From a 1940 collection of essays called Freedom: Its Meaning, here’s Bertrand Russell on how fascism begins:
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
This technique is as old as the hills; it was practiced in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale.
Tags: Bertrand Russell · politics
