Your words with the pictures certainly made me feel what they must have gone through. I would imagine that a numbness sets in so you don’t cry or panic. There’s also a look that looks like them holding their breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. Thank you. I really an looking forward to the new film. I’ve been going through old films and documentaries that are streaming on about the startup to the end of the War Ii. I’ve been assuming that some are weak on the facts.
I know I cannot prepare myself or my family for the worst possibilities snd perhaps it might be too overwhelming.
I’ve been thinking about how the average Italian or German citizen felt while watching Hitler and Mussolini ascend to power. Did they have the same sense of dread I have now worrying about the country my grand children will inherit?
It is really frightening to think that we very well may be going toward fascism. I don't know how I could deal with that, given that I want my old age to be peaceful.
We all want that I think. I find myself wishing I were younger, so that I could fight back better, longer, and be more persuasive. In the end, we can only do waht we can do. I choose democracy--and hope. But I understand your concerns.
Don't worry, Tony, I also choose democracy and hope. The one thing I know I can do is vote. I don't have a lot of energy for anything else these days. My husband and I are faithful about voting. I hope others are motivated to vote for democracy, and vote in people who will uphold it at all levels of the ballot.
so true, important to tune in to the populace to see reflection of their focus -whether it's their faces, their activities, their creations -that tells us more about reality of the moment
Really look at the people behind the mango Mussolini. Some look bored, some most anxious to wave at the camera and some really into his garbage. Recently some disappear. It is really hard to watch it all but is interesting
I have always been fascinated by the crowd reactions and the audience to both Hitler and Mussolini. Because the propagandists wished for us to see their rapt engagement--we are fortunate to see their reactions in many cases. As I have watched the audiences of Donald Trump, I am struck by the irrational and tribal adoration--and the feeling they are all insiders. Cults generate this kind of feeling. It is not unusual in politics. All political leaders seek to generate enthuisasm. I know I have been emotionally energized by Barack Obama, Dolores Huerta, Jack and Bobbly Kennedy, and Jesse jackson and MLK. The skill and aura to rally a crowd is not necessarily dangerous and is a part of democratic life. But--Fascists arouse the worst in us, and call for an unthinking populism that believes in a false and illusory past. Into that the only future is dark. Thank you for sharing the photos. They are reminders and reasons to pause oursleves, too.
I've always found the ability of fascist leaders to create an atmosphere of truth replacement to be truly stunning. The ease at which followers get sucked into this post-truth vortex is just as stunning. It's a destructive symbiosis.
Stunning is the right word. It makes me reel when I watch and listen. I have to really show patience and perseverence in the face of it. Fascist demagogues share the neurotic resentments and weaknesses of their followers. Bullies truly are cowards, fascists are truly afraid. This is something Professor Ben-Ghiat's books have shown me.
Narcissistic voters will support a leader with similar mental traits and are more likely to support fascism. As stated by Duspara and Greitemeyer, " Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and everyday sadism were associated with right wing political oientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. "
Orange Mussolini is an omnipresent figure in our politics, and the question is: How will the electorate respond to him *this* time? In 2016, despite his appalling track record, more than 62.9 million voters considered him fit to be president, and in 2020, *after* seeing what a chaotic abomination he actually was in the job, more than 74.2 million voted for him – an 18% increase(!). This year, Trump already has expressed his desire to be a dictator, suspend the Constitution, and again refuse to accept the election result if he loses. How much more evidence do We the People need before roundly repudiating him?
Anne Applebaum's current article in The Atlantic, "The New Propaganda War," is well worth reading, as is the reaction to it by her colleague Tom Nichols, "Autocracies Are Winning the Information War," in The Atlantic Daily newsletter. Taken together, the two articles offer a stark picture of where America and the world currently stand with both fascism and political nihilism gaining so much momentum.
"[T]he goal of most autocracies is not to replace truth with regime-friendly lies but to destroy truth itself, and to obliterate the human ability – or desire – to even distinguish between truth and lies," Mr. Nichols writes of his colleague's crucial point. "The new authoritarians" is what Ms. Applebaum calls the Putins, Assads and Maduros of this world, whose methods are like Trump's. "They lie constantly, blatantly, obviously," aided and abetted by complicit political loyalists and propagandist television personalities. "But they don't bother to offer counterarguments when their lies are exposed. ... This tactic – the so-called fire hose of falsehoods – ultimately produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you just can't know?"
Or, even worse, what if you just don't want to know? Or have reached the point where you don't care?
Which brings us to where we are, less than 6 months before a national election, with our democracy hanging precariously in the balance and the threat of MAGA fascism knocking ever louder at the door.
People become so bombarded with lies that they become unmoored from reality. They become so confused as to what truth is, that Fascism becomes their reality life raft. Those whom have voted Republican in the past, choose to believe a Republican candidate or leader, over the truth from anyone outside of their camp. The truth is jettisoned in favor of tribal solidarity.
Being in mid-childhood during WW2 I remember this well. I was 6 in 1939 when the War broke out in Europe, at hat time I was a Canadian, so it was my uncles who went to fight. (my father had bad eyesight and three children so he was turned down when he tried to enlist. No, Hitler and Mussolini were NOT admired then. I saw the Life magazine pictures of the concentration camps. I saw the movie reels of German citizens trying to deny they knew of the existence of those camps. The Holocaust was real, the Nazis were real. It was not a hoax.
Glad that there is a focus on Mussolini too and what was going on in Italy, who has seen the rise of a populist leader again. I find Meloni's involvement in negotiating with African countries to try to stem the immigration to be interesting. Why is she appealing to the African leaders to enforce her racist plans? She clearly thinks she can buy them off. Is this supposed to be a softer fascist result than that of Mussolini who wanted to expand Italy's African colonialist holdings. The same Africans that are now being turned away and mistreated in Italy today. Although with such a low birth rate does Italy think it can maintain its society with just encouraging their own unwilling female population to have more babies without the structural supports for doing that? Doesn't seem so. https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20240129-italy-s-meloni-targets-energy-migration-with-non-predatory-africa-plan
Are these images of the Italian crowd reflective of their ability to remember those moments today of how they felt under Mussolini? How is this part of Italian history being taught in Italy today? My daughter is currently studying the resistance to the Nazis as part of her history studies on Nazis at University in Berlin. So, we have been talking about it a lot. What are acts of resistance, which can be little things as well as bigger things. This resistance is very important because it is something we need to take from the situation given our current danger with Trump, as well as the need to prevent fascist takeover of our country.
Meloni is a terrible, 21st Century version of a Fascist. It is remarkable to note how many Italians find her politics repulisve. But--there remains an audience for this kind of cultural resenment politics in Italy, and backlash all over the world. After all, the US is not immune.
The Great Replacment Theory is very ugly and yet pulsing through a lot of America. Meloni grew up idolizing Mussolini. Trump grew up idolizing himself.
It is incomprehensible to me, a 78 year old woman who has lived a life swaddled in democracy, that I worry now about the future my grandchildren and great-grandchildren may face; that they may someday resemble the faces in those photos. The threat of losing the freedom to vote for responsible leaders, the benefit of a free press, an education open to all points of view, and the rights women fought for and won, is real and imminent. How many historical examples do we need to understand what we may face with the results of this next election?
Chilling image. To quote Sartre "“When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.” The image brings to mind my mother's family, working poor, five brothers serving in the army during World War II. Two of the five were in combat, one a medic, the other a tank commander. The medic suffered from mental illness and depression, most likely what is today called PTSD, until his death. The other drank himself to death and died less than 10 years after the war. The true cost of war is not paid during the conflict but years after. The faces in the image seem to understand.
Hi David, I completely agree with you that "the true cost of war is not paid during the conflict but years after." I believe that war traumatizes everyone, directly and indirectly. More has been studied about the intergenerational transmission of trauma and early childhood researchers show that witnessing or experiencing violence coupled with the feeling of powerlessness is what traumatizes people. We can imagine that the people in the photo are anxious, apprehensive, and feeling powerless as they listen to Mussolini rage and rant. I don't know the specifics of Mussolini's own early childhood experiences but I would imagine that as a child he also felt anxious, apprehensive, and powerless before some dictator in his home, as did Hitler. I mention this because, as we adults empower ourselves regarding the fascist threat we presently face, with enormous help from Ruth, Bandy Lee,, Steve Hassan, and many others we must also recognize that violence in childhood at this very moment is sowing seeds of not only authoritarian leaders but authoritarian followers in the future.
I am a lifelong liberal Democrat who despises donald trump and is actively working for his defeat in November. Yesterday I watched the entire C-SPAN broadcast of trump's rally in Wildwood NJ just to see what message he decided to bring here to south Jersey.
The camera feed was fascinating. It was fixed on the podium at stage-center, the people standing on the risers behind the podium, and the backs of the 5 or 6 rows in front of the stage. Some amusement park rides were in the deep background (aren't we having fun?). On the stage, there was just one Black face in the shot. The camera moved only once in the entire 2 hours, to show a second African-American face at the edge of the on-stage audience. The camera lingered for a few seconds, then returned to the fixed center view. At that moment, I wondered if the trump campaign might be controlling the camera.
Trump and the other speakers repeatedly referred to the size of the crowd--enormous, the biggest ever, as far as the eye can see, at least 100,000 people (in space with a maximum capacity of 40,000). Trump repeatedly called out the "fake news" media, pointing out into the crowd, as though there was a phalanx of crews out there recording the event. But the broadcast camera *never moved*. It never turned to show the crowd, or any media presence, even when trump demanded it. The actual size of the rally and the extent of the media coverage was left to the TV viewers' imagination. It could have been (and probably was) a lie.
The entire visual experience looked like fascism to me. What astonished me most was how boring, tedious, banal, and ugly it all was, viewed through that relentlessly fixed, narrow-angle lens.
Your words with the pictures certainly made me feel what they must have gone through. I would imagine that a numbness sets in so you don’t cry or panic. There’s also a look that looks like them holding their breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. Thank you. I really an looking forward to the new film. I’ve been going through old films and documentaries that are streaming on about the startup to the end of the War Ii. I’ve been assuming that some are weak on the facts.
I know I cannot prepare myself or my family for the worst possibilities snd perhaps it might be too overwhelming.
Sharon, you can make a plan for if the worst happens. The last minute will be too late.
I’ll be a girls scout. Be prepared!
I’ve been thinking about how the average Italian or German citizen felt while watching Hitler and Mussolini ascend to power. Did they have the same sense of dread I have now worrying about the country my grand children will inherit?
that is a thought-provoking old photo. As you say, it makes you wonder what's truly in the mind of those people, who would be wary of revealing that.
It is really frightening to think that we very well may be going toward fascism. I don't know how I could deal with that, given that I want my old age to be peaceful.
We all want that I think. I find myself wishing I were younger, so that I could fight back better, longer, and be more persuasive. In the end, we can only do waht we can do. I choose democracy--and hope. But I understand your concerns.
Don't worry, Tony, I also choose democracy and hope. The one thing I know I can do is vote. I don't have a lot of energy for anything else these days. My husband and I are faithful about voting. I hope others are motivated to vote for democracy, and vote in people who will uphold it at all levels of the ballot.
so true, important to tune in to the populace to see reflection of their focus -whether it's their faces, their activities, their creations -that tells us more about reality of the moment
Really look at the people behind the mango Mussolini. Some look bored, some most anxious to wave at the camera and some really into his garbage. Recently some disappear. It is really hard to watch it all but is interesting
Ruth, do we know if this rally was forced attendance or was only those that wanted to be there , probably no way of knowing ….
I have always been fascinated by the crowd reactions and the audience to both Hitler and Mussolini. Because the propagandists wished for us to see their rapt engagement--we are fortunate to see their reactions in many cases. As I have watched the audiences of Donald Trump, I am struck by the irrational and tribal adoration--and the feeling they are all insiders. Cults generate this kind of feeling. It is not unusual in politics. All political leaders seek to generate enthuisasm. I know I have been emotionally energized by Barack Obama, Dolores Huerta, Jack and Bobbly Kennedy, and Jesse jackson and MLK. The skill and aura to rally a crowd is not necessarily dangerous and is a part of democratic life. But--Fascists arouse the worst in us, and call for an unthinking populism that believes in a false and illusory past. Into that the only future is dark. Thank you for sharing the photos. They are reminders and reasons to pause oursleves, too.
I've always found the ability of fascist leaders to create an atmosphere of truth replacement to be truly stunning. The ease at which followers get sucked into this post-truth vortex is just as stunning. It's a destructive symbiosis.
Stunning is the right word. It makes me reel when I watch and listen. I have to really show patience and perseverence in the face of it. Fascist demagogues share the neurotic resentments and weaknesses of their followers. Bullies truly are cowards, fascists are truly afraid. This is something Professor Ben-Ghiat's books have shown me.
Narcissistic voters will support a leader with similar mental traits and are more likely to support fascism. As stated by Duspara and Greitemeyer, " Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and everyday sadism were associated with right wing political oientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. "
They had no idea of the death and misery that was in their future thanks to Il Duce. Or maybe some did.
Orange Mussolini is an omnipresent figure in our politics, and the question is: How will the electorate respond to him *this* time? In 2016, despite his appalling track record, more than 62.9 million voters considered him fit to be president, and in 2020, *after* seeing what a chaotic abomination he actually was in the job, more than 74.2 million voted for him – an 18% increase(!). This year, Trump already has expressed his desire to be a dictator, suspend the Constitution, and again refuse to accept the election result if he loses. How much more evidence do We the People need before roundly repudiating him?
Anne Applebaum's current article in The Atlantic, "The New Propaganda War," is well worth reading, as is the reaction to it by her colleague Tom Nichols, "Autocracies Are Winning the Information War," in The Atlantic Daily newsletter. Taken together, the two articles offer a stark picture of where America and the world currently stand with both fascism and political nihilism gaining so much momentum.
"[T]he goal of most autocracies is not to replace truth with regime-friendly lies but to destroy truth itself, and to obliterate the human ability – or desire – to even distinguish between truth and lies," Mr. Nichols writes of his colleague's crucial point. "The new authoritarians" is what Ms. Applebaum calls the Putins, Assads and Maduros of this world, whose methods are like Trump's. "They lie constantly, blatantly, obviously," aided and abetted by complicit political loyalists and propagandist television personalities. "But they don't bother to offer counterarguments when their lies are exposed. ... This tactic – the so-called fire hose of falsehoods – ultimately produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you just can't know?"
Or, even worse, what if you just don't want to know? Or have reached the point where you don't care?
Which brings us to where we are, less than 6 months before a national election, with our democracy hanging precariously in the balance and the threat of MAGA fascism knocking ever louder at the door.
People become so bombarded with lies that they become unmoored from reality. They become so confused as to what truth is, that Fascism becomes their reality life raft. Those whom have voted Republican in the past, choose to believe a Republican candidate or leader, over the truth from anyone outside of their camp. The truth is jettisoned in favor of tribal solidarity.
Being in mid-childhood during WW2 I remember this well. I was 6 in 1939 when the War broke out in Europe, at hat time I was a Canadian, so it was my uncles who went to fight. (my father had bad eyesight and three children so he was turned down when he tried to enlist. No, Hitler and Mussolini were NOT admired then. I saw the Life magazine pictures of the concentration camps. I saw the movie reels of German citizens trying to deny they knew of the existence of those camps. The Holocaust was real, the Nazis were real. It was not a hoax.
It’s remarkable what perceptions can be had by just hitting the mute button while watching news clips.
Glad that there is a focus on Mussolini too and what was going on in Italy, who has seen the rise of a populist leader again. I find Meloni's involvement in negotiating with African countries to try to stem the immigration to be interesting. Why is she appealing to the African leaders to enforce her racist plans? She clearly thinks she can buy them off. Is this supposed to be a softer fascist result than that of Mussolini who wanted to expand Italy's African colonialist holdings. The same Africans that are now being turned away and mistreated in Italy today. Although with such a low birth rate does Italy think it can maintain its society with just encouraging their own unwilling female population to have more babies without the structural supports for doing that? Doesn't seem so. https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20240129-italy-s-meloni-targets-energy-migration-with-non-predatory-africa-plan
Are these images of the Italian crowd reflective of their ability to remember those moments today of how they felt under Mussolini? How is this part of Italian history being taught in Italy today? My daughter is currently studying the resistance to the Nazis as part of her history studies on Nazis at University in Berlin. So, we have been talking about it a lot. What are acts of resistance, which can be little things as well as bigger things. This resistance is very important because it is something we need to take from the situation given our current danger with Trump, as well as the need to prevent fascist takeover of our country.
Meloni is a terrible, 21st Century version of a Fascist. It is remarkable to note how many Italians find her politics repulisve. But--there remains an audience for this kind of cultural resenment politics in Italy, and backlash all over the world. After all, the US is not immune.
The Great Replacment Theory is very ugly and yet pulsing through a lot of America. Meloni grew up idolizing Mussolini. Trump grew up idolizing himself.
"Meloni grew up idolizing Mussolini. "
That's a sickness, when someone has as their role model, a sadistic, Machiavellian sociopath.
It is incomprehensible to me, a 78 year old woman who has lived a life swaddled in democracy, that I worry now about the future my grandchildren and great-grandchildren may face; that they may someday resemble the faces in those photos. The threat of losing the freedom to vote for responsible leaders, the benefit of a free press, an education open to all points of view, and the rights women fought for and won, is real and imminent. How many historical examples do we need to understand what we may face with the results of this next election?
Chilling image. To quote Sartre "“When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.” The image brings to mind my mother's family, working poor, five brothers serving in the army during World War II. Two of the five were in combat, one a medic, the other a tank commander. The medic suffered from mental illness and depression, most likely what is today called PTSD, until his death. The other drank himself to death and died less than 10 years after the war. The true cost of war is not paid during the conflict but years after. The faces in the image seem to understand.
Hi David, I completely agree with you that "the true cost of war is not paid during the conflict but years after." I believe that war traumatizes everyone, directly and indirectly. More has been studied about the intergenerational transmission of trauma and early childhood researchers show that witnessing or experiencing violence coupled with the feeling of powerlessness is what traumatizes people. We can imagine that the people in the photo are anxious, apprehensive, and feeling powerless as they listen to Mussolini rage and rant. I don't know the specifics of Mussolini's own early childhood experiences but I would imagine that as a child he also felt anxious, apprehensive, and powerless before some dictator in his home, as did Hitler. I mention this because, as we adults empower ourselves regarding the fascist threat we presently face, with enormous help from Ruth, Bandy Lee,, Steve Hassan, and many others we must also recognize that violence in childhood at this very moment is sowing seeds of not only authoritarian leaders but authoritarian followers in the future.
So true.
Those pictures/faces really look like they're from the famous Apple ad, when Apple first came out and the screen was smashed by the woman's hammer.
I am a lifelong liberal Democrat who despises donald trump and is actively working for his defeat in November. Yesterday I watched the entire C-SPAN broadcast of trump's rally in Wildwood NJ just to see what message he decided to bring here to south Jersey.
The camera feed was fascinating. It was fixed on the podium at stage-center, the people standing on the risers behind the podium, and the backs of the 5 or 6 rows in front of the stage. Some amusement park rides were in the deep background (aren't we having fun?). On the stage, there was just one Black face in the shot. The camera moved only once in the entire 2 hours, to show a second African-American face at the edge of the on-stage audience. The camera lingered for a few seconds, then returned to the fixed center view. At that moment, I wondered if the trump campaign might be controlling the camera.
Trump and the other speakers repeatedly referred to the size of the crowd--enormous, the biggest ever, as far as the eye can see, at least 100,000 people (in space with a maximum capacity of 40,000). Trump repeatedly called out the "fake news" media, pointing out into the crowd, as though there was a phalanx of crews out there recording the event. But the broadcast camera *never moved*. It never turned to show the crowd, or any media presence, even when trump demanded it. The actual size of the rally and the extent of the media coverage was left to the TV viewers' imagination. It could have been (and probably was) a lie.
The entire visual experience looked like fascism to me. What astonished me most was how boring, tedious, banal, and ugly it all was, viewed through that relentlessly fixed, narrow-angle lens.