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Crowdfunding For inflatable Trump Baby for UK visit smashes target

I read this today. A friend pointed it out to me. And I am quoting it entirely.

Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism
To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

Moral boundaries
But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination

People have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group.

It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.

To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

‘Devious’ infants
And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious? Second, the hardcore fans loved it: 58 per cent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.

This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow.

Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

OK. What does this achieve? Cui bono?
 
Welcome to the UK Mr Trump. I hope you enjoy your trip
What a shame that, with his advancing dementia, the dotard won’t recall it by the time he meets his handler in Helsinki on Monday.
Suck it up snowflake/gammon
The Govnarcissist is in town
FTFY - you have your snowflakes confused. Top tip: to spot the fragile chief snowflake you need to look up to where it hovers avoiding any contact with those that might criticise it.
 
What a shame that, with his advancing dementia, the dotard won’t recall it by the time he meets his handler in Helsinki on Monday.

FTFY - you have your snowflakes confused. Top tip: to spot the fragile chief snowflake you need to look up to where it hovers avoiding any contact with those that might criticise it.

Sounds like you have it :confused:
 
‘Beautiful’ in what respect?
Chattels one would imagine. The supreme dotard is obsessed with his property. See the interviews he’s had over the past twenty-four hours. Though most notable for the fact that he clearly doesn’t understand Ireland is not part of the UK.
Agree,All women are brought with money in some way
And I rest my case.
 
Not a Moose(slang), look it up
Never seen so many up London today
Here to help

I see, beautiful to you is a woman bereft of natural expression, plucked and reconstructed. You think this is a fact we can all agree on?
 
Indeed. Trump, I gather, will not see a single protester. I do hope all the malcontents on the streets making a nuisance of themselves, realise the only thing they are achieving is an overtime boost for the police?

one of my relatives is one, his making so much money with all these marches his nearly paid his mortgage off, and is now thinking of putting a extension on his house !!
He has said he would like to thank all these marchers
Achieves nothing but kerching for the boys in blue
 
He's probably around the same age as his shoe size...




I was briefly surprised he came out with that crap. But then again he seems to be a misogynist so...there is that to take into account.

oh no the sexist pig has brought the big guns out -the labels
Trying to get out of it and backtrack
And with that as Peter Jones says "Im out"
 
Well...did you read it?
Do you honestly not see how warped Trump is?

That was a given, but wasn't the thrust of the article, which was the resurgence of fascism, but across the globe.

I am not sure if I buy that, but even if it were so, who benefits?

One could say that the cuts to the Welfare State enables the current government to fund COTAX cuts for their donors, but it was the preceding Labour government who started the process.

If you remove the Trump references, what is left is a fear of democracy suborned by fascism, I just cannot see why this would happen, or whom it would benefit.

I must say Trump astounds me, he appears to be the embodiment of 'you can fool some of the people some of the time'. Had the Democrats put up a less damaged individual, they would probably have won. Clinton had so much baggage she hadn't a chance.
 
billbond

Well? Can you explain your statement that "All women are bought "?
Cos I'm baffled at that level of ignorance. I mean are you a dinosaur? Or did you fall asleep in 1952 and wake up last week or something?
 
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