To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=168370
19 messages

BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america

10 Aug 20 - 11:18 AM (#4067895)
Subject: BS: Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Donuel

Yes I have said it for 15 years but it's in front of all of you now.
We are a corrupted election and an american 'Enabling Act' away from full fledged Fasicist America. But in the words of Robert Reich;
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/books/fascism-debate-donald-trump.html

10 Aug 20 - 12:55 PM (#4067902)
Subject: RE: BS: Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Stilly River Sage

He is a smart man, and has been speaking truth to power for a long time. The opening paragraphs of that article:

On Tuesday last week, as police officers across the country deployed brutal tactics in response to protests over the killing of George Floyd, the former secretary of labor Robert Reich announced that his old vocabulary — crowded already with harsh words for President Trump — was making way for a new addition.

“I have held off using the f word for three and a half years, but there is no longer any honest alternative,” Reich tweeted. “Trump is a fascist, and he is promoting fascism in America.”

Reich wasn’t alone. Until last week, the journalist Masha Gessen was also a skeptic. Gessen had just published “Surviving Autocracy,” which lists “fascism” among the words that get thrown about in the American political conversation without sufficient precision. The day after the book’s publication date, Gessen wrote a short essay for The New Yorker commenting on what it meant when the president — enamored already of military parades and masked men in combat attire — told governors to crack down on protesters. “Whether or not he is capable of grasping the concept,” Gessen wrote, “Trump is performing fascism.”

It was a notable turn. The word fascism is so loaded that even some of the president’s most vociferous detractors had long been reluctant to use it. Derived from the Italian for “bundle” or “group,” fascism was born at the end of World War I in Italy, adopted by the Nazis in Germany, and soon became such a widespread epithet that George Orwell decided the closest synonym to “this much-abused word” was “bully.” Ever since Trump became the Republican Party’s standard-bearer in 2016, the term has been floated and then dismissed for being too extreme and too alarmist, too historically specific or else too rhetorically vague.

10 Aug 20 - 02:05 PM (#4067904)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Mrrzy

I live in Charlottesville. I concur.

10 Aug 20 - 02:26 PM (#4067907)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: peteglasgow

i'm assuming that this means that the republican party are now fascist? and the opposition is a right wing, war -supporting, american imperialist party? both parties run by old white guys with no meaningful, progressive opposition. i know it's bad enough in england but really the state of america is scary. what happened to the spirit and idealism of the 60s and 70s? surely those old hippies are now in charge?

10 Aug 20 - 02:42 PM (#4067915)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Donuel

The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany's parliament, laying the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society. The law was passed on March 23, 1933, and published the following day.

10 Aug 20 - 03:05 PM (#4067918)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Jos

"The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany's parliament"

An idea that might well be appealing to Boris and friend(s).

10 Aug 20 - 05:23 PM (#4067925)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: meself

I would suggest that in discussing an article by Robert Reich, the term 'Reich government' is not the most felicitous.

10 Aug 20 - 06:30 PM (#4067929)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Helen

Robert Reich is the man's name. The Third Reich is the official Nazi designation for the regime in Germany from January 1933 to May 1945.

Yes it's confusing but how do you propose to discuss either the person who opposes fascism or the historical German regime if you don't use the person's name or the regime's title?

10 Aug 20 - 06:33 PM (#4067930)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Donuel

What's in a name?...At times names can be confusing

10 Aug 20 - 07:25 PM (#4067935)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: meself

... uh ... "the Nazi government" ... "the Hitler regime" ... "the Nazi regime" ... "the Hitler government" ... "the Nazi administration" .... Use your imagination.

10 Aug 20 - 07:40 PM (#4067937)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Steve Shaw

Some yank scaremongering going on here. Trump is an utter arse, but he's no fascist. He has to face elections. If he loses, he will go out to grass. The US is not a one-party state. Get real, you scaremongers.

10 Aug 20 - 07:47 PM (#4067939)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Donuel

Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand—they wouldn't be able to breathe! But they do dig holes in the dirt.

10 Aug 20 - 08:07 PM (#4067941)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Jeri

He's a fascist, IMO, or at least a wannabe dictator, and he's doing everything he can to derail the election. (I still watch too much news.)
So far, the fact that people call him out whenever he does something dictator-ish is having some effect.

11 Aug 20 - 01:36 AM (#4067958)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: punkfolkrocker

If he is not by now clearly definable as a classic fascist,
he is certainly acting in an obviously unmistakable fascistic manner...

11 Aug 20 - 06:44 AM (#4067975)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: Mr Red

surely those old hippies are now in charge?

I doubt the hippies survived, or their brains - frankly. The people who survived were not hippies, they were waiting in the background while Darwinian selection left the field open for them. IMNSHO

11 Aug 20 - 07:16 AM (#4067976)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: peteglasgow

i think we're still around - listening to '70s music and worrying about the environment. getting a camper van with retirement money (or in our case, a canal boat) my ideals havn't changed but i'm just about retired from actively fighting the system - it's not that i don't care anymore -i'm just taking a break and letting others fight on. wake me up when alexandra orcasia cortez is president. (hope that name is right) and scotland is independent. i'm tired of losing to idiot tory boys and their thuggish or corrupt and wealthy friends.

11 Aug 20 - 07:23 AM (#4067978)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: peteglasgow

yes, trump is a fascist - as is boris johnson and their craven accolytes. they would probably not know how to define this - and nor do i - but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and shits all over the canal path. neo liberal? global capitalists? tories? racist apologists? far-right? don't waste time being specific too about it - call these bastards out

11 Aug 20 - 07:08 PM (#4068069)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: robomatic

"Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding."

Mohandas Gandhi

12 Aug 20 - 10:45 AM (#4068128)
Subject: RE: BS: Robert Riech: learn to live in fascist america
From: keberoxu

Please, would a Mudcat elf correct "Riech" to "Reich"
in the thread title?


It isn't Trumpasaurus Rex who unnerves me,
it's those who got him nominated and elected in the first place
who give me pause --
the notion that there are people with deep pockets in high places
who approve of what Trump promotes publicly.
That really is frightening.