Actually, fascism might be in the eye of the beholder. This is an interesting blog post from Shannon Love, who is one of the bloggers at the classical liberal/libertarianish site Chicago Boyz. The title is "
The Left’s Deal with the Devil." His thesis probably needs to be fleshed out to be more and might be the kernel of a good doctoral dissertation were it not for the fact that it uses the "f" word. Using the "f" word makes it a bit incendiary, but that word is in the air a bit these days, so I guess he might just be responding to that. The lesson I take away from this is that it's possible to find fascistic implications in lots of things, and that the people howling loudest about fascism often have some kinds fascistic baggage in their own backyards that they don't even see because they are so intent on bludgeoning the other side.
Anyway, here is an excerpt to give you an idea:
Quote:
Mussolini grew up from birth a devoted Marxist steeped in the ideology of class identity and conflict. He invented fascism after his experiences in WWI convinced him that cultural and racial identity welded stronger political bonds than did identification with an international economic class.
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Fascism emerges time and again, because its emphasis on cooperation based on innate characteristics is more effective than are other approaches at creating a united and effective political group. Fascist collectives experience less internal division than do those based on class or other non-innate characteristics.
The western Left unknowingly rediscovered this fact of life during the 1960s. The civil-rights movement in America and the decolonization movement in Europe proved successful in part by accidentally creating dependable voting blocks based on innate characteristics.
No one designed the outcome. Voting blocks based on innate characteristics simply out competed those based on other kinds of personal ties. After the fact, intellectuals came in and constructed rationalizations to embrace and foster the successful trend. Today, we call this rationalization “identity politics.”
By the late ’70s, the identity ideology became so entrenched that it began to control the organizational structure of leftist organizations. Organizations from university departments to activist groups became structured around identity.
Worse, identity politics quickly recapitulated the fascist idea that the leader must be one of the volk. Leftists soon began to claim that a person was denied true representation unless he had a political representative who shared his innate characteristics. People began to demand political leaders who looked like them.
Unfortunately, no one on the Left ever looked far down the road to see the paralysis that a political party based on self-absorbed identity blocks would develop. The idea that people deserve representatives who look like them proved useful when running against white males, but it educated large segments of the population to feel cheated if they didn’t get an office holder who looked like them. It never seems to occurred to anyone that, eventually, a point would be reached whereat candidates from different identity blocks would compete for the same political prize.
Now we see the results in the current Democratic race. The African-American Obama versus the white female Hillary. Now the price of the dark bargain for the power of soft fascism must be paid. Now individual voters demand a politician who shares identity with them, and if they do not get what they want they will defect from the coalition.
If the Democrats lose this election I imagine they will believe it the result of a protracted and vibrant primary season and will try to create a primary system which will choose a clear victor very early. They will miss the true weakness they embraced when they embraced soft fascist ideals. What happens when the candidates inevitably become diverse in identity? What happens when you have an African-American candidate, a Hispanic candidate, a woman, etc. all competing for the same unsharable office? As more and more identity politicians rise to the top, Democrat primaries will increasingly become divisive shambles.
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