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Quote of the Day: True Fascism
The spirit of the kangaroo court has since graduated into business and politics where it has proven especially useful for settling scores and advancing careers and agendas dishonestly. Coercion has replaced persuasion. Coercion is at the heart of totalitarian politics. Do what you’re told, or else. Believe what we say, or else. (Or else lose your reputation, your livelihood, your friends….) This plays neatly into the dynamics of human mob psychology. When the totalitarians set up for business, few individuals dare to depart from the party line. It’s the perfect medium for cultivating mendacious ideologies. – James H. Kunstler
The “Resistance” is big on projecting the label of “Fascist” on their opponents. They even call their movement “antifa” for anti-fascist. It reminds me of how another other totalitarian society truncated Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)to Gestapo. Intolerant bigotry against all of those disagreeing even slightly with your views has always been the hallmark of the fascist. And today, it is not only the political mob that will come after you. Major corporations are firing, deplatforming, refusing to service and otherwise silencing those who deviate from the Progressive agenda; intolerance in the name of diversity.
Published in General
Something of a side note, but the reason the truncation reminds you of the Gestapo is because the Antifa also originated in Germany, and Germans love their goofy-sounding truncations. For example, even today the investigative units of German police forces are known as the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei, fittingly pronounced “creep-o”).
But it’s not just semi-totalitarian groups that join in the wacky naming conventions. For lovers of German gummy bears, the company Haribo is a truncation of its founder, Hans Riegel from Bonn.
And it was probably a stroke of good fortune that Adolf Dassler decided to name his athletic shoe company Adidas and not his second choice, Adolf’s Sharp Metal Spiky Shoes.
Sell Your Soul or Lose Your Livelihood
When I saw the name James Kunstler, I thought he might be related to William Kunstler, of ACLU fame and the defense lawyer of the flamboyant Chicago Seven who disrupted the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
However, James Kunstler is not related to William Kunstler, but he
Like Jordan Peterson who tends to lean left, it’s interesting that James recognizes the totalitarian nature of the present left.
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Hypothesis: The word “fascist” applies to any regime whereby there are few-to-no fundamental limits to executive authority. How a particular government chooses to exercise that authority is irrelevant to the question of whether it is “fascist” or not.
I can go with that.
In that case, ANTIFA can be wrong without necessarily being mendacious. They may sincerely believe that the current federal administration is working to eliminate all limits to the authority of the executive.
I think they do so believe. There is a hysteria present which is great fascism fuel.
There have been many attempts to define fascism.
The core features probably are:
Nationalism – national identity as a unifying force.
Totalitarianism – everyone has their place in the state, takes directions from the state, and is supported by the state. Everything, that is, economics, industry, finance, education, science, labor, agriculture, etc., is according to the dictates of the state. Collectivist.
Not democratic but oligarchic or dictatorial. The rights of the individual including property rights are subordinate to the common good. Political violence and coercion are used to remake society according to a Utopian vision.
Class distinctions are abolished and prohibited.
Not only militarily adventurous but organizes society along militaristic and nationalistic lines as if always mobilizing for war.
Secular, not formally religious.
Racism is not an essential feature.
I like Jonah Goldberg’s definition for Liberal Fascism – “Fascism is a heresy of Communism”. (or maybe he said Marxism – it’s been a while. But the meaning is approximately the same).
Yes, Goldberg thinks that fascism gets called “right wing” as a result of Soviet misinformation. But if one emphasizes the militarism, dictatorship, state capitalism, authoritarianism, and nationalism one can get to “right wing” in good faith, I think, although Goldberg’s points are well taken.
Name one of those that can’t be attributed to the Soviet Union and it’s struggle against the Nazis in “The Great Patriotic War”.
And please don’t tell me “The Soviet Union wasn’t communist”.
I think by ‘good faith’ Fabian means that a person could reach or accept such a wrong conclusion without flat-out dishonesty.
But that’s my point – you can’t. If there are no distinguishable characteristics, how can one be leftwing and the other rightwing, other than willfully (which was Jonah’s point)?
In which case, it would be more appropriate to call ANTIFA anarchists, which is what they are.
You can’t, and I can’t. But to be intellectually honest you have to have
an intellectan intellect that is up to the task at hand.Can we also be clear, because there seems to be a lot of confusion in people’s minds, that fascism is not necessarily a right-wing ideology (partly the fault of Wikipedia, which describes it as such).
Fascism as we who remember it began during WW1 in Italy, and it is true that Mussolini’s movement WAS a right-wing phenomenon.
However, in most people’s minds, fascism is associated with Hitlerism, whence the misconception.
Hitler’s party was a far-Left movement (its name in English is National SOCIALIST German WORKERS’ Party, which kind of gives the game away). Since its principal oppononents, at least in its early days, were the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communists (KPD), Hitler’s target voters were the workers likely to vote for one of these. But because it was Left vs Left and Hitler won, it is understandable that people regard him as a Rightist, however incorrectly.
I’ve been a fan of James Kunstler for years after reading his book “The Geography of Nowhere.” I even corresponded with him once via email. He’s an old-time liberal, which means that he frequently sounds downright conservative in today’s world. He had a podcast for a while – and maybe still does – but he got off so deep into peak oil that I lost interest. I was mainly interested in his views on the built world and the life of cities and towns.
All autocrats look the same in their darkness.
Mussolini was a socialist who copied Progressive Woodrow Wilson’s tactics when setting up his Fascist state. (Mussolini’s father, also a socialist, named him for Mexican revolutionary leader Benito Juarez . Mussolini’s middle name was Juarez.) This is just another example of the left’s rebranding every failed left-wing government as “right wing.” Usually successfully.
Actually he WAS a socialist, like his father, but was expelled from the Italian socialist party and went over to “the other side” to combat egalitarianism.
Of course they all can be, which was Stalin’s dilemma.
I’d never do that.
The thing is there were no right wingers in the picture at all.
When Obama appointed Geithner to be the head of Treasury, and then Geithner together with Bernanke offered p some 23 to 32 trillions of Main Street’s dollars to the Big Financial people, that was extremely fascist of Obama. Yet apparently he is considered to be the most popular modern President by so many in the media.
In a way this makes sense. Obama is the very epitome of Corporate America, with the understated soft spoken mannerisms, and with the “aw shucks, I am so in touch with my humility” stance he adopted for his public performances.
Americans can forgive anything, even fascism, if it framed in the above modern day styling that President O had mastered.