If Music Could Talk

101Walterton wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 12:08am

You alright?

BostonBeaneater wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 9:42am

101Walterton wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 12:08am

You alright?

Yeah, I am just ready to take it to these goose stepping goons.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 12:28pm

I'd love to know wtf goes wrong in the development of a fascist psychopath? What's the draw? I want to say they're inherently weak individuals who grasp at violence in order to feel strong because it helps them keep a lid on the fact that deep down they know they're a waste of flesh.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 1:20pm

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 12:28pm

I'd love to know wtf goes wrong in the development of a fascist psychopath? What's the draw? I want to say they're inherently weak individuals who grasp at violence in order to feel strong because it helps them keep a lid on the fact that deep down they know they're a waste of flesh.

You've more or less recreated Arthur Schlesinger Jr's argument from the late 1940s for why some people adopt totalitarian ideologies—i.e., they're psychologically weak. Modernity offers people the freedom to be individuals and chart their own path, he argued, but the weak-willed can't handle it and choose fascism, Nazism, or communism because it has a ready-made worldview and provides security in the mass. Which is an indirect way for Schlesinger to pat himself and his fellow liberals on the back for being tough men. Sure, psychology plays a role in these things, but I'd say brutal capitalism, where community and fellowship is reduced to market value and deals, where your value as a human being is abstracted in favour of how much profit you can make for your boss and how much you spend to keep the machinery rolling—that guts people's sense of self-worth more. This isn't me feeling sorry for these fuckheads—they made the choice of who to blame and went with people often in more marginalized circumstances than their own, and they chose to adopt violence against other human beings as their preferred method—but it's a mistake to simply dismiss the cause as mental weakness. We reduce the number of fascists and potential fascists in our midst by altering the social environment that produces that anger.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 1:47pm

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 1:20pm

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

15 Mar 2019, 12:28pm

I'd love to know wtf goes wrong in the development of a fascist psychopath? What's the draw? I want to say they're inherently weak individuals who grasp at violence in order to feel strong because it helps them keep a lid on the fact that deep down they know they're a waste of flesh.

You've more or less recreated Arthur Schlesinger Jr's argument from the late 1940s for why some people adopt totalitarian ideologies—i.e., they're psychologically weak. Modernity offers people the freedom to be individuals and chart their own path, he argued, but the weak-willed can't handle it and choose fascism, Nazism, or communism because it has a ready-made worldview and provides security in the mass. Which is an indirect way for Schlesinger to pat himself and his fellow liberals on the back for being tough men. Sure, psychology plays a role in these things, but I'd say brutal capitalism, where community and fellowship is reduced to market value and deals, where your value as a human being is abstracted in favour of how much profit you can make for your boss and how much you spend to keep the machinery rolling—that guts people's sense of self-worth more. This isn't me feeling sorry for these fuckheads—they made the choice of who to blame and went with people often in more marginalized circumstances than their own, and they chose to adopt violence against other human beings as their preferred method—but it's a mistake to simply dismiss the cause as mental weakness. We reduce the number of fascists and potential fascists in our midst by altering the social environment that produces that anger.

I had never thought about it in that way, but what you write makes a ton of sense!