup.  

By Anne Applebaum--June 9, 2021

In 2015, Daniel Obajtek was the county commissioner of Pcim, a tiny district south of Kraków and north of the Polish-Slovak border. “County commissioner” is perhaps a grand-sounding title, but I can’t find a better one. In Polish, the term for the job he held is wójt, an old-fashioned word that means something like “village headman.” It signifies that you run something very small. Pcim, population 4,900, is very small.

Today, Obajtek is the chief executive officer of PKN Orlen, the largest company in central Europe. Orlen runs oil refineries and gas stations in multiple countries, owns a range of energy assets, and is listed on the Fortune 500. It is also, in practice, a state company: Although traded on the stock exchange, its largest shareholder is the Polish state treasury, which means that the Polish government gets to name its CEO. Obajtek was the choice of the current ruling party, the Law and Justice party, and he has done well out of this decision. His personal wealth recently became a major news story in Poland (at least among independent, nongovernment media) because it now includes, among other assets, 38 properties, including houses, apartments, parcels of land, even a seaside pensjonat. He says he acquired this real-estate empire legally, but the speed with which he did so has raised eyebrows, though it probably should not have. Obajtek is an oligarch, and in the hybrid democratic-autocratic political systems now emerging around the world, many newly minted oligarchs make their money at an extraordinary pace.

Until very recently, Poland didn’t have oligarchs. Of course the country had some very rich people, including a number who got rich through corruption or deception. But they didn’t have that specific combination of characteristics that we have come to recognize as typical of the very wealthiest Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, or Chinese. In fact, contrary to popular belief, corruption is not necessarily the means by which modern oligarchs acquire wealth and property, if corruption is defined as actually breaking the law. Oligarchs are wealthy because they have friends in high places who arrange for them to be wealthy, and these arrangements can be perfectly legal. Obajtek, for example, is wealthy because the Law and Justice party named him first to run one state company, and then another. (Full disclosure: I am married to a Polish opposition politician who, when previously in office, never earned more than a standard civil-service salary.)

Oligarch and oligarchy are very old words. Aristotle defined oligarchy as what happens “when men of property have the government in their hands.” Nowadays, the word has acquired new connotations, for in a full-blown 21st-century oligarchy, distinguishing men of property from the government isn’t easy, because they have become one and the same. What truly defines the modern oligarch—and what makes him (or, more rarely, her) different from the typical well-connected rich person—is that his relationship with the state is not just close, but symbiotic. His business career exists solely because of his relationship with the autocrat or the ruling party. The regime knows this, and it expects favors in return.

This new kind of oligarch appeared first in post-Soviet Russia. David Hoffman, the author of The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia—one of the first attempts to describe how the original Russian billionaires made their money—explains that their path to riches was different from that of Western tycoons. Even though plenty of wealthy people in America and Europe “feasted off both the government and private capital,” Hoffman writes, Russia’s first tycoons “drew their early sustenance almost entirely from one source: the state.” They never invented anything, never organized anything, never built anything. Instead, they were simply in the right place at the right time when things were being divided up.

Gazprom, for example, now a very large private company run by an oligarch named Alexey Miller, was formerly known as the Soviet Ministry of Gas Industry. Its history is complicated; many in the West were pleased by its privatization in the late 1990s, and some made money out of it. But in 2000, soon after Vladimir Putin became president of Russia, the company revealed its true nature. Using financial pressure—and helped out by the arrival of armed, masked “tax police” at the company headquarters, and the arrest of its CEO—Gazprom acquired Media Most, then the largest independent media company in Russia and owner of NTV, a prominent independent television station. Immediately, Gazprom-Media fired and locked out staff, and closed several publications; the new editor of NTV arrived to take over at 4 a.m., surrounded by his own security detail.

Since then, Gazprom-Media has absorbed many other media properties. Why does a gas company need to own newspapers and television stations? The answer is that it’s not an ordinary gas company, one that exists solely to extract and sell fuel. Gazprom is rather a gas company that, in addition to extracting and selling fuel, also helps ensure that Putin remains in power. Thus it controls a large chunk of the press, pursues his foreign-policy initiatives—most notably the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will enable Russia to sell gas directly to Germany, cutting out transit across Ukraine—and funds his friends. Dmitry Medvedev served on the Gazprom board from 2000 until 2008, during which time he also served as Putin’s chief of staff and as Russia’s deputy prime minister (he then served one term as president of Russia, before stepping back to let Putin run again). Miller, the current CEO, worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in the 1990s. Gazprom makes space for family too: In 2018, it named Mikhail Putin, the president’s relative, as deputy chair of its management committee.

In the two decades that have passed since Gazprom gained control of Media Most, political leaders elsewhere have followed Vladimir Putin’s lead and sought to create oligarchs, and oligarchic companies, of their own. Usually this happens in autocracies, where no one bothers to look too closely at rules about conflicts of interest or nepotism, even if such rules exist. But more and more, it happens in democracies too, especially in rickety democracies dominated by a leader who wants extra help to remain in power. In Hungary, for example, Viktor Orbán created a small group of oligarchs by ensuring that state contracts went directly to them, and by loaning them money using state-controlled development banks. They then returned the favor. One has constructed a large soccer stadium in Orbán’s home town. Others—of course—bought up the media, which are now almost entirely under either state or, via oligarchs, ruling-party control.

Now Poland’s nativist ruling party has followed suit. Obajtek’s rapid rise doesn’t yet match that of the Hungarian oligarch Lőrinc Mészáros, who, when once asked how he had managed to grow his business faster than Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, responded, “Maybe I’m smarter.” (Another time he said: “My fortune is thanks to three factors: God, luck, and Viktor Orbán.”) Still, Obajtek hasn’t been embarrassed to copy Gazprom. In December, Orlen announced that it would purchase Polska Press, a media company that controls, among other holdings, 20 regional newspapers, 120 weekly magazines, and 500 online portals. The company had been up for sale for some time. Unsurprisingly, no foreign or Polish investors thought that this would be a good moment to put money into local Polish newspapers.

The story unfolded the way all of these stories unfold: Within weeks of announcing the acquisition, the energy company began dismissing board members and firing editors in chief and replacing them with editors or activists who had previously demonstrated loyalty to the ruling party. Orlen has also bought the most important Polish press-distribution agency, and launched its own media advertising agency, both of which could give it the power to support other pro-government media—and punish independent media—should it so desire. (That’s a nice little magazine you have there … pity if you couldn’t get it onto any newsstands.) Following the Gazprom model, Orlen has also set about employing the friends and family of Law and Justice party members. The wife of one member of Parliament has, for example, been given several lucrative posts. Remember, the state treasury controls a portion of Orlen’s stock, and the state should therefore benefit from company investments. Instead, the company is investing in ruling-party propagandists. Try to imagine U.S. taxpayers’ money being spent propping up Fox News—or indeed MSNBC—and you can see why this angers people. One Polish court has already questioned the legality of the acquisition.

Orlen has justified its media expansion by talking about “synergies” and “diversification.” When I asked about the change of editors, as well as the sharply falling circulation of many of the new media properties, the company insisted that it “does not interfere” in “HR issues” at Polska Press. A spokesperson gave no other specifics about the takeover. “The transaction was thoroughly analysed both by our in-house experts and external advisors,” she wrote in an email, “with a due diligence exercise undertaken to investigate the target’s financial, legal and tax affairs … Our acquisition of the publishing house is thus primarily a business move expected to deliver economic benefits.” In fact, its purchases are a useful reminder, in an era when so-called neoliberal economics has become deeply unfashionable, of just how illiberal state companies can be. This much was obvious when communism collapsed in 1989; recent events in Poland, Hungary, and Turkey should once again demonstrate this dynamic for those who have forgotten. A national railroad or power company can make sense if, like public media in some well-run countries, it can be surrounded by a culture of strict, apolitical control. It’s hard, for example, to imagine Amtrak buying up local newspapers in the United States and turning them into narrowly partisan vehicles on behalf of either political party. But in places lacking a nonpartisan ethos, public ownership can be easily corrupted.

There’s a bigger story here too. The Orlen saga is a warning not just about state companies, but about democracy, a political system that nowadays rarely disappears the way it used to do. In order to undermine a democracy, you no longer need tanks on the streets or colonels bursting into the presidential palace. You can create your one-party state very slowly, over many years, just by massaging the rules, shifting money around, putting pressure on courts and prosecutors, eliminating unpleasant media, and above all by creating the oligarchs who will fund your projects, block your enemies, enable you to use state money to enrich your party or your family. This method is much more lucrative, and much less stressful than the old-fashioned coup d’état, and it’s coming to a democracy near you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Here is another article, this time by Timothy Snyder that discusses the future two elections in the US and a quick read. He's not the only one saying this, but more voices need to be heard. Loudly.

 

[Nivek 16923]

That is really well stated.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

1 minute ago, Nivek said:

That is really well stated.

I'm a fan of Snyder and Applebaum both. One thing I love about the Surl is how many new authors and ideas I've run across thanks to all you erudite scholars.

[RomaVicta 29905]

I was wondering where to post this. Perhaps this fits here because it's a literary expression of the rise of an autocracy.

We watched the movie Cabaret last night. It's a movie that I largely didn't like when I first saw it as a high schooler. I berated a friend for years because it was his favorite movie prior to Galipoli. Not sure what supplanted that.

Well, my friend had/has a subtler appreciation of the strange than I did. I was repelled by Bohemian lifestyle and thought, naively, that the movie was about that and how wonderful it is. I was dumb. Veddy, veddy dumb.

Of course, a large element of the movie is how Nazism rose while that world was distracted. Decades ago, it seemed like an excellent analysis of an historic event through fiction. Now it's fucking chilling to watch. My beloved and I kept glancing at each other and sharing OMG looks. 

It's a brilliant movie and Fosse's world view that informs his movies illuminates his themes with masterfulness. I can't think of any other artist who has risen so far in my opinion over a career.

Cabaret. To me, it's genius and one of the best films of my lifetime.

 

[RomaVicta 29905]

52 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I performed a rudimentary search and there does not seem to be a topic devoted solely to the nature of governance worldwide trending toward undemocratic rule. It seems useful to have a topic separate from the GOP thread. Both domestic and global institutions are in disarray and the pandemic is not the sole reason. Many Americans are rightly concerned with the attempted coup on the Capitol, a slower and more subtle rise in fascist authoritarian style actions have been taking place or have been revealed (SEE: US Dept of Justice circa the Bill Barr years). A place where some of these actions will not get buried in the daily outcries.

Anne Applebaum wrote a piece for The Atlantic and it's worth a read. As she states and I paraphrase: it isn't the tanks, it's the slow takeover.

It is the mission creep slowly creating cracks in our nation right now as we argue over Fauci or Gaetz's harem of teens or Greene's aversion to evolution and science.

Tweet for the link but the article is spoilered as well:

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The Disturbing New Hybrid of Democracy and Autocracy

In Poland and elsewhere, rulers—and the oligarchs who help them—have figured out how to create a one-party state without the hassle of staging a coup.  

By Anne Applebaum--June 9, 2021

In 2015, Daniel Obajtek was the county commissioner of Pcim, a tiny district south of Kraków and north of the Polish-Slovak border. “County commissioner” is perhaps a grand-sounding title, but I can’t find a better one. In Polish, the term for the job he held is wójt, an old-fashioned word that means something like “village headman.” It signifies that you run something very small. Pcim, population 4,900, is very small.

Today, Obajtek is the chief executive officer of PKN Orlen, the largest company in central Europe. Orlen runs oil refineries and gas stations in multiple countries, owns a range of energy assets, and is listed on the Fortune 500. It is also, in practice, a state company: Although traded on the stock exchange, its largest shareholder is the Polish state treasury, which means that the Polish government gets to name its CEO. Obajtek was the choice of the current ruling party, the Law and Justice party, and he has done well out of this decision. His personal wealth recently became a major news story in Poland (at least among independent, nongovernment media) because it now includes, among other assets, 38 properties, including houses, apartments, parcels of land, even a seaside pensjonat. He says he acquired this real-estate empire legally, but the speed with which he did so has raised eyebrows, though it probably should not have. Obajtek is an oligarch, and in the hybrid democratic-autocratic political systems now emerging around the world, many newly minted oligarchs make their money at an extraordinary pace.

Until very recently, Poland didn’t have oligarchs. Of course the country had some very rich people, including a number who got rich through corruption or deception. But they didn’t have that specific combination of characteristics that we have come to recognize as typical of the very wealthiest Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, or Chinese. In fact, contrary to popular belief, corruption is not necessarily the means by which modern oligarchs acquire wealth and property, if corruption is defined as actually breaking the law. Oligarchs are wealthy because they have friends in high places who arrange for them to be wealthy, and these arrangements can be perfectly legal. Obajtek, for example, is wealthy because the Law and Justice party named him first to run one state company, and then another. (Full disclosure: I am married to a Polish opposition politician who, when previously in office, never earned more than a standard civil-service salary.)

Oligarch and oligarchy are very old words. Aristotle defined oligarchy as what happens “when men of property have the government in their hands.” Nowadays, the word has acquired new connotations, for in a full-blown 21st-century oligarchy, distinguishing men of property from the government isn’t easy, because they have become one and the same. What truly defines the modern oligarch—and what makes him (or, more rarely, her) different from the typical well-connected rich person—is that his relationship with the state is not just close, but symbiotic. His business career exists solely because of his relationship with the autocrat or the ruling party. The regime knows this, and it expects favors in return.

This new kind of oligarch appeared first in post-Soviet Russia. David Hoffman, the author of The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia—one of the first attempts to describe how the original Russian billionaires made their money—explains that their path to riches was different from that of Western tycoons. Even though plenty of wealthy people in America and Europe “feasted off both the government and private capital,” Hoffman writes, Russia’s first tycoons “drew their early sustenance almost entirely from one source: the state.” They never invented anything, never organized anything, never built anything. Instead, they were simply in the right place at the right time when things were being divided up.

Gazprom, for example, now a very large private company run by an oligarch named Alexey Miller, was formerly known as the Soviet Ministry of Gas Industry. Its history is complicated; many in the West were pleased by its privatization in the late 1990s, and some made money out of it. But in 2000, soon after Vladimir Putin became president of Russia, the company revealed its true nature. Using financial pressure—and helped out by the arrival of armed, masked “tax police” at the company headquarters, and the arrest of its CEO—Gazprom acquired Media Most, then the largest independent media company in Russia and owner of NTV, a prominent independent television station. Immediately, Gazprom-Media fired and locked out staff, and closed several publications; the new editor of NTV arrived to take over at 4 a.m., surrounded by his own security detail.

Since then, Gazprom-Media has absorbed many other media properties. Why does a gas company need to own newspapers and television stations? The answer is that it’s not an ordinary gas company, one that exists solely to extract and sell fuel. Gazprom is rather a gas company that, in addition to extracting and selling fuel, also helps ensure that Putin remains in power. Thus it controls a large chunk of the press, pursues his foreign-policy initiatives—most notably the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will enable Russia to sell gas directly to Germany, cutting out transit across Ukraine—and funds his friends. Dmitry Medvedev served on the Gazprom board from 2000 until 2008, during which time he also served as Putin’s chief of staff and as Russia’s deputy prime minister (he then served one term as president of Russia, before stepping back to let Putin run again). Miller, the current CEO, worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in the 1990s. Gazprom makes space for family too: In 2018, it named Mikhail Putin, the president’s relative, as deputy chair of its management committee.

In the two decades that have passed since Gazprom gained control of Media Most, political leaders elsewhere have followed Vladimir Putin’s lead and sought to create oligarchs, and oligarchic companies, of their own. Usually this happens in autocracies, where no one bothers to look too closely at rules about conflicts of interest or nepotism, even if such rules exist. But more and more, it happens in democracies too, especially in rickety democracies dominated by a leader who wants extra help to remain in power. In Hungary, for example, Viktor Orbán created a small group of oligarchs by ensuring that state contracts went directly to them, and by loaning them money using state-controlled development banks. They then returned the favor. One has constructed a large soccer stadium in Orbán’s home town. Others—of course—bought up the media, which are now almost entirely under either state or, via oligarchs, ruling-party control.

Now Poland’s nativist ruling party has followed suit. Obajtek’s rapid rise doesn’t yet match that of the Hungarian oligarch Lőrinc Mészáros, who, when once asked how he had managed to grow his business faster than Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, responded, “Maybe I’m smarter.” (Another time he said: “My fortune is thanks to three factors: God, luck, and Viktor Orbán.”) Still, Obajtek hasn’t been embarrassed to copy Gazprom. In December, Orlen announced that it would purchase Polska Press, a media company that controls, among other holdings, 20 regional newspapers, 120 weekly magazines, and 500 online portals. The company had been up for sale for some time. Unsurprisingly, no foreign or Polish investors thought that this would be a good moment to put money into local Polish newspapers.

The story unfolded the way all of these stories unfold: Within weeks of announcing the acquisition, the energy company began dismissing board members and firing editors in chief and replacing them with editors or activists who had previously demonstrated loyalty to the ruling party. Orlen has also bought the most important Polish press-distribution agency, and launched its own media advertising agency, both of which could give it the power to support other pro-government media—and punish independent media—should it so desire. (That’s a nice little magazine you have there … pity if you couldn’t get it onto any newsstands.) Following the Gazprom model, Orlen has also set about employing the friends and family of Law and Justice party members. The wife of one member of Parliament has, for example, been given several lucrative posts. Remember, the state treasury controls a portion of Orlen’s stock, and the state should therefore benefit from company investments. Instead, the company is investing in ruling-party propagandists. Try to imagine U.S. taxpayers’ money being spent propping up Fox News—or indeed MSNBC—and you can see why this angers people. One Polish court has already questioned the legality of the acquisition.

Orlen has justified its media expansion by talking about “synergies” and “diversification.” When I asked about the change of editors, as well as the sharply falling circulation of many of the new media properties, the company insisted that it “does not interfere” in “HR issues” at Polska Press. A spokesperson gave no other specifics about the takeover. “The transaction was thoroughly analysed both by our in-house experts and external advisors,” she wrote in an email, “with a due diligence exercise undertaken to investigate the target’s financial, legal and tax affairs … Our acquisition of the publishing house is thus primarily a business move expected to deliver economic benefits.” In fact, its purchases are a useful reminder, in an era when so-called neoliberal economics has become deeply unfashionable, of just how illiberal state companies can be. This much was obvious when communism collapsed in 1989; recent events in Poland, Hungary, and Turkey should once again demonstrate this dynamic for those who have forgotten. A national railroad or power company can make sense if, like public media in some well-run countries, it can be surrounded by a culture of strict, apolitical control. It’s hard, for example, to imagine Amtrak buying up local newspapers in the United States and turning them into narrowly partisan vehicles on behalf of either political party. But in places lacking a nonpartisan ethos, public ownership can be easily corrupted.

There’s a bigger story here too. The Orlen saga is a warning not just about state companies, but about democracy, a political system that nowadays rarely disappears the way it used to do. In order to undermine a democracy, you no longer need tanks on the streets or colonels bursting into the presidential palace. You can create your one-party state very slowly, over many years, just by massaging the rules, shifting money around, putting pressure on courts and prosecutors, eliminating unpleasant media, and above all by creating the oligarchs who will fund your projects, block your enemies, enable you to use state money to enrich your party or your family. This method is much more lucrative, and much less stressful than the old-fashioned coup d’état, and it’s coming to a democracy near you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for this. I re-subscribed to Atlantic a year ago after more than a decade hiatus. It's better than ever. I assume this article will be in the coming issue? I'm impatient reading long pieces on a computer monitor.

[DonkeyCigars 144]

11 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Thanks for this. I re-subscribed to Atlantic a year ago after more than a decade hiatus. It's better than ever. I assume this article will be in the coming issue? I'm impatient reading long pieces on a computer monitor.

The Atlantic is rad.

[Brisketexan 105095]

Publisher's Clearinghouse is cooler:

Coincidentally, the chance of winning $10,000,000 and the chance of us having a functioning democracy in 10 years are about the same.

Great.  Now what am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

Thanks for this. I re-subscribed to Atlantic a year ago after more than a decade hiatus. It's better than ever. I assume this article will be in the coming issue? I'm impatient reading long pieces on a computer monitor.

I believe it's coming as I don't think it was in the June issue. I buy the print copy from a local bookseller. Costs more but I'm trying to help them out and it's a little luxury I buy instead of fancy coffee from a nearby chain.

Thanks for the tip on the movie. I have never seen it, but now I ought to give it a go.

[Bama Chick 28596]

I was wondering where to post this. Perhaps this fits here because it's a literary expression of the rise of an autocracy.
We watched the movie Cabaret last night. It's a movie that I largely didn't like when I first saw it as a high schooler. I berated a friend for years because it was his favorite movie prior to Galipoli. Not sure what supplanted that.
Well, my friend had/has a subtler appreciation of the strange than I did. I was repelled by Bohemian lifestyle and thought, naively, that the movie was about that and how wonderful it is. I was

. Veddy, veddy dumb.
Of course, a large element of the movie is how Nazism rose while that world was distracted. Decades ago, it seemed like an excellent analysis of an historic event through fiction. Now it's fucking chilling to watch. My beloved and I kept glancing at each other and sharing OMG looks. 
It's a brilliant movie and Fosse's world view that informs his movies illuminates his themes with masterfulness. I can't think of any other artist who has risen so far in my opinion over a career.
Cabaret. To me, it's genius and one of the best films of my lifetime.
 

Fosse was a genius.

The limited series on FX (“Fosse”) starring Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams was fantastic. I highly recommend it if you didn’t catch it when it aired.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Publisher's Clearinghouse is cooler:

Coincidentally, the chance of winning $10,000,000 and the chance of us having a functioning democracy in 10 years are about the same.

Great.  Now what am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?

Take up hip-hop collaging and scrapbooking?

[RomaVicta 29905]

26 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Fosse was a genius.

The limited series on FX (“Fosse”) starring Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams was fantastic. I highly recommend it if you didn’t catch it when it aired.

I didn't. We just watched Cabaret a few days ago. All That Jazz I've liked since it's release, but I can't find it even to rent via Roku. We'll start that series (Fosse and Vernon) this weekend.

Of course, I referred to Chicago on another thread which is his creation if not his movie. He had it coming!

I'm a tough sell on most musicals, but the best of any genre is reliably excellent. The Music Man is a very interesting study of truth and perception of truth while being funny and filled with great songs. It's another movie I didn't fully appreciate until I was older.

Hell, I'm off track, I'll throw in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as another brilliant movie that I always liked but didn't appreciate until I was stuck watching it in a hotel years ago. Quite a study in irony, particularly the school house scene where Pompey and a woman rise to talk about the virtues of voting and freedom neither of them had access to. 

Roma, take  it to Movies and TV for chrisesake!

Sorry.

[RDCanecutter 26411]

7 hours ago, DonkeyCigars said:

The Atlantic is rad.

The Atlantic has the best rejection letters. At least they did about 20 years ago. Other people were typing up rejections on the fly on flimsy letterheads, but the Atlantic used an artisanal heavy stock that had a design on it that looked block-printed. I used to send them stuff I knew they'd never use, just to get another of those letters.

[Fudge Nuggets 19190]

What are these rejection letters I hear people speaking about?

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

While Senator Feinstein is gaslighting the rise of authoritarianism, here is Ruth Ben Ghiat to remind us once again that the GOP is playing by different rules.

 

[RDCanecutter 26411]

52 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

What are these rejection letters I hear people speaking about?

Dear Fudge Nuggets,

Thank you for your question about rejection letters. Alas, though we all enjoyed reading your question about rejection letters, we currently cannot offer your question about rejection letters a place in our magazine. We encourage you to submit it to anyone else who may be in need of a question about rejection letters, and wish you the best of luck.

Warmest regards,

Kensington Vomit III, Editor, Questions About Rejection Letters Monthly

Edited June 11, 2021 by RDCanecutter
i had to edit an imaginary editor's letter

[Sawbonz 27547]

17 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

While Senator Feinstein is gaslighting the rise of authoritarianism,

TBH she probably isn’t gaslighting she’s probably that clueless. She turns 88 this month

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Can we talk about the good parts of fascism?  I’m looking forward to the Hunger Games and all the pageantry that comes with it.  If I’m going to be trapped in a violent dystopian nightmare, I want to be entertained. 
 

/sarcasm 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Cross posting

 

[JimmyJames 12271]

1 hour ago, Sawbonz said:

TBH she probably isn’t gaslighting she’s probably that clueless. She turns 88 this month

Her dementia is farther along than trumps. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

For forty years our politics have been dominated by the most narcissistic generation in American history, with predictable results. I for one am ready for the days we are ruled by our millennial overloads. And that day cometh right soon. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

It’s the end of times for the boomers and they know it, which is why you see the rise of fascism in their ranks and their quest to obstruct voting by the millennials which they know don’t support them and their narcissism. Trump is the ultimate embodiment of that. 

[27-25 2047]

14 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Can we talk about the good parts of fascism?

At least Mussolini made the trains run on time?

Hugo Boss uniforms for everyone?

Easier "decisions" on "election" day?

Trying to find the silver lining here.

[GopherRock 1765]

Even if he did that, it didn't end well for 'ol Benito. Shot by partisans and the corpse being hung from an Esso station in Milan.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

16 minutes ago, 27-25 said:

At least Mussolini made the trains run on time?

Hugo Boss uniforms for everyone?

Easier "decisions" on "election" day?

Trying to find the silver lining here.

He did not. That was a myth, because fascists lie. They lie a lot. A virus disappearing in April for example.

There is no silver lining unless one prefers life to resemble wet concrete.

[Brisketexan 105095]

3 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

He did not. That was a myth, because fascists lie. They lie a lot. A virus disappearing in April for example.

There is no silver lining unless one prefers life to resemble wet concrete.

Whoa now, slow your roll.

Could this whole exercise end at an Esso station?  Because that could be a solid silver lining.

[wildcat09 29349]

3 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

He did not. That was a myth, because fascists lie. They lie a lot. A virus disappearing in April for example.

There is no silver lining unless one prefers life to resemble wet concrete.

Right. I don't know why the myth that fascism was at least orderly and efficient was ever allowed to grow, but it's ridiculous. Fascism always looks like Trumpism. It's looked like that in every place it's ever been practiced.

[David Dennison 18854]

Fascism, oligarchy, and autocracy in America are the predictable results of the dwindling fortunes of organized labor.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Mussolini did some stuff like expanding healthcare and education to rural areas of Italy but these were mostly efforts to further the self preservation of Mussolini’s fascist state.  The education was basically “Mussolini is infallible” and “Italian exceptionalism.”  Mussolini used to claim he could look at the clock anytime during the day and know precisely what was being taught to third graders at that moment.  

Edited June 11, 2021 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

4 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Right. I don't know why the myth that fascism was at least orderly and efficient was ever allowed to grow, but it's ridiculous. Fascism always looks like Trumpism. It's looked like that in every place it's ever been practiced.

It's a little like the South that @Brisketexan was discussing in the CRT topic: beautiful trees with swaying moss underneath which promenade gentlemen and ladies as they spark among the magnolias, white-walled manors framed with azaleas along the long shaded lane, fields of cotton and rice marshes stretching for miles.

 

1 minute ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Mussolini did some stuff like expanding healthcare and education to rural areas of Italy but these were mostly efforts to further the self preservation of Mussolini’s fascist state.  The education was basically “Mussolini is infallible” and “Italian exceptionalism.”  Mussolini used to claim he could look at the clock anytime during the day and know precisely what was being taught to third grades at that moment.  

(They) preach as savior to the working class, but he damned near starved them. As a tactic, I see how it works but it's very short term thinking that begins violently and ends violently.

[27-25 2047]

34 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

He did not. That was a myth, because fascists lie. They lie a lot. A virus disappearing in April for example.

There is no silver lining unless one prefers life to resemble wet concrete.

I know Mussolini did not make the trains run on time.  I neglected to put my own </sarcasm> tag.  Apologies.

[Neonmoon 38129]

I don’t know where to put this but this ties in 

 

[Brisketexan 105095]

A terrorist organization operating in the US.  Committing acts of violence against US citizens and the US government.

That terrorist organization is given 1) safe harbor and shelter by a foreign state to run their terrorist operations against the US, and 2) receives active funding and support, through various channels, from that same foreign state.

If these terrorists were brown, and the foreign state was run by brown people, we'd have invaded/bombed it already.  Instead, we have the last POTUS talking up that foreign state, demanding that the foreign state be welcomed into the G-8, saying he favors that foreign state over the US under its current leadership, and the like.  To be clear, we have the past POTUS actively supporting a foreign state not in spite of, but BECAUSE of its support for terrorists who continue to attack the US.

And some of y'all still think this all ends up just fine, with peaceful elections and shit.

[lmao 178]

On 6/10/2021 at 8:14 AM, DonkeyCigars said:

The Atlantic is rad.

Except their editor-in-Chief is a pro-apartheid American who volunteered to be a guard for a foreign power in a prison camp that tortured Palistinian political prisoners. That seems kind of shitty. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

So, we've got Al Qaeda and Y'all Qaeda--is this Canadian offshoot Eh Qaeda?

[DonkeyCigars 144]

4 minutes ago, lmao said:

Except their editor-in-Chief is a pro-apartheid American who volunteered to be a guard for a foreign power in a prison camp that tortured Palistinian political prisoners. That seems kind of shitty. 

The articles are all really well done, though.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

They) preach as savior to the working class, but he damned near starved them. As a tactic, I see how it works but it's very short term thinking that begins violently and ends violently.

From my understanding, what did Mussolini in was him believing his own bullshit (as is the case with most fascists).  He thought he could steamroll Ethiopia on shear hubris and when the Italian bodies started piling up, the whole Wizard of Oz curtain came crashing down, the society turned against him.  

[lmao 178]

20 minutes ago, DonkeyCigars said:

The articles are all really well done, though.

I agree.

[RDCanecutter 26411]

1 hour ago, lmao said:

Except their editor-in-Chief is a pro-apartheid American who volunteered to be a guard for a foreign power in a prison camp that tortured Palistinian political prisoners. That seems kind of shitty. 

I just buy it to look at the centerfolds.

[Biff Tannen 45673]

3 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The education was basically “Mussolini is infallible” and “Italian exceptionalism.”

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Um, I don't know how many viewers watch One America News Network, but this is very not good.

 

 

 

[Neonmoon 38129]

Holy sweet fuck. How is shit like that allowed to air as news?

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

An Arizona state senator (Wendy Rogers) was recently on TruNews talking about the election audit there and had no problem with TruNews promoting their 'Jew Coup' theory regarding the supposed sabotaging of a second Trump term. (TruNews is a RW network that has a noted antisemitic bias).

So, yeah, there is a lot of hate being spread as 'news.'

The word 'news' should mean something very specific when it comes to broadcasting, but as with most words, the right leaning machine is very adept at framing and co-opting words.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

I’m posting this because I feel like it articulates and important observation. The sunshine pumpers that said a few of us were overreacting four years ago are saying the same shit today despite being proven catastrophically wrong all the way up to this point.

 I get the need for someone to play Devil’s advocate in these discussions but it must get exhausting. 

 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

59 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Um, I don't know how many viewers watch One America News Network, but this is very not good.

 

 

 

Wait, he's talking about executing these Q supports trying to overturn the election, right? Right?! 

[BrickHorn 18218]

42 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I get the need for someone to play Devil’s advocate in these discussions but it must get exhausting.

Many are trolls. There’s propaganda value to disarming the resistance by appealing to their humanity. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I’m posting this because I feel like it articulates and important observation. The sunshine pumpers that said a few of us were overreacting four years ago are saying the same shit today despite being proven catastrophically wrong all the way up to this point.

 I get the need for someone to play Devil’s advocate in these discussions but it must get exhausting.

I was reluctant to create a fascism/authoritarian bubble by making this thread, but at the same time I was *disengaging more and more due to the type of people to whom Moxon refers. The white oppressed, the comfortable whites, are people with whom I come into contact daily and yet the others in my expanded circle who are not white and are not comfortable have a lot different perspective. A lot of shit is being normalized that should never be viewed as normal.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Mrs Whiggins
*the trolls get ya down man, and it requires a step back and a deep breath sometimes.

[Neonmoon 38129]

I mean, even if you ignore the insurrection incited by Republican leaders, and how they continue to do so. Even if you ignore the right wing propaganda networks spewing anti-democratic rhetoric, you still have the party from local all the way up to state 

1. Voter Suppression Laws, including but not limited to less access to polls, ability to reject results they don't like, ability to replace local election officials they don't like. 

2. Academic Suppression Laws

3. Censuring Members that don't support Election Fraud 

4. Women's Rights Suppression Laws

 

 

[DDD Dad 14332]

3 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Um, I don't know how many viewers watch One America News Network, but this is very not good.

 

 

 

The guy sounds like a Tucker Carlson wannabe.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

5 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

The guy sounds like a Tucker Carlson wannabe.

It is a line that goes like this OANN ->Fox->Russia TV Very similar styles in altering reality.