The Unutterable Political Epithet [Reader Post]

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The English Language is a constantly evolving thing. Having no official governing body, it tends to do so haphazardly (which is, in the end, a good thing). Efforts to enforce controls on the language (see Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984, or “politically correct” speech on any college campus) are, at their heart, efforts to control thought.

I arrive at these ruminations today due to an essay from Hot Air‘s Green Room:

The Eff Word
Fascism

By Doctor Zero
HotAir

It’s the ultimate political epithet, the atomic blast that ends calm and measured debate. This makes those who seek to be reasonable and persuasive understandably reluctant to use the word… and those who aren’t interested in either reason or persuasion eager to hurl it at their opponents. There is nothing surprising about the visceral emotions conjured by the mention of its name. The history of fascism is written in the blood of innocents, on a scale that challenges the limits of human imagination.

Indeed it is. That it should be so is something of an irony of history. Fascism is without question an ideology whose history is written in blood. Yet for all its manifest evils, Fascism is not the most blood soaked ideology in history. That distinction belongs to Communism, which killed nearly two orders of magnitude more innocents in the 20th century.

More ironic is the common mis-perception of Fascism as a creature of the political “right.” It was no such thing. Fascism was an outgrowth of Socialism and Progressivism. It’s current assignment in the political spectrum is a testament to the effectiveness of Communist Propaganda (no enemies to the left) and the leftward tilt of the modern academy.

Doctor Zero continues…

Our natural repulsion from the concept of fascism, coupled with the way it has been cheapened by decades of use as a casual insult by the Left, makes it difficult for us to study it dispassionately. It is important to make that study, because fascism was not a mystical phenomenon, a curse inflicted on the Axis nations through the supernatural charisma of Mussolini and Hitler. Too many people recall the garish and horrifying trappings of Nazi Germany, and think “it couldn’t happen here.” It has happened here. It’s happening again now. We do ourselves no favors by refusing to see it, any more than we would be helping ourselves by throwing around baseless accusations of fascism where it does not exist.

Indeed. Those who have not yet read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism would do well to pick it up and read it. Goldberg’s thoroughly document book is a critical look at the roots and history of a systemic evil that needs to be understood. Nor is the accusation by Doctor Zero of an incipient Fascist moment in our current political environment misplaced.

Fascism, like communism and socialism, is a form of collectivist politics. As the great author H.P. Lovecraft put it, when describing the dark gods of his horror stories: “Many names, one nightmare.” These philosophies share a belief in the supreme power and virtue of the central State. Under communism, government owns the means of production – there is no private industry. In a socialist system, the State is nominally separate from private industry, but it siphons large amounts of money from the private sector to fund the socialist agenda. Fascism maintains private industry, but places it under the direct control of the government. Private industry still exists, but the State sets production goals, directly controls economic activity, and dominates the management of corporations. Industry becomes enslaved to political goals.

And those political goals inevitably become the goals of improving the lot of the political class.

Modern audiences, raised on a steady diet of movies about World War II, think of fascism as either inhumanly horrifying, or completely absurd, and wonder how anyone in their right minds could have fallen for the fascist sales pitch. In fact, fascism did not seem absurd at all to the intellectuals of the early twentieth century. They thought a wise and all-powerful State, run by the most brilliant minds, would be able to engineer a more advanced society, much as engineers were designing increasingly advanced scientific marvels. The pioneering author of modern science fiction, H.G. Wells, was an outspoken advocate of authoritarian control by a benevolent government of geniuses and academics. His novel The Shape of Things to Come envisions such a government seizing control of the entire world to create a global utopia, called “The Dictatorship of the Air” because the government controls the technology of air travel – which it occasionally uses to drop bombs on those who resist. Here are some excerpts from a famous speech Wells gave to the British Young Liberals Society at Oxford in 1932, reprinted in Jonah Goldberg’s indispensable Liberal Fascism – a phrase Wells actually coins in the speech:

We have seen the Fascisti in Italy and a number of clumsy imitations elsewhere, and we have seen the Russian Communist Party coming into existence to reinforce this idea… I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis… And do not let me leave you in the slightest doubt as to the scope and ambition of what I am putting before you… These new organizations are not merely organizations for the spread of defined opinions… the days of that sort of amateurism are over-they are organizations to replace the dilatory indecisiveness of democracy. The world is sick of parliamentary politics…

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

America’s Founding Fathers designed a system that would both feel the pressure of the People and the moment (the House of Representatives, which stands for election every two years), and be resistant to transient passions (The Senate, elected to six year terms, only one third of whom stand for election in any Federal Election, and an Executive standing for election every four years). They also went to great pains to make the Constitution difficult to amend, and nearly impossible to amend quickly.

The world is sick of parliamentary politics. This is an idea that occurs in every strand of collectivist thought. Collectivists only revere democracy until it has voted them sufficient power… then democracy becomes a cumbersome inconvenience that allows selfish, ignorant fools and corporate shills to interfere with the brilliant work of great men. The Democrats fleeing from town hall meetings are also sick of parliamentary politics, as is the President who defiles American government with dozens of unelected, unconfirmed, unaccountable “czars.” Parliamentary politics proved very inconvenient for the President’s health-care takeover and cap-and-trade bills, and have been driving global-warming cultists mad with frustration for years.

Indeed they have, just as designed.

Why is fascism bad? It seems like a ridiculously understated question, similar to asking why cancer is bad, but the answer is important. The grisly ornaments fascism has worn in the past should not distract from the deeper reality of what it is, and why it fails. The essential flaw of fascism is that it elevates the State to control of its citizens, because controlling the economy requires control of the people. A corporation is a voluntary association of people, not an inanimate machine that can be reprogrammed painlessly by wise government advisers. The people who comprise corporations must be kept alienated from the government’s supporters – fascism requires enemies, and turns feral quickly. The government does not require a majority of the people to support it, in order to maintain power. It can make do with much less than fifty per cent, if they are sufficiently motivated and obedient. In fact, maintaining control through an energized minority is much easier than keeping the majority of the population on board, especially in a large country.

The end state of all the child ideologies of Progressivism (Socialism, Communism, and Fascism) is inevitably a dictatorship by a very small ruling class, and a sub-majority of strong supporters. The process may be fast or slow, but once the “parliamentary impediments” are removed the end state is inevitable.

Hie thee to the Green Room, and read the whole thing.

Cross Posted from The View from Dairy Hill

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Well,to her everlasting credit, shortly before her death,Susan Sontag…the enfant terrible’ of the chichi left proclaimed at some public rally that “Communism IS fascism”….which,naturally earned her a loud chorus of scornful boooos from the crowd which had hoped for something more in tune with their own collectivist sympathies….I was never a Sontag fan,but she did earn a modicum of respect from me with that utterance,since it indicated to me that she did,after all,possess some intellectual honesty that had,prior to that,been well disguised.

Valerie Jarrett

Here’s an excerpt from the above link, showing how they intend to sneak their fascistic programs on us:

According to administration sources, Sunstein’s office is looking for ways to impose through the regulatory process those Obama White House health care, environmental, and labor policies that do not survive the legislative process.

“The goal from this White House is to have as much nonspecific language passed by Congress in policy areas like health care and the environment and then use Sunstein’s office to put in place the regulatory language called for by Congress that gets us to where we want to be. It may very well be the most important job in this administration, given the lack of success we may have on Capitol Hill,” says a White House source.

If Beck needs a new target to pick off, this bitch needs to be next.

Very nice, Rodney!

Thank God we have a judge with some b*lls. Looks like the Obama thugs have struck out on this one. GO JUDGE CARTER!!
Madalyn