The UK slipped into fascism pretty quickly, and without a long term charismatic leader, even. It was clearly just the will of the tories as opposed to something they happened upon.

[–] Syldon@feddit.uk 6 points 2 years ago (10 children)

The famous page 48 of the Tory manifesto said they wanted to do this. People were jumping up and down at the 2019 election about this. No one believed they would go this far. Even when Johnson was passing laws similar to that Hitler grabbed before he went for his absolute power grab, people would deny it was happening. Laws that supressed freedoms that are a defence against fascism have been eroded for years now. Frogs on a slow boil, people think that no one would want to remove our freedoms, and yet here we are.

[–] peter@feddit.uk 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter"

They Thought They Were Free - Milton Mayer

[–] Syldon@feddit.uk 3 points 2 years ago

Frogs in a boiling pot. So long as a government moves slowly they can do almost anything. The problem the Tories had in the UK was they got greedy. Their greed was blatantly obvious and more so was felt by the many. It scares me that they could come back having learned the lesson from this.

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