"The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which
it dehumanizes segments of the population. It limits the capacity for
empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane
treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion
to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."
Jason Stanley,
How Fascism Works
"Words can be like tiny bits of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed and seem to have no effect, but after a while the toxic effect is there."
Victor Klemperer,
I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End: 1933-1945
"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”
Philip Kerr,
Berlin Noir
“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Garry Kasparov
The totalitarian doctrine of the state thus satisfied the various traditional partisans of German reaction: university professors, bureaucrats, army officers, and big industrialists. It was also acceptable to the western world in general. Totalitarianism also served the practical needs of the moment. The situation was difficult and Hitler was prompt to use the weapon of the totalitarian doctrine. The revolution was to proceed in an orderly fashion—in so far as property, the civil service, and the army were concerned."
Franz Neumann,
Behemoth: The Structure And Practice Of National Socialism 1933-1944
"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."
Thomas Clement Douglas
"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."
R. J. Rummel, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900
“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1943
One of the hallmarks of the 1930s and the lead up to war was the rise of unprincipled, autocratic leaders who, with the support an influential and ambitious professional class and wealthy patrons, were able to energize the discontent and fears of the public into hate and anger, dehumanizing and desensitizing them, gradually bending them in submission to their will.
And so the common people of several nations were led step by step into the abyss.
They succeed in part because the average person cannot even begin to comprehend their callous disregard for others, the egoistic certitude of their evil, and the psychopathic pathology of their shamelessness.
Stocks faltered today. The mispricing of risk, so heavily stoked over the past few months, shook on its tenuous foundations today.
Gold rose, while the Dollar fell.
Tech earnings are coming out this week.
FOMC tomorrow. Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.
It is hard not to disappoint when expectations are priced to fantasy.
But sometimes fantasy is actively encouraged, and dissent systematically suppressed, when it supports the shameful ambitions of the wealthy and powerful.
Have a pleasant evening.
"In the middle of this square on 10 May 1933 National Socialist students burned the works of hundreds of freelance writers, publicists, philosophers and scientists."
Memorial Plaque, Bebelplatz, Berlin
