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i have to be somewhere soon, so all i can say is that we live in a mass-media environment & that people select their political viewpoints like any other consumer item in the main except that they live through them at least for particular durations, in particular situations. the game that the populist right is playing with the fictional mosque is exactly the same game that neo-fascist organizations all over europe play with islam. the game the populist right plays with immigration is the same. the difference is that in western europe, neo-fascist organizations are named publicly--which is a problem for them because it forces people to choose explicitly to align with neo-fascist politics. here in the states, there is no naming. it's "the tea party" and the xenophobic/racist politics that are mobilizing the tea partiers right now are not labelled what they are. and in the name of some illusory "balance" this neo-fascism is given **heavy** media exposure, which functions to legitimate it, extend it.
this is not a sky-is-falling situation. i focus on it the way i do in this thread because of the topic of the thread and because it affects people close to me directly. but i don't think it's a Crisis. but i do think that there is something really really wrong with a political context that allows neo-fascism to become a mass movement, to be normalized as just another conservative position. it isn't. and i would expect conservatives to be right there to point that out.
and maybe all this happens in meat-space over beverages and conviviality which is very not like the narrowcasting of a messageboard.
but there we are.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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