The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Fascism is coming to the USA... Literally (no kidding)

    By David Seaton on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 3:52pm |
    I thought twice before using the word "fascism" in the title of this post, because by now the word "fascism" and "fascist" have become degraded into simply all purpose terms of abuse without any concrete meaning, except disaproval: so perhaps it might be a good thing to go straight to how  fascism is defined by former Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton in Wikipedia's article on the subject and see how it fits with some of what we are looking at today:
    "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
    I would say that professor Paxton's definition is a useful one and that the far right in the USA has gone through most of the steps that Paxton has outlined right up to pursuing "with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." unless, of course, you count the invasion of Iraq, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo, as steps in that direction.
    **
    Let's take a look at a few sentences in an essay by Dinesh D' Souza in Forbes and see how they jibe with Paxton's parameters of "community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood":
    The U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost. Dinesh D'Souza - Forbes
    Now, if you think that all this is too weird to be relevant, just read the comments on D' Souza's "thoughts" by one of the Republican party's guiding lights, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich quoted in The National Review:
    Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama. What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.” “This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us. National Review
    To give some more context and to heighten the flavor of Gingrich's comments, it might be useful to view a trailer of his latest film, "America at Risk", stressing professor Paxton's themes of "community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood".


    What is this really all about? Why is so much money being spent to make American's angry and afraid?

     

    Professor Paxton's text also gives us a clue, when he speaks of:
    "A mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites"
    Sounds a bit like the Tea Party, doesn't it?
    **
    During the Wiemar period in Germany, many of the country's richest industrialists, concerned about the rise of communism, saw fit to finance the rise of Adolph Hitler... was this a mistake on their part?
    **
    In World War Two, Germany was burnt to the ground and nearly seven million Germans died, but the families that financed Hitler such as the Krupps and the Thyssens are still some of Germany's richest citizens. I think that answers the question. Obviously the vital concerns of the super rich and those of ordinary citizens often don't coincide and the ruin of nearly everyone is not necessarily the ruin of a few.
    **
    We could use that hypothesis when studying which public affairs organizations the Koch family, for example, finance with their fortune.
    **
    Here is would be correct to note that the USSR has disappeared and with it the "international communist conspiracy" that went with it. We live in a period where the free market's hegemony is absolute. Why are rich people like the Koch's spending such sums on political agitation? What are they afraid of?
    ***
    Looking through my files, I stumbled on an important article written in 2007, in my opinion one of the most important articles of our brief century, written by Martin Wolf, the head economist of the Financial Times, one the most level headed, best informed and least controversial writers on world affairs in the English language.
    **
    It seems to me that the article, which seems to have been forgotten , entitled, "Living in a Zero-Sum World", gives us the key to the "Tea Party" phenomenon and all the strange and contradictory and sometimes quite senseless, behavior we associate with it. As I hope you will see, reading the following extracts, there is method in their madness:
    We live in a positive-sum world economy and have done so for about two centuries. This, I believe, is why democracy has become a political norm, empires have largely vanished, legal slavery and serfdom have disappeared and measures of well-being have risen almost everywhere. What then do I mean by a positive-sum economy? It is one in which everybody can become better off. It is one in which real incomes per head are able to rise indefinitely. How long might such a world last, and what might happen if it ends?
    Obviously the idea that we may coming to a point where an irresistible force, our (over) capacity to produce is running into an immovable object, our finite energy resources and the disastrous effect of global warming. This puts into question the entire idea of a "positive-sum" world, and in many ways takes us back to the times before the Industrial Revolution. Here is what Wolf has to say (emphasis mine):
    "A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad. In traditional agrarian societies the surpluses extracted from the vast majority of peasants supported the relatively luxurious lifestyles of military, bureaucratic and noble elites. The only way to increase the prosperity of an entire people was to steal from another one. (...) Democratic politics became increasingly workable because it was feasible for everybody to become steadily better off.(...) in the new positive-sum world, elites were willing to tolerate the enfranchisement of the masses. The fact that they no longer depended on forced labour made this shift easier still. Consensual politics, and so democracy, became the political norm.(...) The biggest point about debates on climate change and energy supply is that they bring back the question of limits. If, for example, the entire planet emitted CO2 at the rate the US does today, global emissions would be almost five times greater. The same, roughly speaking, is true of energy use per head. This is why climate change and energy security are such geopolitically significant issues. For if there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge – indeed, they are already emerging – within and among countries." Martin Wolf - Financial Times

    The bottom line that ties together all the above quotes are the taboo words, "class struggle" or what Martin Wolf artfully calls, "intense distributional conflicts."

    "if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart"

     What does Martin Wolf mean by the "underpinnings of our world"? The great (huge understatement) British historian, Eric Hobsbawm, puts it this way in "The Age of Revolution":

    "... some time in the 1780s, and for the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid and up to the present llimitless multiplication of men, goods and services."
    This is the world we have lived in since the end of the 18th century, we know no other and it is predicated on limitless growth. Limitlessness is an article of faith, so is optimism. 

    In an article from the Weekly Standard from all the way back in 2005 there is a relevant paragraph on this optimism and the conflict that is brewing today:
    "...the core of the GOP's support turns out to be drawn from "Enterprisers," affluent, optimistic, and staunchly conservative on economic and social issues alike. Enterprisers represent just 11 percent of registered voters--and apart from them, the most reliable GOP voters are Social Conservatives (13 percent of registered voters) and Pro-Government Conservatives (10 percent of voters). Both groups are predominantly female (Enterprisers are overwhelmingly male); both are critical of big business; and both advocate more government involvement to alleviate the economic risks faced by a growing number of families. "
    I'm sure my readers will have noticed that whenever you talk to one of these "Enterprisers", they invariably pooh pooh any doubts about the sustainability of our system. These people have a taliban-like faith that there will always be a technological solution to any "limit" that might ever pop up.

    Until recently this optimism was not confined to the Rotarian, Republican, booster crowd, it was also an article of faith of the left. Every Soviet five year plan that ever was, was filled with this very same optimism. Up till recently the only argument between the left and the right on the question of growth was to whom would fall the privilege of fulfilling mankind's destiny to soar ever upward on the wings of growing productivity... and the right is the last man standing.

     

    At this point, as the evidence of the reality of global warming piles up, most of these optimists are whistling past the graveyard or in denial. Some of them, however, may be prudently planning for the future.

    Martin Wolf is the chief economist of the Financial Times and a wonderful journalist. In his work: at international conferences, and over a thousand dinner tables and at countless coffee sessions, he comes into daily contact with some of the most wealthy and powerful men and women in the world and those that serve them. Wolf hears them speak and most of all picks up their body language, their silences and vibrations. His article on "limits", which I am quoting abundantly is the cri de coeur of a man who, though not wealthy and powerful himself, knows the ways of the wealthy and powerful as no other does... with the possible exception of Rupert Murdoch's butler. For the language of a sedate, financial newspaper, Wolf practically weeps:
    "The response of many, notably environmentalists and people with socialist leanings, is to welcome such conflicts. These, they believe, are the birth-pangs of a just global society. I strongly disagree. It is far more likely to be a step towards a world characterised by catastrophic conflict and brutal repression. This is why I sympathise with the hostile response of classical liberals and libertarians to the very notion of such limits, since they view them as the death-knell of any hopes for domestic freedom and peaceful foreign relations."
    If we examine what Martin Wolf is saying logically, not even really reading between the lines, this supremely informed man is declaring that he knows that, before they will ever pay Scandinavian like income taxes, drive small cars and wear sweaters around the house on cold winter days, the elites of the United States will create a police state and go to war endlessly to dominate the resource rich areas of the world. Hyperbole? Examine George W. Bush's presidency in that light and perhaps Dubya may not really have been as dumb as he looked.. Or maybe he was more like what May West once said about Ronald Reagan, "dumb but willing."

    At this juncture, the elites of the Republican Party begins to separate from their middle class and working class base and the only way to keep them on board would be endless war and endless fear. Terror and paranoia,     what moldy old Marxists used to call, "false consciousness", may be the key to this year's and the 2012 election.

    The Republican Party, to use another worn but useful Marxist term, has entered into contradiction with itself and using Wolf's analysis as our text, is probably going to finally tear itself apart. Unfortunately I don't think the Democrats will ever have the chops to pick up the pieces.


    I think that without pulling any rhetorical rabbits out of hats, Martin Wolf's insights give a clear idea of what is going on in the American right and why they are acting so strangely lately.

    Cross-posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com

    Comments

    Funny you wrote this, because as I was walking home today I was wondering how long it would take the Republican/Tea Party to develop a strong-arm wing, like the Basij.


    by Donal on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 5:44pm

    Hi David!  Good post!

    There's no question that the Republican right carries both the potential and the desire to become a fascist authoritarian movement and not just "conservative". They are dangerous people.


    by oleeb on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 6:08pm

    I had to stop and digest all that you wrote.  Yes as a voter I have noticed the republican party is falling apart.  But I also have noticed the democrats are under pressure from their voters to toughen up and take the wealthy on. 


    by trkingmomoe on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 6:26pm

    On what happened in Germany -  from The Fear of Freedom by Erich Fromm, 1942,

    "once certain needs have developed in a character structure, any behaviour in line with these needs is at the same time satisfactory psychologically and practical from the standpoint of material success. As long as a society offers the individual those two satisfactions simultaneously, we have a situation where the psychological forces are cementing the social structure. Sooner or later, however, a lag arises. The traditional character structure still exists while new economic conditions have arisen for which the traditional character traits are no longer useful. People tend to act according to their character structure, but either these actions are actual handicaps in their economic pursuits or there is not enough opportunity for them to find positions that allow them to act according to their "nature ". An illustration of what we have in mind is the character structure of the old middle classes, particularly in countries with a rigid class stratification like Germany. The old middle class virtues - frugality, thrift, cautiousness, suspiciousness - were of diminishing value in modern business in comparison with new virtues, such as initiative, a readiness to take risks, aggressiveness, and so on. Even inasmuch as these old virtues were still an asset - as with the small shopkeeper - the range of possibilities for such business was so narrowed down that only a minority of the sons of the old middle class could "use" their character traits successfully in their economic pursuits. While by their upbringing they had developed character traits that once were adapted to the social situation of their class, the economic development went faster than the character development. This lag between economic and psychological evolution resulted in a situation in which the psychic needs could no longer be satisfied by the usual economic activities. These needs existed, however, and had to seek for satisfaction in some other way. Narrow egotistical striving for one's own advantage, as it had characterised the lower middle class, was shifted from the individual plane to that of the nation. The sadistic impulses, too, that had been used in the battle of private competition were partly shifted to the social and political scene, and partly intensified by frustration. Then, freed from any restricting factors, they sought satisfaction in acts of political persecution and war. Thus, blended with the resentment caused by the frustrating qualities of the whole situation, the psychological forces instead of cementing the existing social order became dynamite to be used by groups which wanted to destroy the traditional political and economic structure of democratic society."

    Since you are bringing the Marxists into your comparison of the tea partiers with Germany's pre-fascist lumpenproletariat middle class, who better to turn to than an old Marxist who had a front row seat from which to study them.  That what his whole book is about.  Note the name of the site linked.


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 6:50pm

    Hey David. I have no doubt that those om the extreme right would love nothing better than to set up a facist state here not unlike Nazi Germany or even Italy under Mussolini and may try. But unlike Europe of the 1920s, 30s and 40s - where most countries were still pretty isolated and separate unto them selves - no country these days can say that. We are far too inter twined these days.   The Globalization that the left has raled about really started in the 1960s and has continued since then. Clinton's part was mearly a foot note to it. The near global economic collapse of 2008 was the last example of this.

    So anything here (or anywhere) that threatens the stability of the rest of the world would be dealt with I can assure you.  And an extreme fascist state would not be tolerated for very long.  This is the whole reason behind the tea party - extreme right movement. The rest of the world has been intruding on their own little world more and more and they want it to not only stop but to revert to the ways things use to be. Or how they imagine they use to be.

    But it cannot happen.  Unlike Europe or Russia of the past, few events can be hidden from the rest of the world. And our advancing technology is making this even more so. Witness how ineffectual Iran was at attempting to keep the rest of the world from learning what was going on there during the past election protests. 

    Yes these people are dangerous but not I think in the way one might imagine.  What I see as an undesirable outcome is an ineffectual chaotic state where very little can be accomplished and escalating conflict on a regional basis. With more and more states challenging the federal government like Arizona  and the federal government less and less able to control it.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 7:27pm

    Do you know how much support fascism has among the U.S. population or even corporate interests?

    About zero. Fun to worry about, though.


    by Rootman on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 7:40pm

    I'm sorry if my long winded post isn't clear. When I talk about fascism in America I do not envision torch-lit parades of brown shirted skinheads giving the roman salute. Anything America is going to have a distinctly American flavor. I am saying that we are already there. What is you see is what you get.

    What is boils down to is that the party is over. The era of phenomenal growth that has lasted for 200 years is drawing to a close. From now on the world will operate more and more in the "zero-sum" mode, which is going to be like old fashioned musical chairs. In the Industrial Revolution version, which is running out of gas, when the music stopped they added more chairs, now it the classic game of musical chairs again, where they take away the chairs when the music stops. More and more people are left standing. A few still are sitting and they are afraid that those standing will want their chairs

    What are the political consequences?

    If people really understood that there wasn't going to be future abundance, that like in a lifeboat, there was only so much water and so much food, they would demand, as in a lifeboat, that the provisions be shared equitably. This would mean that people with huge fortunes would have to take an enormous haircut as their abundance would have to be shared out... they don't like the idea one bit.

    The key phrase would be, "if people really understood". So it is important to keep them from thinking, from understanding what their situation really is.

    That is what the Tea Party, Fox, etc is all about: keeping people from thinking straight. The idea is to play on people's emotions: fear, hate, racism, xenophobia, just to keep them from doing the math. The Teabaggers, Beck, Gringich and Fox are often criticized for not making any sense... this is not  a failure or an error... that is the object of the exercise: to make rational thought difficult or impossible due to emotional overload. This is a slippery slope that leads to more war, more emotions and less and less cool headed thinking. We are already there.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 2:07am

    Your long-winded post was perfectly clear, David. But given the buttons that are being pushed, we may get a little torch-lit parading as a bonus. Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally had less pomp than you saw in Nuremberg in the 1930s, but he's new at the game.


    by acanuck on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 2:29am

    David, I await your post at Dag on the $1.5 billion Central Command/Petraeus 5 year arms plan for Yemen reported in the NYT, and how far you think Obama and the GOP will go bankrupting the country chasing young Muslims going thru their Jihad stage on the other side of the world.
     
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/world/middleeast/16yemen.html?hp

    The piece says there are maybe 500 'al qaeda' there, which works out to over $2 million in weapons and 'training' to combat each single bad guy in the desert. Some at the State Dept. apparently fear we will just create another Arab 'strong man' who will primarily aim to wipe out his political foes. Is this insane or what?

    If Obama OK's this I am done with him.

    I just read Andrew Bacevich's 'Washington Rules'
     and he says no military fiasco from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan has stemmed the hammer lock perpetual war has on Washington, DC. He notes that the think tanks, the Pentagon brass, the arms industry, and the politicians they buy off all depend on the billions wasted in these overseas wars. He thinks we don't need it and can't afford it. Good book.


    by NCD (not verified) on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 11:29pm

     

    Howdy NCD ...

    That all sounds real interesting. Why not join the rest of us here as an active blogger and that way you can put all of that in a blog for the rest of us to respond to. It's not that hard. Just follow the easy instructions:

    http://dagblog.com/user/register

    I hope to see you soon.

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 9:52am

    You weave an interesting thread, David. But this premise -

    "if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart"

    is wrong. The idea that economic growth has up until now been shared across the social strata, and that is what has maintained stability, is belied by the facts. Median wages in the US hit their peak in 1973 (in real terms) and have fallen even as the economy more than doubled in output, with nary a peep from the workers. The elites at this point are just testing the limits of the rate at which they can shrink the slice of the economic pie that goes to the middle class. They seem to be realizing that they can both grow the economy and squeeze the workers with no consequences for stability. But even if there were no 'growth' in absolute terms, they would just find another way of calculating 'growth' to ensure that it looks like there is progress (imo, that is what has already happened over past decades).


    by Obey on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 3:14am

    More of a recipe for socialism than fascism.


    by Rootman on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 7:29am