Mastodon Feed
Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
dyckron@mstdn.ca ("Ron Dyck") wrote:
"Like more extreme forms of religious fanaticism, the discourse of political populism is rife with incendiary appeal. It is a language of action and empowerment, and it tends to oppose secular liberalism, which it views as weak and corrosive.
One does not need to dig very deep to find historical examples. In The Doctrine of Fascism, Mussolini states: 'The right to national independence [arises] from an active, self-conscious, political will expressing itself in action and ready to prove its rights.'
Similar passages can be found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf: 'He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.'
Eighty years from the end of World War II, we know what such invocations look like when they are followed to their natural conclusions."
100 years on, T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men is a poem for our populist moment https://theconversation.com/100-years-on-t-s-eliots-the-hollow-men-is-a-poem-for-our-populist-moment-269487