Mon Oct 29 16:29:10 CDT 2018

Thanks both Mark and mc -   it’s on my wish list and I’ll put it on the Suggestions List for a group read over at All-nonfiction: https://groups.io/g/AllNonfiction  


Becky
https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com

> On Oct 29, 2018, at 7:33 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I second the recommendation of Robert O. Paxton's "The Anatomy of
> Fascism". I have a point-by-point breakdown of the first two-thirds
> completed (and unfortunately I doubt I'll get around to doing the rest
> of the work as I loaned it out and never got it back). If anyone wants
> a copy of my readers notes, let me know!
> 
> Cheers,
> YOPJ
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 8:38 AM matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Howdy Folks,
>> 
>> Are we all familiar with the Business Plot of 1933? That sure seems
>> relevant, in that the roots of fascism have been there (US) for a while (we
>> were no more immune to the ideas and trends that were in the air; I mean
>> just think of Father Coughlin or that Bellamy salute).
>> 
>> Also, if you haven't read Robert Paxton's "Fascism", you should. The fellow
>> knows what he's talking about. Early on, when Chump was a but a candidate,
>> Paxton pointed out that Drumpf was at least quasi-fascistic. Perhap by now
>> he has updated that diagnosis.
>> 
>> Of course it is also worth looking at Isaiah Berlin's work on the
>> intellectual roots of fascism (Joseph de Maistre, but also the so-called
>> Counter-Enlightenment thinkers like Herder and Hamman that left a path for
>> the Frenchmen Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès; on these last two one
>> might peruse J.W Burrow's "The Crisis of Reason: European Thought 1848 -
>> 1914).
>> 
>> That's my two bits on how history echoes all around.
>> 
>> ciao
>> mc
>> 
>> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 2:59 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> You’re right about  It Can’t Happen Here much less of a novel than 1984.
>>> It’s more like Aldous Huxley’s Island for all its pontificating.
>>> 
>>> The thing is that both the Lewis book and Trump fit the set of
>>> similarities set forth by Albright (in “Fascism") which authoritarian
>>> dictators use to attain power and keep it,  this is whether they are right
>>> wing or left.   They attack media, free speech, certain minority groups
>>> voting rules and the political opposition while tending to promote a
>>> militaristic form of nationalism with no avoidance of violence on any level
>>> and themselves as cult leader. They make up what they need as they go along
>>> so each regime/leader is unique in its own specifics.
>>> 
>>> I’m still only about 1/2 way through.
>>> 
>>> Becky
>>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 25, 2018, at 11:38 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I learned of it in an even earlier political and reprint cycle, Nixon's,
>>> of the late 60s-70s when I was a pup bookseller. Bet voracious reader, we
>>> think, TRP
>>>> has read it. (You can't read and love 1984 and miss this one, although
>>> it is much less as a novel).
>>>> 
>>>> Just recently I got a copy of T. Harry Williams' HUGE biography of Huey
>>> Long, the model. Surely won't read it all but from his Preface to the
>>> paperback-that-hardly-holds together: ....TRP's/Weber's charisma is a
>>> defining quality..."Long went much further than creating a political
>>> "machine"--He was the first Southern leader, and very possibly the first
>>> American leader, to set out not to contain the opposition or to impose
>>> certain conditions on it, but to force it out of existence.
>>> ....Deliberately, he grasped the control of all existing boards and other
>>> agencies ..and then just as deliberately by creating new agencies to
>>> perform new functions, he continually enlarged the patronage at his
>>> disposal. His control of patronage, gave him control of the legislature,
>>> and his control of the legislature enabled him to have laws enacted that
>>> invested him with imperial authority over every level of local
>>> government.........he became so powerful finally that he could deny the
>>> opposition almost all political sustenance, and if he wished, destroy it.
>>> .....but he did it differently. He created an arrangement in which the
>>> survival of any opposing organization would have to come into his to
>>> survive. He defined the terms and the rewards.  He also campaigned for
>>> sympathetic judges and they were winning so, all three branches. And he had
>>> effectively set it up before he died.
>>>> 
>>>> Arendt totalitarianism. What is at least at stake in the upcoming US
>>> elections, as Trump has packed the Supremes, is still the patronage
>>> President, the Senate--McConnell has surely studied Long's career-- will
>>> probably not turn Dem therefore.......
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 9:40 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Yup -  but written in 1936 so Lewis would be limited in some ways
>>> including the bomb as well as the environment.   Life is much more
>>> dangerous for many more people now.  (But it was in the days of the Shrub,
>>> too.)
>>>> 
>>>> I’ve read about some post-WWII and post-WWII totalitarian tactics and
>>> strategies (Fascism by Madeleine Albright) and we’ll see how he does on
>>> those. This was written in 1935,  way prior to Pearl Harbor.  just after
>>> Hitler became Fuhrer.  I don’t know what I’m reading for - parallels to
>>> current times or historical interest.
>>>> 
>>>> I read Lewis’ Main Street a few years ago.  It’ll be interesting if
>>> nothing else.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Becky
>>>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>>>> 
>>>>> On Oct 25, 2018, at 3:08 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I remember fifteen years ago, the LAST time It Can't Happen Here went
>>>>> through a cycle of current-events-spawned popularity. It even had the
>>>>> Dubya Bush / Buzz Windrip synchronistical nomenclature to help sell
>>>>> its ostensibly prophetic nature.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It's a pretty good novel, very "readable", but the lack of nuclear
>>>>> weapons in the mix means it can only go so far as a satire that can be
>>>>> shoehorned over the contemporary realpolitik.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jerky
>>>>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 6:03 PM Becky Lindroos <
>>> bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Interesting as I’m just starting to read “It Can’t Happen Here”
>>> (“What Will Happen When America Has a Dictator?”)  by Sinclair Lewis -
>>> (1936).  A the time, the book was thought to be directed at Huey Long, a
>>> Mississippi populist, governor/senator who was assassinated as he was
>>> getting his campaign for president together.  Sinclair’s novel is a satire
>>> and really aimed at its own times,  but it resonates what with all the
>>> fictional Windrip does *after* he gains office.  (hush the critics, etc.)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> "Keith Perry argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he
>>> decks out U.S. politicians with sinister European touches, but that he
>>> finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional
>>> U.S. political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of
>>> society and a new kind of regime.”
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Also:
>>>>>> "A number of writers have compared the demagogue Buzz Windrip to
>>> Donald Trump. Michael Paulsonwrote in The New York Times that the Berkeley
>>> Repertory Theatre's rendition of the play aimed to provoke discussion about
>>> Trump's presidential candidacy.[2]”
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> And:
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/books/review/classic-novel-that-predicted-trump-sinclar-lewis-it-cant-happen-here.html
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> or:
>>>>>> 
>>> http://time.com/money/4573801/sinclair-lewis-it-cant-happen-here-amazon/
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> very curious -
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Becky
>>>>>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Oct 25, 2018, at 2:37 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Nice.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> And true.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> J.
>>>>>>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 3:09 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> From Charles Pierce
>>>>>>>> 
>>> https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a24174810/cnn-obama-clintons-bomb-donald-trump/
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> "The bomb has been as essential a part of American political
>>> history as
>>>>>>>> were the knife, and the pistol, the high-powered rifle, and the
>>> rope."
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> 
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l