Limits of discourse and the rise of fascistic tendencies

I find myself being re-drawn into the writings of Bertrand Russell.  Here is an enlightening essay on the Ancestry of Fascism which he wrote in the 1930s.  It is eerily relevant today, particularly his passages about the limits of discourse with people who refuse to share commonly held facts.

Reliance upon reason, as thus defined, assumes a certain community of interest and outlook between oneself and one's audience. It is true that Mrs. Bond tried it on her ducks, when she cried “come and be killed, for you must be stuffed and my customers filled"; but in general the appeal to reason is thought ineffective with those whom we mean to devour.

Those who believe in eating meat do not attempt to find arguments which would seem valid to a sheep, and Nietzsche does not attempt to persuade the mass of the population, whom he calls the bungled and botched." Nor does Marx try to enlist the support of capitalists. As these instances show, the appeal to reason is easier when power is unquestioningly confined to an oligarchy.

In eighteenth-century England, only the opinions of aristocrats and their friends were important, and these could always be presented in a rational form to other aristocrats. As the political constituency grows larger and more heterogeneous, the appeal to reason becomes more difficult, since there are fewer universally conceded assumptions from which agreement can start. When such assumptions cannot be found, men are driven to rely upon their own intuitions; and since the intuitions of different groups differ, reliance upon them leads to strife and power politics. 

Yes, this does sound familiar these days...