The gradual rise of fascism
I came across this excerpt from ‘They thought they were free’ by Milton Mayer. It’s very analogous to the situation I see in a lot of places today, especially the hyper-partisan United States of America. And yes, I’m referring to Trump and his followers, the neo-fascists or what have you.
Read it. The link in the first paragraph takes you to a longer exerpt, but this is telling enough.
“Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
“But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”
I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.
2015 Reading Challenge, some more short review blurbs for a few books
Time for another one of these catch-up posts to see where I am with the 2015 Reading Challenge. I’m making progress and I’m a bit behind page-wise, but on point in terms of number of books.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
The story continues about The Boy Who Lived and things are getting darker. Already at the beginning when Harry defends himself and Dudders against dementors and the subsequent trial, things are looking grim and it doesn’t exactly get better after Dolores Umbridge turns up at Hogwarts. So far she’s been the character I’ve disliked the most. Goddamn sadist. It’s impressive how Rowling makes you despise a character so deeply. It was exciting to see more of the wizarding world and more of the more experienced wizards and witches of the Order of the Phoenix
Finished it on May 31st
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A banned book
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
This book starts out as a criticism against consumerism with Patrick Bateman ringing off brand names left and right and talking about status. It’s always important to eat at the right restaurant and to even have the right seats in the right restaurant. It’s all surface and skin-deep. Then as the novel goes on more and more of Patrick’s psychopathic tendencies shine through. At the end he’s gone off the deep end and it’s really interesting to see how Bret Easton Ellis writes it.
Finished it on June 13th
Grade: 4 out of 5
Category: A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
Now we’re talking. In this one, everything is even darker than the last one. Seeing a pattern here. Seriously though, things get really grim in this one. What I loved the most about it was the trips into the memories involving Voldemort and his family. It made me wish for more books in the Potterverse where we get the perspectives of other characters. I love Harry Potter and all his friends, but I wouldn’t exactly hate it if there were more stories for other characters. Harry actually gets a bit tiresome in this book, what with all his nagging about Malfoy. In the end I think I like this book the most because we get to see the most of my favorite Harry Potter character, Dumbledore.
Finished it on June 29th
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book you own but have never read
Tape, by Steven Camden
The Swedish title of this book is “Mixtape” which is a bit more fitting. It’s a split narrative. One of them is about Ryan, a kid in England whose father has moved in with a new woman and her son after Ryan’s mother passed away. That takes place 20 years ago. The other storyline is about Ameliah, a girl who lives with her grandmother after her parents passed away. Her story is set today. She’s a bit behind the times compared to her friends and she likes sitting in the room where her parents’ stuff is in boxes. She finds mixtapes in the boxes and starts listening to them. On some of them there’s a boy talking. On the other end, 20 years ago, Ryan is recording audio diaries… It’s a bit slow in places, but it has good emotional payoffs spaced out throughout the story.
Finished it on June 30th
Grade: 4 out of 5
Category: A book set in high school
The Big Book About Moomin, by Tove Jansson
My initials are TJ, so it was either this book or Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography. I started out reading Jefferson, and while it was interesting to read all that old English about how the US was started, it was pretty boring reading about all the meetings and who wrote which draft of whatever document. So I went and found this book at the library. It’s kind of a best-of book, consisting of a mix of different types of stories. A few comics, a few prose, a few picture book, a few songs/poems. My childhood never had much of any Moomin in it. It was more H.C. Andersen, Donald Duck and Transformers. Having no nostalgic bond to the Moomin family meant that I went into this completely blank and I have to say that it was quite underwhelming. A big shrug.
Finished it on June 30th
Grade: 2 out of 5
Category: A book written by an author with your same initials
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Quite possibly the funniest book I’ve read all year long and not because the subject is funny. It’s just the way the main character Mark Watney is written that makes it hilarious at times. It’s also a bit depressing and very nerdy, but I still laughed out loud many times when I listened to this book. The narrator is R.C. Bray and he does a phenomenal job. He’s puts in just the right amount of sarcasm in his voice. I saw the trailer for the movie The Martian a while ago and just had to get the book into my challenge, because I want to read the book before I watch the movie. It’ll be interesting to see how the moviemakers adapt some parts of the book, but judging by the trailer it looks like they’re on the right track. The book has a lot of technobabble, but I enjoyed that, so if you know you have a bit of a nerdy side, I really recommend this book for you.
Finished it on July 3rd
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book that was originally written in a different language
Wool, by Hugh Howey
I love the Fallout games and this is probably the closest I’ve ever come to reading Fallout from a vault perspective. It apparently started out as the first novella out of five being published by Hugh Howey on his own and then it got really popular, so Howey kept writing. Then the first five novellas were published in an omnibus edition and that’s what I read. There’s a continuation of the story and I will definitely be reading that when I’m done with this challenge. It’s pretty dark and depressing, because Howey is good at letting you get to know the characters. Then when quite a bit of bad stuff happens to the various characters, you feel very bad for them. Not always, of course, but a lot of the time.
Finished it on July 18th
Grade: 4 out of 5
Category: A book with a one-word title
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
I got this book almost exactly a year ago and I’ve really wanted to read it ever since then. It’s one of the books that I haven’t even considered removing from the list at any time when I’ve wanted to switch up books in the list. I’ve stayed away from spoilers and I haven’t watched the movie yet. This is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read in terms of style and narrative. Gillian Flynn plays a lot with the two different narrators of the books and uses different style tools to her advantage. It had me at the edge of my seat the whole way through and I know that’s a cliché, but it really is true about this book. There are plenty of twists and you change your opinion about the two main characters many times. An excellent book that you really should read.
Finished it on July 18th
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book that became a movie
That means that I have 29 books cleared. 23 to go. 9851 pages read, 9351 pages left. That means I’ll need to read about 1700 pages per month after July. The big challenge is still paper books, but I’ll make it. I have all of the good books I really want to read left. Looking forward to my remaining books.
2015 Reading Challenge, short review blurbs for a bunch of books
Alright, let’s see here. Clearly I’ve fallen behind on writing reviews for the reading challenge. Hardly a surprise, right? That means it’s time for a catch-up post.
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
Science fiction romp where a soldier goes back and forth between Earth and fighting placements against some alien enemy. He’s in stasis on every trip, so centuries pass between every visit to Earth, highlighting the way society changes for every visit. Overpopulation leads to legislated homosexuality, etc. It was okay, but boring here and there. The ending was shrugworthy. Might have been because the narrator of the audiobook was boring.
Finished it on February 13th
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A book set in the future
Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
This is a comic book where the two main characters discover, on their own, that they can freeze time by having an orgasm. Then they meet and make sweet love and get the idea to rob banks with the help of this strange ability. It’s funny, it’s thoughtful and the art is beautiful. At some point I’m going to read the parts that follow volume 1.
Finished it on February 15th
Grade: 4 out of 5
Category: A graphic novel
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
The first Harry Potter book. Doesn’t really need an introduction. I had stayed away from these books for some reason. I really loved this first one, the great adventure of it all. So much so that I found a way to add books number two and three to my list. I listened to it as an audiobook and it was narrated by Stephen Fry who did a fantastic job.
Finished it on March 1st
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book with magic
Five on Finniston Farm, by Enid Blyton
I used to read a whole bunch of Famous Five books when I was a kid. I found three at my local library and picked this one to read, but I don’t think it would have mattered which one I read, because these follow a set intrigue. The four kids are almost disgustingly proper and friendly. Everyone is friendly and hearty, except for the obvious bad guys and they are obnoxious to the extreme. It has some friendly parts, some exciting parts, the dog barks a bit, there’s a big setback and then they squeeze through a win in the end. Same thing in every book.
Finished it on March 3rd
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A book from your childhood
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell
I love good bad movies. The Room is the best of the bunch. It’s so bad that it defies belief, but somewhere it twists around so that it becomes entertainingly bad. It was made by the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau. Greg Sestero is the guy who plays the best friend in the movie. This book is part Greg’s tale about how he got to know Tommy in acting class and part how the movie shoot went down. It’s mindboggling. I challenge you to find a stranger guy than Tommy Wiseau. Watch the movie and then read the book. Or listen to it as an audiobook because Greg himself narrates it and his Tommy impression is spot on!
Finished it on March 9th
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A memoir
Food: A Love Story, by Jim Gaffigan
Jim Gaffigan is a stand-up comedian who talks a lot about food. This book has a lot of stuff he already talks about in his various comedy specials, but there’s also new stuff and I listened to him narrating his own audiobook, which turned it up a notch. He knows exactly how to read his own act, when to pitch his voice a certain way and whatnot. Had some slow patches, but also some damn funny stuff. I especially liked the part where he goes through the geography of the US and what food specialties you can find in different parts of the country.
Finished it on March 11th
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A funny book
The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter
At first I was a bit apprehensive about reading a play manuscript. It’s just not the same thing as watching a play or reading a book. You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to visualize what’s happening between the lines, how long the pauses are, what the characters are doing physically, the way they’re saying things, and so on. But I really liked The Birthday Party. It’s entertaining and sinister and the characters all have their own thing going on.
Finished it on March 12th
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A play
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
This was a looooong book. If at least a third of it was edited out it would have been a lot better. It had a lot of slow, cumbersome parts that felt redundant. Which is a shame, because the parts that felt fresh were very good and enlightening. It’s about how our brains work in different ways, how they take shortcuts and how we can sidestep the laziness of our brains. Listened to it as an audiobook.
Finished it on March 27th
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A book with antonyms in the title
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling
Second one of the Harry Potter books and so far it’s the only one that hasn’t been a slam dunk 5 out of 5 for me. It’s still very good, but it felt like it took way too long for the main plot to get going. The Harry Potter books should have a bunch of things going on, sure, but the main plot still needs to be clear and it just wasn’t in this one. It felt tacked on and that dragged the book down. Stephen Fry was fantastic as a narrator, just like for the first one.
Finished it on March 31st
Grade: 4 out of 5
Category: A book by a female author
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
Now we’re talking. This book really had me from the first moment on to the very end and I was crying a lot at the end of it. This was exciting from beginning to end. Not much more to say, really. Solid adventure with, again, excellent narration by Stephen Fry. I kind of lost it whenever Harry’s family was the center of the story. It was after I read this book that I had to make room for the rest of the seven Harry Potter books in my challenge list plan.
Finished it on April 6th
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book that made you cry
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
This was a wonderful read. A true classic. I’ve watched the Disney animated version before and I know how this one goes, but I’ve never really read the original until now. Dickens’ language is short but very vivid. It hits all the right notes and paints a very clear picture. The book I read also had wonderful illustrations that enhanced the writing. I think everyone should read this, but perhaps not in April, because it felt pretty strange to be reading about Christmas in the middle of spring.
Finished it on April 12th
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A book set during Christmas
Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
This book was a real surprise. I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator Tim Gerard Reynolds is Irish, which he uses to great effect. He switches between his Irish accent and a more posh British one depending on what character is talking. The Irish makes the lower-class people sound a lot more gritty to me. Red Rising is about Darrow, a mine worker (a Red) on the planet Mars who loses everything and becomes a sleeper aristocrat (a Gold) and the goal is for the Golds to have their power usurped and for all the other colors to be part of a new, interstellar democracy. It’s raw, it’s violent, it just screams bloody, sinister revenge on every page and it’s damn satisfying. The only reason it’s not 5 out of 5 is because the military academy parts read like it’s ancient Rome and that just wasn’t my cup of tea. But it’s still a damn good book. After reading it I made room for the sequel Golden Son on my list.
Finished it on April 12th
Grade: 4 out of 5
Category: A book written by someone under 30
Samlade tankar för natten: 2010 – 2013, by Emil Jensen
Emil Jensen is a Swedish jack-of-all-trades artist and about a month ago I got concert tickets as a birthday gift from my girlfriend. They were for this guy called Emil Jensen. I’d listened to a few songs of his before, but didn’t know too much about him. The show was fantastic and wasn’t just music. He also does some spoken word and poetry and he’s right up my alley with his political leanings. After the show I bought his book, but he was out, so I gave him money and wrote down how he should sign it for me and my girlfriend. A few weeks later I got it and read it. It’s pretty short and consists of everyday thoughts about everyday life, although he puts a funny spin on most of it.
Finished it on May 3rd
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A book with a number in the title
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling
Again a slam dunk by J.K. Rowling. Stephen Fry is again excellent and the adventure turns pretty grim in the fourth book. I was getting really angry at Cornelius Fudge for being so fucking thick-headed about Voldemort’s return. Goddamn idiot. One thing that became very apparent in this book, that is a lot longer than the first three books, is just how much gets cut from the movies. My girlfriend is a total Harry Potter nut, so we’ve gone through the movies a few times each and now that I’m actually reading the books, it’s astounding to me how much is left out or changed. The movies are still good, but the books are just so much more rich. Shocker, right?
Finished it on May 3rd
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book with more than 500 pages
The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption, by Clay A. Johnson
This book has the same issue that Thinking, Fast and Slow does. It just goes on for too long about some things. The last third of the book could also be cut, because it’s only about the American political landscape back in 2011. But before that, the book is very interesting. Or rather, the part that explains how our information processing works. The part that suggests an “information diet” for you doesn’t really do anything for me. Obvious stuff. But it was a quick read and funny at times. The first proper ebook I finished for this challenge. The other was Sex Criminals, but since that was mostly artwork, it’s not the same thing.
Finished it on May 4th
Grade: 3 out of 5
Category: A non-fiction book
Golden Son, by Pierce Brown
The sequel to Red Rising and this book takes it to another level. The boring Roman stuff is gone and now there’s some proper sci-fi going on with space ships and whatnot. Arms get cut off, people die in George R.R. Martin-like fashion and Darrow is still an interesting protagonist. If there is something I could possibly complain about, it’s that Darrow is just too perfect for most of the time, so much so that it almost gets boring. But the ending was a big kick in the pants and I can’t wait for the third book in the trilogy that will be released next year. Again the narrator was excellent.
Finished it on May 10th
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book with a color in the title
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
A punch in the gut. That’s the best way to describe this book. Holy hell, it’s depressing. It’s pure misery on pretty much every page and Cormac McCarthy’s short and unique narrative style is so very fitting for this story. I’ve always loved post-apocalyptic stories and settings and I love the Fallout games and a bunch of movies, but this one took it to a new level. I’ve avoided the movie version of The Road because I wanted to read the book first and it’s been a long time since I read a book that gave me such a vivid image. Close to a perfect novel.
Finished it on May 17th
Grade: 5 out of 5
Category: A book that scares you
How about some numbers? According to my spiffy spreadsheet for this challenge I’ve gone through roughly 6500 pages and I have about 10900 pages left to read this year. I’m on pace to clear 50% of the pages before June is out, so still on pace. I need to read about 33 pages per day the rest of the year but that doesn’t include the audiobooks, but I will get through the rest of the audiobooks no problem. The average grade for my books so far is 3.67, but considering that I’ve gone through most of the books I wasn’t exactly thrilled about reading early on, I expect that average to go up before this challenge is over. I started out at a very low pace in January and February and since then I’ve picked it up, but I still have another gear or two with the paper books. It’s going to be very interesting to compare the final list with the one I wrote on this blog at the start. A lot of books have been switched out for different reasons.
2015 Reading Challenge, first quarter done
It’s been three months and I’m still going strong. I’m 14 books in and I’ll probably finish number 15 tonight when I finally get done with A Christmas Carol. I really haven’t had the motivation to read that one, because come on, it’s a book about Christmas and we’re in the middle of spring. But I want to get it done while I have borrowed it from the library, so I’ll just have to get through it. It’s the same with Northanger Abbey and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Not exactly motivated to read them, because they were books outside of my usual reading preference that I added just because they fit a few categories. I’ve been putting it off week after week, but I should just get it done and read them.
Here’s some stat-wanking, courtesy of my overly ambitious excel chart for this challenge. 🙂
One problem is that I’ve read a bunch of shorter books, averaging about 260 pages. That means that I’m ahead in the number of books but behind in the number of pages. Apparently I have about 13700 pages left to read in nine months. About 8700 of those will be ordinary paper books. About 4100 will be in audio books, unless I make more switches. Then there’s about 900 left in ebook format. I just messed around a bit more and apparently I’ve read 23% of the total pages, so there’s 77% left.
Speaking of switches. My current list looks a lot different from the one I originally posted on this blog. A few of the changes have been to get a few books I wasn’t really excited about off the list, replacing them with more exciting books I’ve discovered. That’s probably the most annoying thing with this whole challenge and books in general. I constantly find more books I’m excited about. Oh well… The biggest change, though, has been that I happened to discover the Harry Potter books. I’ve listened to three of them so far and they’re excellently narrated by Stephen Fry. A pure joy to experience the story of the young wizard.
Also, speaking of audio books. According to my ridiculous excel sheet, I’ve “read” 2783 pages in audiobooks so far, while I’m only at 974 in paper books and 337 in ebooks. I need to pick up the pace with the paper books. But it’s also pretty obvious that I probably wouldn’t make this challenge without the audiobooks.
Time to get done with A Christmas Carol. I’m also 10 reviews behind. Need to get on that. 🙂 Here’s a list of the books I need to write about:
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
Sex Criminals #1, by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
Five on Finniston Farm, by Enid Blyton
The Disaster Artist, by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell
Food: A Love Story, by Jim Gaffigan
The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
Read on!
Dakkster's Brain Droppings 