Turns out fascists are really shit leaders in pandemic times. Who would have thought it?

[Soph0571]

Link to tweet

Were the COVID crises in the US, Brazil, and India predictable? From the preface of the paperback edition of How Fascism Works, written in early March 2020, before COVID had really arrived in Brazil. Published in May 2020.

Thankfully America had the sense to get out from under the former guy. Brazil and India are still dying with the reckoning bought on by voting ultranationalists into office. Vote on the twisted ideology of othering and you get the incompetence and utter mismanagement you might expect... the far right hate reason, critical thinking skills and fact based decision making - these are counter ethical to all the hate they hold dear. Of course they were going to fuck up the pandemic response, and the worst thing about it is I am quite sure they don't give a shit. What was it Stalin said- one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic? Heh. Indeed.

[abqtommy]

1. Let's always remember that fascists are not healthy for children or other living things.

The kindest thing we can do to fascists is to LOCK THEM UP!

[secondwind]

2. My daughter is friends with a Harvard epidemiologist, who has been following the virus in India.

He says the numbers are way underreported, that there are most likely 1 million infected daily, with millions dying by August.

[ck4829]

3. I wrote about this last year, I know some people love it, so I think I should share it again

The potus elected by first world problems/angry conservative man problems can't solve a real one?

Who got Trump elected? People with first world problems and angry conservative man problems...

"Why can't *I* say the n-word?"
"Why do I have to press 1 for English?"
"Why do people say 'Happy Holidays' to me when I want to hear 'Merry Christmas'?"
"I'm not racist but..."
"No, all lives matter! (Except refugees)"
"Gay marriage ruins the sanctity of my third marriage!"
"YEAH!" (Response in question to letting a person without health insurance die)
"Sure there's a shooter, but the shooter is white and not a Muslim, so... win."
"I don't want higher taxes for billionaires because I'll totally be a billionaire someday."
"Gotta undo what the black man did!"
"I'm so happy to have a president who isn't politically correct!"

Those are Trump's people, that's his base, and they elected him to solve their oh-so-pressing issues.

And now there's a real issue that's spooking the economy, shutting down public meeting places, scaring people in general, hurting people, killing them, and more... and the man they elected doesn't seem all that equipped to solve that real issue?

I'm shocked. Simply shocked.

Link

Now I don't know too much about Bolsonaro and Modi but from what I do know, I'm assuming you simply replace the things of white angry conservative man problems of the US with stupid concerns in those countries... "cultural Marxists", "Why don't Hindu nationalists get special rights?", "Brazil is in a moral decline because there are more gay people", am I right?

[The Jungle 1]

4. We still have the fascist police to deal with!

[Hortensis]

5. Ruthless authoritarians have weaponized DISEASE to seize power for centuries.

Chaos and disruption in societies work for them. Of course this pandemic was opportunistically grabbed onto by their sort around the planet. And helped along.

Here, the Republican Party blocked the standard governmental actions already in place that had been used to stop the 2003 SARS pandemic cold in the U.S., and in over 24 other nations. This time, instead, they and their agents in the media lied to the nation that the virus was a hoax, a "cold," and, when people were dying in numbers too big to deny, encouraged their zealous followers to actively spread the disease for "freedom."

Knowing many would die, but mostly those retired from the workforce. And let's not fool ourselves that turning this disease loose on the elderly is not a genocidal "cleansing."

[FakeNoose]

10. Well I don't know that Covid has been weaponized

... but it certainly has been politicized.

That was Chump's game from Day One, as soon as he got the news about how bad Covid really would turn out to be. How could this NOT backfire on him?

[Hortensis]

11. Early on last year both Maddow and Brian Williams addressed

the Republicans' shocking obstruction of actions they were supposed to take. But that was very briefly, both saying it was documented beyond doubt but that investigation needed to come after the fight to end the pandemic. Those are just the two I was watching on the night they did.

This seems to be an opportunistic holocaust; how else? I believe that if this virus was killling children, instead of mostly people collecting SocSec and costing $billions on Medicare, the Republicans would have cooperated, as they had before, to stop it.

Heck, Senator Richard Burr, who warned donors and sold stock to avoid personal losses, headed the senate intelligence committee that, after the first coronavirus pandemic, researched, wrote and passed what became the law detailing the plan to stop the next pandemic in its tracks. Intelligence committee because it was believed to be a matter of national security.

[FakeNoose]

12. It doesn't make sense that the Repukes all called it a hoax

... and many are still doing that after 13 months. Even Ted Nugent who caught Covid.

[Hortensis]

13. Umhm. It makes horrible sense if they wanted their base to spread it.

And they are still doing that.

As for fear for themselves and those they care for, the risk of an individual under 80 of dying from it was quite low. Early on, 80+-year-olds in bad health were dropping like flies, while most younger people who had it blew it off fairly quickly or had no symptoms. Congressional Republicans have the best healthcare available. And that sequelae would cause permanent damage and requirement for lifelong healthcare was not known initially.

A very useful disease, seemingly. Too bad they didn't know then what we do now. Future costs are likely to be enormous. And it did not help them get control of the federal government.

(Observers say that authoritarians in most other nations who tried to use Covid in a power grab reportedly also failed. Wrong disease apparently, or time, or whatever. So far.)

[tanyev]

6. Dramatically illustrated in the U.S.

An entire year of giant clusterf*ck getting turned in the right direction in just a few weeks of competent people sincerely trying to fix the problem.

[thucythucy]

7. Fascists are shit leaders at all times.

Contrary to the myth that Mussolini "made the trains run on time" and the Nazis brought "order" to a chaotic Germany, the fact is both regimes were incompetent in pretty much all the ways that matter.

Italian fascism was a lethal mixture of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and grandiose self-delusion. Their attempt to reestablish the Roman Empire would have been laughable if it hadn't led to so much death and destruction, not least of all for Italians themselves.

Similarly, Nazi Germany was a hodgepodge of conflicting personal fiefdoms that wasted resources and likewise caused hideous death and destruction, not only to the rest of the world and to those targeted as others, but also finally to the German people themselves.

Alan Bullock, one of the preeminent historians of European fascism, states that "in the end, Hitler and Nazism--by their own test, that of war--were defeated and discredited." We saw the same result in Argentina, when the fascist junta decided to seize the Falklands as a way to distract from its abject failure in every other aspect of its rule over that nation. Fascist pretentions of martial prowess are just that--pretense.

Show me fascism anywhere and at any time and I'll show you a dysfunctional government wracked by incompetence and corruption and eventual and total failure.

One example of this has always stood out in my mind, ever since I read about it decades ago. In his memoir (an admittedly flawed attempt at self-exoneration) Albert Speer recounts how, during an air raid on Berlin, Hitler was listening to the police/fire dept. communications and heard that an important arms factory was on fire. He ordered every fire company in the city to respond immediately, then swallowed a fist full of sleeping meds and went to bed. That one fire was quickly put out, but meanwhile fires all over the city were burning out of control. None of the fire companies could respond without a direct order from "der Fuehrer" and no one dared wake the great man and risk literally getting his head chopped off. And so all night long dozens and dozens of fire trucks stood idle while all around them the rest of the city burned.

I love Camus's writing and have tremendous admiration for his courage as an anti-fascist, but his "cult of efficiency" (the phrase he coined to describe Nazism) was a myth, with as much relation to reality as all those paintings of Trump as some Rambo superhero.

If only this history was common knowledge, here and around the world.

[ck4829]

8. "Mussolini makes the trains run on time" Of course people would say that...

Saying "Mussolini is making me late for work!", hearing it even, would get people shot during that time!

[thucythucy]

9. You point to one of the reasons why fascism inevitably fails.

There is no mechanism for self-correction, short of overthrowing the government entirely, or the intervention of a foreign power. It inevitably sets up a circle of yes-men--the German word translates as "lick-spittle's"--whose sole aim is to retain the favor of the man or men in charge. The longer its term in power, the tighter its grip on society, the more pronounced the turning away from any fact that contradicts the fascist world view.

[former9thward]

14. The Prime Minister of India is now a "fascist"?

Who knew?

Maybe someone should inform President Biden.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/08/readout-of-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-call-with-prime-minister-narendra-modi-of-india/

What about the leaders of Japan and Canada where both countries have terrible vaccination rates. Are they fascists? How about Europe leaders where the vaccination rates are poor?