Timothy Snyder makes history alive and usable. He is right in saying that fascism is present in our time and should not be left as hollowed our and irrelevant.
Orange man bad? The $500 m Zuckerberg poured into the 2020 elections , the Time magazine Molly Ball, article, the fact that Tiebe and Shallenburger exposed the FBI and CIA infiltration of Twitter and the Democrat Party incitement to suppress the opposition. WEF and the policy of ESG is fascist in that the private sector is under control of the state. Russiagate was a Hillary construct abetted by the deep state as Durham reported.
I love it Timothy Snyder acknowledged the German speakers there and thanking them for understanding that this presentation will not be in their first language. How did I not realize that one of the five languages that he's fluent is German? I love him even more now!
I'm listening to this 3 years later and it's maybe even more fascinating in light of what's happened in the meantime: a global pandemic, the Jan 6th attack on Congress (they actually got off the sofa and protested!) as well as the invasion of Ukraine and Putin's instance that he's liberating the country from fascists (a word used in a very different way in Russia).
I came here to write this exact comment! In these three we now see the process of turning medium size lies into the Big Lies and resulting 'tragic responsibility' that is central to full fledged fascism. Listening to these words three years later feels quite chilling...
indeed. Jan 6th is a super fascist event, in that sense that it utterly resembles what Hitler did with the burning of the Reichstag to invoke a state of emergency, which is what Biden goons are doing now, even though there's a ton of evidence of FBI's involvment.. so a state manipulating citizens into thinking that "unthinkable is happening and we need to act nooooow". enjoy your blindspots
@@Dabu-Dabu Can't figure out if you're being sarcastic or not, but I sure hope so. Hitler effectively killed German democracy within four weeks of coming to power. And Biden did what exactly? And evidence of the FBI being involved in what exactly? And how reliable is this ton of evidence you're apparently in possession of exactly?
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is an organ-harvesting, virus-spreading, terrorist regime that promotes genocide, torture, and global terrorism. Like the slaughterhouse Khmer Rouge regime, CCP is set out to erase all human rights and freedom, kill off innocent lives to bring the entire world under its totalitarian control.
Tesla referenced human energy 🌪👻jesus christ referenced living waters 🤍💎science described water memory 🌊👨🎓existence reflecting psychologically psalms16:24 k,j 👻🤍💎👨🎓💖🗽🌪🌪🌪
Only thing is that of all the fascist regimes that existed in history they were all very left wing with left progressive policies. The global crisis that the left has latched onto is climate change. This man contradicts himself and doe not refer to facts. Part of the job growth under trump for low income people was due to the decrease in illegals entering the country. He denies allot of documented facts. It has been made clear that the media has been extremely deceptive and manipulative.
It might seem strange to non-germans why some questioners seemed to criticize the use of the term fascism in this context. Germans are highly sensitive of using terms from their past for the present, and aren't used to it at all. That's why the one guy used a phrase you hear all the time in Germany: "You are relativizing..." It's the thought that the 3rd Reich was so awful and in a category of its own, that when you compare the current to it you are somehow diminishing the horror of the past. Just FYI
Indeed. So educational. If I was a HS Civic teacher, I would get permission to present this to my students as mandatory. Public Library across the country might also need to advertise his e-books/videos too.
That's unfortunate. He's hyperventilating as he speaks and what he is trying to say is so fueled by his fear and hate that he simply obfuscates and muddies whatever it is he is trying to teach.
@@RicardoGomesRodrigues Yes, Russian. Even if you don't recognize it, you are talking anti-American gibberish. Currency is an agreed form of exchange; it is not "fake". Everything you base on the idea that it isn't real is illiterate crackpottery.
@@RicardoGomesRodrigues It's not a fiat currency when it's backed by the combined might of US Armed Forces, US Naval protected shipping lanes (All of them except for a small segment near China) which allow for global commerce, the entire NATO block and the entire US economy plus Wallstreet. Actually, that makes it the opposite of fiat, or based on nothing - that makes it very - very real.
Snyder does indeed ramble on incoherently with a smorgasbord of essentially meaningless vocabulary which sounds clever but actually tells us nothing. It is an entertaining act unless one wants to learn something about politics. The importance of language is ironically highlighted by demonstrating how language can be used to bamboozle members of an audience who try to look interested as if they know what he is on about.
@@jean6872 Jean--are you just looking for a pro-fascist speech or something? I've been alive and awake for the past 5 years, and have seen countless criticisms and complaints of 'contemporay fascism', most of which are hysterical and poorly thought out. However, Snyder is obviously more sophisticated than the vast majority of critiques--and he is at least somewhat generous to those being criticized, doesn't give way to moralizing. He understands that our authoritarian trend is a culmination of an entire society's failing, and blame cannot be attributed in any succinct and partisan way.
@@joeessig3550 I congratulate you for understanding what Timothy Snyder means to convey. My criticism of this talk should not be taken as a disappointment that Timothy Snyder does not support fascism. Nothing I wrote suggests that. Rather, I was looking for some perspective which at least makes sense. I do not know what Snyder believes. Perhaps you can tell me. I am a native English speaker and I was lost from the beginning. That he was addressing German speakers and got through to them mystifies me. He boasts of being a polyglot but I suspect he plays the part of an intellectual having maybe one interesting idea and hides his intellectual impoverishment behind a curtain of verbiage. Few in his audience want to admit that the emperor has no clothes. If you read the comments section here, generally we get adulation for Snyder and how brainy he is but no-one is discussing what he said.
Snyder majes an excellent point about US usage of the word "democracy" in the discussion. He might have gone on to add how "democratic" and "capitalist" became almost synonymous adjectives from the Cold War onwards.
Difference between modern "democracy" and "capitalism" can be only on the abstract, academic thought. If you can give an example in real world, then, please, indulge me.
I teach at a university in Europe and even there I doubt that five percent of the students could give a reasonably accurate definition of either "fascism" or "socialism". "Fascism" seems more of a general go-to insult to anyone to the right politically of the person using it than an actually well-understood concept at this point, and "socialism" seems to be confused by an awful lot of people with the concept of the "welfare state", which describes most Western European economic systems at this point. (Perhaps someone over there in the US could explain that to, for example, Bernie Sanders, as he seems a bit confused on that one.) The greater point being that these terms, especially the former, are sometimes thrown around too easily, even by academics. Having said that, I can highly recommend Dr. Snyder's book "Bloodlands". It's definitely worth the read, and he has another lecture posted where he talks about it in some detail here on RU-vid, which I can also highly recommend.
It's totally impossible for an honest person to be elected to either Congress or the Senate. Why? Because it costs $12 million to be elected to get a job that pays $175 thousand. So to get a job that pays $175 thousand you need to raise $30,000 every day in the year of an election or $8,000 every day for 4 years. (That's 7 days a week) So you may start out with honest intentions but after being handed $30,000 every day for a year you are comprised.
"The wall is a dumb idea. It's just something that morons can get behind." - (see directly above) renowned political scientist, Howard Stern. The US border wall is a terrible idea, a waste of money that would devastate ecosystems and not accomplish its purpose. It was a means for Steve Bannon to fleece the ignorant.
I would add the need for constant vigilance AND education of ordinary people. The enemy of such ideological cul de sac's such as neoliberalism and fascism is education.
You must be coming down with something. The folks have prepared displays where they shed light on things but do nothing in a follow up. In short they're all accomplices.
one always likes to believe that when one lives in a democracy, fascism is in the past, only happens, if still in existence, some place else, but not where we are, and therefore, it has no place in the western world of today, not in thinking or in speech. Professor Snyder's hits a nerve, and some of us are irritated by his presentation, because our democracies are not as insulated as we are told by our leaders they are.
Not only was there never a British nation-state, there hasn't been an English one since the Norman Conquest (if then). The existing United Kingdom and its dependent territories are what remains of the Norman-Angevin-British Empire founded by William the Conqueror in 1066.
I agree that we need a different terminology than fascism to describe the politics of today. We need a new terminology. We need factual local news rather than the watered down often foreshortened use of the term fascism. Fascism is a real thing today & being foisted on us in the US very skillfully.
Inverted totalitarianism is a good term for todays America. The USA has an unholy alliance between corporations and the state that isn't quite fascism due to that veneer of democracy. Big tech, is fused with the security state. There is a facsimile of democracy but we know lobbyists create laws for the ruling elite in the USA, the majority of Americans don't truly have a voice in Washington. So while the USA isn't fascist, we could go that way if systemic change isn't made to lessen egregious inequality. Social unrest will lead to greater crackdowns and like in the 30s things could go south if capitalism isn't saved from its own excesses.
I found this talk very helpful in clarifying the similarities and differences between Fascism and Trumpism. Particularly notable to me is the notion that Fascism is ideological, whereas Trumpism is irresponsible. It would be nice to get to an age where responsibilitiy and striving for a better world is actually the objective of our government.
@@secallen Then you should be able to go beyond labeling and dismissing it based exclusively on the label and present refutation. Instead you post propaganda.
@@sharonnoble3877 There’s a cool book by David Sloan Wilson called “Atlas Hugged” which refutes Rand’s objectivist greed cult through an extension of the Atlas fiction into the future. It’s John Galt III’s autobiography about how his father and grandfather were sick.
@s7martify Conspicuous because, next to US, Israel is the biggest destabilizing force in the world. He didn't have a problem being negative about Russia and Putin... specific enough for you?
While I do agree with some of Prof. Snyder's focus on Russia, I still think that there were alot of rich and powerful local forces that played the game of creating consent, along with Russia, to result in electing Trump, as well as the Brexit vote. It seems that these forces are also playing a role within the EU to dismantle it, for a reason or another. Ignoring these forces (For example the Kochs and Mercers in the US), while focusing only on the tip of the iceberg (Russia, Facebook and Analytica) provides an incomplete picture. Additionally, the fear of the dominant ethnic group in the US, as well as the UK. of loosing power because of natural growth of minority populations, which is another real issue for the dominant ethno-economic group, is another factor.
Mussolini represented certain aspects of fascism as did Hitler; but they weren’t the quintessential definition of fascism; merely certain parts of it. There is more than only one definition of the word; it changes with time, it evolves and adapts.
Quite interesting, though there are some enormous oddities in this talk. To begin with, French cookbooks don't use the subjunctive for their instructions, they use the INFINITIVE. While the shortcomings of the US education system are no secret, it's very strange that someone who teaches at Yale shouldn't know the difference. Similarly, the argument that "Build that wall" as a slogan does not precisely specify who should build the wall does not make the word "build" anything other than an imperative. Imperatives in themselves - think of the example "TAKE this cup away" or "RUN round that field" - never specify who is to perform the task; that is something which occurs elsewhere in "the speech act". I presume what Snyder is trying to say is that it is an IMPERATIVE WITHOUT AN ADDRESSEE. A contrast would be the Nazi slogan "Deutschland erwache" (Germany, awake), in which an addressee is specified. Perhaps the confusion is produced by the fact that, in English, infinitive and imperative are usually identical in form (they aren't in, for example, German or French). There was briefly a vogue some years ago for historians to wander on to philosophical terrain and attack post-structuralism on all kinds of spurious grounds that bore little or no relation to the actual philosophical problems being addressed by that movement: one particular contribution by Richard Evans, who is a perfectly competent historian, was especially embarrassing. This feels a bit like that. There is a second obvious problem which is the apparently unexamined nature of Snyder's political classifications. The notion, for example, that "There is no alternative" was a "Centrist" slogan seems quite bizarre, at least to this Englishman: in the UK, it was the watchword of the extremist neoliberals led by Margaret Thatcher, a movement further to the right than anything which had been seen in mainstream British politics since the 1930s. Fukuyama's transposition of the notion into the realm of historical philosophizing became very fashionable in the USA a few decades back, but apparently among those who had only vaguely heard of Hegel or understood the nature of his politics. Other problems are failings of historical scholarship, such as the idea that Fascist ideology is uniform on fundamental issues like its conceptions of time. That just isn't true across the major forms of European fascism in the twentieth century. All the variants (Italian, German, French, Belgian, Spanish, Hungarian, Rumanian etc.) draw on different national traditions in that regard. SImilarly, Snyder is clearly wrong about 1930s fascism not having an internationalist dimension. A large number of movements in Europe in that period were imitative of Italian fascism or Nazism (e.g. Bucard's Francistes in France. Mosley's Blackshirts in Britain, the Garda de Fier in Rumania). In general, Snyder is addressing a very fertile area for reflection, but it does require precise concepts that are handled deftly and with the self-reflection which he calls for but, in my opinion, doesn't adequately achieve. I think he would do well to explore Jean Baudrillard's concepts of simulation and the simulacrum: referring to the new right-wing populist authoritarians as "not even fascists" seems oddly like a call for them to up their game and embrace "the real thing".
While slightly interesting, your comments point to issues which are not particularly relevant to the larger theme. We all know language is seldom precisely understood exactly the same way by all listeners.
@@seanmoliver My comments had nothing to do with the way language is understood by listeners. The point about language was that those who are claiming to analyze political discourse really ought to be able to distinguish between the subjunctive and the infinitive. As for the "larger theme", no one is going to make much progress on that by talking in vague - or, as at times in this piece, wholly inaccurate - terms.
@@chrisbirmingham5132 i can't argue with that. Snyders greater concerns regarding words and reality remains valid even if this particular example was flawed. Hes not discussing French cookbooks.
@@seanmoliver The analysis of how language is used in political contexts requires an ability to describe that language with some level of technical precision. If someone can't tell the difference between the subjunctive and the infinitive or between the imperative and the infinitive (or doesn't think these specifics are important), then their contribution is likely to be less than robust. The cook books are incidental. I did praise some other aspects of the talk in another comment, but I think it was fair (and decidedly germane to the general argument) to point out how odd this aspect was.
17:15 *Big data prison house* “There is a sense in which we are all now prisoners of what the algorithms find out irritate us the most.” (I.e. Cambridge Analytica/“Build the wall”)
@@amandap9332 yeah glad to see another concerned citizen. My worry is that abuses like this will be slowly forgotten especially as economic austerities wind up with all this pandemic mess and companies looking to “leverage human capital” in more prying, micromanaging data/app drenched ways. Cambridge and others showed that using data against people works to produce specific actions (like voting against your own freedom).. neuromarketing and all that corporate advertising junk are “psychology in reverse gear” (Rick Roderick)-seeking to deconstruct/obfuscate the sense of one’s self in order to mechanically realign it with efficiencies metrics/market cap goals. Rather than using data to emancipate and to reduce the exploitative pressures in life (the critical theory aim), it’s increasingly used as a tool with which to more subtly and effectively repress and subjugate the desire to dissent against such things as, the hypocrisy of _”corporate family.”_ Every modern employee witnesses this in the communication asymmetry between boss/employee.. and at performance/appraisal time.
@@nightoftheworld They are all using Cambridge Analyticas. And now the left is throttling the right's access to the marketplace of algorithm-driven mind control. They want a monopoly on it - because they think they know what is best. And if you don't agree your social credit score will be reduced accordingly. China is rushing back from the "century of humiliation" in style.
@@secallen yeah.. black mirror lifestyle coming to a world near us maybe-freaking “social credit”, aka minority report paranoia state. Zizek is worried that we’re heading toward a type of permanent emergency state, that the optimism of post-covid life is unfounded. Beyond that even it seems that western capitalists are slowly adopting a “capitalism with Asian values” methodology. His and Sloterdijk’s hypothesis that 100 years from now they’ll be building statues of Lee Kuan Yew (former prime minister of Singapore) to honor him as a world capitalist saint. Hopefully people wake up.. but I feel rather pessimistic when thinking about the future in regards to human freedom/liberty. And the cherries on top.. neuralink/ the transhumanism fetish/ Kurzweil’s singularity prognostications..
@@nightoftheworld yes ..I was in a corporate job for many years, I am very happy to have retired this year.. in a moment of semi sleep.. the description.."suffocating mind control " came to me as apt my years there..
One thing that Snyder brings up around 130 is something Kotkin brings up in a lecture he gave on Putin and the current Russian situation and that is the issue of Trump's being involved in off-shore money laundering.
Money laundering, isn't that what the whole Clinton Foundation was about, the Biden's involvement with Ukrainian Oligarchs and in China? Isn't that how Obama became able to live a millionaire lifestyle when he left the While House, aiding and abetting whoever wanted to pay for their help to get a piece of the United States Corporation? Regarding Russia, this "professor" totally ignores Russia's horrid history, but also purveys the idea that Russia is less than America morally, whereas Russia holds the higher ground at this point in history - but that is not saying much!
Give a clear definition of human or physics... life is not a dictionary, the concept of fascism takes hours to define as any other complicate and multifaceted notion. He gave some key ideas to understand it. It’s about you whether you get it or not
@@maxovgrom The concept of fascism can ultimately be summarized though, in material historical terms: It is a particular trend of early 20th century european politics. And quite genuinely, sloppily applying the term anywhere else leads to anachronisms and a mythologized understanding of politics.
Really?... a "radical right" that is led by a militant Zionist who loves homosexuals and made MLK's birthday a federal holiday and deports 95 year old men to Germany to stand trial for "war crimes". You know nothing about what radical right or anything else of a political nature. Trump is a leftist slob just as much as you are. And so are his pathetic followers.
I enjoyed his talk--- great discussion! I've always wanted to know more about the anatomy of Fascism. I knew very little other than that Mussolini coined the word as rule by the industrial elite.
@@mingzeli9869 In some ways, yes. But your analysis is horribly incomplete, and I suspect you have some hardline nationalist sympathies with China, given your name. Many people cannot (or do not wish) to recognize how pervasive an influence 20th century 'fascism' has on contemporary politics. In some profound sense, every government is fascist, and took the lessons of Nazis and Mussolini to heart.
That dude was so full of himsel, you could notice in the way he was using the opportunity to ask an engaging, important question to go on full-on monologue.
Are you referring to Nazi Germany or the USSR? Germans tended to call Germany "the fatherland" and Soviets tended to call the USSR "the motherland". Virtually everywhere I've been, a lot of people called their native land "the homeland". The comparison really seems a bit of a stretch.
I like Snyder bringing up irresponsibility. It should be the case that some people go into a room, make a decision, and if something goes wrong, they are all partially responsible. A shared responsibility. What actually happens, is that everyone claims not to be responsible. A shared irresponsibility. This for example is the case with the EU, where national leaders will publicly reject policy that they in the meeting room agreed to. And it drives many of the problems present to today, in many places, not only the EU.
When I was at University there was a bizarre person who was on the right, and favoured the Confederate cause. The Professor of History was a specialist on Modern Europe and the USA. He set an essay on 'The origins of the American CivilWar' and of course the individual submitted his account of the topic to which the professor wrote the comment that should be used by those that 'weaponise nostalgia.This essay is better than what happened' I enclose also the copies of two letters I wrote [both unpublished] but I am vain enough to believe they were more germane than those that were. One is more immediately relevant to the cause than the other When I attended a translation exercise in which we had to translate from 'French to German' 'German to Italian' and all other combinations including English the instructor made an interesting distinction between 'Freheit' and 'Liberté' He said that it would convey the wrong, a mistaken notion of meaning to translate ' Freiheit' into English as 'Freedom' for what the Germans understood as 'Freiheit 'approximated more closely to the meaning the French understood as Liberté. A Frenchman and a German understood Liberty as distinct from 'license' ,as a democratic recognition of commitments, obligations, responsibilities and convictions ,not their abdication, but a tacit covenant recognising laws and conventions and the thrust of such challenges to the status quo would be the lack reciprocity in the covenant so that equality, justice, were absent where a law bore down excessively on one section of the community. Freedom abrogates those tacit constraints, it is a spectrum condition at one end positing licence at the other implying slavery and subjection and discrimination by one privileged section of society of another such as Feudalism Apartheidt, National Socialism,and if ideologically practised, by what passes for Communism. The essence of the meaning and the social and legal distinctions might not be appreciated in English but it would be crucial in understanding in the other languages. It is not a mere semantic distinction but a distinction where Freedom was a potential tyranny. 'Freedom is not a legitimate slogan because it challenges the very relationships between individuals and between individuals and Society. That is at the root of the concept of Heimat. Although this term has sadly acquired opprobrium because of National Socialism and Southern States of the USA in the 'non conformist churches especially.
In his review of the book "Bloody Lands", A. Weiner noted that being a scientist who is not an expert on Nazi Germany and the USSR, T. Snyder in his book is almost entirely based on the conclusions and arguments of other scientists, but at the same time his own statements question all the literature on this topic that preceded this book of his. According to the reviewer, Snyder's statement regarding the cooperation of Nazi Germany and the USSR and the fact that they supported each other in the territory under consideration by the author, which he called "Bloody Lands", as well as the chronological framework, "are nothing more than unproven assumptions and the fruits of the author's personal agenda, and not historical evidence". According to P. A. Rudling, the scope and goals of the book "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Prevention" are ambitious. Noting that it is politicized, the reviewer sees it noteworthy that the back cover contains, unusual for books in the field of Eastern European history, the approval of former US national security advisers and the Secretary of State. In general, as P. A. Rudling noted, the direction of the book is aimed at a non-academic audience, and the generalizing statements contained in it mystify the topic and actually distort the state of science. The most politicized is the last chapter, in which, in particular, it is claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in relation to Ukraine, acts as a destroyer of the state with the foreign policy doctrine of ethnic war, that he, just as Stalin entered into an alliance with Hitler in 1939, put himself at the head of populist, fascist and neo-Nazi forces in Europe, in order to destroy the European Union, which is the most peaceful and prosperous order of the beginning of the XXI century, etc
Terence Cottrell I have a doctorate in the English language but any words that historically used have never been used in the US in relation to what’s happening.
He usually suggests that Trump isn't committed to anything enough to be an actual fascist. He just flails around in whatever direction he fancies in the moment. That's neither better nor worse than fascism but it's not coherent enough to be considered an actual ethos.
You're right, I think he's still self serving of his own position in society. He's good, but he needs to go a long way in his thinking despite how good he thinks he is.
And now 2 years later Biden is controlling the whole econmy getting people fired whom cannot afford it by vaccine mandates for a virus that the vaccine doesn't stop. Trump is self serving not facist. Current admin is trying to take total control.
when he's talking about trump not having a "big lie" that serves to move to his "higher truth" that would happen with actual fascists. that aged like milk. Because he even called it a "big lie", I'm going to have to give him partial credit for that.
Год назад
"the fascist moment is the last imperial moment in the world's history " - boy, did the reality come to surprise us or what? Anyway, fascinating lecture. Love the guy.
There's really no such thing as a nationalist, or if there is: We are all Nationalists. Like, essentially anyone living after the 19th century is a nationalist, de facto.
T.I.N.A. (There is no Alternative) was a thatcher slogan in the late 1970s. All this 'Hegelian' talk of end of history, inevitability, Wrong side of history etc this is where the concept of 'Necessary Evils' comes from the idea that "We will look back on this horrific moment and laugh" it all comes from Hegelian views of history which excuse all injustices and violence, as inevitable steps to 'Glory'. And, "Not even Fascism" is call "Fourth way political theory", the Russians would say "I have my Russian 'Truth' and I didn't do all those things I've been caught on camera doing' - it's a tactic for negotiating, it forces you to concede ground and admit to what wrongs you are doing first and then afterwards they will finally admit to their wrong doings. Only after you concede though. "My Truth" or "Our Russian Truth" is like the whole 'Woke' identity politics way of speaking. And in Fourth way Political theory they are open about using 'Post Modernism' to criticize the West.
@s7martify He openly admits to being a leftist and statist. Yet, it was state power, not individual liberty, that enabled the Holocaust. But he is so wedded to his leftist agenda, he can bend even that atrocity to fit his political agenda.
the social transmutation of the Age will produce different political phenomena around the planet. We just need to realize our new roles as politico social subjects..
Is anyone else disturbed by the use of the phrases "my truth":, "our truth", and "your truth"; which imply that truth is subjective and there is no such thing as objective reality?
. in the US and elsewhere Religion is also playing a greater roll in putting the masses at a disadvantage by the "respectable" assumption that the existence of "god", "good and evil" cannot be questioned . .
"The same people who say they're against organized religion are all card-carrying members of the Church of Human Equality, which is perhaps the best organized, most well-funded, and least tolerant mythological system on Earth. I don't think even ISIS can compete with it." ---Jim Goad
@@williamtaylor5193 Yup. Man is innately religious, superstitious, ritualistic, and cultic. It's also worth noting---that the "Church of Human Equality" is a direct continuation of Rome, of Christendom, and is essentially just a radical sect of Protestants, who've gone so far as to only hear Christ (contemporary left politics are very obviously a form/direct continuation of Christian ethics), but no longer believe in God.
How is social truth arrived at? By permitting open debate and letting people decide for themselves which arguments are more persuasive. By condemning censorship and coercion of speech. Very disappointed to not hear Dr. Synder endorse freedom of speech more strongly and instead engaging in name calling of those he judges "almost fascists." He's much better when he sticks to the facts.
I would like to know what the consensus opinion of historians regarding the political leaning of past fascist states - are they left or right wing in character? Certainly Nazism and Italian fascism used the terminology of “socialism” which is a left characterization. But as Chomsky has argued Nazi’s and communists wanted to co-opt the popular appeal of the word socialism and the US had used the word to demonize the Soviets. Most right wingers I encounter use this terminology to insist that fascism is a left phenomenon, which to me is opposite to how I’ve understood it. Please point me to what the consensus of historians is.
Right wingers often get things completely backwards, especially after Trump. If you take what they say and assume the opposite, you will be closer to the truth. They often blame the right for things like fascism and racism, when the reality is that the right is much worse, they've just been blinded to that fact.
The last guy called bullshit on this stooge! Putin is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and under my bed! Russia is important because the U.S. needs a "bogeyman" to justify spending trillions on NEW NUCLEAR weapons (those cute, little [mini-nukes]!). There's no other way to justify that amount of spending.
I doubt it. Although I'm not a fan of his, he's more of a symptom than a cause, in my opinion. Being a narcissist and attention seeker (perhaps most politicians at that level are both of those to some degree), I'm sure he's laughing at all the world-changing things that he's considered responsible for by so many.
Why do have those ‘intellectuals’ the need to take the opportunity to be on ‘stage’ (as well) not to articulate a question but just to ramble on their ‘opinion’. Their incoherent criticism, blaming Snyder not to deliver solutions now… (???) without having a real question to discuss (Or an alternative). It is like going to a doctor, who is explaining that the symptoms one has might signalize a health stadium in which the patient might be. Those symptoms could indicate cancer/diabetics/etc. The advice is to take it serious and one could reflect ones behavior, to get aware of the consequences… to enable to take/consider some actions which might help to cure the raising or having problems. Of course one could ‘argue’ with a doctor why he uses the words cancer/diabetes, one heard that before and wants another label/name for the illness (cause one doesn’t like the diagnoses/analysis …). If one understands that the symptoms stand for a certain process, then one might change habits: move more, eat different, take/change medication… in order to change/prevent/accept a ‘deadly’ course…
