Political sectarianism in America

[broncofan]

I often am reluctant to use the word fascist because people can be pedantic about what qualifies. One might expect authoritarianism to be necessary but often societies on the precipice of embracing fascism have maintained the appearance of ordinary process but are functionally authoritarian. The focus in some definitions on corporatism or bureaucracy seems to be concerned with how such societies tend to operate rather than the core of fascist ideology.

I like Umberto Eco's list in the link posted by Filghy quite a lot. Of note, fear of modernism, obsession with a plot, contempt for the weak, selective populism, and machismo. If you break down Eco's definition of selective populism it kind of tracks with a cult of personality but explains why supporters of the cult will not view themselves as engaging in hero worship. The will of the people is created and interpreted by the person at the head of the cult. Really the head of the cult confabulates a code and the followers are left to justify it.

While Eco doesn't focus on race or nationalism they are embedded in a lot of the categories. The category of selective populism focuses only on the will of certain people and that can track race, ethnicity, and religion. I've often heard echoes of that when Republicans discuss real Americans, a category that definitely seems to focus on white people, but is a subset of white that have maintained their authenticity somehow by rejecting many modern ideas.

[Stavros]

Part of the problem is that 'Fascist' was used as a term of abuse by the left, sometimes by others, and resonated with a generation old enough to have either fought it, or or who knew people who did. It summoned up images of Blackshirts imposing Fascist rule through violence and thuggery, a one-party state, the 'great Leader' or 'Duce' not much different from the Fuhrerprinzip that has been identified in National Socialism, and above all by war and destruction.

As the more contemporary theorists and Broncofan and filghy2 thoughts and links show, Fascism can be revived without being named as such. One key area is the Law, where the capture of legislative bodies, be it in Central/Federal or Local/State Government, can attack the 'problems' that are identified as weakening State and Society, and thus form a takeover of the political agenda not in a single 'Enabling Act' that Fascist governments have used in the past, but through numerous small amendments to the law that privilege the 'Fascist' programme, of which the multitude of laws being proposed by Republicans are a factor, and seek, primarily to take away the right to vote. This can be done by changing the rules on registration, the purging of rolls, limiting access to mail-in ballots and so on. The cumulative impact is to organize a preferential/partisan voting system in which the losers are the minority segments of society who are blamed for its decline.

The irony is not lost here -the very same procedure that the Republicans claim enabled the Democrats to 'steal the vote' is adopted by them to do the same, thus-

"According to the Brennan Center for Justice, there are currently 165 separate pieces of legislation pending in 33 states to restrict access to the ballot with stricter identification rules, limit the use of postal ballots, shorten voter registration and early voting windows, and make it easier for election officials to purge voter rolls in between elections. The three states with the most proposals on the legislative docket — Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia — were carried by Biden in 2020, but have Republican-controlled legislatures."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/republican...165007798.html

The law is also being used in states such as Hungary and Poland in an effort to re-define their countries histories, even to the point of making some claims about the past illegal, for what Fascism, or New Wave Fascism also demands is the right to own and control all the narratives of the State -nothing inside the state agains the state-. Gone is any commitment to an open democracy in which a 'market place of ideas' is an indelible part of civil society, indeed, civil society, precisely because it lies outside the control of the Governing party, is a threat to its hegemony. Thus, New Wave Fascism builds on partisan rage, resentment and grief to mount an aggressive assault on the alternatives to its agenda, branding them unpatriotic, hateful, probably 'woke', and uses the media and the law to change the narrative so that it says only one thing, where 'free speech' is only defined as speech that supports the Nationalist agenda.

The downside for them, is that they tend to be poor managers of the State -as we have seen with regard to Covid in the US- and also of the economy. For the concept of a 'Patriotic' economy sits ill at ease with reality -the US has to import a wide range of products in order for its economy to function, just as it needs access to global markets; while for all their Nationalist fervour, neither Hungary nor Poland look as if they are about to leave the EU.

There have always been Fascist or similar states around in my lifetime -when I was born, half of Europe was governed by one-party states or military governments, from Portugal in the West, to Poland in the East. That one now sees its creeping influence in the US in particular is strange in its own way, because its extremists were always relegated to the fringe of politics -and if they now occupy the centre ground, if McConnell, Cheney and other 'true Republicans' cannot see them off, it is they who will end up on the fringe.

But will the current resentment of Trump's supporters last until 2022 and be effective? Or is this a whole lot of noise that the people will eventually reject?

[filghy2]

But will the current resentment of Trump's supporters last until 2022 and be effective? Or is this a whole lot of noise that the people will eventually reject?

I doubt that the sense of grievance that Trump tapped into so effectively will go away. We know that Republican voters' support for Trump has been remarkably persistent since 2016. I don't think that is based on particular policy positions: it's more about his willingness to take the fight to those perceived as cultural enemies by any means necessary. Most Republicans seem to view themselves as unfairly disadvantaged and persecuted (notwithstanding that the reality is generally the opposite). A period of Democrat rule can only reinforce this perception.

Even if Trump fades from the scene for some reason, someone else will come along to tap into the same feelings.

[filghy2]

In some cases, the Christian legacy is vital for Scruton, in others, such as the second of the American appraisals linked below it is downplayed. Michael Gove was a supporter of Scruton, and I believe Steve Bannon too. In Bannon's case, the New Wave Fascism he extols believes there is nothing that the USA needs that cannot be made in the USA, hence 'America First' and a belief that all the production offshored to China and the rest of the world can, indeed should be repatriated to the USA. It is summed up in the core beliefs of Italian Fascism -'Everything Within the State. Nothing Outside the State. Nothing Against the State'

I haven't come across Scruton before. On a quick read, his main argument seems to be that globalisation, immigration and supra-national institutions have led to a breakdown of community identity and social trust. The point that seems to be missed is that the key thing breaking down social bonds has been the turbo-charging of capitalism since the Thatcher-Reagan reforms, in which all economic relationships are reduced to financial transactions in pursuit of profit maximisation (the ultimate manifestation being the gig economy). Economic nationalism will not change this fundamentally because it does not address the market power of corporations - all that would change is that the corporations doing the exploiting would be domestically-owned.

[Stavros]

Scruton became a well-known figure in the early 1980s when he pubished the Salisbury Review, and in particular an attack on mult-culturalism by a Bradford headmaster, Ray Honeyford. A few years later I chose to write my undegraduate thesis on liberal and conservative political theory, and think I had a good crack at it, but in the end I was felled by the contradictions in both and some personal issues I need not go into here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salisbury_Review

The point of interest is that Scruton came out of the Peterhouse set who sat in awe of Maurice Cowling to become Consevatives in the philosophical sense, and who- with some exceptions- thus opposed Margaret Thatcher's 'free market' liberalism precisely because they were not Liberals. To that end, Scruton appeared to have the rigour which, for example, Michael Portillo, also an acolyte of Cowling but an enthusiast for 'free markets', lacked, but then Portillo chose to go into politics as an MP, and the key point here is that what we have seen over many decades is one strain of thought stealing or borrowing from the other, so that the distinction between a Liberal and a Conservative is often blurred. It is particularly awkward in the US because these two terms have an American context, though even there I think the distinctions are also confused.

Scruton to my mind is an oddity, not because he is opposed to free markets, but because his answer to the question, 'What do you wish to conserve?' must result in the change that he argues is not part of Conservative political thought and practice. Moreover, the change he wants is one that tackles the cultural consequences of immigration, because immigrants who do not 'share' the culture of the English or the British, seem doomed to wreck it, through their corrosive influence as criminals, people who don't understand what it means to be English or British, lacking a deferential attitude to authority, believing in stange gods and relgious practices that belong in the East (see the comments by Scruton and Casey in the Edgar link below).

In this way, by identifying members of society who not only 'don't belong' but are a 'threat' to 'our way of life', Scruton thus joins with the Fascist narrative in which everything inside the State would be fine if it weren't for those who are destroying it -what to do? Get rid of them.

One area where I think I have erred, is in the original support that Fascism in Italy had from those who saw themselves creating a modern world -in terms of technology -motor cars-, in terms of culture- the enthusiasm for cinema that is associated with Fascism in Italy. I am not sure Scruton is in favour of modernization in the way the original Fascists were, though there is a precise context for this in the stale and moribund climate in Italy that led Puccini to welcome Mussolini as a 'breath of fresh air' who would be a more efficient ruler than the 19th century Liberals he felt had let Italy down.

It means New Wave Fascism is itself a hybrid, if I can make that excuse. Hostile to 'foreigners' and 'immigrants', hostile to free markets and globalization, but also hostile to modernization and multi-culturalism which original Fascism was not, though that may be the Italian aspect.

Anyway, Scruton became a champion of Conservatives who loathe multi-culturalism, Marxism, Gender Studies (see Scruton's views on homosexuaity in the David Edgar link below) and all they see as a threat to the British way of life. One wonders if the Brexit he supported also has in it a form of 'economic nationalism' that is prevening the govt of Boris Johnson from being more aggressive in its attempt to solve the crisis in the fishing industry and the imminent obliteration of the entertainment industry both in the UK and through the virtual end to touring in the EU by musicians and artists of every genre. From its exciting birth in 1909 Fascism, New Wave if this is what it is, threatens to impose an age of misery upon us all, with streaming our only salvation.

Futurism and Fascism in the early 20thc here-
https://www.wired.com/story/italy-fu...chno-utopians/

David Edgar on Scruton-
https://irr.org.uk/article/the-scrut...ess-old-fogey/

[blackchubby38]

I like the fact that Democrats are saying even though they won in 2020, they're asking what can they do better going forward.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats...160302933.html

[Nick Danger]

I like the fact that Democrats are saying even though they won in 2020, they're asking what can they do better going forward.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats...160302933.html

Here's something the Democratic Party can do besides dropping its trousers to virtue-signal after 6 months of rioting and sedition: Learn how to economy.

The biggest problem with the modern Democratic Party is its non-stop pandering to the struggling masses. There's a reason those people are struggling, and it's either a failure of motivation or a failure of personal responsibility. You take any individual American citizen who is just barely scraping by, give anyone of reasonable intelligence a truthful overview of their life, and the problem will be readily apparent - the individual himself. You simply can't fix those problems by throwing money at them.

What the Democratic Party has forgotten but the Republicans never will is that most Americans are totally unqualified to vote. The average citizen's knowledge of the crucial issues is so non-existent that he actually doesn't even know what the crucial issues are. And I include most Republican voters in this group.

But the Republicans make it really simple for the slobbering proletariat - we're not going to give you shit! And we're not going to give anyone else shit either. We're going to concentrate our efforts on creating an economy in which everyone can prosper off his own efforts.

Americans are about to see for themselves the damage that a Democratic administration does to this country. The imminent expansion of Affirmative Action is going to put a lot of unqualified people into important positions in the economy as quotas are met while merit and qualifications are ignored. Unemployment and inflation are going through the roof. By 2024 we're going to be living in an economic wasteland - my prediction is 20% unemployment behind the impending $15 minimum wage. "Social Justice" is going to start looking like what it actually is - catering to the relatively worthless portion of the population that refuses to conform to reasonable standards of work/life balance.

Democrats got into power in 2020 by scaring the Christ out of America and simultaneously promising pie in the sky that they can never deliver. The nightmare is just beginning.

My suggestion to the current administration, if they don't want to ensure a single term president, is NOT to ignore the vast numbers of fiscally conservative Americans who wouldn't mind seeing a little bit of social justice, but also don't want to see American economic strength wither away. Go ahead and give away some candy, but is it really so much to ask that you don't give away the store while you're at it?

[filghy2]

Here's something the Democratic Party can do besides dropping its trousers to virtue-signal after 6 months of rioting and sedition: Learn how to economy.

The average citizen's knowledge of the crucial issues is so non-existent that he actually doesn't even know what the crucial issues are. And I include most Republican voters in this group.

Unemployment and inflation are going through the roof. By 2024 we're going to be living in an economic wasteland - my prediction is 20% unemployment behind the impending $15 minimum wage.

Learning to economy is good advice (even if economy is not a verb) so why don't you follow it. I love the way you say those things about your fellow citizens without a hint of irony.

Here's a little exercise for your first economics lesson. The minimum wage in Australia is equivalent to US$15.70. The current unemployment rate is 6.4 per cent, which is actually lower than the US unemployment rate. Explain to us how this is consistent with your prediction.

For your second lesson we might proceed to updating you on the past 90 years of economic thinking. Apparently you can fix a recession by throwing money at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

Don't tell me you are bored with your own thread already.

[Nick Danger]

Learning to economy is good advice (even if economy is not a verb) so why don't you follow it. I love the way you say those things about your fellow citizens without a hint of irony.

Here's a little exercise for your first economics lesson. The minimum wage in Australia is equivalent to US$15.70. The current unemployment rate is 6.4 per cent, which is actually lower than the US unemployment rate. Explain to us how this is consistent with your prediction.

For your second lesson we might proceed to updating you on the past 90 years of economic thinking. Apparently you can fix a recession by throwing money at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

Don't tell me you are bored with your own thread already.

Apples to oranges, Flighty. Or actually, considering there are 3 metropolitan areas in the USA with a higher population than the entire continent of Australia, I'd say more like watermelons to grapes.

Or we could just talk about eggs. I.E., the fact that a dozen of them will cost you around $5 USD in Australia. (I just bought a dozen 2 days ago for $1.18.) Australian inflation is legendary. Of course, when you have a state-owned central bank, you can keep inflation and wages aligned almost perfectly, even if your economy is constantly at the mercy of the larger economies on which it relies for imports.

So despite the lavish Australian prosperity of which you speak, the vast majority of Australians live below what we in the USA consider the poverty line.

I was never bored with my own thread, Flighty. Unfortunately no one wants to play with me anymore. Stavros has disowned me for failing to respect his towering intellect. Bronco is too smart to engage me in a real argument. And the last thing I got from you in that thread was a Dennis Leary video, which doesn't really require a response, neh?

If you want to see me bite, Flighty, you're going to have to yank my chain a little harder.

[broncofan]

Apples to oranges, Flighty. Or actually, considering there are 3 metropolitan areas in the USA with a higher population than the entire continent of Australia, I'd say more like watermelons to grapes.

I'm a bit rushed here but Australia has a population of 25 million people. So you'll say you're exaggerating or include a metro area that is really in three states, but you're wrong. Also, Sydney has a population of 5 million people. It's a fairly large city. I live in a mid-size city and trust me Sydney is like any big city...high rents, people living close together, public transport...it's cleaner than our big cities and is beautiful to the north with the Harbour and the opera house. I'm not here to defend the reputation of Australia but you don't really know what you're talking about.

The statement about the poverty line is obviously not true also.