Fascism

It was frightening even then, but instead it excited you and you voted for it.

Yet this is pure, unadulterated fascist communication. It excites because it pushes the same primitive buttons which drove fascists to power in Europe in the 1930s.

Oddly, it was those who think themselves liberal who were most excited by it. Maybe they are not so liberal as they think. Or maybe they just need a better education.

When I heard this back then, all I could think of was brown-shirts, black-shirts, dictators and a murderous mob agitating for change in the form of destruction from which the new nation would rise like a twisted phoenix.

The only buttons it pushed for me were the fearsome buttons from 1930s footage. I found it frightening and still do.

Dictators rise to power on the back of stupidity and cupidity. That can happen in a general election too.