Posted on 05/07/2022 2:48:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
For my work in corporate social responsibility, I was recently reading The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi’s critique of capitalism, when something he wrote gave me one of those really uncomfortable “Aha” moments.
Polanyi was discussing the alternatives to capitalism -- left socialism and right socialism (which we call “Fascism”). His point was that these two socialisms were created to undo the disruptions of capitalism which had privileged “money power” to degrade human sociality into atomic individualism driven by self-seeking greed.
When I read his observation that the Fascist phase of anti-capitalism brought about “Irrational philosophies, racialist aesthetics, anti-capitalist demagogy, heterodox currency views, criticism of the party system, widespread disparagement of the ‘regime’,” I thought “How odd, that sounds just like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the postmodern Left.”
So, I took a moment to do a quick scan of Polanyi’s criteria of a Fascist movement to see how well they embrace our postmodern Left.
I concluded that our postmodern Left meets each of Polanyi’s criteria:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
of COURSE it is! There was never any question in my mind.
Is the American Postmodern Left a Fascist Movement?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes . They use the same methods as fascist movements in history, control of press, control and extortion of industry,using violent protest to subvert the rule of law,subversion of elections, and the use of Utopian ideology to support devolution of civil society, and many others .
And you can see this development written about quite throughly by others here:
Barrrack Obama, The Quintessential Liberal Fascist:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html
Regarding left socialism and right socialism, we have this important quote:
Although our modern socialists’ promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under “communism” and “fascism.” As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, “the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.”
No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
— F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
“I concluded that our postmodern Left meets each of Polanyi’s criteria:
1)Irrational philosophies: Postmodernism is an irrational will to power; intersectionality is irrationally prejudicial; toxic masculinity is irrationally prejudicial; destruction of a fetus when it can survive as a person outside the womb is an unbalanced application of the principle of human dignity.
2)Racialist aesthetics: stigmatizing “Whites” or considering them morally deformed by “White Privilege” is a racialist aesthetic regarding human persons; blaming institutional racism for the achievement gap is racialist aesthetics at work in public education; Harvard created a special racialist aesthetics for Asians to denigrate their possible contributions to “student life”.
3)Anti-capitalist demagogy: Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of college debt, Woke Capitalism.
4)Heterodox currency views: Modern Monetary Theory
5)Criticism of the party system: privileging ideology with cancel culture
6) Widespread disparagement of the ‘regime’: the narrative of Systemic White Racism; defund the police; the fervid anti-Trump Resistance using mainstream media, the CIA, the FBI, and a special prosecutor; setting up a purifying “Ministry of Truth” in the Department of Homeland Security, our modest version of a Ministry of State Security; abolishing the Electoral College, and packing the Supreme Court.”
The ultimate test of whether a movement is facist or not involves the presence Utopian ideology and the dehumanizing of their opposition.Those two when combined lead to the subversion of civil society and the democratic body politik
while touting themselves as democratic, a distinct untruth.
Many of the associated social mechanisms are defined in the movie “Animal Farm” 1954 George Orwell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXkicQRl6vg
Yes.
Of course it is!
Been saying that for years.
It’s totalitarian.
Excellent post, thanks.
The American Postmodern Left is communist, fascism is the reaction to it.
Postmodernism is a kind of sophistry. Sophistry will devolve into rule by force.
The left is in love with the oligarch system, whether it be china or Russia and they are striving to do the same for themselves here. Weaponizing the agencies, ruling by executive order, destabilizing American society, the media the tech giants all on board and made promises to join them in their quest
The real spectrum is how much government. Total-government Communism and Fascism are on one side, and minimal government is on the other.
No! It is Marxist
First of all Fascism is not Nazism. You will never find Hitler describing his national socialist (Nazi) system as Fascist.
Fascism was a broad brush label used by the International Socialists aka Communists to conceal the uncomfortable fact that the war on the Eastern Front was between International Socialism and National Socialism.
Since WW-II, fascism has been used pretty much to describe anything the Left doesn't agree with.
The American Left is by and large part of International Socialism.
I have noticed people quibble less when they go with the term “collectivism.” Provided you’re not talking with hopeless sociology majors.
With respect, Italian Fascism was the outcome of moving from European socialism and farther to what we should know see as the political Left. Mussolini was a socialist. In similar manner, and per the Hayek quote posted to this thread by another, National Socialism was also socialism, properly termed Aryan socialism by the movement's important thinkers like Goebbels, whose 1930s writing make this clear.
It has seemed to me that the Left has played a rhetorical game on conservatives and libertarians alike, indeed on all freedom loving people, to paint some totalitarianism as on the right and some on the left. When one clusters together all the forms of state control and totalitarianism together, they seem quite like a family of ill intent. Corporatism which is being practiced today is the other form of Leftist behavior, as one sees in the WEF game. And of course Communism in China is all about massive authority over a citizenry.
As to "reaction" by one controlling political entity versus another, the old adage seems to apply. There is no honor among thieves. And indeed all big government is about ever greater thievery.
Is this a serious question? Of course it is.
Oversight of all personal and business activities by various organs of the state ... Check
Control and confiscation of privately held firearms ... Check
Violence against anyone willing to speak out against their policies and goals ... Check
Rioting by masked and black clad supporters of their policies ... Check
Indoctrination of the youth through infiltration and control of the education systems and all broadcast and published media ... Check
Targeting of specific racial and economic classes as "enemies" ... Check
Censorship and firings of anyone willing to speak out and oppose them within those institutions
False flag operations (Reichstag Fire/Polish Border Incident/Jan 6 "Insurrection") ... Check
Massive government spending (benefitting their supporters) to gin up support for their policies and artificially inflate the economy ... Check
You know, there's a lot here both Mussolini and Hitler would recognize as their own.
^^
Yes. Next question?
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