@jayrosen_nyu Dwight MacDonald pointed this out ... 70 years ago, in his "Theory of Mass Culture":

The upper classes, who begin by using it to make money from the crude tastes of the masses and to dominate them politically, end by finding their own culture attacked and even threatened with destruction by the instrument they have thoughtlessly employed. (The same irony may be observed in modern politics, where most swords seem to have two edges; thus Nazism began as a tool of the big bourgeoisie and the army Junkers but ended by using them as its tools.)

https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf

It's the old problem of grabbing the tiger by the tail.

#DwightMacdonald #MassCulture #media #FoxNews #RupertMurdoch #LachlanMurdoch

@Stoori Recognising the fascistic tendency or potential of communications modes and media formats is actually precisely what I'm encouraging here.

It's not that "all memes are fascist".

But you'll find that very nearly all fascists uses memes.

I'm reminded of the parallel with a famous observation of John Stuart Mill on stupidity and conservatives:

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23qdkr/john_stuart_mill_i_did_not_mean_that/

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1866/may/31/committee-adjourned-debate#column_1592

My view (supported by the work of Arendt, Paxton, Eco, MacDonald, and others) is that fascism is a behavioural mode, not an ideologial one, one that tends to be highly emotive, low-information, and reactionary. It probably emerges in times of high social and political stress.

Knowing that, and being aware of the risks and signs is valuable.

Yes, fascism wears ideological trappings, but those serve its behaviours and not the other way 'round. The specific ideologies claimed are fluid and flexible and inconsistent both internally and over time.

See the commentary on this post:
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6wuenu/is_politics_truly_ideological_or_is_this_a_20th/

@steko @zatnosk

#fascism #ideology #HannaArendt #FrankfurtSchool #Memes #MemeticWarfare #RobertPaxton #UmbertoEco #DwightMacDonald #MarshallMcLuhan #AdamCurtis #CenturyOfTheSelf #NoamChomsky