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   you’ll get a society (which we now call a mass society) which is no longer   
   cultivating the high ideals of a democracy, but you get the kind of society   
   which is dominated by our lowest instincts – greed, fear, resentment,   
   hatred, propaganda, stupidity. And that’s where the demagogues and the   
   populists will move in and they will present their own version of fascism.    
      
   But we don’t recognize it, again because the idea is – well we know fascism   
   is a bad thing, but in our, you know, media, Hollywood-oriented visual   
   culture... look, in a visual culture, evil has to be very visible.    
      
   Look at Batman, right? Batman, handsome guy. And who’s the evil guy? The   
   Joker, and you immediately see that is an evil man, right?    
      
   And James Bond, you immediately recognize who are the good guys and who are   
   the bad guys. So we think that if there’s evil in our society you have to   
   be able to immediately see it, right?    
      
   And so when it comes to fascism probably we’ll have swastikas and black   
   uniforms and silly gestures. Now of course on the fringe there are always   
   those lunatics who like to present themselves “Oh we are fascist” or “we   
   are Nazis” or whatever. That’s the fringe. We can ignore, I mean, those   
   idiots are always there.   
      
   But the fascism in our time will present itself in forms of our time.    
      
   So we have to look at the characteristics because the characteristics will   
   be the same.    
      
   You and I—everybody who looks at this—will be different next year and five   
   years from now, okay, because of time. At the same time we’re still the   
   same, because our characteristics are still the same.    
   And so what are the characteristics of a fascist culture? In a fascist   
   culture you’ll always have, and again, you know, the terrible examples of   
   Mussolini, Franco and Hitler—they tell us: The fascist leader will always   
   come forward in a time of crisis.    
      
   He—most of the time it’s a he—will present himself as the anti-political   
   leader who will cure society of all social evils. A kind of new messiah.   
   It’s a cult figure.   
      
   It will always be a form of extreme nationalism, you know, to “make the   
   country great again”. That’s a very old phrase every fascist will use.   
   Deprived of any positive idea, not even interested in it, because those   
   fascist leaders are completely obsessed by self-interest. It’s all about   
   them, them, them, them—them and nothing else.    
      
   They know they have to use all kinds of propaganda to captivate and   
   brainwash and manipulate people. Again this is also an old story. I mean   
   interestingly—enough the focuses of Sigmund Freud—Mr. Bernays, came here to   
   American in the twenties and he wrote a small essay which is still   
   available, entitled Propaganda.    
      
   And Bernays became the godfather of marketing and he became also very rich   
   because he was one of those people who at that time managed to make women   
   smoke. And he also could use the techniques of his uncle Sigmund Freud. But   
   anyway in his essay Propaganda he in a very honest way said look, of course   
   America is a democracy and Washington was the president and the congress.    
      
   He said, “but beyond that is an invisible government. And that’s us.   
   Because we can control the mind of the people by marketing, by propaganda,   
   by advertisement, a whole commercial culture is like this, right?”   
      
   So interestingly enough when the Nazis came to power in the thirties he got   
   in touch with the White House and said look, you know, I know those people.   
   Not personally but I know that Goebbels because I know their techniques.   
   Probably I can help you because we will have the war of propaganda.    
      
   So anyway, propaganda. The other thing is all fascists will be and have to   
   be: pathological liars. It will always be lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.    
      
   And a very telling example is that one of my intellectual heroes, Thomas   
   Mann, who came to America in 1938, in 1948 he gave a lecture in L.A. And he   
   said at that time, “if fascism should come to America it will come in the   
   name of freedom.” And interesting enough so many of those fascist parties   
   are parties for freedom including my country, the Netherlands, is the Party   
   for Freedom. Of course this is a lie.    
      
   (Unintelligible) Okay, so there was this thing of and the demand of   
   complete loyalty.    
      
   Then because the crisis is there so we always are in need of a scapegoat.   
   The Jews or the Mexicans or the black people or people from Poland or   
   wherever. They always are in need of a scapegoat. They are always in need   
   of new enemies. And so the thing is that fascism is a political expression   
   of our lowest human instincts. And with a leader who knows how to use it,   
   you’ll get a very corrosive process in your democracy.    
      
   What we should never forget – two things about this.    
      
   We should never forget that Hitler could come into power through a   
   democratic process. It was a democratic process. And even more telling than   
   that: he lost the popular vote. He had 11 million votes, and 22 million   
   voters did not vote for him. But the political parties, the power elite at   
   that time thought well, you know, we can use the guy, we can control him.   
   We give him this responsibility then people will understand what kind of   
   failure he is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, so many things as we’re   
   seeing here right now.   
      
   And then there is this terrible blind spot.    
      
   So even one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, Winston   
   Churchill, on February 1933 – so Hitler was already in power. He gave a   
   speech for the League Against Socialism—because as a real conservative, for   
   Churchill, socialism was one of the terrible things and he immediately   
   related it to Bolshevism, et cetera. In this lecture he gave there he says,   
   he says quote-unquote, “In Italy it was Mussolini. Mussolini is the Italian   
   genius of law and his fascism might be the strategy for our future.”   
   Churchill in 1933. I mean it took him even a couple of more years to   
   realize what the connection is between Mussolini and Hitler.    
      
   So if even if Churchill, you know, can make this mistake, and he was not   
   the only one—I mean even Freud in the thirties dedicated one of his books   
   to Mussolini. And with a whole line up of hundreds of intellectuals who   
   wanted to see Mussolini. He wasn’t only a politician but he also was a   
   poet, he wrote plays, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.    
      
   So anyway fascism always comes with a huge temptation.    
      
   This is also the reason why so many intellectuals and so many artists on   
   the one hand they could go off to Stalin and, you know, Stalin is the new   
   messiah. But they also felt, you know, temptation to fascism. So if you put   
   all these things together we realize that again in moments of crisis when   
   people are losing trust in their own political system—which is   
   happening—when the democratic spirit is going out a new anti-democratic   
   spirit will come in.    
      
   And if we have bad luck—and we are now having a lot of bad luck in Europe,   
   and here—and here the risk is a leader with a fascist mindset.”   
      
      
      
   SEE ALSO: “VOYEURISM, CELEBRITY AND RUMOUR AS THE HEART OF AMERICAN   
   ALTRUISM” dated 2 to 15 January 2018   
      
      
      
   SEE ALSO: “BUDGIE TALK ON ADOLF HITLER’S #AIDING, #WILLINGLY OR   
   #UNWILLINGLY THE DISSOLUTION OF THE STATE AND ITS BIBLICAL PARALLELISM AS   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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