Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Friday, April 25, 2025

Democracy 2025

.
25-3-10 Team DUH Is Destroying American Democracy - Warning > .
25-4-28 BMS Now The World Hates Us - Malcolm Nance > .
25-4-24 Death Spiral That Can Kill Any Democracy (US in one now) - Warburg > .
25-4-12 DUHstroyer: Rise (and Fall?) of the Western Territorial Peace - Spaniel > .
25-2-5 How Democracy Can Fail: Lessons From Germany - DW H&C > .
25-2-15 Democracy Under Threat: Kaja Kallas’ Warning, Munich Conference > .
25-2-7 Time to Prepare for the Fall of American Democracy - Humanist R > .
...
Germany


DUHplicitous Idiocrazies 2025

 .
24-11-22 [DUH's Cabinet of Horrors] Wrecking Status Quo - gtbt > .
DUH~NATO 
25-2-11 David DeBatto - Real Steal - Musk's Unchallenged Coup - SiCu > .
Signal Stupidity - Guy Lewis >> .
25-2-7 [Sovereign "Wealth" Fund: DUH's Tariffs will Rob Consumers] - CBC > .

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Econopolitics 2025

> BRICS >>
2024 .. 
Global 
25-3-27 Why governments (UK, US) are 'addicted' to debt | FT > .
Iran Econopolitics 
Ruscist Economy 
25-1-21 Ruscia’s War Economy on the Brink of Collapse - Icarus > .



2025 ..

Elections 2025

.
25-1-6 German election 2025: Who’s ahead in the polls? - euronews > .

Australia   .
2025 Australian federal election, must be held on or before 17 May = May 325-4-14 Australian Elections: Explained - Context Matters > .

25-1-27 Lukashenko "wins" big in Belarus election scorned by West | Reuters > .
Belarus  .
25-2-18 2025 German elections - A vote of [low] confidence | DW Doc > .
25-2-17 Has Germany’s Left Party Come Back from the Dead? - TLDR > .

25-3-21 Péter Magyar (leader of Tisza party) challenging Viktor Orbán | DW > .
Hungary  April 2026


Norway    .
2025 Philippine House of Representatives elections .
2025 Philippine Senate election .
2025 Philippine local elections .

Poland   .
2025 Polish presidential election, 18 May (first round) & 1 June (potential second round)

Romania   .
2025 Romanian presidential election, 4 May (first round) & 18 May (potential second round)

Russia   .

   
25-2-20 Could [Pooti's Moronic Puppet] Force Elections on Ukraine? - TLDR > .

Ukrainian law does not allow presidential elections to be held when martial law is in effect. Martial law has been extended in 90-day intervals since the full-scale invasion with parliament's approval, and has most recently (as of February 2025) been extended for the 14th time until 9 May 2025Incumbent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not confirmed if he will seek reelection. When asked in a January 2025 interview, he said that seeking a second term was not his current goal or focus, but his decision would depend on the outcome of the war.   

Saturday, March 1, 2025

25-3-4 State of Disunion

 Congratulations, MAGAts .......................... You can now chant USSR! USSR!  

25-3-4 B-o-r-i-n-g Lie-Filled Braggadocious State of Disunion Prolix .............................. 

25-3-5 "Awful, Cheap and Tawdry": [DUH's Drone to Congress] - Warning > .25-3-5 Schiff Destroys [DUHspicable] in Bombshell Senate Floor Speech > .
25-3-5 [DUHnocchio] Speech Was the Ultimate Loyalty Test - Ezra Klein > .
...24-7-5 How Communists Took Over America 1/3 - Notes From The Past > .>> Political Philosophy >>>  >> Politics >>>  >> Propaganda, DISinformation >>>
Societal Manipulation 


The "best description" of gradual, transformational subversion "comes from Yuri Bezmenov."
Subversion refers to a process by which the values and principles of an established system are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the existing social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and social norms. It involves a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system, often carried out by persons working secretly from within. Subversion is used as a tool to achieve political goals because it generally carries less risk, cost, and difficulty as opposed to open belligerency. The act of subversion can lead to the destruction or damage of an established system or government. In the context of ideological subversion, subversion aims to gradually change the perception and values of a society, ultimately leading to the undermining of its existing systems and beliefs.

“The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy.” Yuri Bezmenov .

Yuri Bezmenov outlines the four stages of ideological subversion as follows:
  • Demoralisation: This stage involves the undermining of the moral fabric of a society, eroding its values, and creating a sense of disillusionment and hopelessness among its population.
  • Destabilisation: During this stage, the subverter aims to destabilise the institutions and functions of the society, leading to a state of crisis and a breakdown of the existing social, political, and economic systems.
  • Crisis: The crisis stage involves a period of intense turmoil, where the subverter exploits the destabilisation to create widespread panic, fear, and conflict within the society.
  • Normalisation: In this final stage, the subverter seeks to normalise the previously subversive ideas and changes, making them appear acceptable and part of the new status quo, thereby solidifying the subversion.
Thirteen Keys ..
Tools of Political Warfare ..
Undermining Democracy ..


Friday, January 31, 2025

●● Politics

● Politics ..

Cold War 1 

Democracy 2025 ..

Econopolitics 

Fascism ..

Morale, PsyOps 
Morale ..
Leftist Authoritarianism ..
MAGAtry ..Undermining Democracy ..
Undermining Democracy ..
Political theory 
Revolution vs Reform ..
Political Warfare 
Polls, Predictions 
Thirteen Keys ..
Publications 
Secession 

Aristocracy to Tyranny ..
Democracy 2025 ..

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Fascism

.
23-8-23 What is FASCISM? - Horses > .
25-4-4 USA descending into fascism: Jason Stanley - PBS > .



Bertrand Russell on the rise of fascism "First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent."     

Fascism is a far-right-wrong, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism, fascism is at the far right wrong of the traditional left–right-wrong spectrum. [Ignoring, of course, the statist, "century of humiliation", Han-racist elements of communist XiXiP dogma. In other words, enslaving a people to statist-party ends is employed at both "left" and "right" authoritarian political extremes.]

Scholars place fascism on the far-right-wrong of the political spectrum. Such scholarship focuses on its social conservatism and its authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism. Roderick Stackelberg places fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of fascism"—on the political right by explaining: "The more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further farther left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further farther to the right he or she will be."

In the 1920s, Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile described their ideology as right-wing in the political essay The Doctrine of Fascism, stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century."

Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall." Each group described as "fascist" has at least some unique elements, and frequently definitions of "fascism" have been criticized as either too broad or too narrow. According to many scholars, fascists—especially when they're in power—have historically attacked communism, conservatism, and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far-right. Historian Stanley G. Payne's definition is frequently cited as standard by notable scholars, such as Roger Griffin, Randall Schweller, Bo Rothstein, Federico Finchelstein, and Stephen D. Shenfield, His definition of fascism focuses on three concepts:
  1. "Fascist negations" – anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism.
  2. "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire.
  3. "Fascist style" – a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership.
Umberto Eco lists fourteen "features that are typical of what [he] would like to call 'Ur-Fascism', or 'Eternal Fascism'. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it." Historian John Lukacs argues that there is no such thing as generic fascism. He claims that Nazism and communism are essentially manifestations of populism, and that states such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy are more different from each other than they are similar.

In his book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), Jason Stanley defined fascism thusly:
[A] cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation ... The leader proposes that only he can solve it and all of his political opponents are enemies or traitors.
Stanley says recent global events as of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020–2022 United States racial unrest, have substantiated his concern about how fascist rhetoric is showing up in politics and policies around the world.

Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism." Palingenesis is a concept of rebirth or re-creation, used in various contexts in philosophy, theology, politics, and biology. Its meaning stems from Greek palin, meaning 'again', and genesis, meaning 'birth'. Without palingenetic ultranationalism, there is no "genuine fascism" according to Griffin. Griffin further describes fascism as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism, and (iii) the myth of decadence." In Griffin's view, fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism, and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.

Kershaw argues that the difference between fascism and other forms of right-wing authoritarianism in the interwar period is that the latter generally aimed "to conserve the existing social order", whereas fascism was "revolutionary", seeking to change society and obtain "total commitment" from the population. In Against the Fascist Creep, Alexander Reid Ross writes regarding Griffin's view: "Following the Cold War and shifts in fascist organizing techniques, a number of scholars have moved toward the minimalist 'new consensus' refined by Roger Griffin: 'the mythic core' of fascism is 'a populist form of palingenetic ultranationalism.' That means that fascism is an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the 'new man.'" Griffin himself explored this 'mythic' or 'eliminable' core of fascism with his concept of post-fascism to explore the continuation of Nazism in the modern era. Additionally, other historians have applied this minimalist core to explore proto-fascist movements.

Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser argue that although fascism "flirted with populism ... in an attempt to generate mass support", it is better seen as an elitist ideology. They cite in particular its exaltation of the Leader, the race, and the state, rather than the people. They see populism as a "thin-centered ideology" with a "restricted morphology" that necessarily becomes attached to "thick-centered" ideologies such as fascism, liberalism, or socialism. Thus populism can be found as an aspect of many specific ideologies, without necessarily being a defining characteristic of those ideologies. They refer to the combination of populism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism as "a marriage of convenience".

Robert Paxton says:
[Fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Roger Eatwell defines fascism as "an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way", while Walter Laqueur sees the core tenets of fascism as "self-evident: nationalism; social Darwinism; racialism, the need for leadership, a new aristocracy, and obedience; and the negation of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution."

Historian Emilio Gentile has defined fascism thusly:
[A] modern political phenomenon, revolutionary, anti-liberal, and anti-Marxist, organized in a militia party with a totalitarian conception of politics and the state, an activist and anti-theoretical ideology, with a mythical, virilistic and anti-hedonistic foundation, sacralized as a secular religion, which affirms the absolute primacy of the nation, understood as an ethnically homogeneous organic community, hierarchically organized in a corporate state, with a bellicose vocation to the politics of greatness, power, and conquest aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization.

Historian and cultural critic Ruth Ben-Ghiat has described fascism as "the original phase of authoritarianism, along with early communism, when a population has undergone huge dislocations or they perceive that there's been changes in society that are very rapid, too rapid for their taste".

Racism was a key feature of German fascism, for which the Holocaust was a high priority. According to The Historiography of Genocide, "In dealing with the Holocaust, it is the consensus of historians that Nazi Germany targeted Jews as a race, not as a religious group." Several historians, such as Umberto Eco, Kevin Passmore, and Moyra Grant, stress racism as a characteristic component of German fascism. Historian Robert Soucy stated that "Hitler envisioned the ideal German society as a Volksgemeinschaft, a racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the nation, or Volk." Kershaw noted that common factors of fascism included "the 'cleansing' of all those deemed not to belong—foreigners, ethnic minorities, 'undesirables'" and belief in its own nation's superiority, even if it was not biological racism like in Nazism. Fascist philosophies vary by application, but remain distinct by one theoretical commonality: all traditionally fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, many experts see fascism as a mass political movement centered around extreme nationalism, militarism, and the placement of national interests above those of the individual. Fascist regimes often advocate for the overthrow of institutions that they view as "liberal decay" while simultaneously promoting traditional values. They believe in the supremacy of certain peoples and use it to justify the persecution of other groups. Fascist leaders often maintain a cult of personality and seek to generate enthusiasm for the regime by rallying massive crowds. This contrasts with authoritarian governments, which also centralize power and suppress dissent, but want their subjects to remain passive and demobilized.

The term fascist has been used as a pejorative, regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'", and in 1946 wrote that "'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable." Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times". Fascist is sometimes applied to post-World War II organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term neo-fascist.

Despite fascist movements' history of anti-communism, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as fascist, typically as an insult. It has been applied to Marxist–Leninist regimes in Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split, and the Soviets used the term to denounce Chinese Marxists, in addition to social democracy, coining a new term in social fascism. In the United States, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times asked in 1946: "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?" J. Edgar Hoover, longtime FBI director and ardent anti-communist, wrote extensively of red fascism. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was sometimes called fascist. Historian Peter Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental ... [the KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."

   
“Fascism is not an ordered set of beliefs, like laissez-faire or Socialism or Communism; it is essentially an emotional protest, part of those members of the middle-class (such as small shopkeepers) who suffer from modern economic developments, partly of anarchic industrial magnates whose love of power has grown into megalomania. It is irrational, in the sense that it cannot achieve what its supporters desire; there is no philosophy of Fascism, but only psychoanalysis. If it could succeed, the result would be widespread misery; but its inability to find a solution for the problem of war makes it impossible that it should succeed for more than a brief moment.”
― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays .

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...