Regime technical efficiency can win admiration abroad for authoritarian states.

Evidence

A clear reference to fascist propaganda extolling the regime’s achievements in the field of public works, etc. In England in the ‘thirties, approval for fascist Italy often took the form of “at least Mussolini has got the trains to run on time”, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2353

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s hegemony/‘common sense’ toolkit: the trains-running-on-time trope is a concrete case of how consent is manufactured through practical efficacy claims, which later Islamophobia readings will build on.

Related

• Foreign observers endorsed fascism through its claimed practical achievements (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian politics eclipsed imperial profiteering through purposeless efficiency #complicates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 561