So to world build is hard, and sometimes it requires a whole lot of insight in what it is you’re trying to do. While fantasy settings are easier because you can basically pour old wine on new bottles – that is kinda boring.
So I spent WAY too long investigating fascism, and while we can’t ignore the world of old, I find current day faschism much more “fasinating”, or relevant.
In Nocturnes I have set up a world that slowly slides into totalitarism, and this has caused me to look at way too many documentaries of something like the early days of Hitlers regime, but also other leaders like Mussolini, Franco, Chauchesco, Stalin, Pol Pot – and so forth.
I have the same theory about faschism as I do about domestic abuse, and in some way I think I’d call it national abuse, because in all honesty I see this as a population being slowly groomed into ignorance. So if you met a man, and the first thing he did was to hit you and call you a slut, you’d leave right away and repport it to the police. But if he did so after 2 years of slowly escalating abuse, you probably would not. Because by then you’d be groomed into thinking things like ‘i can’t manage without him’, or ‘it was my own fault’ – and often it’s also because he made her believe that she for instance can’t take the kids with her, or she would lose everything if she leaves.
That is why I say ‘national abuse’ because that is basically what those dictators told the people, and the people believed it. They were told that they would crumble without, that the countrys infrastructure would collaps, that they would go back to starving, that someone would take everything they had. And people were afraid of losing everything they had, and honestly can you say you wouldn’t be? No one on this earth want to see their children starve, or get sick and there is no medicine because you have no money. It’s that kind of crisis-rethoric they used – and the people did like the battered woman above, they went along, because it is safest.
untill it is not – but that is for another day.
Now I meant it when I said I wasn’t super interested in the fascism of old, because even if it’s useful in some way, because the slide to madness is well documented. Then I find current fascism much more scary, and I had to wonder how it can even happen.
You don’t think we have fascism here in the western world? well we do, at least I say we do.
Faschism is an ideology where you find a very strong us and them narrative, this is the backbone of elevating your own standpoint as righteous, or pure. And you can look at the Nationalist Religious movement in the US, they do exactly that.
They rewrite history, religious texts and current events – to fit their needs, and support their narrative.
Now another sign of faschism is that you “punish” those who does not fit in, or oppose your ideology. And if you think that is a thing of the past, you would be wrong. Like look at the industry that torment young people who are rebellious or gay, and the parents send them there like sacrificial lambs. I don’t think these parents are evil, I think they are ignorant and afraid, they fear that their child will have a terrible life unless they change their ways, or that they as a family will be seen upon as ‘poor christians’ or just be expelled from the collective.
And that is it, innit? they made those parents believe that gay is wrong, that they can fix their kid with sending them off for some “tough love”. I don’t doubt they love their children – but it’s that fear tactic of the narrative. So imagine you think that gay people go to hell, deviant bad people… And suddenly you find one of your children are one of THEM – why is that? didn’t you pray enough? is it a test from God? Did you spare the rod and spoil the child? Because surely something like that doesn’t happen to people like us, we are the chosen… And then you reach out for help – what happens? well you’re told that it”s not you, it’s the kid that is rotten because whatever. And you are told that your group supports you and want to help you.. You invested everything in this, and you truly believe they want to help you, and help your kid – all is well. right?
No.
And the others in your group say “we pray for you” – But they are secretly judging you, and you know it, they don’t think something like ‘that’ could happen to them, because surely you did something wrong to harbor a snake at your bossom.
Another tactics is to create the fear – you need a reason to be afraid of the gays, the heretics, the lefties – whatever.. but to fear it, you need it to make an impact on your life. Let’s return to ww2 for a moment;
Now Germany was still hurting from ww1, and so it was easy to tell the general unhappy population that ‘someone else stole what was rightfully theirs’, and because they didn’t have anything, they bought into that narrative. So in other words, if you have no oranges, and Jim has five – and your teacher tells you that two of Jim’s oranges should be yours. You go to Jim and ask for two oranges, and he gives them to you because he can see you have none. And then the next day you and your friend go to the teacher and say ‘how come jim have 8 oranges and we have none’, and the teacher say ‘those oranges doesn’t belong to him, you should take them back’ – and so you do, you and your friend go there and leave Jim with one orange. The next day the teacher approaches you and asks if you aren’t tired of Jim having all the oranges, and you of course agree, and the teacher tells you that Jim is a theif, and he should be punished. But you aren’t so sure, and so the teacher addresses the class and tells them that Jim is a theif and he took all the oranges.
There will be those who take the oranges, and those who just stand by – and over time they just ignore Jim, and they ignore the pupils who take the oranges. And when you one day feel sorry for Jim, another pupil stops you from giving him half your orange, and tells you that ‘jim has glasses, we don’t share with the handicapped’ – you look around and see all those to took Jim’s oranges staring at you – and you say ‘oh yeah, I know that’ and do not give Jim anything in fear of ending up like Jim.
With that I mean that creating a image of ‘the enemy’ is actually not hard, I used the oranges as a metaphor for shops and homes of the Jewish population, but technically the same thing happend to many other groups of people, like the chinese in the US. Because it might have started as people going without and asking those who had plenty, and those people gave them what they could spare – but then people were told what they others had, were their right to own – and they believed it, because they wanted to. And in all honesty it’s like toddlers, you know I want all the candy, I take all the candy, I don’t care if Judy is crying because I want the candy.
And the totalitarian sentiments are seen as factual, like Jim stole the oranges – we don’t know that to be true, no one ever asked Jim as they are not interested in the truth.
One thing I was shocked to learn when I did research for this, was that these Nationalist Religious movements, have this idea that ‘straight’ is the natural order of humans, and a straight couple is therefore the habitual state of the human condition, and for unknown reason straight people don’t think about sex outside procreating or something.
But gay people, well they can’t controll their deviant urges, and everything gay is about sex.
Do you know who else were discriminated for being animalistic, unable to control their urges? people with Downs. And their history is long and dark – like state ordinated sterilisation, lobotomies and imprisonment.
Would those religious nutters do this to gay people if they could? Absolutely, there is no doubt in my mind that they could work themselves into a narrative where that made sense. But as society is now, they can’t – because luckily there are still more sane people than there are religious zealots.
But something like Eugenics is the belief that the size and shape of your skull (and body) determines your personality, and while most people would think this crude and unethical now – we are still talking about the ‘crime gene’ or the ‘gay gene’ – or whatever ‘gene’, which is basically the exactly same thing. That your genes determines your personality, and opens up for “treatment” or “punishment” without any other reason than your genes, not your actions; in other words you’d be a potential X.
And really it’s alive and kicking with the belief in negative social inheritance, that ppl who are born from people with no or low education will repeat that pattern. That is a disgusting inhumane opinion if you ask me, but it’s very much a part of modern social understanding.
One of the key factors in violence, is that the agressor no longer sees the one they are hurting as a person, an individual – but a thing, an object, or ambassador for something they hate.
You can see that in the Millgram Experiment, and the Stanford Prison Experiment; how fast you dehumanize those who you just days ago would have classes with – or how far you’d go if an authority told you it was okay.
And to support that experiment (for my arguments sake) The Stanford Prison Experiment.
What these two experiments tells us, is that humans are conditioned fast, we adapt and accept the roles we are given, when those roles are given by an authority. And while these were experiments, I think it shows pretty well that we are so much easier to sway than we think.
Alright this post is too long and my head hurts.
DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD 
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