Interesting Times

How did they start?  

 

Emotional susceptibility:  "Today's [citizens] don't want logic anymore, nor reason, nor clever speeches. They want irrationality, they want the miracle." 

 

Hero-worship:  "What convinced people...was his fame more than his achievement. His achievement was multiplied a hundredfold by his fame." 

 

Populism: "You had to win people's hearts, not their poor brains. It wasn't the content of a sentence that determined its effect, but its sound, the attitude with which it was delivered". 

 

Hope:  "[At least] they're pushing forward, something is happening."

 

Self-delusion:  "the hollow barbarism will wear itself away once they're on top." 

 

What kept them going? 

 

Hubris:  "That's a risk, because how do you get rid of the bandits once you have mastered the masses?" 

 

Sloth:  "It is more convenient to wish and dream than to think...In his indolence, Man prefers to take refuge in the idea of ​​a miracle worker." 

 

Fatalism:  "It's pointless to argue against sentiments with rational arguments. You have to wait until it resolves itself." 

 

We go high:  "We would have to use their own methods to combat...these people. But we cannot bring ourselves to do that...That is why we have no effect". 

 

Fear:  "All the so-called politics...has nothing to do with...common sense; it's gangster romanticism".

 

What are the hallmarks?

  

Misinformation:  "Only those affected knew about it...but many millions...suspected nothing, and when they were told, they refused to believe it."

  

Self-preservation:  "Since we live in a time of darkness, we cannot live as if in a time of light. We must adapt." 

 

Kangaroo courts:  "These judges acted earnestly, as if they were seeking the truth, yet they evaded it by a wide margin." 

 

Autocracy:  "They were determined to stage a left-wing coup and then invoke extra-legal powers to suppress it. In this way, they will elegantly and forever replace inconvenient legality with the absolute rule of the party."

 

About 1930s Germany (Lion Feuchtwanger, Die Brüder Lautensack, 1943).  And we know how that turned out.

 

Unless?  "Someone must be there to show...there were also people who, amidst the general stupidity and cowardice, stood up and declared: 'This is all lies and nonsense.' "

 

(but who?)