Okay, time to stop messing around. I’ve been putting it off, but it can’t be shirked any longer. I have to make fun of the whole article, all of it, not just selected highlights. I have to be thorough.

…this fascism of the masses, as was practised by Hitler
and Mussolini, has today been replaced by a system of
microfascisms – polymorphous intolerances that are
revealed in more subtle ways. Consequently, although the
majority of the current manifestations of fascism are less
brutal, they are nevertheless more pernicious.

Less brutal (there’s the not killing millions of people by shooting or overworking or gassing them for instance) but more pernicious? Really? More pernicious in what way? They don’t say. They … Read the rest

It was above all the theater, the vulgar “art”, the grand guignol productions of the beer halls and the street. It was the provocation, the excitement, the frisson which Nazism was able to provide, in the brawling, the sweating, the singing, the saluting. Nazism, whether one wore brass knuckles and carried a rubber hose or simply played along vicariously, beating up communists and Jews in one’s mind, was action. Nazism was involvement. Nazism was not a party; Nazism was an event.
Eksteins, M., Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, (Black Swan, London: 1990), 414.

Our office is in an incredible state. Dozens of people pass through every day and at any time

The Deleuzoguattarian deconstruction of the evidence-based hegemonic post-positivist paradigm is being discussed in other places. It makes a nice chain – I got it from Tom P (he emailed me about it) who got it from Ben Goldacre. Alun at Archaeoastronomy got it from me, Martin Rundkvist at Salto Sobrius got it from Alun, PZ got it from Martin, and Orac got it from Martin and PZ and is planning to take it on.

The main author has a profile here.

For several years, he has been a clinical nurse in forensic psychiatry (both in hospitals and in the community) as well as in public health. His research interests focus primarily on the issue of the power

Another excellent article from Fred Halliday.

Amid the unconscionable violence, targeting of civilians, and appeals to unreason and ethnic identification that such modern wars entail, it is all the more necessary to retrieve the example of those who sought to defend core values that crossed boundaries of prejudice and narrow partisanship. I have already honoured one of those in this openDemocracy series of columns: the great French scholar of the Muslim world, Maxime Rodinson. Two more such figures were formative in articulating an internationalist position – one (Isaac Deutscher) within a Marxist framework, the other (Hannah Arendt) within a broadly liberal perspective.

And two very long-standing intellectual heroes and influences of mine.

Soon after the 1967 war, Deutscher gave

So there’s this letter from what the BBC calls ‘Muslim groups’. It’s bizzarre.

Prime Minister, As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens. It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad. To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy.

The government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy – and then what? Tell itself that unless it obeys (obeys whom?), hundreds or thousands of people will … Read the rest