As in the 1930s, a bankrupt liberalism, grotesque social inequality and declining living standards are empowering fascist movements in Europe and the U.S.
The Bankruptcy of the Liberal Ass — by Mr. Fish
By Chris Hedges
ScheerPost.com
Energy and food bills are soaring. Under the onslaught of inflation and prolonged wage stagnation, wages are in free fall. Billions of dollars are diverted by Western nations at a time of economic crisis and staggering income inequality to fund a proxy war in Ukraine.
The liberal class, terrified by the rise of neo-fascism and demagogues such as Donald Trump, have thrown in their lot with discredited and reviled establishment politicians who slavishly do the bidding of the war industry, oligarchs and corporations.
The bankruptcy of the liberal class means that those who decry the folly of permanent war and NATO expansion, mercenary trade deals, exploitation of workers by globalization, austerity and neoliberalism come increasingly from the far-right.
This right-wing rage, dressed up in the United States as Christian fascism, has already made huge gains in Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Bulgaria and France and may take power in the Czech Republic, where inflation and rising energy costs have seen the number of Czechs falling below the poverty line double.
By next spring, following a punishing winter of rolling blackouts and months when families struggle to pay for food and heat, what is left of our anemic western democracy could be largely extinguished.
Extremism is the political cost of pronounced social inequality and political stagnation. Demagogues, who promise moral and economic renewal, vengeance against phantom enemies and a return to lost glory, rise out of the morass. Hatred and violence, already at the boiling point, are legitimized. A reviled ruling class, and the supposed civility and democratic norms it espouses, are ridiculed.
US Internationalized Fascism
It is not, as the philosopher Gabriel Rockhill has points out, as if fascism ever went away. “The U.S. did not defeat fascism in WWII,” he writes, “it discretely internationalized it.”
Orders for transportation of Karl Baur, with Werner Von Braun in same list. (Arliebright/Wikimedia Commons)
After World War II the U.S., U.K. and other Western governments collaborated with hundreds of former Nazis and Japanese war criminals, who they integrated into western intelligence services, as well as fascist regimes such as those in Spain and Portugal. They supported right-wing anti-communist forces in Greece during its civil war in 1946 to 1949, and then backed a right-wing military coup in 1967.
NATO also had a secret policy of operating fascist terrorist groups. Operation Gladio, as the BBC detailed in a now-forgotten investigative series, created “secret armies,” networks of illegal stay-behind soldiers, who would remain behind enemy lines if the Soviet Union made a military move into Europe. In actuality, the “secret armies” carried-out assassinations, bombings, massacres and false flag terror attacks against leftists, trade unionists and others throughout Europe.
See my interview with Stephen Kinzer about the post-war activities of the CIA, including its recruitment of Nazi and Japanese war criminals and its creation of black sites where former Nazis were hired to interrogate, torture and murder suspected leftists, labor leaders and communists, detailed in his book Poisoner in Chief: Sideny Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, here.
Meloni Triumphs in Italy
Fascism, which has always been with us, is again ascendant. The far-right politician Giorgia Meloni won enough votes in a coalition with two other far-right parties, to become Italy’s first female prime minister on Sunday.
Meloni got her start in politics as a 15-year-old activist for the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, founded after the World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini. She calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.” She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people.
Giorgia Meloni addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, February 2022. (Vox España/Wikimedia Commons)
She has called on the Italian navy to turn back boats with immigrants, which the far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini did in 2018. Her Fratelli d’Italia, Brothers of Italy, party is a close ally of Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban. A European Parliament resolution recently declared that Hungary can no longer be defined as a democracy.
Meloni and Orban are not alone. Sweden Democrats, which took over 20 percent of the vote in Sweden’s general election last week to become the country’s second largest political party, was formed in 1988 from a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish. It has deep fascist roots. Of the party’s 30 founders, 18 had Nazi affiliations, including several who served in the Waffen SS, according to Tony Gustaffson a historian and former Sweden Democrat member.
France’s Marine Le Pen took over 41 percent of the vote in April against Emmanuel Macron. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party is the third largest party in Spain’s Parliament. The far-right German AfD or Alternative for Germany party took over 12 percent in federal elections in 2017, making it the third largest party, though it lost a couple percentage points in the 2021 elections.
The U.S. has its own version of fascism embodied in a Republican party that coalesces in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump, embraces the magical thinking, misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy of the Christian Right and actively subverts the election process.
Depression
A 1000 German Mark note stamped as 1 billion marks during hyperinflation, 1923. (Wolfmann/Wikimedia Commons.)
Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis’ rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament.
The Weimar government, tone deaf and hostage to the big industrialists, prioritized paying bank loans and austerity rather than feeding and employing a desperate population. It foolishly imposed severe restrictions on who was eligible for unemployment insurance. Millions of Germans went hungry. Desperation and rage rippled through the population.
Mass rallies, led by a collection of buffoonish Nazis in brown uniforms who would have felt at home at Mar-a-Lago, denounced Jews, Communists, intellectuals, artists and the ruling class, as internal enemies. Hate was their main currency. It sold well.
The evisceration of democratic procedures and institutions, however, preceded the Nazis’ ascension to power in 1933. The Reichstag, the German Parliament, was as dysfunctional as the U.S. Congress.
The Socialist leader Friedrich Ebert, president from 1919 until 1925, and later Heinrich Brüning, chancellor from 1930 to 1932, relied on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to largely rule by decree to bypass the fractious Parliament. Article 48, which granted the president the right in an emergency to issue decrees, was “a trapdoor through which Germany could fall into dictatorship,” historian Benjamin Carter Hett writes.
Nazi party rally grounds, Nuremburg, 1938. (Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)
Article 48 was the Weimar equivalent of the executive orders liberally used by Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, to bypass our own legislative impasses. As in 1930s Germany, our courts — especially the Supreme Court — have been seized by extremists.
The press has bifurcated into antagonistic tribes where lies and truth are indistinguishable, and opposing sides are demonized. There is little dialogue or compromise, the twin pillars of a democratic system.
Two Parties Serve Same Master
The two ruling parties slavishly serve the dictates of the war industry, global corporations and the oligarchy, to which it has given huge tax cuts. It has established the most pervasive and intrusive system of government surveillance in human history. It runs the largest prison system in the world. It has militarized the police.
Democrats are as culpable as Republicans. The Obama administration interpreted the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force as giving the executive branch the right to erase due process and act as judge, jury and executioner in assassinating U.S. citizens, starting with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Two weeks later, a U.S. drone strike killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Anwar’s 16-year-old son, who was never linked to terrorism, along with 9 other teenagers at a cafe in Yemen.
It was the Obama administration that signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, overturning the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military as a domestic police force. It was the Obama administration that bailed out Wall Street and abandoned Wall Street’s victims. It was the Obama administration that repeatedly used the Espionage Act to criminalize those, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who exposed government lies, crimes and fraud.
And it was the Obama administration that massively expanded the use of militarized drones.
Article 48
The morning after the Reichstag fire, Feb. 27, 1933. (Das Bundesarchiv /Wikimedia Commons)
The Nazis responded to the February 1933 burning of the Reichstag, which they likely staged, by employing Article 48 to push through the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. The fascists instantly snuffed out the pretense of Weimar democracy.
They legalized imprisonment without trial for anyone considered a national security threat. They abolished independent labor unions, freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press, along with the privacy of postal and telephone communications.
The step from dysfunctional democracy to full blown fascism was, and will again be, a small one. The hatred for the ruling class, embodied by the establishment Republican and Democratic parties, which have merged into one ruling party, is nearly universal.
The public, battling inflation that is at a 40-year high and cost the average U.S. household an additional $717 a month in July alone, will increasingly see any political figure or political party willing to attack the traditional ruling elites as an ally.
The more crude, irrational or vulgar the attack, the more the disenfranchised rejoice. These sentiments are true here and in Europe, where energy costs are expected to rise by as much as 80 percent this winter and an inflation rate of 10 percent is eating away at incomes.
The reconfiguration of society under neoliberalism to exclusively benefit the billionaire class, the slashing and privatization of public services, including schools, hospitals and utilities, along with deindustrialization, the profligate pouring of state funds and resources into the war industry, at the expense of the nation’s infrastructure and social services, and the building of the world’s largest prison system and militarization of police, have predictable results.
At the heart of the problem is a loss of faith in traditional forms of government and democratic solutions. Fascism in the 1930s succeeded, as Peter Drucker observed, not because people believed its conspiracy theories and lies but in spite of the fact that they saw through them.
Fascism thrived in the face of “a hostile press, a hostile radio, a hostile cinema, a hostile church, and a hostile government which untiringly pointed out the Nazi lies, the Nazi inconsistency, the unattainability of their promises, and the dangers and folly of their course.” He added, “nobody would have been a Nazi if rational belief in the Nazi promises had been a prerequisite.”
As in the past, these new fascist parties cater to emotional yearnings. They give vent to the feelings of abandonment, worthlessness, despair and alienation. They promise unattainable miracles. They too peddle bizarre conspiracy theories including QAnon. But most of all, they promise vengeance against a ruling class that betrayed the nation.
Hett defines the Nazis as “a nationalist protest movement against globalization.” The rise of the new fascism has its roots in a similar exploitation by global corporations and oligarchs. More than anything else, people want to regain control over their lives, if only to punish those blamed and scapegoated for their misery.
We have seen this movie before.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report.”
Author’s Note to Readers: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waiver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, “The Chris Hedges Report.”
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As much as I admire Christopher Hedges, I have to disagree, for Fascism never left. As P.K. Dick said, “The empire never ended.” I used to say that in almost everyway that matters it mattered not who won WWII. I now say that in every way that matters, it mattered not who won WWII. The names were changed; the intent is the same. The same perpetial war machine that began in earnest at the end of the 18th century just continues ever on. The magnitude and appitude to do final harm is much greater (even absolute), that is all that has changed.
Anyone interested in looking into fascism as an psychological condition by texts such as ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism”, by Wilhelm Reich, or the ”Fear of Freedom” by Eric From, and from an economic angle Fascism and Big Business, by the Frenchman Daniel Guerin. From the philosophical angle there was a composite study by the Hungarian Marxist of a seminal work: ‘The Destruction of Reason” where he charts the decline of liberalism and the rise of irrationalist currents in much of Europe around the 19th and 20th centuries. ”Modern irrationalism springs from the major socio-economic political and philosophical crisis occurring at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth century. It’s jaundiced spokespersons which include Bergson, Sorel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, et al. and the rest of this motley crew of the enemies of reason. In our own time the Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet has put forward the theory of ‘mass formation’ which a characteristic of all quasi-fascist movements
If Fascism is returning at all it sits in the now rulling parties, not the new ones, and certainly not on the right side.
Christian –> individuals who are fascist ? Group forming ? No that can not be, that are 2 opposites of each other.
Fascism is a faith of it’s own.
Fascism is a product of the left. It was in Nazi Germany–and Italy as well. Do the research… Socialism with strong governmental controls and the joining of Government with Corporations–that is fascism. This drivel that it is right-wing does not stand the smell test. Maga opposes fascism. Just like Biden and Clinton who said Trump was in bed with the Russians when it was them who were receiving money and contracts from the Russians, the liberal professors and Fascist Democrat liars blame the right. The demonization of Italy’s first female (can I denote her gender??) prime minister, a center right figure, as Fascist (she is in fact the opposite, opposing global corporations seeking control, instead promoting the family unit, country, and God). When they are practicing and preaching censorship, removing freedoms and body autonomy, and taking gun rights (Nazis did this too), you can be sure they (liberals) are Fascists. Burning buildings, cities, and cars is another sign of fascism–compared to peaceful protests that include prayer, songs, senior citizens walking within the cordons of the capitol on Jan 6 and being placed in solitary confinement, etc. Chris, you dissapoint again. You have many good points, and often point to serous problems–but your assumptions that America is always to blame, and that other countries would have done better with all this power, is childish… and naive. –I reference your recent interview on Pacifica radio (I believe that’s where it emanated from, I heard it Saturday), pointing to the many war crimes and mistakes of America… Trump saw Syria for the Saudi/US debacle it was–HRC promised no-fly zones… Trump called out the corruption in Ukraine–Biden and his family added to the corruption, and promote the lie now that Ukraine is a heroic victim. Trump called NATO out for the extreme problem it was–Biden wishes to expand NATO. Wake up Chris. M. Desmet (The Psychology of Totalitarianism) discusses Mass Formation Psychosis–apparently it is almost impossible to overcome–but not impossible! I suggest prayer, although Matias suggests listening to truth–or rather speaking it, as I do here–as the remedy… Are you capable of removing the Fear-inspired rock wall known as: Trump? You of all people should know that the mass media is corrupt to the core. Parroting their TDS is not a good look.
TY, Chris Hedges. “Bravissimo!!!”
And, the Categories,
1. The Essentials @ Ri$k. The good ol’ days weren’t always good; and, tomorrow, will be worse than today.
2. Trickle Down Fascism (The Supreme Court). Granted. There is a whole lotta wrong w/The Right; but, what’s “Left,” is beyond “unhinged,” f.u.b.a.r; And, in a “DEMOCRACY,” Supreme, anything, is as f/up as The Ayatollahs, “John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,” mediocre jurists and Federalist Society ideologues who carry the banner of Christian fascism, control the Supreme Court.”
“The system is broke. It can’t be fixed. The system is bought and paid for. We can’t get it back.”
Rage is the appropriate attitude toward this machine.
3. The Currency IS Hate & WAR. “Hate of people, a culture, countries, thousands of miles away.”
4. It’s MADness, Mutually Assured Destruction, IMO, by, Design.
5. “DEMS da Breaks,” Democracy vs. Gerontocracy. The Oldigarch, a lost soul, in extreme mental decline, posing as POTUS masquerading as Human shuffles around The Divided $tates of Corporate America, in way f/over his competencies, looking for the “EXIT.”
Indeed, this Science Fiction flick needs to be retired. “We the People” have washed our hands of the plastic “presidency.” Please, Give US Peace.
6. ”GO, Fish,” The BANKRUPTCY of The Liberal Ass. (Mr. Fish).
“Democrats are as culpable as Republicans.” (Chris Hedges).
7. “EL CAPITALISMO ES EL VIRUZ.” “Capitalism infects a living host like a virus, changing its behaviour so that energy is diverted to keeping the virus alive and indeed so that it can be reproduced exponentially.
There is much debate about whether a virus is itself a living thing. We can define life as something that is self replicating, or autopoetic. Viruses meet this test. Others argue that a living thing also practices metabolism, it uses energy to sustain its own existence. This, viruses, do not, by themselves, do.
Some viruses – but not all – kill their host, stealing too much energy or overwhelming the living organism as a direct result of its exponential growth. This, to me, sounds very similar – indeed pretty much the same – as capitalism.
The DNA of Capitalism is identified by the philosopher and political economist Karl Marx in his Das Kapital as the sequence M-C-M, or Money, Commodity, Money. This is the logical inception or beginning of capital.”
FOR the WIN, ”WHO is “the Wolf & Fox party?” ……. “NO matter what, they’ll both eat you!!!”
Nice allusion to the famous Malcolm X quote.
Old people and sickly people often die from common colds (they are over 200), often with opportunistic bacterial pneumonias. Our body politic may be old and sick enough to succumb to a mild “virus” (one parasite killing another).
Orwell penned a famous editorial in 1944 that even then term “fascism” had been bandied about as a political smear so recklessly that it had become meaningless. 2,300 years earlier, Aristotle wrote “Politics,” a study of the rise and fall of the Greek city-states, which led him to conclude that each time democracy fails, citizens clamor to see it replaced by a strongman. Then, eventually tiring of the god-king’s tyranny, they depose him, set up a new democracy, and begin the cycle over again. And again. In a recent book by an MIT professor called “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” the author finds that generally what causes states to collapse is the grossly unequal distribution of wealth where once it was shared more equitably. Ben Franklin himself warned when he introduced the federal constitution in 1787, “can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” History also shows that every state which has attempted to balance support for the privileges of the elite with safeguarding the rights of the people will be taken over by the former in time. Our situation today recalls Lincoln’s comment that the nation cannot go on pretending it’s working as half of one thing and half of another: a great trial must again be met and passed before we can advance to the next stage. What’s going to happen next is anyone’s guess, but this is pretty much how human societies have always worked.
Something extremely important to note when recalling Aristotle’s “Politics” is that what HE meant when he used the word “democracy” is completely the opposite of the governments of the world for the past couple centuries. Aristotle and the other Athenians understood all governments where officials are chosen by election to be oligarchies.
Yes….underneath that vicious cycle is the economic-model of capitalism. That’s what needs to be routed out and replaced with a resource-based economy. I know, “how” is another question entirely
From my reading of the Greeks (not enough), most like Socrates detested democracy (he said the wisest– like himself– should rule, although he had no interest). Generally the Strong Man was seen as most effective, with democracy a stop gap measure to bridge to the next qualified leader. They all agreed the worst Government was by Oligarchs.
Artículo muy esclarecedor.
Fascism arose in the 1930s in defence against the threat of Bolshevism (Internationalist Communism). The oligarch elite had to adopt the same Corporatist Fascism during the Cold War to defend the West. With the Cold War over, they refused to relinquish this Fascism and have now doubled down. Corporatist Fascism is now known as Globalism – not Globalization – the first is an ideology and the latter a process of global Modernisation. Ordinary people are having to adopt Populism (Populist Fascism) to fight the Corporatist Fascism of the elite – fighting fire with fire is the only way to defeat them. Trump is the most prominent example of this in the USA – a new folk hero.
Exactly.
The definition of fascism is the opposition to international communism.
Give me fascism any day over the neo-Bolshevik utopia espoused by Mr Hedges.
“Populist fascism” sounds like a bad joke. It won’t help.
It seems like the Democrats have some fascist tendencies. We see the warmongering of Biden’s neocons, and even nuclear threats against Russia. Ukraine is declared to be the holy land.
To make a necessarily imprecise historical analogy to circumstances in Showa-era Imperial Japan, Steve Bannon often seems to be an analogue to Ikki Kita, whereas Biden seems to be an analogue to Prince Fumimaro Konoe.
Several commentators make the point that both major US parties are fascist. As the Democrats are currently pursuing Hitler’s dream of a world war against Russia, it makes little sense for Mr Hedges to blame Orange Man Bad.
“Hitler’s dream of a world war against Russia?”
Such a simplistic, shallow POV.
Hitler’s pursuit was a world war AGAINST COMMUNISM.
I think he’s just pointing out the obvious. But you’re right, the current form of USFascism is a bipartisan affair.
Perfection belongs to the God. In the political world is no vacuum. Rapid development in the world coincides with Christianity and appears to be a general setback is coinciding with a shrinking of christian influence. Christianity is the one what vigorously confronts the WEF!
Has been returning for quite some time already. As I see it, KILLER KAPITALISM opened the doors for the return – paying little or no attention to the needs of the average citizen…mostly poor.
I think that we can say with some certainty, that in the developed world the party is over. The intellectual, political, monetary and religious structures have crumbled, and a more vicious and unforgiving new order is establishing itself. This process probably began around the late middle to the 19th century. Prior to this was the Renaissance which was the culture of a powerful bourgeois class on the crest of a wave which was whipped up by a storm of economic forces. The masses who did not share with the power of the ruling stratum had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened – but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power. A new despotism arose side-by-side with a new individualism. Freedom and tyranny, individualism and disorder were inextricably interwoven.
However, things were not always this bad for the masses, or at least those masses who lived in the northern hemisphere. With the post-1945 settlement rolled out in the northern hemisphere there was a period of class truce. But this came to an end in the 1980s at the latest to renewed class war in the English-speaking world, this together with social political, and economic development in Europe. And this was about it. And here there has been a return to the increasingly vicious class struggle just about everywhere.
The ideological rottweilers were now off the lead: greed is good. Boris Johnson has launched a bold bid to claim the mantle of Margaret Thatcher by declaring that inequality is essential to fostering “the spirit of envy” and hailed greed as a “valuable spur to economic activity”. In general terms to petit-bourgeois have imbibed the spirit of the age – as the dominant belief system of contemporary society. The outlines of which can be found almost everywhere in popular media and culture and the consequences thereon.
‘’All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life and death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with ones fellow men – or at least with members of one’s class – was replaced by a cynical detached attitude: other individuals were looked upon as ‘objects’ to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one’s own end. The individual was absorbed by a passionate egocentricity, and an insatiable for power and wealth. As a result of this the successful individual’s relation to his own self, his sense of security and were also poisoned. His own self became as much an object to him as other persons had become. We have reasons to doubt whether the powerful masters of the Renaissance capitalism were as happy and secure as they are often pictured. It seems that new freedom brought two things to them: an increased feeling of strength and at the same time an increased isolation, doubt, scepticism – and resulting of all of these – anxiety.’’ (1) Erich Fromm – Fear of Freedom.
And into the 20th century stepped the maelstrom of the irrationalist social and political currents and cults of philosophers, writers, eccentrics and the generally disoriented. For we are dealing here with a political system which, essentially, does not appeal to rational forces of self-interest but which arouses and mobilizes diabolical forces in man which we had believed to be non-existent or at least have died long ago. The same forces in Western Ukraine which have chosen a death cult which stretches back to Stepan Bandera (OUN-B) and Roman Shukeyvich (UPA). These are the same inheritors of the death-cults whose murderous rampage have taken place in Western Ukraine – particularly the Polish areas of Galicia. And also burning down Trade Union Building in Odessa in 2014 with 45 people inside. This is the new fascism. Take note
It seems to me that there needs to be much more rigor in one’s definition of fascism. Many of the things Chris Hedges’ criticizes are worthy of criticism. But not everything that doesn’t match one’s own political-cultural preferences is therefore ‘fascist.’ Most of the world for most of human history has not embraced what the left today embraces and considers normative in the area of sexual politics. Nor, for the most part, has it embraced a thorough-going equality in the economic sphere. Has most of the world for most of human history been fascist? If so, then the word is so vague as to be meaningless.
Except it isn’t.
This contribution by Chris Hedges is on target.
I can only add that “democracy” never existed in the US or in the so-called “democracies”.
One analysis is presented by Francis Jennings in his book “The Creation of America”. If
“democracy” had been more than rhetoric and propaganda the attitudes towards blacks,
Indians, foreigners would have been another… When I am President of the US, I will make
sure that “democracy” is the center of all my State of the Union addresses. It works!
One thing that makes it obvious to me that fascist propaganda has taken a hold here, is that anyone that advocates for radical change in order to better serve all people is immediately disparaged as “evil socialist/communist” etc…..while at the same time idiot liberals babble on about voting-blue-no-matter-who in order to “save our democracy”….it’s one of the more acute signs of mass cognitive dissonance that I’ve ever seen.
Excellent / right on comment.
The USA is already awash with guns, but the European far right is likely to soon be well-armed with weapons diverted from Ukraine – and not just rifles.
This must be part of Biden’s (the CIA’s?) plan, since shipped weapons are no longer accountable/ trackable. Makes you think of BAD ISIS, the head-choppers, which were unmasked as the CIA’s Little Helpers.
ISIS uever had sympathetic European political parties getting significant percentages of electoral votes.
I sometimes wonder how true these old definitions hold today. Living in Germany, I’ve been a leftist all my life – or so I thought. Today I recoil in horror watching what the Left and the Greens are doing to the country I grew up in. Therefore, while still thinking that ‘deep inside’ I’m still left and the biggest Sahra-Wagenknecht-fan there is, I go and vote AfD. It’s the only opposition we’ve got. Of course, they’re vilified as fascists and Nazis, in a hysteric fervor that rivals the tenor of the real Nazis. It’s so bad that people in Germany can lose their job if spotted having diner with an AfD politician. Germany’s well on the way…. again.
But what is a Nazi, these days in Germany, the motherland of Nazi? Or a fascist? Apart from the basic meaning of a nationalistic socialist on one hand and an autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader on the other.
Here in Germany, you’re called a Nazi if you criticize the government’s Corona rules, and an even worse Nazi if you refused to get vaccinated. You’re a Nazi if you criticize the out-of-control migrant policies. You’re a Nazi if you mention the escalating crime rates. You’re a Nazi if you think it’s wrong that a migrant who has raped a child or bludgeoned an old woman to death gets probation and is set free to run around on the streets because ‘he’s traumatized’. You’re a Nazi if you want to maintain traditions like, say, Christmas. Or deny the existence of 99 different genders. Or if you observe dead birds around a wind turbine and don’t buy the climate saga. You’re a Nazi if you dare mutter ‘Minsk 2’ or mention that the killings in Donbass already started in 2014. The government has already warned people that they’re about to be considered Nazis if they dare and protest our energy politics this winter.
But you’re not a Nazi if you support the Nazis in Ukraine. Or any of the shenanigans in, say, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen.
You’re only a Nazi, a fascist, a racist and whatever other most atrocious designation folks could come up with if you disagree or differ from what is considered the prescribed mainstream thought line. I could never make up my mind whether its Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World that’s in the making here – but what I do realize are the glaring similarities to Sebastian Haffner’s posthumous memoir “Defying Hitler”. Read it, look at Germany and start weeping. His 1940 book “Germany: Jekyll and Hyde” is an equally mortifying character study of the German people. They might call everyone else a Nazi these days and drop the Aryan race crap because it’s so utterly out of fashion, but other than that the mo is pretty much the same.
What goes for Germany more or less goes for the whole EU – even though the one or other shows slight signs of exasperation with German arrogance, wokemania and hypochondriacal climate disorder, well able to spot the old Herrenmensch in his Gutmensch disguise. Whether the rabid kraken festering in Brussels is German in nature of if Germany is once again so fervently zombie obedient that it internalized the whole thing to perfection doesn’t really matter. In how far the resulting Frankenstein monster is a US puppet is equally out of vision for the little folks. Whatever it is, it’s bound for the destruction of Europe.
And I guess that is the background of this “new rise of fascism” – for the most part, it’s desperate people who desperately try to escape the utter madness surrounding them. All else failed, this seems the last way out. I do not know enough about Meloni, but I wouldn’t call Orban a fascist.
God, I wish we had an Orban in Germany.
Katharina,
I really liked your post. I thought about the article and was somehow upset about the statement of fascism rising. I think it is about ordinary people being mostly desperate and scared about what is coming. I don’t know if I would call it fascism though.
Oh dear. You seem to have drunk all the Kool-Aid and demanded more, more, more. There are few truthful words in your comment. Your hatred for migrating people, about whose lives you seem to know nothing, is bad enough. You add contempt for transgender people, repetition of right-wing myths about the end of Christmas and then you deny climate change. I can only suggest you change your reading material from the far right to some socialist sources such as WSWS.
What a low bar to wish for….
What goes around, comes around.
Russia, and China in the east, saved the world from fascism in WW2. Here we are again !
Descrivere il partito di Giorgia Meloni e dei suoi alleati come ESTREMA destra è semplicemente ridicolo. Evidentemente voi il fascismo non sapete nemmeno che faccia abbia. Noi italiani lo sappiamo bene, e non è sicuramente quello che andrà al potere. Andate a rileggervi la storia.
Meloni is not a fascist. The previous prime minister, Mr Draghi, was the one who imposed vaccine passports, and it was Mrs von der Leyen who sad they had the tools to inflict on Italy the required punishment if Italy dared to vote the wrong way.
Hedges never defines what he means by fascism. If he means fascism as Mussolini defined it – as a corporate government combine, then we’ve had it for a long time. Where the Trump movement does not espouse that at all. It is more of a Libertarian anti-globalist philosophy that really wants to break up power centers rather than create new ones. “Drain the Swamp” is the oppositte of creatng totalitarian bureaucracies so I think Mr. Hedges needs to do his research before publishing this “fascist behind every tree” sort of doctrine.
There are two forms of fascism. One is overt and populist, which is what Chris is talking about here. The other is covert and elitest, which is the kind that we see in the US, the UK and other countries — neoliberal fascism. All forms of fascism are exceptionalist and exclusivist. Populist versions such as Banderism in the UK channel rage, fear, and a general sense of powerless into violence against “outgroups”, n the case of Ukraine, ethnic Russians, then anyone “other”. While populist, however, Banderism and its ilk are not representative and their contradictions are too evident; their propaganda too crude. Neolliberal fascism does not channel despair. Instead, it channels apathy, the need for comfort and convenience and illusion. Its propaganda is subtle — mostly entertainment — or presented in that modality.Its best mouthpiece is Hollywood. But neoliberal fascism breaks down when economic fundamentals cause real suffering among the “many” who then start to see the plotholes in the stories they want to believe. hxxps://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/how-the-west-was-won-russias-victory
Let’s face it. Victoria Nuland’s working with the neo-Nazi Rght Sektor and Svoboda Parties in Ukraine to overthrow the elected Yanukovich in 2014 helped to empower neo-Nazis all across Europe. US financial support of Ukraine’s once banned ultra right militias’ Nazi activities pulled Ukraine’s military, Intelligence and local policing under neo-Nazis governance. Take a bow, USA. Europe reaps what you have sown.
Mr Hedges has warned all of us an alarming amount of times about the fascistic country and world we live in. I fear, like most here, that the message will be lost. We are in for some dark times. I fear my children’s future. I fear for my future. Though fearful I will not sit out. Ill dissent every time.
Solidarity
Where is a Rosa Luxemburg when you need one?
When it was HRC vs. The Donald, I shocked many “progressive” friends by stating that if I was an American, I wouldn’t, I just couldn’t, vote for Clinton to “stop Trump”, that I didn’t see any more virtue in her, in Obama, than I did in Trump. If I ware forced to vote, with a gun to my head, I would flip a coin.
That perspective has gained a little more traction, but not much.
The last federal election in Canada was the first one I didn’t vote in. Who would I vote for? I had been holding my nose and voting NDP for many years, but couldn’t anymore. Unless something changes very dramatically, I won’t vote in the next one.
The Democrats are not better than the Republicans, here; the Liberals are not better than the Conservatives. Perhaps, liberalism is even worse – it certainly has more oceans of blood on its hands.
The problem I have with Hedges (and a lot of “progressives”) is his apparent reluctance to see liberalism as being of the enemy, his disappointment with them for not finding their better natures, for not being better-abled or more focused on, defeating the fascist enemy. They are part of the enemy, distinguished only by their facile and deceiving invocation of let-them-eat-cake identity issues that serve only to fracture the working class, thereby rendering powerless.
Liberalism is not, and in no meaningful sense, ever has been progressive. A half century ago, when I was a young man, a union leader and socialist, the federal conservative party in Canada was called the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, informally, the “Red Tories”. The Liberal Party of Canada was the party of big business, the “pro-American” party. Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson was the father of NATO. Before some back-room strategist discovered the enormous potential of identity politics, Governor George Wallace was a not atypical Democrat politician. They were the primary avatars of the enemy in the class struggle.
Earlier, before the war, and before my time, the Communist Party of Canada was, by far, the biggest political party in Canada by membership. (I am not certain, but I believe that may have also been the case at some point in the US.) How did we, in the intervening years, become so stupid, so naive? This was the great work of liberalism.
This is obviously a time of great peril. But it is also, perhaps largely as an unintended consequence of cornering Russia into an existential war, a time of great potential. But not if we harbour the nostalgic notion that liberalism, neo- or not, at its best, can be an ally.
Where is a Rosa Luxemburg when you need one?
Hedges is well aware of the failures of the liberal state and the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the liberal class…he’s written entire books on the subject.
I have to ask if any -of the conservative wanted-to-be against the opposition platform.(s)..and waited for their response.. Then why is any alternative commit– reduce to a ‘slight airing’.
For the major signs of treason is left to possibly unstable officials —who remain unaware as to their involvement (s). Now what as education has been stifled —the press are ‘out-to-lunch-permanently—and our political alternatives are co-opted miserably..But the most eye-popping wall is the majority of people who have simply gone about their dailies without a blink as to what the real ramifications might be for their soon-future. It’s as though their all waiting for the disaster to happen —then wait again for -so-called forces to respond–and then watch on the 6 o’clock ..news.
To be bleak it’s like the rush to get to the 60’s from the boot-rubber on ones neck (air to breath)–to a respect and freedom to ‘think’ for oneself — never felt with ones feet comfortable place to walk toward their futures. It’s all gone–nothing to look towards for my son–(only don’t have children)–because there is nothing but ‘precariousness (a warning from a former finance minister.) who left with millions and not a damn care for anyone….same with our courts and Parliament–we are soon to be erased or excluded…but bank bailout . are part of every annual federal budget — globally worse in the US of A. No longer America….
You have come a long way Chris. From a mouth piece for the US establishment to a semi-critical thinker. In this case you have identified that fascists are rising, however you missed to identify who the fascists are. It’s exactly the European Union ruling elites who are the fascists and trying to suppress any opposition. European Union is nothing more than 4th Reich that has achieved almost everything that Hitler set out to do. Centralized Europe, ruled from Berlin. Germany have integrated all the European countries that had substantially supported them during WW2 in the offensive against Russia and the same is happening today. They also follow the rule “keep your friends close and enemies closer” so they are keeping the French right next to them (throwing them the bone) so they think they are important. France also had a large percentage of people who supported Germany. Well, Franks are Germans after all. Axis powers of WW2 are united in EU again and are using their financial influence to bend all of Europe’s knees to their throne. Yes Meloni may have started from a party that had actual connections to Duce, but what are her actual party policies today. Not nearly what Duce wanted to do. European Unionists are burning Russian literature and books. Cancelling their people, media. EU is a fascist entity and it’s is a financial arm, or lever of the United States hegemony. EU is not a union of people, it’s a union of fascists.
I have only voted for Independents in all of my presidential elections.
I worked for Ross Perot in 91 & 92. .. And remember, how they blocked him out in 96?
…
… And, in 2000 to 2020, those were the very same treatments, etc, etc, & etc…
On November 8th, 2022, I will surrender my right to vote at the elections hq in Phx, AZ…
… Complete with a memory photo of the event…
… And, then from there, I will go for my favorite pastrami sandwich!
I will no longer be a part of the criminality.
: (
Fascism, according to its self-proclaimed creator, Benito Mussolini, is a synonym for corporatism, a form of government in which the political office holders are chosen and dominated by the ultra-wealthy and the corporate elite, usually one and the same, to work, not mainly for the public interest but entirely for their own selfish considerations (though if the trains are made to run on time there may be some overlap of both the people’s and the oligarchy’s interests, if only out of serendipity).
By this definition, every stinking American politician of both major parties is and has been a fascist, selling their services to the oligarchy, ever since all campaign finance laws were struck down as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. This reality was underscored with further proclamations by our kow-towing court in the service of Mammon that corporations are persons and that money is free speech. Also occurring in the simultaneous milieu of the Clinton administration were a raft of bills passed in Congress that totally deregulated the banking industry, shitcanning rules such as Glass-Steigle, while at the same time our entire structure of mass communication was also being deregulated and handed over to the whims of no more than six enormous corporations that now owned and micromanaged the entire “Matrix” of electronic modalities, including not just radio, TV and print media but all the newly emerging swarm of multifarious digital devices, which were quickly and vigorously used to condition and brain wash the entire American population simultaneously with nothing but select propaganda and false narrative to suit the every whim of the tiniest fraction of the top percentile.
Over the course of no more than 20 years (between roughly 1990 and 2010) this entire country was both formally and functionally transformed into a fascist dictatorship of which even Hitler would be proud. The bag of tricks routinely used to dominate, intimidate and eliminate anyone who would dare challenge the insider elites defining the “establishment” were now muted, censored and removed entirely from the picture by the new “cancel culture.” “Social media” are not the Wunderspielwaren we were told they are. Just consider the mischief and deceit to which travesties such as Facebook and Twitter are put.
The American politicians, as stupid and obtuse as they usually are, immediately adapted to the real fear of losing their jobs, with the considerable power and money attached to them, at the hands of such weapons and their wielders, and sold out–every last man jack of them–to their aristocratic sugar daddies with the cash who could make or break any one of them with as much fungible truth or lies spread widely enough through the populace to make it happen! Now this same pack of liars who OWN the American government, think that they deserve to own the nominal leadership of every last sovereign country on the planet whereupon they will make every last decision as to how you will live your life from cradle (if they let you be born) to the grave, and as to how your existence will serve them.
What do you think the imbroglio in Eukraine is all about but the cancellation of Russia and then China with all consequent prerogatives obtaining to the cold black hearts in Silicon Valley? Why are new infectious diseases suddenly emerging as if from nowhere (which most people cannot fathom unless they have an advanced understanding of molecular genetics and how to create such things on a lab bench)? Why does the internal combustion engine have to be suddenly shitcanned and quickly replaced with obscenely expensive and dangerous battery-powered vehicles with such limited range and time-consuming nuisance to re-charge (assuming corporate America commits to building the many additional power plants needed, none of which are on the drawing boards!) that they will make owning and using a personal car unachievable for most regular working folks? Maybe they don’t want interlopers in the American outback which is rapidly being bought up by the rich and being depopulated by the now poverty-stricken “just folks.” Why? Why any of this and more questions I am sure that YOU have? Agendas, agendas that are not yours, and would never be chosen by anyone at all lucid. Obviously, the people on top realised long ago that the rough and tumble of American “democracy,” as flawed as it was would never be conducive to the level of CONTROL they needed to remake the Earth as they imagined to be perfection. Frankly, with all the inertia inherent in any entrenched “system” I don’t think that the ongoing transformation we see all around us in this 21 century can be stopped, undone or reset to a previous time point. Even if we could tear it down, what plans do we have to replace it that most would agree upon? The future’s so bleak, I gotta wear… a blindfold!
@Realist: Hoo boy you said a mouthful! But don’t forget that Mother Nature bats last around here so the day will come when these greedhead swine who think they have everyone and everything under total perfect control, will have to come to grips with that fact and scurry off to their well stocked, well appointed, air conditioned hidey holes (G.W. Bush has a multi thousand acre spread in South America dab smack over the biggest natural aquafer on that whole continent). I just hope I live long enough to see some of them cringing and whimpering and imploring God to save them, while vowing to change their ways, as the last great wave of human caused shitstorm engulfs them.
I heard that!
Bravo!
Except, this not — repeat not a movie!
Fascism is what the citizens — and other nations’ citizens — have been trained for and lied to about.
Fascism is when forty-nine republicans — as a bunch — vote against social reform and against economic equality.
Stop Wars!
Keep writing, prof Hedges.
Well said, Chris Hedges. Fascism is well under way, not only in the US where with the support of the well controlled MSM is it partly disguised, but also in so many other countries, Germany being one, yet again.For those who can remember Joseph Goebbels, he is alive and well, masquerading in the form of the many leaders of so many countries, including Ukraine. That kind of fascistic thinking seems to be a requirement to become one of the subservient US war tools, the majority of NATO members as the perfect example in that proxy war.
“Jump” says the US. “How high, Mr. President”
A Nationalist labor movement in a single country will always be very powerless against International Corporations. The International Bosses like it this way, and the “Labor Leaders” get nice 6 figure salaries by pretending to fight for their workers in a hopeless cause, before announcing a ‘historic victory’ that is yet another set of concessions by their workers.
The only way to fight against International Corporations and International Bosses is an International Labor Movement.
American unions won’t even link their struggles together inside of America. They isolate each strike as much as possible, and never, ever join strikes together. And yet, we know that the power of the workers is when we unite, across any fake lines drawn to divide us.
I believe that a republic and a democracy have proven to be the most corruptible forms of government–and there is ample proof of that in the West today. So, I can easily see the need for a populist patriot, like a well-intentioned Trump or DeSantis, to gallop in to our rescue, thus replacing what has become a thoroughly broken and deliberately subverted political system with order. The risk, of course, is yet more tyranny. But, in the short term, that white knight may be the only way to stop the national suicide. No government is without corruption, but left to fester a corrupted government becomes irredeemably so. DNA is our worst enemy, but, sadly, it is something over which we have precious little control.
“We have seen this movie before.”
Yes, we have – it’s the one where the liberal, ‘social-democratic’ administration of Capitalism shows its true colours every time it is faced with an economic crisis (hxxps://newleftreview.org/issues/i111/articles/giovanni-arrighi-towards-a-theory-of-capitalist-crisis), – this time because the neo-liberal attempt to “cure” 1970s stagflation is crashing and burning in front of our eyes – it resorts to neo-fascist “solutions” rather than Communist ones (obviously!), simply because the former is at least a form of Capitalism, if an “exceptional” one (see Poulantzas, etc.).
I note that you do not seem to be a Communist, rather a religious liberal. As such, you are ipso facto part of the problem: basically wanting a return to the “rational” status quo of the 1945-1970 Golden Age of Capitalism (when massive Cold War spending gave the Western working class the (temporary) ability to improve its conditions of existence and allowed various social movements (racial, sexual, environmental, etc.) demanding equality to take off), but still based, as today, on the private, rather than communal, ownership of the world’s natural resources and the theft of labour-power.
Come back with your “moral” religious/liberal “solutions” after you have read The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (hxxps://b-ok.xyz/book/1167198/8e0ba1), if not Marx/Engels themselves.
The headline is incorrect. The correct headline should be
“Fascism is Here”
And has been for awhile. I describe the current American system as “Two Party Fascism”.
On the current, corporate approved ballots in America, you can take your choice between the Cult of Personality form of fascism, or the Banker-General-Spy form of fascism. The alliance of Bankers and Military and Police power is the traditional backbone of fascism, but in the Land of the Free, the Party of Wall Street allied with the Generals in a quest for World War III and World Domination is described as the ‘Liberal’ alternative to the Cult of Personality and fascism.
No matter how the votes go in America, America will continue to operate the world’s largest prison system, massive militarized police forces will still rule by intimidation and kill thousands of Americans each year. The government will maintain surveillance of all citizens. The government budgets will continue to pour money upon the military and police, while calling for austerity and sacrifice for the citizens. The tax cuts for billionaires will not change no matter the size of the deficit. No matter who gets the most votes, America will stay the same.
But the notion of Two Party Fascism allows the illusion that just by electing the other group of fascists, everything will be great again, or we’ll be stronger together again, or whatever the opposition slogan of the cycle is next time around.
U.B.I. anyone, for every civilized person in the world? All surface unrest sit on a causal reality of wealth inequality. It’s end-stage capitalism that will not fix itself. But we the people might prevail if we had a voice that was supported by something all people of goodwill could affiliate with. In addition to meeting people’s basic needs of food, shelter, education, and Health care, I propose the Human Survival Party — not a political party but an advocacy group. I say it’s time to add to documenting what we do that’s wrong with what we could do that’s right!
Perhaps you might ask yourself why UBI is supported by tech billionaires. It’s not a socialist, egalitarian solution to poverty; it is entirely neoliberal in that it monetizes through the private sector even more of our lives than at present. A better, more socialist solution is universal basic services, free at the point of delivery and publicly funded. We in the UK have enjoyed the NHS since 1948, against all attacks by Tory and Labour governments, and it stands as an example of what can be achieved. UBI would hand vast funds to the private sector. Is that what you want?
Of course that’s not what she wants. I don’t mean to presume to speak for her, but I think she’s only considering that it would keep millions from starving or going broke and homeless. Yes it’s supported by some elite because it would give them even more control, so it’s nothing more than a band-aid on a gaping wound. But it will likely be necessary in some form as things unravel more swiftly and viciously. But I’m with you, as far as realizing we need to go much further, and I think more people will wake up to this as our society collapses due to the dominant “profit above all else” mindset.
For a guy carrying water for Joe Biden and the Democrats, Chris Hedges is looking incredibly naive (at best) on what ‘fascism’ actually is. Those on the Democrats side of our society, ‘fascism’ is Donald Trump. Why is that? He was the US Presdident for 4 years, and clearly did not act as a ‘fascist’ in those years. Trump did not ‘fix’ his election in 2016 – he legitimately won, driving Democrats into the dreaded ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’, buttressed by a compliant ‘press-titude’ media savaging Trump for 4 years, and illegally interfering with the operation of an effective US Federal Government. Perhaps Mr. Hedges ‘missed’ the Philadelphia speech of Joe Biden, in which he threatened American citizens who don’t agree with him on a blood-red stage backed by ‘US Marines’, waving his fist as Adolph Hitler did in his speeches against the Jews and Communists. As I stated in my previous comment on a Hedges article, only one side of the political spectrum is censored, legally destroyed, ‘swatted’, demonized, etc. It is the side of Trump adherents. If only Mr. Hedges could see past his extreme biases, he might see the true ‘fascists’ are the Democrats – who hide behind a phony ‘democracy’.
I don’t think you’re very familiar with Chris Hedges’ work to think he’s “carrying water” for Biden and the Democrats. That’s a typical reaction from the right when they are criticized- an example of binary thinking. To hell with Trump and Biden and anyone who blindingly supports either- you’ll find Hedges is on that page more so than this piece exemplifies.
Fascism, or better right-wing populism, is simply the people’s reaction when left-wing populism fails or becomes marginalized by spending its time and energy on issues irrelevant to the needs of the majority.
So as the best and brightest of the liberal class spend all their time on LGBTQXYZ and endless racism, and abortion rights, and protection of undocumented aliens and etc. while completely neglecting the elephants occupying the room: empire, militarism, corporatism, Deep State security stateism, and the general beggaring of the middle and lower class to the benefit of the rich, the people will take comfort and direction from the traditional sources of order.
“She (Meloni) calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.” She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people.”
She’s absolutely right about the EU bureaucrats … they are indeed global elites networked to promote their own class interests at the expense of the normal citizens of Europe. As for the “Great Replacement”, recall that the great Cesare Chavez was also against illegal immigration into the US, or indeed large scale immigration of any kind. Rapid demographic and population changes are ALWAYS in the interest of capital classes that thrive on division and chaos.
Isn’t it sad that the main people in power uttering these truths now are right-wingers?
Thanks to Chris Hedges for an excellent tracing of parallels showing the rise of fascism in the US.
The two parties do serve the MIC, corporations, and the rich, but they prefer to win for their few differences.
The failure of the Biden admin to see that the Ukraine disaster will lose them the midterms is hard to explain.
Apparently another Russophobia scam was to fool the sheep and distract from poor handling of the epidemic.
The Nazis won due to a severe depression, and political fragmentation which exists but is not visible in the US.
The US does not have a culture of action and results among citizens, only lying, cheating, and stealing.
That may prevent fascism, but also prevents reform by any means beyond tweets and changing channels.
A disaster of fascism might burst the US totalitarian prison, but there is no model or means of reform.
“The failure of the Biden admin to see that the Ukraine disaster will lose them the midterms” is not at all hard to explain.
You can make a case that neither are Nazis, that they are merely enablers, but Biden is no less a Nazi, or an enabler, than Zelenski is.
This is an existential war for Russia, but, and this is less acknowledged, it is also an existential war for the USA, NATO and the Empire. In this context, losing the midterms doesn’t even enter into the calculation.
“The failure of the Biden administration to see that the Ukraine disaster will lose them the midterms” is not a failure: it’s a feature, not a bug. The Dems are uncomfortable with being in the majority. It’s harder to hide their do-nothingness so contrary to their rhetoric. “Party of the working man” is the biggest lie in a sea of lying. The Great Betrayers is how this bleeding heart liberal thinks of them.
The comment Anyone as long as they’re blue is on target with the lefties I know.
Call it by whatever name(s) you like. People are voting for a perceived ‘lesser evil’. Herr Schlob, Squeaky Gates, Tedros, Pfauci, et al.; together with their fawning barkers: Bojo, Truss, Scholz, Macron, Pedo Joe, SelfieBoy Trudo and (fill in the blanks) are wholly irrelevant to peoples’ needs. They. Are. Pissed. They want change. They don’t care what pejorative you use to describe their aspirations.
“She calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.”” Meloni’s spot on with this!
“She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people.” Dem0graphic change in the U.S., U.K, and Western Europe is a total reality, pointing it out is not a conspiracy theory. There’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with desiring to help your own countrymen first and foremost. Cesar Chavez, Bernie (until the woke dead end got to him), and much of the labor movement always understood this. Of course, one big way to stop the migrants from fleeing the Third World would be for the Washington-Zio-militarist empire to stop with the warmongering and draconian sanctions.
Agreed.
Demographic change isn’t necessarily the result of a plot to bring it about. And while Western warmongering and economic policies have played a major role so far, climate change is likely to make matters a hundred times worse.
So….stating the truth about a few things doesn’t justify fascism. Never will.
Fascism is already here in America: the U.S. is a warmongering state that does absolutely nothing for its people. That’s fascism.
No kidding. What are we going to do about it?
Start by supporting any (and I mean any) politician or govt official who advocates a termination to the Washington-Zio-militarist empire, period. That means when MTG and Boebert get it right — which they do when it comes to US imperialism regarding the proxy war against Russia — it’s time to support them on that issue. Also, eschew those officials and politicians who get it dead wrong: the Dems voting 100% in lockstep (Bernie, the sqaulid squad, etc.) to fund and support the Ukie Russophobic fascists should be wholeheartedly condemned and denounced.
The real fascists are the Washington neocon-Ziocon militarist in our midst: they’re currently putting us on the brink of a major World War, vilifying to no end sovereign Russia that cares for its people, and they’re robbing and pillaging the treasury as we worry about silly “fascists” in relatively inconsequential nations.
The fascists in our midst just moments ago decided to rob us of another $11 billion to send the Ukie Russophobic fascist (real fascists) and miserable conscripts.
We are being robbed from within! The barbarians are int’l finance plundering everything in sight: they stole from the Russian people throughout the 1990s and they’re stealing from us currently; no sane heads in Washington are around to demand a stop to this perilous fascistic nonsense.
There’s absolutely nothing morally or ethically wrong with some isolationism, a much demonized term that must come back into fashion. Our goals in the U.S. are to take care of our Black, Chicano, Native Am, Asian American and White working class/middle class and poor CITIZENS! Nothing fascist about taking care of our own, stopping the imperial aggressions all over the globe, seizing funding the racist arrogant sadistic and paranoid state of Israel, and jailing and trying for war crimes our parasitic financial elite and warmongering Zio freaks.
You’re right. No nation is perfect. We do after all have to contend with our DNA. But what’s happening in the USA and EU is symptomatic of socialism’s failure and an opportunistic/subversive Marxist World Economic Forum and their similarly afflicted global warming cultists trying to fill the developing void they have created. The Fascists and Marxists, esp. in the Democrat Party, aka the Democrat Socialists, are the genuine culprits here. The Biden Regime attest to that in spades. An under-engaged, ill-educated electorate also contributes to this national suicide. There are still genuine American patriots who place great importance on traditional values, national identity, secure borders and republicanism without being Communists or Fascists. And we all know who they are and are not. If we are fortunate enough to be “rescued” by a republican white knight, in 8 years must can be done to purge the system of Fascists, Communists and their useful idiots. Our house is in dangerous disorder and is destined for the ash heap if we do not clean house–and soon. A return to our Founders’ foundational first principles is still possible, but not with the Establishment elites in control. And if all else fails to return us to “normalcy” and republican principles, then I secession is Liberty’s only hope for survival. Unity at ANY price is suicidal insanity.
Well said Drew! I am confused by this article as the Italian politician talks about defending faith, family , freedom and country …. not the EU or the WEF. Hmmm…. what is so fascist about this? Just because the MSM, WSJ, etc say it doesn’t make it true.
Great comment Cyn. There’s a big segment of the Western population that gets uncomfortable anytime anyone anywhere speaks about genuine economic populism.
I agree with your line of thinking more than Chris Hedges, who always blames the Christian Right for Fascism even though the rise of “Fascist” (actually Nationalist Isolationist Demagogues) are a Reaction to the present international globalism (where the Corporate World always undercuts Labor and paying their fair share of taxes). America needs some self reflection that will only come from some isolationism, at least from the military side. We should be building up third world countries, cooperating rather than crushing them; they may fear and respect Power, but they appreciate and value win-win for their peoples (not just their American puppet dictators). Both China and Russia seem way ahead of the US in this regard.
For Hedges to equate noisy populists like Trump, Le Pen, Orban, and Meloni (and I would add Erdogan, who the US failed to overthrow; he bears a grudge) with the Super Fascist Joe Biden and his coterie of ex-Soviet family neocons who are supporting the eradication of Russian language, culture and particularly ethnic Russian Ukrainians with soon to be a $hundred billion in war equipment should be insulting to anyone with a brain. There is a massive difference between a Trump (demonized and never allowed– maybe correctly– to touch the real levers of power; we had Pompeo, “Ambassador” Bolton and the Deep State for that) and a Biden, the Quintessential Establishment Creature after 50 years in DC, an arrogant stupid megalomaniac who is now taking on Hitler’s mantle to crush the untermenschen (as he did with his incarceration drug and crime bills as Senator). Hedges is still bound up by Democrats vs Republicans, now more than ever a false dichotomy. It is all about POWER, not moral or ideological differences, actions not words.
Hedges sees the ghost of Hitlerian fascism everywhere. We must overcome this paranoia in order to install real genuine economic populism and a nationalism rooted in peace, providing for our own, and total anti-imperialism/anti-militarism.
Great stuff Chris, great stuff! Thanks!