LIBERAL VITAL CENTER AMHERST COMMON LANGUAGE GUIDE STOOGEDOM

Quotation, and some old posts and excerpts:

Intellectual, spiritual, and artistic initiative is as dangerous to totalitarianism as the gangster initiative of the mob, and both are more dangerous than mere political opposition. The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. Arendt, 1976, P 413

Following Arendt, there was and is even a hierarchy among stooges; stooges of stooges, so to speak.

Comment 14:
"The main difference between the Nazis and the Tea Party is the Tea Party doesn’t advocate intimidation or violence. That’s the difference. If they did they would resemble the Nazis (or labor movements) a bit more."

I would say that this is the kind of view which a so-called 'party sympathizer', or lower level party member, would naturally, and even rather naively, take; whereas the actual views or political goals of the leadership of a proto totalitarian party (left, liberal, or conservative), if it has aspirations to ultimate power of a powerful state, are quite other than those promulgated to or from sympathizers. Low level grass roots governance is not what this movement will be about, once securely in power. 

The 'buffering' process among party organization levels works in both directions, as Arendt describes.

Analogies, as well as differences, can be drawn, to the account in Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianism, chapter The Totalitarian Movement, subchapter ii. Totalitarian Organization. 

This sort of fills in the blank, left by comment 14, on DK's current post. 

Wish that weren't the way things have been shaping up......

....Coincidentally, I looked again, tonight, at the passage in Arendt, Origins, The Movement, the section beginning at citation to Alexandre Koyre, 'the secret society in broad daylight', to the end of the chapter.  Great stuff, Arendt.

See also, Koyre, on which Arendt relied, "The Political Function of the Modern Lie",

https://nasepblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/koyre-the-political-function-of-the-modern-lie-1945.pdf

Thursday, January 20, 2011

RE FACEBOOK ARENDT ORIGINS ETC

There are I am sure as many views of the significance of this development as there are distinct thinkers around the glob.

I tend to see it, down the road a little way, perhaps as a powerful tool to be coopted, or transformed; starts out what appears to be private, Mark Zuckerberg, individualistic, enter preener, laissez faire, rail to rail, Maverick Executive, Casanova hand, enterprise (terms search these); then may turn, some day soon, in the direction of 1984, BIG BROTHER, pops out, back to the future.  Perhaps that is why certain 'illiberal' regimes have taken a ravenous interest in it.  One cannot help but think of some implications, from the old Soviet regime especially, described in Arendt's Origins and elsewhere, or for newer ones of similar scope.

Volunteer Facebook Guppies are legion. What are their views and who are their friends, enemies, or merely acquaintances, and why might that some day seem to matter, not just for 'marketing', etc.; facebook tells most all of it, and more. 

At least my blog site is mostly 'mine', with limited references to known others.