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spiced pudding

@spiced-pudding.bsky.social

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very cringe

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spiced pudding @spiced-pudding.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

thinking of Eugène Ionesco’s commentary on Rhinoceros for no particular reason

“At the beginning, certainly they were not Nazis. About fifteen of us would get together to talk and to try to find arguments opposing theirs. It was not easy…. From time to time, one of our friends said: "I don't agree with them, to be sure, but on certain points, nevertheless, I must admit, for example, the Jews …," etc. And this was a symptom. Three weeks later, this person would become a Nazi. He was caught in the mechanism, he accepted everything, he became a rhinoceros. Towards the end, only three or four of us were still resisting.”

spiced pudding @spiced-pudding.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism (2004) could have been describing DOGE

“One device used by fascist parties, but also by Marxist revolutionaries who have given serious thought to the conquest of power, was parallel structures. An outsider party that wants to claim power sets up organizations that replicate government agencies. The Nazi Party, for example, had its own foreign policy agency that, at first, soon after the party had achieved power, had to share power with the traditional Foreign Office. After its head, Joachim von Ribbentrop, became foreign minister in 1938, the party’s foreign policy office increasingly supplanted the professional diplomats of the Foreign Office.”

Excerpt From
The Anatomy of Fascism
Robert O. Paxton
This material may be protected by copyright.

“The fascist parties’ parallel structures challenged the liberal state by claiming that they were capable of doing some things better (bashing communists, for instance). After achieving power, the party could substitute its parallel structures for those of the state.We will encounter the parallel structures again in the course of observing the process of achieving power, and of exercising power. It is one of the defining characteristics of fascism”

Excerpt From
The Anatomy of Fascism
Robert O. Paxton
This material may be protected by copyright.