Support Your Local Dollar Despot

     It is no longer possible to use words like "capitalism" and "socialism" in a derogatory manner - nobody knows what the most precise definition is, and can't be bothered to clear that up anyway. Instead, the word oligarchy is more promising. Even that adjectival noun doesn't do America justice. What we have is plutocracy. Aristotle defined aristocracy as rule by the better few, while oligarchy would simply be rule by the few: the unjust form of aristocracy. If aristocracy (as embodied most of all in the ancien regime in France) fell because of the revolt among the many in the "Folk" or Volk, our republic today is failing because of the revolt of the "many" elites against the remaining healthy "many". The elites are using "majority-minorities" to bludgeon their populist political opponents, who (barely) can still constitute the "Many". If one weighs the NAACP, SPLC, the ACLU and all of the many arms of the liberal elite associations, its very numbers and sophistication amplifies its power to the point of constituting a rival "Many", and gives them control over Media, Education, Government, Entertainment, and (now) most of the main-line Churches.
     In other words, the Western world has entered a downward spiral of degeneration in which each group launches revolutions in mores and laws against the more conservative elements in the other groups. There is no longer a "commonwealth". The main issue here is not class or social justice, but Justice. Neither is the issue which class or caste should rule. The issue is whether the American people can secure just rule by any group or person. Monarchy having been excluded from the outset, America had left to choose between the natural aristoi or the body of commoners. This dynamic played itself out (for instance) in the struggle of Jackson against the old parties and entrenched leadership.
     However, the disappearance of Christianity as a cultural force has opened up more possibilities. Instead of being ruled by (relatively) sound and sane natural aristocrats or populist leaders at the head of a (relatively) normal movement, we are now confronted with the proletariat, the lumpen-proleteriat, the huddled mobs and masses, and actual dissidents who range from the bizarre and macabre to the suddenly-weirdly-possible (if current population trends continue). These forces exist in any society, but are normally held in check by just and sound rule or statecraft; the fact that they are no longer creeping when out in the open means that they sense their time is nigh.
     The new leaders which have emerged to manage these possibilities are either demagogues or plutocrats. Donald Trump is arguably both, while Hillary was certainly both, but in much cleverer disguise. The human mind desperately wants to think in terms of simplistic binaries (eg., Us vs. the 1%), but as the bottom drops out of what was left of once-great America, a multitude of insane options present themselves. John Howard Kunstler argues that America will eventually accept "corn-pone Nazis" if that means it can keep Suburbia. The Left apparently actually believes we are in danger of fascism coming to power, and they are pioneering fascistic methods on our streets in order to prevent Fascism with a capital F (you have to destroy the village in order to save it). This despite the fact that George Orwell already noted long ago that the word has lost any objective meaning. Corn-pone fascism comes in a leftist dipping sauce and spices if that's your poison.
     Why is it, that year after year, America's debt goes up and up, living arrangements seem more temporary, life feels more hectic, and the whole nation feels like a moonscape settlement in a dystopian science fiction novel? Because America no longer has any morals or even mores left. Carthage, too, once the world's greatest trading empire, possibly possessing ships that were seaworthy to cross the Atlantic, believed that money alone could defeat and rule the rest of the world, and seemed invincible. The British Empire itself went broke trying to keep its coffers ringing with tribute from around the globe. The love of money is the root of all evil. And America loves money. Not just a lot, but almost the exclusion of everything else. Money is the only language degraded intellects can parse.
     In America, the dollar is King - "The business of America is business.". We will not get Russian oligarchs, at least not yet. We will get the "soft" version of a melting-pot mob presided over by gluttonous plutocrats, all squabbling over the enormous carcass of what was once the wealthiest nation on earth. This is because as times worsen, people turn to what they know and understand, something simply, something denominated in binary Ones and Zeros - the Almighty Dollar. If illegal immigration pays for Tyson and the rich and Democratic hereditary legacy-bureaucrats, then illegal immigration we will get. If pollution and drug trafficking generate revenue streams, then we will get mountains of waste dumps, dirty lakes, and plenty of cheap heroin and meth. America has been schooled, almost from infancy, to value the "main chance". Even the Civil Rights Era could not escape this legacy, keeping their "eyes on the prize", which was access to all the power, glitz, and money afforded by inroads made into "white America". North America has become the center of a global banking Empire which wants to wrap tentacles around the entire globe, until the world is flat again, with no walls or borders.
     The poor don't know any better, and generally can be halfway forgiven for not being able to overcome their cupidity and ignorance, but their number is swelling by the day, and in a "Democracy", numbers matter. They are also engaging in inexcusable violence and shameful displays of hatred and stupidity. And "poor" is a relative term - financially, they still enjoy enviable slices of the Imperial Pie, compared to global counterparts. Their greatest poverty is primarily in cultural capital, like mores and traditions, and they give away what little they have to embrace anyone who is willing to lie to them.
     I am not sure what excuse the rich would use for their short-sighted idiocy in allowing this trend to gain ground, or even adding accelerants to the mixture in the form of Third World immigration, but they will live to regret it. The middle class is shrinking from both sides, either selling out as middle managers for the bozos who are masterminding one of Dante's circles in hell, or else falling abjectly into the seething mass below them. The ones that are left are woefully short more on brains than actual virile manpower, and that is not good either. The middle class still thinks America Can Be Made Great Again, if we just return to 1950s nationalism, or something close to it. My sympathies, but not loyalties, are with them. At least they still remember a time in which ordinary Americans had more in common with each other than not. Their instincts are good and right, but they are hopelessly outclassed by the enormitude of the problems confronting this country, which are not primarily of their design, and will not submit to their belated objections in the form of The Donald. The Donald cannot fix America, even if he knew how.
     Everyone in America wants to get rich quick, even the lumpen-proleteriat, who faithfully and religiously purchase lottery tickets each week or sue their local Walmart because the floors were too slick for their flip-flops. Minorities can barely wait to have their own local power structures, replete with Byzantine levels of corruption and greed. The Italians and Irish gave us our first really gigantic big city political machines, and other minority groups will continue this time-hallowed conservative tradition of money and power being marks of God's divine election in the promised land of the kingdom of God. But maybe this was there from the start, implicit in industrial civilization, as pioneered by the Puritans. Certainly the Abolitionist movement can be viewed as a very effective version of a political machine, if judged by the attainment of goals and aims. Even the Allies during WW2 engaged in effective juggernaut propaganda, all in the name of Freedom, Justice, and (above all) the Dollar.
     It's hard to tell where it all started anymore, but start it did. Western Civilization is (today) for the most part concerned with making money.This means that, in the end, money is all we will have left, and that in name only, because money is not the same as economic wealth or resilience, let alone culture or civilization. We will have to buy everything, including loyalty and the air we breath, and we burn worthless derivative bundles in our potbelly stoves to keep warm during the winters. American resourcefulness, hard work, and tech-savvy go a long way, especially when the world is awash in cheap oil. But macro and micro-economics are not enough to prevent the human tragedy we see unfolding. Man doesn't wish to, and indeed cannot even if he did, live in a world in which he is just another brick in the wall.
     Our global elites have tried to create this world, imagined in countless fantasies, of one unified mankind living in the peace and harmony of an economic paradise. But they tried to build it with manipulation, lies, and promises printed on paper. America is being run like a gigantic corporation, which wishes to take over, or at least control, all the other little corporations it created in its own image in the name of Democracy. Instead of a light on a shining hill, we would be the capital city of a New World Order. God may intend something like this to happen, but it will be built by the Spirit, with the wisdom and power of God, and not according to the dictates of a secular humanism run rampant on cheap (and now declining) fossil fuels.
     God's plan involves re-integrating Time (including Past-Present-Future) in one narrative, and dividing (and thus stabilizing) Space into many diversities which are united in the deeper love of the Spirit, the "shields of the earth". Our rulers want to fragment time (by splitting everything into nanoseconds and re-inventing natural law as if the past could be ignored and the future averted), and crushing space into one uniform order. This way lies the cindery plains of hell. The very people who are most self-righteously pushing for the will of a God they no longer believe in, are doing the most to ruin any chance that this generation can ever begin to glimpse something of the beauty and majesty of God. This is the definition of hypocrisy, Phariseeism, and tyrannically unjust social orders.

 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

     This is the legacy of 1789. It is time to go backwards, in order to go forward again. For those who wish to, here is a great place to start, at Gornahoor. Failing that, or even in addition, you might need to start planting a Victory Garden.
    

Racism/Fascism

Now it's necessary to defend Tolkien from Fascism/Racism. This is because the "net of the term" is so broad as to virtually encompass anyone from Charlemagne, through the Falange & Franco, to Pinochet, and beyond, into the hinterlands of Hitler. This spectrum is supposedly notable primarily as being "Right Wing", with the far left being "soft" Fascist, or pre-proto-Fascist, and the far right of the Right being pure Darkness.

"But the primary concern for a free society is not which kinds of people should have their freedom smashed. The real concern is liberty for all. The capacity of the state to divide peaceful people into groups and set them
against one another is its capacity to oppress. When anyone is victimized by the
state, all who believe in and love the universal values of freedom, as well as
the finer principles on which America was founded, have a moral obligation to
oppose it..." (Elizabeth Wright)

Here is a progressive definition of the F-word:

"Fascism is a libidinal orientation to politics characterized by modulations of pride and rage. Pride in the national character, and in the greatness of the Leader. Rage at the ethnic or racial outsiders (Jews) who make our society impure and disrupt its natural balance. Pride in "traditional" mores, stern upholding of traditional gender role and traditionalist sexual behavior, combined with disgust and violent repression of deviations (homos). A high valuation on outward strength, military power, aggressive foreign policy postures. Our society could accurately be described as totalitarian insofar as the market economy is socially "totalized", influencing, and indeed literally determining, every social possibility and every behavior. But, much as I know how you'll hate to hear this, the only contemporary faction that could accurately be described as fascist are angry ideological conservatives."

While this may have a point, I suppose that my rejoinder would be that most "conservatives" are entirely neo-liberal, progressive, or "Leftist" in their character or association. Again, as GP Grant notes, the Machine that powers the Empire also allows us to have societal chaos at home: "Orgasms at home, Napalm abroad". Hitler's associations and roots had Leftist overtones and influences. The question of whether he was truly a "man of the Right" is a complicated one. Mencius Moldbug thinks that he obviously was, but that he had to dress himself up as a Leftist in order to gain power. This, in its favor, would explain the Nazi "programme" or party points, which look very similar to that proposed by the Democrats of the 21st century for America, including welfare, education, and the no-gun policy.

Again:
"The Nazis were not leftists; they appropriated leftist iconography as a mass aesthetic, won over those of conservative racialist attitudes by villifying the Jews, and preserved the haute bourgeoisie wholly intact by inviting them into the corporatist-state. Naziism's two most salient features: culturally conservative race-hatred, and industrialist oligarchism, had absolutely no relation to any leftism historical or contemporary..."

Hmmm, possibly...it is disturbing (however) to contemplate the possibility that even the Nazis were obliged to dress up "Red" in order to get what they wanted...this places Leftism (and its specific offspring, liberal-democracy) in an entirely new light. This would seem to imply that at least a) It was eminently possible to pull off in this specific manner & certainly not a touch & go matter. Which is suggestive on a number of fronts...This would seem to hold true unless one believes Hitler "barely" pulled it off, which would then call into question most of the anti-national, anti-Church arguments most favored by those who take this position. In short, such contemplation infinitely complicates the question. Is it possible that such a dragon barely managed to trick the masses by making them think of him as a Red Dragon? If Hitler was well on his way to industrial/societal victory thanks to the Right, why would he need to masquerade in Red drag? In the above quote, the writer minimizes (to my mind) the importance of the "mass aesthetic" that operates in the Leftist mode? Isn't this exactly the "religion-by-the-back-door" theme which Khuenhelt-Ledhin so thoroughly explores? "Decayed altars are inhabited by demons," noted Ernst Juenger. The Leftists truly believe it is possible to excise religion from the soul of man, without harming the soul, and some think it can be done non-traumatically (we might characterize these last as the typical Western liberals). The New Pantagruel had this to say about the lack of Telos which characterizes Rawlsian Liberal-Democracies:

For Santayana, a healthy spiritual life was possible in this world only by
looking to the “beauty and perfection that this world suggests, approaches, and
misses.” The singular disease of Modernity is to forget this; which is to say
that modern man idealizes a priori. He carries with him not so much a distorted
view of reality; but a disdain for it. Thus, the pursuit of an ideal devolves
into idealism. For Santayana, though modern man may believe himself to be an
idealist, he is actually “a materialist in morals; he esteems things, and
esteems himself, for mechanical uses and energies.” Idealizing a priori
inculcates an over-calculation of one’s ability to effect change in the world;
to confront Power and wrestle it into submission, rather than the other way
around. In contrast, the Pantagruelist is able to joyfully engage in earthly
reality, insisting on seeing both the divine reflection and the demonic shadow.
Drawing from Augustine’s view of this age as a saeculum senescens (an age that
will pass away), the Pantagruelist is content with the uncertainties of faith
for knowledge of the Beyond. This, in turn, frees him to love the people and
places he finds himself surrounded by; to see things for what they are: a
suggested yet missed perfection. We moderns though, inflicted as we are with the
disease of Liberalism, cannot suffer the Augustinian humility regarding the
prospects of this age with grace. We chafe mightily against such restraint. We
desire above all to endow this age with the fulfillment that Christianity has
traditionally insisted lies over the horizon. Ironically, the harder we have
worked at remaking this world into a suitable future home for humanity, the
stronger is our sense of disenchantment, isolation, and homelessness in the
present. This is because, as Eric Voegelin put it, Liberalism “destroys the
oldest wisdom of mankind concerning the rhythm of growth and decay which is the
fate of all things under the sun.”

And here is John Crowe Ransom:

'Our vast industrial machine, with its laboratory centers of experimentation, and its far-flung organs of mass production is like a Prussianized state which is organized strictly for war and can never consent to peace. Or, returning to the original figure, our progressivists are the latest
version of those pioneers who conquered the wilderness, except that they are pioneering on principle, and from force of habit, and without any recollection of what pioneering was for.'

Clearly, the modern industrial state has overtones of "eternal war in Africa" & massive discipline through regimented organization, this time against the enemy Nature. So what does "Fascism" mean? Is it applicable to either Right or Left, or both? Or neither? Does Fascism pertain to anything? Do we need a new word? And who is this "we" we talk about?

Christopher Hitchens, in dialogue that reminds me of the old story about the death of Julian the Apostate, insists that secular regimes only go wrong if they fall prey to the dark side of thinking they have authority from on high:

"Lilla's most brilliant point concerns the awful pitfalls of what he does not call "liberation theology." Leaving this stupid and oxymoronic term to one side, and calling it by its true name of "liberal theology" instead, he reminds us that the eager reformist Jews and Protestants
of 19th-century Germany mutated into the cheerleaders of Kaiser Wilhelm's Reich, which they identified—as had Max Weber—with history incarnate. Lilla might have added, for an ecumenical touch, that Kaiser Wilhelm, in launching the calamitous World War I, was also the ally and patron of the great jihad proclaimed by his Ottoman Turkish subordinates. So, could we hear a little less from the apologists of religion about how "secular" regimes can be just as bad as theocratic ones? Of course they can—if they indulge in acts of faith and see themselves as possessing supernatural authority."

But don't all states have power and authority at (after) a certain level? And don't all states indulge in magical thinking? America most of all? Wouldn't the cure be proper authority and the discernment of what real acts of real faith are needed? In otherwords, isn't the danger that mankind incessantly finds himself in only curable by finding a way farther in? Hitler, in this view of things, is so evil, not because he is diametrically opposite from what he should have been (merely), but because he represents a primal perversion of a primal good. He would not be a lightning rod if his "ideal state" did not in fact represent the possibility of something that is good. I think this is the most frightening thought to the liberal mind, and the explanation for why they attempt to bury Hitler in darkness as if to even invoke his name is to invite his presence. This explains the obsession with the term "fascist" & also the desire to avoid rigorously defining/determing/agreeing upon the term. It is an epithet to be hurled at your enemy, even as one averts one's eyes.

Meditations on Fascism

More on Fascism.

"I knew no more about Spanish politics and history than most of my fellow-countrymen, that is to say, not much. I had read (in translation) much (but not all) of Don Quixote, and seen reproductions of the great paintings of Velázquez and Goya. I knew that Philip II had married an English reigning Queen -- Mary -- and on her death claimed the throne of England, but had been defeated when in 1588 he sent the great Armada to invade England and enforce his claim. I knew that the Duke of Wellington had fought a long, hard campaign against Napoleonic armies in Portugal and Spain and that guerrilla (which was to become my military specialty in World War II) was a Spanish word. But I had no real understanding of the complicated situation that had produced the military revolt of July 1936. What I did know was that Franco had the full support of Hitler and Mussolini. In fact, that support had been decisive at the beginning of the war. The military coup had failed in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain's principal cities. Franco's best troops, the Foreign Legion and the Regulares, the Moorish mercenaries recruited to fight against their own people, were cooped up in Morocco, since the Spanish Navy had declared for the Republic. Planes and pilots from the Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force, in the first military airlift in history, had flown some 8,000 troops across to Sevilla, Franco's base for the advance on Madrid"

This from one of the most educated Americans of his time...but then again, Americans have made a career from being oblivious to the oldest cultures of the world, particularly if they are antique European ones that are part of old Christendom's body. After all, what else do you need to know than that Franco "had the full support" of Hitler? This phrase reeks of American politics and political posturing. Franco, in fact, irritated Hitler so much that he once stated he would rather have his teeth pulled than another conference with Generalissimo. As for the Tercio, the Rif War was probably even more outside Knox's expertise...Knox conveniently forgets to mention the Soviet advisors operating upon the other side of the line...advisors who came with "materialle". To Knox, he knew what he needed to know. Which wasn't much.

Constrast this with the chivalric and martial spirit operating on the Nationalist side:

"During the Spanish Civil War, Colonel José Moscardó Ituarte held the building against overwhelming Spanish Republican forces in the Siege of the Alcázar. The incident became a central piece of Spanish Nationalist lore, especially the story of Moscardó's son Luis. The Republicans took 16-year old Luis hostage, and demanded that the Alcázar be surrendered or they would kill him. Luis told his father, "Surrender or they will shoot me." His father replied, "Then commend your soul to God, shout 'Viva Cristo Rey' and die like a hero."^[1] Moscardó refused to surrender. Contemporary reports indicated that the republicans then executed Moscardó's son. Other historians have reported that Luis was not in fact shot until a month later "in reprisal for an air raid".^[2] The dramatic story also camouflages the fact that the fate of a number of male hostages, mainly from the Guardia Civil, taken into the Alcázar at the beginning of the siege is unclear. Some sources say the men "were never heard of again".<sup>[3]"

Bernard Knox is, in fact, oblivious to the insensitivity of forming part of an International Army which volunteered to come & conquer Spain. Now, granted, he was fighting for a universalist ideal, but it seems strange for a liberal to overlook this fact when discussing (or romanticizing) about War and their own past participation in it. Imagine what that would look like today, in America, as an experiment....

Contrast this with the martyrial attitude and religious spirit that existed in the "Fascist" ranks of Spain. One place to examine what it means to be Fascist is the Spanish Civil War, given that the operating definition of that term seems to have been formed (among the intelligentsia) in that theatre. To be Fascist, ultimately, was to be opposed to the progress of the Republic and the international "world community". Who wouldn't want Abraham Lincoln Brigades to come and help save them from their own Nationalists?

If nothing else, I know that the Spanish Civil War was more complex than this. (And you can, as well. Read Jose Maria Gironella, if nothing else). Therefore (ergo, if the dataset is more complex than admitted) so is the term "Fascist". To Bernard Knox (GRHS!) there was no such thing as a "premature anti-Fascist", because, as we would do well to remember, Progress never sleeps nor slumbers. It is impossible to jump the gun here, and prudentials have no consideration. What do the Proverbs mean anyway? Wisdom? Knowledge? No. There is only Progress. And those who resist are "Fascists". Liberals have no other word for those they hate as "Fascists" because there simply isn't substitute for the word "evil". You don't say "bad" or "not-good". You can say, partly-evil, or mostly-evil, as in mostly-Fascist or semi-Fascist. But you cannot get rid of the term, because it is a primary signifier. What would you replace it with? And what gradations would you admit from its elementary vileness? Any government that is authoritarian + Right Wing = Fascist.

This is how the term "means" to me.</sup>