“One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately.” - Donald Trump, Erie Pennsylvania, Sept. 29, 2024.
Fascism happens in stages: first of all you spread lies, lies that many people would like to believe, lies about the particular low status group that you know many fear and hate. It used to be about “the Jews”, but they are a high status group now, so the hatred has moved on to other groups, refugees, immigrants, Haitians…. If you have media that will support the spread of lies, such as: Fox News, One America, Breitbart, etc., then you can normalize them, which in turn, solidifies a very strong connection between fascist provocateurs, like Trump, Carlson, and Jones, and their mass audience, amplifying their ability to produce and sustain mass rage and resentment.
You can begin the process of normalizing violence through the spreading of malicious lies, while making a point of both glorifying guns and violence; which then incites an increase in violent crimes and mass murders; and this trend works wonders to increase the levels of fear and polarization. You can then innocently point to “lone wolves” the mentally ill, and “bad guys with guns” and, of course, “illegal immigrants” for all the mayhem you were encouraging yourself.
But there still is another stage after this where the destruction of the moral system undergoes a tipping point. Let’s call this: the point of “breaking glass”. In the United States, January 6, 2021 was an attempt to “break the glass” which didn’t quite succeed in reaching that tipping point. So we need to go back in time a little further to see the prime example of this. We can see it in the historical occurrence of “Kristallnacht” - the night of broken glass.
On the night of November 9, 1938, all over Germany, Jewish businesses and places of worship were ransacked and destroyed by people from Nazi organizations dressed in civilian clothes. Buildings were destroyed with sledgehammers and Synagogues were burned to the ground. All the while this was happening Nazi authorities stood by and did nothing. The name “Kristallnacht” is a spin on the fact that the streets were filled with the shards of glass from countless windows of Jewish establishments. This was Hitler’s way of getting the word out in 1938, and it led directly to the concentration camps and the Holocaust.
If ever there was a single answer to fascism - it would be “common morality”. Fascists are insecure impatient guys who want power for nefarious ends. They know that common morality is a big impediment to getting their way. And how do you jettison something so basic as common morality? The answer is that you do it in stages, as can be seen from historical examples.
First get people used to politicians lying. Next create a fake emergency like a ‘stolen election’ so you have an excuse to “break the glass”. Breaking the glass is a tipping point in the evolution of a fascist movement. By breaking the glass you now normalize the destruction of morality, because people standing in the way of wrongdoing are all that stands in the way of instituting fascism. People don’t normally put up with arson, vandalism, bullying, thuggery, and other forms of public violence, but what if the government is behind it, as the Nazi’s were in 1938? Because once the government is all in on the violence there are no other choices, and the net of authoritarianism closes in on everyone.
The fascist method is that in an emergency you break the glass. This is a very powerful message and it leads to “Final Solutions”. Just “one rough hour.” - but when you break the glass and destroy the moral order there is, then, no going back. You will end up as the Nazis did, and destroy your own civilization in a total war.
