Fascisme nog steeds niet begrepen in de VS en de EU

Beste bezoeker lees het volgende opiniestuk van Umair Haque. Hierin legt hij uit dat de VS geen snars begrijpt van fascisme: de opkomst en het grote gevaar van fascisme zoals we dat in Duitsland, Italië, Spanje en aantal Latijns Amerikaanse landen hebben gezien.

Moet wel opmerken dat wat mij betreft de VS al een fascistoïde maatschappij is, neem de omgang van de politie met de gekleurde en zeker met de zwarte minderheid in de VS. Dan is er nog het frustreren van het kiesrecht voor gekleurden, die veelal niet eens kunnen stemmen als ze daartoe gemachtigd zijn (en aan die machtiging wordt ook nu weer flink geknaagd)...... Wat voorts te denken over het inperken van vrouwenrechten (zoals voor abortus en anticonceptie) in een aantal VS staten....... 

Lees en geeft het ajb door, ook hier begrijpt men niet welk gevaar de fascisten vormen voor onze toch al lamme democratie..... Hoewel wij de les bij wijze van spreke aan den lijve hebben ondervonden, zie je ook de neoliberale partijen als VVD, D66, CDA (in feite ook neoliberaal), PvdA, CU en SGP meer en meer uiterst rechtse of beter gezegd fascistoïde denkbeelden omarmen, zie alleen al hoe men met vluchtelingen en hun kinderen denkt om te kunnen gaan.......... 

De CU sputtert nog wel wat op het gebied van vluchtelingen, maar deze hypocriete partij blijft wel achter  het inhumane waardeloze kabinet Rutte 3 staan, een kabinet waar het zelf aan deelneemt...... Sterker nog: dit kabinet kan niet zonder de steun van de 'Christen'Unie.....

Ook het etnisch profileren in de VS en hier, is feitelijk een fascistische vorm van politie-inzet......

Bovendien is het neoliberalisme uiteindelijk goed beschouwt niets anders dan een fascistisch gedachtegoed! Daar is Haque het overigens niet mee eens, gezien het artikel dat hieronder is opgenomen. 

Verder stelt Haque dat de hang naar fascisme niet in de grote steden is te vinden, echter daar ben ik het niet met hem eens, zie alleen al de neonazi parades in diverse grote steden in de VS. 

Hooguit kan je uit het stemgedrag buiten de grote steden in de VS als meer rechts bestempelen dan in de grote steden, waar uiteraard het discriminerende gedrag tegen de gekleurde minderheid in die gebieden extremer is dan in de grote steden, ook al schiet de politie in de VS meer gekleurden neer in de grote steden van de VS.....

Vergeet verder het gevaar niet van de steeds verder toenemende macht van grote bedrijven die met een beroep op duurzaamheid intussen de wereld verder verrampeneren en de volksgezondheid ondergeschikt houden aan het maken van (mega) winsten....... Waar dit bedrijfsleven graag foute regimes steunt en van de VS regering eist dat consumenten zo min mogelijk te vertellen hebben over o.a. voedselveiligheid...... Ook hier is dit te zien, al helpen onze politici daar graag aan mee, neem het TTIP handelsverdrag*, een verdrag waarmee de consument wordt gereduceerd tot een lastige klant die zich vooral niet moet bemoeien met voedselveiligheid en zaken als genetische manipulatie....... Verder is het een feit dat het bedrijfsleven in Duitsland het prima deed in aanloop van WOII (vanaf 1933) en de eerste twee jaren van die oorlog...... Sterker nog: zonder het grote bedrijfsleven was Hitler (en de NSDAP) waarschijnlijk niet zo machtig geworden........

Lees het volgende artikel van Umair Hague en oordeel zelf: 

umair haque

vampire. Sep 3

What America Still Doesn’t Understand About Fascism

What Happens When a Rich Society Suddenly Becomes a Poor One?

Today, I read, as you probably did, that Steve Bannon is to keynote the New Yorker’s Ideas Festival. LOL — it should go without saying that’s a pretty good indication that a society is out of ideas. Yet I can almost hear the reasoning in the New Yorker’s offices. Their problem is that American thinkers have no real explanation for fascism — just fairy tales — and that leaves you with…the fascists. Or maybe they just wanted to stoke controversy and make money (I’d give them more credit than that, but I digress.)

Let’s take the fairy tales Americans tell themselves about fascism — there are three — one by one, and then discuss what really causes fascism (and why American thinkers are completely unable to get it, even at this late stage). You can skip this part if you want the less nerdy stuff.

— Fascism is caused by identity politics. This is what Francis Fukuyama suggests in his new book — and I’d say he should be ashamed of himself, if it weren’t so funny and laughable. I decide to be a gender-nonconforming them, not a he anymore, and you respond by…cheering on Mexican babies as they’re put in camps? LOL, you see why I think American thinkers don’t know how to think anymore? It’s not just childishly absurd — it’s a grotesque form of victim-blaming, that obviates freedom or liberty in any genuine sense, every bit the equivalent of saying “well, you shouldn’t have worn that dress...!”

— Fascism is a cycle, a backlash against “too much liberalism.” This seems to explain things — but it doesn’t. What is “too much liberalism?” When we have healthcare? Or just sewers and pipes? Does that mean that human beings are doomed to be fascists? This is a kind of theology of individualism — not really an explanation for fascism.

— Fascism happens when white people are afraid of becoming a minority. This explanation is trotted out regularly by American pundits. But whites in Sweden are in no danger of becoming a minority — yet extremism is in second place there, in the upcoming election. That’s true in Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Russia, too. So this theory is obviously false — it can’t explain the global rise of fascism even a bit.

These three explanations lead to what I call the meteor strike theory of fascism. Since we have no real explanation, it becomes a random event, a kind of natural catastrophe. But if it’s a natural catastrophe, then we have no control over it. And if we have no control over it, then maybe the best we can do is…invite the fascists to headline our festivals. As a way to negotiate and bargain with them. Does that make sense?

Now. Let us try to look at all the above from another perspective. Not the one of what we believe, but simply what we know. What do we know about how America has changed over the last thirty years?

80% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. 70% have less than $1000 in savings. 70% expect their kids to live worse lives. Life expectancy is falling. Real incomes are shrinking. Suicides are skyrocketing. Depression and loneliness are soaring. The old can’t afford to retire, and the young can’t afford to start families. The middle class has imploded, and the ranks of the poor have swollen. What does all this really say?

America is a rich country that effectively became a poor one — in the space of a generation. Is it any surprise that this sudden, unexpected, historic collapse would massively, catastrophically destabilize society — and give rise to fascism?

(Perhaps you object. The mistake many Americans make is to think that flat-screen TVs and microwave ovens somehow make them better off than people in poorer countries. They don’t. People in Pakistan and Chile can afford those things, too. Poverty — the experience of deprivation — is a truer thing that not having a flat-screen TV. It’s about living at the edge of perpetual ruin, which is something that most Americans now face daily)

How might a society plunging from riches into poverty destabilize into fascism, precisely? The social bonds in a town or community get blown apart. People turn to fascism for belonging. The sense of optimism and faith in the future people have is destroyed. They turn to fascism for hope again. All the good jobs are gone. People seek scapegoats to blame for their miseries — the very ones they’ve barely learned to tolerate living next to. Life is a frightening thing now — people seek the soothing, comforting words of a demagogue.

You must work harder every year, just to keep your head above water — the demagogue is the only one who tells you this is wrong and unjust, while elites don’t seem to notice or care much at all. You never expected to be poor — yet here you are. Suicides and illnesses and drug use have come to surround you. Everything seems broken — towns, communities, cities, bonds, families, jobs, livelihoods, careers, even people. In the end, you turn to fascism to restore all the things you feel have been taken away from you — trust, meaning, purpose, belonging, optimism, opportunity, fairness, dignity, pride, and strength.

Those things are what poverty is really made of, and the new poverty that Americans face isn’t just financial — it’s made of all the elements of a decent life. In hard terms, poverty of human, intellectual, social, emotional, and civic capital, to name just a few.

Now, if the theory is correct, we’d expect to see fascism rising in places where all the above is true — where poverty in all these forms has risen, where all these real “capital deficits” have grown. Where are those places? They are not places that have always been poor — but of downward mobility. And that’s precisely what we do see. American fascism isn’t rising in inner cities — but in Rust Belt towns, in exurbs, in third-tier cities, in the regions where people expected easy, comfortable lives, like their parents and grandparents — but instead, are ending up elsewhere, and can’t understand why, or what to do about it all. Bang! The fascist spark is lit by the implosion of the middle class.

The fascist isn’t the prole — he’s the frustrated bourgeoisie. The one whom capitalism promised to make a capitalist — but only did it to sell him on capitalism. It had no intention of ever making him a true capitalist, like Bezos, Gates, or Buffett — why would it? Capitalism isn’t there to make him rich, it’s there to make them rich. So the prole turns to tribalism, hierarchy, and predation, then, for the power and riches and comfort he was promised — and still hungers for.

So now our theory goes something like this. Capitalism promised proles bourgeois lives — it was the best marketing trick in history, perhaps. But all it ever really wanted to do was to squeeze the proles — and maximize profits. Those disappointed would-be bourgeoisie, who are now poorer than ever, enraged, losing trust and faith in the system, living at the edge, turn to fascism. They band together into tribes of the pure— so the prole, if he can’t be a real capitalist, a true bourgeois, can at least be powerful enough to prey on the weak. The sudden, jabbing sting of poverty, the feeling of being empty, hopeless, weak, damaged, forgotten, abandoned, becomes a sense of of belonging, meaning, purpose, safety, security, and strength. Now he is someone again.

So the disappointed prole turns to fascism to restore precisely the things that capitalism took away from him — what it was impoverishing him of while he wasn’t looking. But that means that he is at the mercy of tribal logic, in all its fearfulness and cowardice and stupidity, too. The rage that should be directed at capitalism is pointed at scapegoats. The anger that should be directed at those above him is aimed below him. The contempt he should have for the rich is turned into scorn of the poor. The disappointment he should have in greed, egotism, and self-concern instead turns to a vengeful resentment of the smallest differences. He imagines that he is history’s great victim, persecuted by malign forces, hunted, and hounded — and so everything becomes an existential battle, in which only the strong survive, and must act pre-emptively, to eliminate their enemies. Self-preservation means that the price of survival is to become a predator. Nobody will ever make him poor again — he will make sure of it, by making everyone else less of a person at all.

Predatory capitalism degenerates into fascism, by creating the glittering expectation of riches, but the shattering reality of poverty. Enraged, embittered, aggrieved, people turn on their neighbours, colleagues, friends, and peers, preying on the weak, to gain back the very things capitalism took away from them — even as it promised them dreams of bourgeois wealth. If it can’t live like the bourgeois, as capitalism promised, the tribe will take whatever it can, by more vicious means, not to be poor in these ways ever again. Democracy itself begins to wither and die. Society shrivels. Norms and values are ripped apart. Everything seems to shatter.

The world has seen all this before. This was the story of Germany in the 1930s, almost exactly. A rich society which had suddenly become poor. A middle class imploding. People turning on their friends and neighbours. The tribe seizing for itself what capitalism had promised — but never had any intention of delivering. In more and more violent ways. Led by a demagogue. Who made people feel strong and powerful and hopeful again. Bang! Fascism.

That story is being retold in American today. America can’t quite bring itself to believe it. It is too busy telling itself fairy tales and fables. That is why Steve Bannon can headline a festival of ideas — LOL — while a nation seems to think fascism is the equivalent of a meteor strike. Fairy tales, my friends, do not help you, in the deep, dark night, when the monsters judder and screech. They are only there to lull us asleep.

Umair
 August 2018

Leadership News Politics Economics Life

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* Sinds Trump aan het bewind is, zijn EU ambtenaren en politici bezig met een peperdure lobby in Washington om het TTIP verdrag alsnog getekend te krijgen, let wel: de EU is een volksvertegenwoordiging en niet een bedrijvenvertegenwoordiging!