Did you know that Barack Obama is leading a crypto-messianic, quasi-fascist movement?
Moreover, this kind of reaction—an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere—is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.
People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors—yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.
Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?
There are rising murmurs (and screams) that Obama is the spearhead to a fascist movement, led largely by overexcited college students and newly rejuvenated voters that want to help him embark on his grand crusade of…well, none of the fascism-watchers are quite sure what elements of the fascist program Obama seeks to institute. While he lacks any political element of fascism in his platform, he makes up for it in some people liking him a lot, which is like 60% of fascism anyway.
This, incidentally, is what happens when a movement begins its official rewriting of history, but one of its prime historians is a complete fucking idiot.