Scrutable

noggins wrote: Fri Sep 19, 2025 3:06 pm Ooooh. A day off! His sacrifice was not in vain

Have they announced a public holiday?

shpalman wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:29 am https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17DdLYREZa/

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%. Once they win elections, it's already too late.

– Chris Armitage: substack.com/@chrisarmitage1

The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 put down a marker. So far, we've resisted fascism here. Oligarchy pandering to people's worst nature is more of an issue so far.

shpalman wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:29 am https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17DdLYREZa/

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%. Once they win elections, it's already too late.

– Chris Armitage: substack.com/@chrisarmitage1

Problem with his analysis is the posthoc way it excludes examples where people with fascist inclinations started to win elections but then got booted out democratically. E.g. Bolsonaro + Trump - both kicked out in elections.

Tessa K wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:56 am ...
The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 put down a marker. So far, we've resisted fascism here. Oligarchy pandering to people's worst nature is more of an issue so far.

The battle of Cable Street has been somewhat mythologised, and is now rather misleadingly viewed as some sort of pivotal moment in the fortunes of the British Union of Fascists. If there was a pivotal moment then, in reality, it came about 2 years earlier when, following Mosley's deployment of the "Fascist Defence Force" to beat up protestors at his Olympia rally, Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail withdrew its support for the party. Exactly how much you can attribute the subsequent decline in the BUF's membership to the DM's change of heart, and how much to general revulsion at Mosley's tactics is debatable but, either way, the effect was a dramatic collapse (some estimates suggest that membership declined from about 50,000 down to 5,000).

Membership did slowly recover after that point, but there is no evidence that Cable Street did anything to dent that recovery. Indeed some estimates suggest that it resulted in about 2,000 new recruits coming to the party. This is really not that surprising. The BUF always attracted a faction that rather enjoyed the idea of street violence, so it's not hard to see why a bit of actual street violence would be a fillip to them.

I suppose the other candidate for a pivotal moment would be the internment of BUF leaders at the outbreak of war, but it's difficult to intern people without trial in peace time, so that event might have limited relevance to our current situation.

There is a scholarly analysis of patterns here, although you need to have some kind of institutional access to JSTOR to read it.

shpalman wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:29 am https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17DdLYREZa/

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%. Once they win elections, it's already too late.

– Chris Armitage: substack.com/@chrisarmitage1

I guess he missed 1945 out.

dyqik wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 12:39 pm

shpalman wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:29 am https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17DdLYREZa/

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%. Once they win elections, it's already too late.

– Chris Armitage: substack.com/@chrisarmitage1

I guess he missed 1945 out.

What he actually says, a few lines into the article, is

Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever.

The second world war ended up costing tens of millions of lives to stop the fascism which had been allowed to take control.

bob sterman wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 9:09 am Problem with his analysis is the posthoc way it excludes examples where people with fascist inclinations started to win elections but then got booted out democratically. E.g. Bolsonaro + Trump - both kicked out in elections.

I agree. The thesis that fascists are never removed democratically sounds a bit circular to me, because successful suppression of democracy is something we tend to see as a necessary element of fascism. If authoritarian governments do get removed democratically, we tend to describe them as proto-fascist, or as attempts at fascism, rather than the full Mussolini. The author presumably doesn't think that Trump 1.0 was a fascist government (otherwise it would be a counter-example to the thesis). But, if the January 6 insurrection had succeeded, I don't think they, or anyone else would hesitate to say that 2016 was the year the fascists took over the US.

Martin Y wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:00 am

noggins wrote: Fri Sep 19, 2025 3:06 pm Ooooh. A day off! His sacrifice was not in vain

You can wish everyone Happy George Floyd day, as he and Kirk share a birthday.

Thats good to know, thanks