[jbloocher at gmail.com]

Thanks. Forever late to the party I am, however Paxton is duly noted. I may return to beg notes Jerky.
Blooch 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 29 Oct 2018, at 22:29, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> 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
>>>> 
>>> --
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> 
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