Jamie Dettmer, the opinion editor at Politico Europe, had an article out on Sunday under this headline:
The opening paragraph is:
Why does almost no government appear to want to give this issue attention?
Is fascism in plain sight acceptable now?
What is their thinking? Why do they think apparent tolerance is acceptable?
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Perhaps Starmer & LINO recognise that apart from words, there is little that they can do (hmm – why am I defending the LINO gov’). Fact is, Turkey controls the Black Sea which is the only sea route to/from Ukraine. Erdogan won’t last for ever & you can be sure out some point he will be turfed out. Time after time one can see how those in power get a taste for it such that they don’t (can’t?) relinquish.
It’s inconvenient criticising a country when yours is supporting another with genocide.
Given the authoritarian ruthless opponent-destroying instincts of our UK PM, I imagine Starmer is green with envy, and anxious to fly out and see how its done.
State withdrawal from the pastoral areas of people’s lives will create fear, as much as creating new enemies and threats within and without. The fear will be of destitution and of being left behind.
The new body politic is to keep up appearances, don’t show weakness or dependency on anything. The credit card is your path to credibility.
When we are scared and discombobulated, people claiming to be leaders and looking strong will profit and people will genuflect toward them.
Tim Snyder has done double time on this issue – read 2018’s ‘Road to Unfreedom’ for the crash course and don’t say we weren’t warned.
My view is that many states are playing dangerous games – fear leads to compliance, and those states withdrawing from their citizens in favour of markets will want as little opposition as possible as they funnel their compliant citizens as compliant consumers towards the very people who fund the states political parties.
For too long in the West but mostly I think the U.S. and the U.K. we have been scared of the communist bogeyman, without realising that the science of fascism – the mobilisation of sentiment against political opponents amongst other things – is actually rife in our political discourse every day.
Fascism is acceptable simply because it is useful to vested interests, particularly to the political middlemen doing the bidding of the rich and powerful.
Good comment
I don’t thin fascism should be referred to as a science. It is an offensive ideology.
It was offensive burning the bodies of Nazi extermination camps victims, but the Nazis knew about the science behind how to burn human bodies at scale . Science is not always nice Larry.
Fascism is a science to me because its all about deliberately doing certain things (to stimulate) known to cause certain effects/events/ and observing what happens, what changes, in preparation to capitalise on it – it’s the testing of the hypothesis of itself and the hypotheses of the human condition all rolled into one.
It is very accurate.
Erdogan calculates I think that he has sufficient support and control to get away with this at home. And that people are distracted enough internationally (Ukraine, Palestine, Trump) that he can get away with it internationally. We need Turkey as a bulwark against Iran, Iraqi, Syria, a first defence against refugees flooding into Southern Europe, and for its strong armed forces on the southern flank facing Russia.
Erdogan has been in power as prime minister and then president for 22 years. This is not a normal thing in any functioning democracy. All of these countries held in thrall by ageing illiberal nationalistic men.
Precisely. This is not novel for Erdogan, who purged 150,000 civil servants at all levels after the 2016 coup attempt, including jailing 80,000 people, including opposition politicians and activists. His operations against the Kurds are long and well documented, not to mention Turkish involvement in Syria, playing all sides for his own advancement. He has repeatedly used the threat of unleashing a ‘wave of migrants’ into the EU to get concessions and quiet the lecturing from our political class. I believe there was a migrant bill in 2015 where he was rewarded with 6bn Euros to prevent an embarassing political crisis in the EU of having to deal with refugees and migrants. He repeated this threat a few times whenever an EU politician decided to opine on his rule. I believe in 2021 there was an additional 3 billion Euros sent. Erdogan has played this game for a long time, and positioned himself to be able to ignore demands from any foreign power bloc as long as he has space to repair relationships with another, and play them off against each other. Perhaps our government has calculated that it can’t afford any more embarassing foreign policy bluster that goes nowhere, and so simply pretends as though this is not happening.
The emergence of Fascism from its temporary suppression since it was claimed to be defeated in 1945 is now open in many parts of the world. The climax of genocidal attacks in Gaza (and the absence of any condemnation) marks a new level of acceptance by Western governments that it’s okay.
All I would say to that is that any survey of political rhetoric since WW2 would reveal fascist type language – it’s used by the Left and the Right – and even the so-called centre.
I think it’s anti-political in nature, because politics is the art of accommodation of differences whereas a lot of the language of fascism is about portraying differences as irreconcilable and as a threat, creating an ‘other’ leading to a form of persecution that can morph into and justify the
destruction of the ‘other’ and even war.
Fascism is an abuse of language – that is its first crime.