Friendly Fascism Quotes

“We, like the natural world, have become mere commodities in the hands of corporations to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Elected officials are manufactured personalities and celebrities. We vote based on how we are made to feel about corporate political puppets. The puppets, Democrat and Republican, engage in hollow acts of political theater keep the fiction of the democratic state alive. There is, however, no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are permitted virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Mass”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“We are only permitted to take emotional stands on issues that do not affect corporate power.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“Elected officials are manufactured personalities and celebrities.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“They enjoyed the passive acquiescence—and at times the direct support—of the police, the army, and the church.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“In The Reason for Democracy, published after his death in 1976, Kalman Silvert of New York University provided another pungent description of false patriots: “People who wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim the sanctity of the nation are usually racists, contemptuous of the poor and dedicated to keeping the community of ‘ins’ small and pure of blood, spirit and mind.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“Above all, the fascists “wanted in.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“Meanwhile Adolf Hitler, the only right-wing nationalist with a mass following, was publicly promising full employment and prosperity.”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

“Some know full well what Bernard Shaw had in mind when he wrote that “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” Rather”
― Bertram M. Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America