For some time, I have thought this myself-
"Most of ‘apocalyptic’ literature, warning us of the dangers of totalitarianism, such as Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, warn us of a fascist government (Orwell’s Animal Farm of course warns us of socialist totalitarianism). But whether the authors warn us of a communist or fascist dictatorship, they all perceive totalitarian societies as based on non-subtle (overt?), masculine force. They all have failed to envision a totalitarian society that was subtle, seductive, and feminine. The most successful totalitarian government in history has been the United States. Using feminine coercion rather than masculine, the U.S. has accomplished much more than Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or any other 2-bit dictator ever hoped to accomplish.
In Fahrenheit 451, my favorite of the apocalyptic novels, Bradbury correctly notes that a totalitarian government must, if it is to maintain itself, kill history. There must be no historical consciousness; there must only be the reigning government, which has always been, and always will be, world without end. In Bradbury’s novel, the government kills history by burning all books from the past."
Just yesterday, I read in my nursing book that "results of progress may cause old ways of thinking to not apply anymore". The question here is not, what is ideology doing in a nursing book, but what kind of ideology has succeeded in making itself its own rationale? If Progress makes everything "not work anymore", then OBVIOUSLY we need more Progress. My boss the other day opined that America would not "go down the drain" but that we just needed more "creativity". I am sure everything will be fine.
Here is a liberal definition of fascism:
"Robert O. Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, defines fascism in his book The Anatomy of Fascism as: "A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
But this definition fits La Raza quite as well as the smeared Tea Party. It also fits the NAACP.
Chris Hedges nails it. Liberal policies have CREATED a pre-fascist, as well as a proto-fascist, polity in America:
“It is time for us to stop talking about right and left,” McKinney told me. “The old political paradigm that serves the interests of the people who put us in this predicament will not be the paradigm that gets us out of this. I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it came from the Supreme Court. Our problem is a problem of governance. I am willing to reach across traditional barriers that have been skillfully constructed by people who benefit from the way the system is organized.”
This is perfectly correct. And in fact, the relationship between Liberalism and Communism is far more complicated than this (given that National Socialism and International Socialism can be related as well):
"Moreover, this social mismatch has been entirely rectified. What the bohemians of Greenwich Village believed in 1923, everyone in America (and the world) believes now. The beliefs of an ordinary Calvin Coolidge voter would strike the ordinary John McCain voter as outlandish, ridiculous, insane, and often downright evil. America has no surviving intellectual tradition besides progressivism - which is no more than a synonym for communism. (My own grandparents, lifelong CPUSA members, used "progressive" as a codeword all their lives.) Communism is as American as apple pie, and America today is a completely communist country. As Garet Garett put it 70 years ago, the revolution was."
As Moldbug notes, the relationship between Liberalism & Communism is, well, "complicated".
It is not only complicated by Empire and Imperial politics, as well as such things as the results of the Civil War, it is complicated by religion & class divisions, as well as the money market situations (in which some Americans have a very vested interest, and are getting richer than anyone in history).
What seems fairly clear is that "Fascism" is a definition that everyone agrees is "bad", but almost no one agrees upon. This of course doesn't mean that general contours aren't there, or that some counters/markers can be identified with some safety. However, once a definition is agreed upon, MANY different polities or groups can fit the label. American business, for instance, is largely operative at the behest or at the service of government. Wall Street and Beltway have a CLOSE relationship. Is this not "corporate fascism"?
Another complicating factor is American transcendence over ethnic/cultural norms. When a race with a homogeneous culture constitutes a base, it can potentially "go" fascist (as Serbia did with Milosevic, who was "socialist"), but it is also a potential barrier or bar to Imperial/Global Fascism on the scale displayed in the post Berlin Wall era. Putin-era Russia, therefore, is both proto-fascist on an internal level, but is a barrier to global fascism in the external sphere. And proto-fascist formal polities can often prevent a "pre-fascist" mentality from blossoming among the "volk", a situation which we can only envy in America, where liberal over-kill and looting of the state for the benefit of the elites and a "new people" have effectively created a "learned fascism" among heartland peoples. Franco, for instance, managed to have the forms of fascism, without the power thereof, and in so doing kept Spain from radicalism of the Right or Left.
It's complicated. Basically, what we have in America is a situation of control flowing from the bureaucratic elites downward, channeled into the ferment of the progressive masses. These masses are directed by forms of political correctness into the proper channels, and the religion of democracy guides the rituals and forms in the upper crust, while providing the "bread and circus" faith from below in the masses. The engines of Science & Empire function to keep the brew fermenting, but more and more raw material (read "colored people") are being thrown into the crush. They, too, will be assimilated, and the product thereof may be a mixed race/culture with all of the worst characteristics of the donors. Like decaying DNA, our polity seems to suffer a degrading with each generation, both intellectually and morally. And in our case, the original blueprints are up for questioning as well. Were the Founding Fathers really wise to create a "proposition" nation? If so, have we done well in the battle to keep it?
Our current America is a giant corporation, with the CEO as president. The dollar is stock. And the shareholders are squabbling ferociously. Arguably, this is a pre-fascistic situation, with proto-fascistic forms already in place to guide us. To what & where?
Anyone for "Red Tory" tea?
Conservatives worth their salt should concentrate on creating the alternative base (whatever it costs, whatever it entails) that will preserve the country in the coming Winter.
