Russell Brand

goinghome said:
I don't know. A BNP link is specific so rarely applicable, yet I seem to recall you using the word more than occasionally when referring to a number of Morrissey fans here and abroad. If that's so, your definition must be about much more than just BNP involvement. It isn't a label to throw around lightly, in these serious times.

George Monbiot says in this interview that fascism, admittedly usually far-right, above all needs billionaire backing, and seems to imply that by now, it's systemic.

"What we are asking people to do – to resist this monstrous system – is very difficult, but not as difficult as what other people have faced in the past...neo-liberal ideology has transformed a system that worked more or less in the interests of the people into one that works in the interests of big business...That’s what the right always says [i.e. recently, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said that the real problem is not climate change but demographics.] It’s a way of shifting the blame from consumers in the rich world to the poorest people on the planet...But there is a real demographic crisis, and that is the livestock crisis, which is growing by 2.4% a year..."

Novelist Umberto Eco draw up this diagnostic 14-point list to identify fascism:
  • The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
  • The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
  • The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
  • Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
  • Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
  • Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
  • The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
  • The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
  • Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
  • Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
  • Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.
  • Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
  • Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
  • Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
  • ---- https://www.openculture.com/2016/11...ist-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Eco reckons that the presence of just one of these traits can be the calling card for all the others i.e. they reinforce each other. Still, I and people I know sometimes display one or more of these traits, without turning into monsters. Scope for interpretation, and the variety of human nature should be allowed, imo. We're certainly on Russell Brand's page in churning over topics like this!
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It is interesting that 'far right' is generally portrayed as much more 'evil' than 'far left'. Ash Sarkar came on TV and declared she is 'literally a communist'. And she is regularly invited back on. I wonder if someone said they are 'literally a fascist' - would they get invited back on?

 
gashonthenail said:
It is interesting that 'far right' is generally portrayed as much more 'evil' than 'far left'. Ash Sarkar came on TV and declared she is 'literally a communist'. And she is regularly invited back on. I wonder if someone said they are 'literally a fascist' - would they get invited back on?
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I suppose fascists identify as exalting violence and authority, whereas sincere communists are seen as misguided wasters with bleeding hearts, and so of lesser threat.

A writer I like, trying to design manageable livelihoods in a future that scientists warn won't be easy, argues why the only way forward for people with major ideological differences is talking.

"If we can then get into a productive conversation about what we are actually saying and try to get to the root of our disagreement, then we’re back in the realm of good faith dialogue.

I’ve found that step into real dialogue hard in debating ecomodernists, and I’m tired of the bad faith, overheated moral outrage and caricaturing.

But where dialogue stops, conflict starts. It doesn’t really matter in relation to an argument with another individual person, and maybe one lesson I could draw from this is to opt for the usually wise course of understatement rather than overstatement in relation to incidental parts of an argument, to avoid alienating potential readers. However, at the individual level I suspect it’s impossible to so purify one’s language that it becomes impossible to offend those who are looking to take offence. And, as I’ll argue in the next section, there are bigger and more consequential structural conflicts in society bubbling up within the dividing lines of my little social media spat. As I see it, ecomodernist positions in this conflict thrive by insisting on understatements of the problems associated with modernism itself which should not be understated."

https://chrissmaje.substack.com/p/a...73&isFreemail=true&r=lcwsh&triedRedirect=true

Meanwhile, complaints about Russell continue to be pursued.

C4 says there's 'no evidence' TV chiefs knew of complaints about Russell Brand : News 2024 : Chortle : The UK Comedy Guide

C4 says there's 'no evidence' TV chiefs knew of complaints about Russell Brand - But apologises to one worker for not investigating complaint
www.chortle.co.uk www.chortle.co.uk
 
Interesting interview with Kevin Spacey. I do think ultimately he played the role of the villain too well. So people think he's a villain whatever the jury finds.
He's a wonderful actor. So many great roles.

 
You gotta love Douglas Murray. The latest Channel 4 documentary on Spacey alleges that he - wait for it - groped some men. And that makes him a monster apparently, and those he groped 'victims'. What happened to being flattered, saying thanks but no thanks, and getting on with one's life?

 
Sorry, I should have added to the above - or punching his lights out.
Either of those options has got to be better than bottling it up inside, telling yourself you are a victim, and then speaking to a Channel 4 documentary several decades later.
 
goinghome said:
I don't know. A BNP link is specific so rarely applicable, yet I seem to recall you using the word more than occasionally when referring to a number of Morrissey fans here and abroad. If that's so, your definition must be about much more than just BNP involvement. It isn't a label to throw around lightly, in these serious times.

George Monbiot says in this interview that fascism, admittedly usually far-right, above all needs billionaire backing, and seems to imply that by now, it's systemic.

"What we are asking people to do – to resist this monstrous system – is very difficult, but not as difficult as what other people have faced in the past...neo-liberal ideology has transformed a system that worked more or less in the interests of the people into one that works in the interests of big business...That’s what the right always says [i.e. recently, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said that the real problem is not climate change but demographics.] It’s a way of shifting the blame from consumers in the rich world to the poorest people on the planet...But there is a real demographic crisis, and that is the livestock crisis, which is growing by 2.4% a year..."

Novelist Umberto Eco draw up this diagnostic 14-point list to identify fascism:
  • The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
  • The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
  • The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
  • Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
  • Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
  • Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
  • The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
  • The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
  • Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
  • Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
  • Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.
  • Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
  • Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
  • Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
  • ---- https://www.openculture.com/2016/11...ist-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Eco reckons that the presence of just one of these traits can be the calling card for all the others i.e. they reinforce each other. Still, I and people I know sometimes display one or more of these traits, without turning into monsters. Scope for interpretation, and the variety of human nature should be allowed, imo. We're certainly on Russell Brand's page in churning over topics like this!

View attachment 102564
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I'm a bit disappointed by Eco's 14 points here. I haven't read the essay, but depending on how they're presented, the list implies a genetic fallacy: any of these are wrong (because fascist) because fascists have also endorsed or practiced these. They're also vague. What does a cult of tradition mean? Any society has traditions. Is that a cult? Do we have to have perpetual Maoist cultural revolutions in order not to be fascists?

There's also the rather interesting point that most of those on the list probably apply more to the left than the right at present, at least as one moves towards the centre of politics. And as one moves out from the centre, these get worse on both sides. (Obviously, some are more markers of the right than the left, such as 'machismo', though weaponry and violence are certainly features of leftist 'protest'.)

Another extremely interesting point is 'The rejection of modernism', as in, the rejection of the Enlightenment project. It's pretty clear that the left is bent on bringing down the Enlightenment at present:

https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2022/return-anti-enlightenment#

Quote:

Today’s left‐wing progressivism prizes individual autonomy and self‐determination only in some circumstances, such as the right to live according to one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Its general attitude toward these values tends to be quite negative. Indeed, classifying people by racial, ethnic, and sexual identities is at the core of the current progressive worldview, which rejects universalism as an imposition of white European (and patriarchal) values on people who are not straight white males. Moreover, the view that individualism, rationality, objectivity,and other Enlightenment values are attributes of “whiteness” or “white supremacy culture” is fairly common in social justice circles and has been included in “anti‐racist” training workshops. The irony of how this view overlaps with arguments long made by actual white supremacists is lost on them.
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There's plenty of material on this phenomenon should one be interested.
 
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Woolly Monty said:
Under no circumstances do you “gotta hand it to Douglas Murray”.
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I initially gave the post a "like" as I was listening to Murray discuss the sad case of Kevin Spacey, because he did make good sense, but then a new segment started up and he went into his typical sneering Zionist apologetics, and I quickly revoked my upvote.
 
gashonthenail said:
Interesting interview with Kevin Spacey. I do think ultimately he played the role of the villain too well. So people think he's a villain whatever the jury finds.
He's a wonderful actor. So many great roles.

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He pulled out as production began without a script (from what I’ve read), but he was lined up to be the baddie in Tomorrow Never Dies. He would’ve been dazzling, I’ve no doubt.
 
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