Colin wrote:
On 2/11/07, Arash <arash at riseup.net> wrote:
> Here you have to fool people into it by fear and
> so on. We need all kinds of complicated mechanisms of propaganda and
> coercion which in a well-run, more fascistic society are quite
> unnecessary. You just give orders. That's one of the reasons fascism is so
> efficient.
You've compared Japan and the US. But what about Europe? On the continent, people have been willing to sacrifice consumptive power (=higher taxes) largely on the basis of appeals to reason, ie, neither by fear nor coercion. One can mock public genuflection to "French intellectuals" but intellectual constructs such as "socialism" still carry significant weight here, albeit less so than in previous decades.