How to call for political violence, in 5 easy steps (thread).
If you want to mobilize a large group of people together for purposes of mass violence against your political opponents, you must give them a unifying cause, one that justifies the violence. Here’s how to do it, in 5 easy steps.
1. Give them a terrible external enemy, one who seeks entry into the country, threatening their loved ones, particularly women and children. Say your political opponents are opening the country’s gates to this enemy, and supporting their terrible mission with your money.
2. Give them a terrible domestic enemy, a violent insurrection that seeks to overturn the stable social order. Say your political opponents are funding and supporting this violent insurrection.
3. Denounce your political opponents as having corrupt intentions, seeking to profit politically and financially off the chaos they create.
4. Spread conspiracy theories connecting your opponents to terrible crimes against women and children.
5. Denounce the institutions as controlled by the enemy. Tell them they have been horribly wronged, their will subverted, by these compromised institutions. Warn that unless these injustices are rectified, far worse is yet to come.
Finally, and most importantly, don’t forget to denounce the resulting violence, placing the blame for it on your political opponents.
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My father was almost 7 when he left Berlin. My great-grandfather was the chief Cantor of Germany's largest Jewish congregation. He and my great uncle were in the original Wagner ensemble. My great-uncle was one of the original Bayreuth singers.
And I went to high school and college in Germany, where I was always asked, "where are you from?", and when I said "the US", the response was, "no, where are you REALLY from", and when I said "Germany", the response was utter disbelief.
Leaving Hungary aside for obv reasons, my book on fascism has now appeared or is appearing in translation in every European country...except Germany.
For Germany, hearing about such matters from people of my background is problematic. zeit.de/2018/24/68er-g…
Sorry, not every European country, this was an exaggeration. Sweden, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain (with Catalan), Poland, I think that's it. A lot of them.
One of the things that has astonished me about academics in the last few years is how many of them regarded their utter silence in the public sphere as courage. So many of my colleagues regarded their *lack* of participation in public debate as a kind of virtuous heroism.
I literally have had colleagues tell me they were too brave and principled to say anything in public about politics.
I’m not here criticizing it. It’s just a mindset I don’t get.
This tweet has been greeted with a shock of recognition by many people in India who have retweeted it, noting that the Delhi police have facilitated and acted in concert with fascist mobs. We are seeing these patterns repeat across countries with far right nationalist govenrments
For those outside of philosophy following our field’s discussion of trans issues - a thread. Some grad students and maybe 1% of tenured profs in top 20 Phil departments signed a letter critiquing the choice to give an OBE to a gender critical scholar.
That scholar not only has received an OBE for their work on these issues, which few philosophers have received, but also an Aristotelian Society main symposium (not something I have gotten), signaling that they have immense support for their views among leading philosophers.
This is not an accident. That scholar, despite having very few publications or citations, is regarded as a hero and a champion for their Gender Critical views among leading analytic philosophers, both in private and in public.