Not for lack of trying: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(...

But like everything else Maduro did, it was a failure.

They never had this. Such regimes only have individuals holding crackpot ideas that they suddenly have the power to implement with little feedback mechanisms or checks and balances to hold them back from creating disaster. This ruined Venezuela, and will soon ruin the United States too.

Too many people on the left still think of Chavez as something more than a tinpot dictator and kleptocrat because he cloaked himself and his regime in the drapings of socialism. But this was a lie. Kleptocrat regimes have no ideology, as this implies a movement doing theoretical development.

The rot can be hidden for a long time, often showing itself only when the despot is replaced with another despot, casting the blame on the new despot, rather than the former and type of regime he led. Case in point: Maduro replacing Chavez. While Maduro lacked Chavez's charisma, they are the same.

Trump is also using every possible opportunity to show them that he will pardon them for any crime they commit for him or for themselves while serving him. Time is not on the side of the Democrats here. The regime must not be allowed to solidify and consolidate, it must be disrupted to the maximum.

I think this is an essential analysis in other to defeat the new fascists. The cultural and ideological parts of fascism are harmful but that is neither their strength nor their weakness - and to focus on it is a mistake. We must attack the money. I hope to have a longer substack article on it soon.

Richard Jevans: "one of the major and too often neglected factors holding the top ranks of the Nazi Party together was corruption: the receipt of massive gifts, huge increases in income, property and so on, that cemented the patronage relationship they had with Hitler in a relationship of clientage”

Paul Corner on Mussolini: "‘In a regime that rested heavily on a whole network of personal contacts ... corruption represented a kind of glue, keeping the network together… this discretionary nature of decision-making that rendered people so vulnerable to what was, in effect, blackmail…’

Götz Aly: "The Nazi leadership did not transform the majority of Germans into ideological fanatics ... Instead it succeeded in making them well-fed parasites. Vast numbers of Germans fell prey to the euphoria of a gold rush, certain that the future would be a time of unbridled prosperity."

My conclusion is that it is a modern version of something that has been around for as long as have historical record: Pillage and plunder. The nazis and the fascists both immediately maxed all ways to rack up national debt, plundered their own people, then looted other countries. Some quotes:

Fascism should not be understood as an ideology. Any particular instance of fascism is just an arbitrary confabulation of its leaders, some crackpot theory they have decided to latch onto, that is not necessarily shared with any other instance. Fascism, I realized, is above all an economic movement.

Reading Götz Aly and Adam Tooze on the economics of Nazi Germany in the evening while hearing about the kleptocratic smash and grab of 12% of an entire country's GDP in the morning finally made me connect the dots. These are not different movements, they are the same thing.

I usually read the most while traveling. For me, sitting in an airport terminal, in a hotel lobby, or on a train is perfect for concentration. The journey took me as usual from country to country in rapid succession. Eventually I came to Moldova, where I was told of the great bank robbery of 2014.

Savages, who puts ice in their coffee?

It is also nice to see a discussion of how we should define a more general interface between academia and government, where government can temporarily draw in academics while they keep their jobs. We need more of this.

Our collective information space needs to be seen as an organism - it needs active repair processes. The tech overlords cannot supply this - there is no profit in it. Only academia can provide a solution to this - and save AI from itself. And save all of us from living in a disinformation hell.