Zero Tolerance for Criticism

 

Friend Xerxes writes of a recent visit to a clinic, and notes in passing “The clinic had the usual signs posted, that they would not tolerate abusive speech or action directed at the staff.”

As this illustrates, these signs have become ubiquitous in Canada. And they make me deeply uneasy. You do not see such signs in the Philippines, or Saudi Arabia, or Korea. 

Is it because Canadians are more inclined to be rude or abusive than these other nationalities?

Of course not. Canadians are notoriously polite.

This is a power move. The entrenched civil service, what they call in the USA the Deep State, or in the UK “the blob,” is asserting their sovereign authority. Letting us know who is really in charge. They are reminding the common people of their place.

This is what fascism is, in practice. It is the government bureaucrats asserting absolute power. People do not see it, because they are blinded by Marxist theory. They imagine the struggle for power is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bureaucrats can masquerade as the supposed vanguard or defenders of the proletariat against those “greedy capitalists.” Who may be Jewish.

Canadians are far down the road to fascism, without seeming to know it. 

Living in Interesting Times

 

Fascist headquarters in Rome: Hope and Change

How you would have reacted had you been a German in the 1930s? As Hitler rose to power? Would you have been one of the good guys? Even at personal risk?

No need to wonder. We are in a comparable time. Have you even noticed? Will you be proud of your role when, one day, your grandchildren ask?

We have a much larger Holocaust, of the unborn. Seventy million a year and counting.

We have the moral relativism that backstopped the Nazis. As with the Nazis, we have decided that morality is purely cultural and subject to choice. All we think about now is power and the triumph of the will. If I say I’m a woman, I am a woman. You must submit.

We have learned to see one another as ethnicities, rather than fellow humans. As “whites,” or “indigenous,” or “people of colour,” or even as the “gay community.” We have embraced the concept of corporate ethnic guilt, of blood libel. Moreover, if morality is purely a matter of cultural convention, all other ethnicities are immoral. 

We have established the same close collusion between government and large corporations that defined Nazism as an economic system. Big businesses are increasingly protected from competition by regulation, their profits guaranteed. In return, they enforce government policies. They have become, in effect, an arm of government.

We have seen totalitarian measures and the suspension of liberties: in the Covid and vaccine crisis; in the draconian response to the trucker protest in Canada; in the crackdown on “hate speech” and “misinformation” online. Governments keep pushing this envelope.

We have seen the police and courts subverted to political ends, as enabled the rise of Hitler in the Weimar Republic. We see eager prosecution and severe penalties for those on one side of the political aisle, while overlooking or barely punishing offenses on the other side.

And we have seen the Reichstag fire, in the reaction to the January 6 riot. Trudeau tried it in Canada as well, claiming the Freedom Convoy was subversive and the product of “foreign influence.” 

We have also seen the antisemitism, expanding rapidly, increasing in intensity, since October 7th. Now it is even okay again to kill Jews. Hamas did, and everyone on the left supports Hamas. The Jews are always the canaries in the mine. They are the first targets when morality breaks down.

All that is yet missing is the Fuhrer principle, the impulse to hand dictatorial power to a supposed “genius,” bypassing conventions and established systems.

Those on the left are actually accusing Trump and Musk of this. They are calling them Fascists or Nazis. 

Musk’s concentration of powers of all kinds has to be worrying, on Lord Acton’s principle that all power corrupts. And Trump is not good on keeping to social conventions.

But there is a critical element of Nazi leadership that they lack. The Fascist dictator is a narcissist, not a real genius. He only plays one in his own mind, and seeks to impose that illusion on others. This is why he seeks power. You expect him therefore to emerge from nowhere, without significant prior accomplishments. Like AOC, Bernie Sanders, Jacinta Ardern, or Justin Trudeau. Like Muammar Ghaddafi, or Stalin, or Saddam, or Putin.

Trump and Musk are, instead, actual known geniuses. They had achieved distinction before entering politics. 

It takes strong leaders, after all, to combat Nazism: a Churchill, a DeGaulle, a Tito.

And so the course for good men is clear.

What will you tell your grandchildren? Assuming they have not been aborted?

Godwin's Law

 

It is grimly comic that the Harris campaign has in the dying days of the election whittled down their argument to the claim that Donald Trump is a Fascist.

For this is a perfecdt illustration of the popular misreading of Godwin’s Law: “the first party to mention Hitler has lost the argument.”

Either inadvertently or semi-consciously, they are conceding the election. They are telling us they know they have lost.

They are also projecting. Fascisim is indead among us once again, and a clear and present danger. But it is the Kamalites, wokes, and Democrats who are fascists.

What is fascism: at or near its essence, it is the collective over the individual. That is what the symbol of the fasces illustrates. This is the postmodern opinion, prevalent on the left: reality itself is a social construct. The individual exists only as part of the group. Hence the leftist/Democratic stress on ethnic identity, intersectionality, and group rights over individual rights.

As an economic system, fascism is a cartel formed by government in collusion with big business. Corporations become an arm of government, doing its bidding. Which has clearly happened under the Democrats over the last few years, with corporations enforcing censorship, enforcing vaccine mandates, while small businesses and competition are crushed by government policies.

Fascism is totalitarian: the government claims the right to dictate even the details of our lives. “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,” as Mussolini put it. It is the left that demands more laws and regulations. It is the left that declares “the personal is political.” It is the left that wants to police even the pronouns we can use. 

Fascism believes that reality is a social construct. Mussolini said, “Fascism is relativism.” The state can invent reality. This is what the left believes today: it believes it can declare a man a woman, or invent new genders. This is why it believes so fiercely in censorship: saying a thing is so makes it so.

The state also gets to decide right and wrong. Fascism rejects “conventional morality.” The Nazis called it “slave morality.”  And the modern left rejects it. This frees them to do whatever they want in moral terms.

This suspends the “do unto others” principle, and frees those in power to abuse unfavoured groups. The latter have no rights; their existence does not serve the collective. In Nazi Germany, Roma, Slavs, and Jews. In leftist America, white “cis” males, Asians, increasingly white women.

And this leads to holocaust. In Germany, as we all know, the Jews, the Roma. In modern America, unborn children. Soon, if Canada’s model is followed, the poor and infirm. Their existence is inconvenient. 

Yes, fascism is here.

Might Makes Wrong?

 

Nazi antisemitic poster, courtesy of Alamy

Some days ago, I suggested the recent Tory slippage in the Canadian polls had to do with the growing strength of Donald Trump in the US, allowing Trudeau to run against Trump instead of Poilievre. Now my sister has suggested another theory.

She suggests it is young people pulling away from Poilievre for his support of Israel. Trudeau has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, as Hamas and the left-wing protesters demand.

Raising the next question: why are young people and the left, in Canada and in the US, on the side of Hamas, and against Israel, in this conflict?

I say it is because the left, and the educational system they control, have rejected the concept of morality, “conventional morality”. So there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a surprise terrorist attack, however violent; there is nothing wrong with sucker-punching a "fascist," after all. Or, intrinsically, in raping women, or beheading babies, or taking hostages. They see everything as about power. The only issue is that there must be “equity,” and no “power imbalances” or “income inequalities.” No “bullying,” bullying simply meaning, to them, the exercise or mere possession of superior force.

It follows that if it comes to a disagreement, anyone who is poor is in the right, and anyone who is rich is in the wrong. In violent confrontations, whoever is losing is in the right; whoever is winning must be in the wrong. It is a childish cartoon morality, simply the inversion of “might makes right.” It makes Hitler and Japan the innocent victims of World War II, and Bin Laden the victim of 9/11. And children always right if they disagree with their parents.

That last is perhaps a clue as to why it is appealing to the young.

This is why, to the left, police and prisons are the causes of crime: abolish both, and we could all live in peace. This is why, at a recent symposium, a University of Minnesota professor declared “the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.” This is simply and definitionally true from the fact that the US is the richest and most militarily powerful nation so far in history.

And this is why Israel is in the wrong: because they are winning against Hamas. More Palestinians are dying than Israelis. And Israelis are richer than Palestinians.

This is actually the Nazi ideology. Mussolini portrayed Italy as a “proletarian nation,” Hitler called Germany a “volkish nation,” and both played up on the idea that their nations had been exploited and bullied by the peace treaties that ended WWI. Hitler was able to turn popular wrath on the Jews because they were richer and better educated than the average German: they were supposedly the international cabal that ruled the world.

Indeed, because of their accomplishments, this doctrine of “equity,” of amoral power politics, is always going to produce antisemitism.

Sadly, because of the admirable human instinct to defend the weak against the strong, this fascist atheist doctrine is likely to appeal to an uneducated conscience, and so lead a naive or weak mind astray.

Field of Screams

 

W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe is magnificently written. It is a pity it is Fascist.

It shows the appeal of Fascism; which is worth understanding. After all, how did it attract so many in the early and middle years of the last century? It must have had something going for it. 

It seems to be especially appealing to artists. The artistic movement known as Futurism was in the Fascist vanguard. Ezra Pound was famously drawn in. Gabriel D’Annunzio, the original Fascist dictator, in Trieste, was  prominent poet. Hitler was a wannabe painter, Mussolini wrote short stories. Fascism made a strong appeal to the imagination. As does “Shoeless Joe.”

“If you build it, they will come.” If you just wish for a thing strongly enough, believe in it strongly enough, it will happen.

In other words, the triumph of the will.

Like Fascism’s elevation of the volk and the volkish, Shoeless Joe elevates traditional American folk culture to sacred status: Kid Scissons even, on the point of death, preaches a kind of Sermon on the Mound.

“I take the word of baseball and begin to talk it. I begin to speak it. I begin to live it. The word is baseball. Say it after me,” says Eddie Scissons, and raises his arms.

“The word is baseball,” we barely whisper.

“Say it out loud,” exhorts Eddie.

“The word is baseball,” we say louder, but still self-consciously. 

“The word is what?”

“Baseball …”

“Is what?”

“Baseball…”

“Is what?” As his voice rises, so do ours. “Baseball!”

He pauses dramatically. “Can you imagine? Can you imagine?” His voice is filled with evangelical fervor. “Can you imagine walking around with the very word of baseball enshrined inside you? Because the word of salvation is baseball. It gets inside you. Inside me. And the words that speak are spirit, and are baseball.”

At the same time, our narrator is scornful of conventional religion. 

The great advantage of seeing life as a game is that there is no morality involved. One only seeks to win.

There is an underlying conflict in the book: the narrator’s brother-in-law wants to buy his farm. He does not want to sell.

And, tellingly, morality is not involved. Ray, the narrator, attempt no moral case that his desire to stay on this farm is more important than brother-in-law Mark’s desire to incorporate the farm in a more profitable larger section. Rather the reverse: he has not kept up with his mortgage, his brother-in-law offers attractive terms, and his brother-in-law will be financially ruined if he refuses. Morality is clearly not the point. It is only a matter of winning the game, again, a triumph of personal desire, of the will.

To cap it off, Mark’s business partner, the true villain in the tale, is an accountant named Bluestein. A suspiciously semitic-sounding name. A foreign, cosmopolitan presence in an Iowa wheat field.

The core premise of the novel, the core premise of Fascism, is also the core premise of postmodernism, seen for example in current gender ideology: there is no objective reality, and we are free to construct and impose our own narratives.

It is pretty liberating. But Kinsella himself seems to as much as admit that The Voice speaking to the narrator throughout the novel is in fact the Devil.

Kinsella killed himself by assisted suicide in 2017.

Just Sayin'

 

Death is beautiful. Death is your friend.

You know what’s funny? If the Trudeau government planned to create a Fascist dictatorship, they would be doing exactly what they have been doing over the past few years. Buying out the established media. Refusing to allow other reporters at their press conferences. Imposing censorship on the internet to silence independent voices—Bill C-11. Shutting down peaceful protest with aggressive police force. Freezing the bank accounts of those who supported it, even in a minor way. Briefly, but an abject warning against any thoughts of organized opposition in future. Trying to force everyone to carry an app on their phone, allowing them to be tracked at all times. Going after truckers and farmers, the two groups most difficult to control—because of their mobility and self-sustainability. The sudden shift in Ontario at least to voting machines, which have proven so problematic in the US. The introduction and expansion of assisted suicide, giving government power to kill, perhaps ridding society of what Hitler called "life undeserving of life." Now the plan to ban almost all firearms under the guise of “assault rifles.” 

Funny too how it is now forbidden to speak in public of conspiracies. “Spreading conspiracy theories” is now justification to have you silenced or banned online.

Heck, that almost looks like some conspiracy is at foot. Otherwise, what’s the problem?

We even know of a number of strange activities lately that almost look like conspiracies. The Balenciaga ad promoting child predation. The La Maison Simons ad promoting suicide, and actually featuring the blue whale image used by online serial killers. The mystery of Epstein’s island, his client list, and his assisted suicide. The suppression of information on the laboratory origins of the COVID virus, the strange government resistance to talk of possible treatments, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story; the “Russia hoax,”… Frogs really were being turned gay.

If you were a conspiracy theorist, you’d almost think there was something going on here.

It’s all an amazing set of coincidences.

Who Is Giorgia Meloni?

 

I normally do not comment on world events unless I feel I have something unique to say. And I have no special insights regarding Giorgia Meloni. Like the rest of the extra-Italian world, I am trying to make head or tail of her. Is she a fascist? Is she a conservative? 

The one thing she is evidently not is a liberal, like myself. In North America, liberals like Milton Friedman have been, absurdly, classified as “extreme right wing.” But Europe is a different matter. 

Meloni is strong on family and on nationality. Family is better than state, and nationality is better than tribe, but either can also be a dangerous idolatry. Liberals stress the individual. Conservatives and fascists both stress the collective, family and nationality; as does the modern, socialist “left.”

 Meloni stresses that we are all unique in our “genetic coding.” 

That sounds fascist rather than conservative.

I am not my genetic coding; for I am not an animal. I am unique because I am an independent consciousness, an independent free will, an independent soul. All souls are equal in the eyes of God, and we should not be defined by our genetic coding, or our nationality, or our family.

Meloni seems especially opposed to “renting wombs.” As a liberal, I do not see the problem. This is a voluntary transaction; nobody is exploited. A child gets to live. As each human life is infinitely valuable, why would one be opposed? It seems only a way to attack homosexuals. It puts family as an ideal above the individual. This seems sinister.

Nice meloni!

Meloni paints “financial speculators” trying to turn us all into “consumers” as the villains of society. This is where fascism is Marxist; she agrees here with the modern left, not with liberalism. This is class conflict. Most often, the “financial speculators” are really just ordinary people trying to build their pension income. For a liberal, the villain is the bureaucracy, which wants power, not money. In a free market, consumption itself is a purely voluntary activity in which no one is exploited, and everyone gets more or less what they want.

Just paint the “financial speculators” as Jewish, and there you go—Nazism.

Her emphasis on ethnicity might seem a good idea in Italy, for the sake of social unity; but it is a very bad idea if transposed to Canada or the USA, which are not ethnic states. It is, in two words, “identity politics.” It leads, in an ethnically diverse state like the US or Canada, to multiculturalism and tribalism. Even in Italy—despite denials, ultimately, sinister implications for ethnic minorities like the Jews.

The problem is that Meloni is also saying many things that are common sense, and have been suppressed in public discourse. Even I, if I were in Italy, would be strongly tempted to vote for her just to force an end to the censorship and allow open discussion.

By silencing all opposing thoughts, the lunatic left who have been in power have paved the primrose way for an eloquent fascist. Exactly as they did in the Weimar Republic.

Sermons from Nature

 

Old growth forest, Alaska

My distaff buddy Xerxes has been on vacation, hiking happily through the high coniferous forests of Vancouver Island. They have inspired him with religious insight. He uses the term “cathedral.” 

His insight is that all nature is interconnected:

“A forest is more than the sum of its trees. The forest itself is a living, breathing, organism.

“The forests challenge our obsession with individualism. We have made cult of standing alone, of being ruggedly independent. We are so immersed in the cult of individualism that, as Robert Bellah noted years ago, when we think of breaking free of individualism, the only route we can imagine is to be more individualistic.

“No matter how tall it stands, a Douglas Fir, towering in lofty isolation over a clear-cut hillside, will never say, ‘Every tree for itself.’ Or, ‘I won! I won!’”

This falsely conflates individualism with selfishness. While that is a possible sense of “individualism” in common speech, it is not a fair account of the Western philosophy of individualism. Here is Oxford’s (OED) definition:

“The principle or theory that individuals should be allowed to act freely and independently in economic and social matters without collective or state interference. Opposed to collectivism, socialism. Cf. LAISSEZ-FAIRE n.”

Here is Merriam-Webster’s:

“A theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action, and interests.”

Nothing about that implies selfishness.

The “cult of individualism” which he refer to as permeating Western thought is, in fact, Christianity. That is where it comes from, and why the West is different from other cultures here. The Catholic Church teaches the principle of “subsidiarity”: that is, decisions should always be made at the individual level, or as close to the individual level as possible. As little as possible should be left to the state. For only the individual is a moral agent. God creates individuals, in his image. Social structures are created by man: they are, as postmodernists will aver, “social constructs.”

But Christianity also and more adamantly holds charity to be the highest virtue. It would condemn such sentiments as “every man for itself” or “I won! I won!”

Christianity holds it to be morally evil to go along with the crowd, rather than take responsibility and act as an individual—the proper sense of “individualism” as a social or political philosophy.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Salvation is individual, and cannot be reached by following the crowd.

“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.’”

Political and social structures are under the control of the devil.

“The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

“This world” means the social world, for the physical world is not sentient and cannot have idols. What the social world values is idolatrous and antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

Christianity’s essential opposition to social conformity is probably best illustrated by the fact that its God is condemned to crucifixon by the civil authority and the social elite.

Does the interconnected forest offer us a good model for society? 

No. 

The group is intrinsically more likely to be selfish, not less, than the individual. The group avoids personal responsibility, and so can give the individual cover and sanction for selfishness. After all, everybody else is doing it. In the magnificently interconnected forests of Vancouver Island, the high conifers kill all undergrowth with their acidic needles. Their high canopy denies the light that might be necessary for competing species to emerge; they kill off all diversity. Like most groups, the high conifers cooperate in their own self-interest against outsiders or those judged “different.”

It is the fascist model, that “the forest is greater than the sum of its trees.”

The Second Coming

 

Courtesy of the "Toronto Relationship Clinic"

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Current academic articles based on “critical race theory” keep cascading across my desk. They always accuse the US of being a racist society, based on “white supremacy.”

It is not obvious what they mean by this. I think many are confused. 

It is true, of course, that the US once had race-based slavery, and did not abolish it until 1865. But then again, most of the world used to have slavery, it was abolished, and in the US it was abolished over a hundred and fifty years ago. 

It is also true that discriminatory laws based on race were revived and then persisted in the US South until 1965, a hundred years later. But that too is over fifty years ago. Most now alive would have no memory.

What makes the US “white supremacist” today? Merriam-Webster defines “White supremacy” as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Oxford defines it as: “The belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in particular black or Jewish people.”

According to the US Constitution, and American statute law, to act on any such belief in America today would be illegal. The US is almost uniquely a non-racial nation. To be German or Japanese or French is an ethnic, a racial, designation. To be American is not. It is the one country in the world least based on any kind of racial supremacy. In America, by its very founding document, all men are created equal.

There is no constituency to speak of in modern America for such an opinion as “white supremacy.” I doubt any reader of this piece has ever heard or read such an opinion expressed by anyone in the past forty years, in public or in private. I have not. And I read a lot.

So how can the US be said to be based, today, on “white supremacy”?

By a redefinition of the term. “White supremacy” as the term is used by the critical race theorists means any situation in which it is tolerated that people with white skin are statistically doing better on some metric than are people with darker-toned skin. This must be ended, by main force, or the system is “white supremacist.” Pale-skinned people of primarily European ancestry do better than “blacks” on measures of average income and average educational attainment. So long as this is true, apparently, the USA is and will be “white supremacist.”

Yet we have a logical problem. If you factor in all racial groups, instead of an arbitrary two, it turns out that the USA is “Asian supremacist.” Asian Americans do better than either European or African Americans on both those metrics. And, given that the Oxford definition expressly excludes Jews from the category “white,” American is probably even more “Jew supremacist.”

The essential premise of critical race theory is exactly the same premise as Nazi race theory. There and then, it was the Jews running everything; for the Jews in prewar Germany were wealthier and better educated than the average German. So they were supposedly in control of everything, and were to blame for all the sufferings of the Germans. Here and now, it is the “whites” running everything, and responsible for all bad things. Increasingly we hear calls for similar remedies as well.

No cause for panic, of course—many will say. After all, the Jews were only six percent of the German population in 1930. “Whites” in the US are the majority. They really do hold power, so long as the US is a democracy, and so have little to fear, however violent and vile the rhetoric becomes.

Except, to begin with, the rules are changing. The innovation of “intersectionality” allows things to be parsed so that the ethnicity can be expanded or contracted as seems useful. “White” can be read to exclude “Hispanics,” Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Sicilians, or whatever group might be convenient. And you can discount women, homosexuals, and so forth. The remaining core might be entirely vulnerable in a democracy, depending on how the lines are drawn. Only a bigger and better Holocaust.

But it might not go that direction. Instead, there are growing signs that the gun turrets are swinging to Asians and Jews. Street attacks on Jews and Asians seem to be growing. The logic of critical race theory points inexorably in this direction.

It is amazing how history repeats; it is amazing how people seem incapable of learning from history. 

And to Think That I Saw It in 2021

 

The current hysteria of blacklisting and censorship has now reached Dr. Seuss. A year ago, this sounded absurd. What still sounds absurd today is likely to be law tomorrow.

I managed to dig up online some of the offending images that have prompted this.

These are simply comic stereotypes. All figures in any cartoon format are comic stereotypes.

Imagine, for comparison, if you are Canadian like me, a Seuss illustration of a Canadian as a lumberjack wearing a red plaid shirt, suspenders, hobnail boots, and a cap with ear flaps? Or a Mountie uniform? We might roll our eyes at the supposedly ignorant Yank. But would we feel offended? Why?

Reality check: my Filipina wife and my half-Filipina children have no problem talking about slanted eyes. Are they supposed to be ashamed of them?

History Begins to Rhyme

 

The original "black  bloc."

Is the US--and the world--going Fascist? The parallels are uncanny.

The Nazis wedged themselves into power in Germany largely because the establishment was distracted with fear of the Bolsheviks. Similarly, the modern left misdirects attention to a mostly fictional threat of insurrection from “white supremacists.” And throws their support behind Antifa and BLM.

In general, law enforcement and the judiciary—the establishment--are playing favourites instead of following the rules, going soft on Antifa or Black Lives Matter or Hunter Biden, throwing the book at rightist groups like the Proud Boys, or Donald Trump. This resembles the favoritism shown in Weimar Germany towards the Nazis, allowed to rule the streets, while Bolsheviks and other socialists were dealt with harshly.

The reaction by so many in government to the invasion of the capitol building by a mob on January 6 even looks strikingly like the Nazis’ exploitation of the Reichstag fire. Whether or not it was a “false flag” operation.

Old Joe Biden looks like a reassuring but easily controlled figurehead. This is a strategy the Nazis found effective in their last run: Hindenberg, Petain. Not sure why this should be a Nazi strategy in particular, but it has been. Perhaps nostalgia is a part of the Nazi appeal. Similarly, they resurrected the aged Peron for an encore in Argentina. 

The censorship and blacklisting of dissenting views is now blatant. 

The last US election looks fixed.

We see emerging a seamless coalition between government and big corporations, eliminating the free market. This is more or less the definition of Fascism in economic terms.

We also, if it needs to be said, see an ongoing holocaust, unrestricted abortion. I suspect it is guilt over this that is fueling the whole move to Fascism. But racism and discrimination is also being aggressively fomented against another targeted minority, straight “cisgender” white males. Who are accused of all the same things the Jews were accused of in the 1930s. There is even growing antisemitism.

And so it goes.

The last time it touched down, this all happened mostly in three medium-strength powers. Nevertheless, it took a lot to end it then. 

This time, it looks much stronger. Both China and the US look as though they are moving to Fascism. 

Are we all doomed? It took many years of struggle to achieve freedom and democracy. It may not be so easy to ever get it back if it is lost.

It may take another war, worse than the last. Just because both the US and China are Nazi, does not mean they will ally. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were virtually the same system, but fought to the death. In earlier years, Mussolini stood against Hitler’s annexation of Austria. There is no honour among Nazis. To the contrary, the logic of their beliefs will compel them to sooner or later fight one another. Nazism requires a hated enemy.

I have also seen the theory that, with the rise of a middle class, liberal democracy becomes inevitable. We have seen evidence in East Asia over the past few decades: once the GDP per capita hits about $10,000 US per annum, the system morphs into something more liberal. A prosperous middle class has the resources to resist an oppressive government, and the desire to do so. This theory, if correct, suggests that any movement to Nazism is temporary, pulling against the tide of history. It might work for a time, given the crisis and economic chaos produced by COVID; as it worked for a time in Germany and Italy under the strain of the Great Depression. But once prosperity returns, it cannot hold on. No government exists for long without at least the tacit consent of the governed. All it takes is for the common soldiers and the police to stop following orders…

But what if the concentration of power in a few big tech firms is killing the middle class? Many have actually been saying just this. A few on top, and everyone else on GAI? Now the existence of independent merchants or service providers or business owners of any kind seems dependent on the mercies of Amazon, Google, PayPal, or a few others. Amazon can refuse to carry your products or your storefront; Google can delete you from search results; PayPal can refuse to process payments...

Yet I think the inherent logic of the Internet is decentralizing. We have allowed power to be concentrated in a few silos so that people can put locks on the door, but this is artificial. Once America Online was the only visual interface to the Internet, and held close to a monopoly. Where are they now? MicroSoft used to have a near-monopoly on the Internet and even personal computing with the dominant browser and the dominant operating system. Now both monopolies got busted, by the market itself and the evolving technology. The tech companies will keep trying to build their silos—Apple’s introduction of the concept of apps was a blatant example. 

But this is like whack-a-mole. The monopolies work for a little while, until the public realizes their options. Because of the nature of the beast, putting a printing press in every home, a video camera in every pocket, it is not going to be possible over the long term to control and restrict the flow of either information or commerce. Trying to do so is going to require ever more extreme measures.

And that is perhaps what we are seeing now. Those holding power now are paranoid, and are acting as though they are desperate. CNN, the New York Times, Twitter, publishing companies, seem actually to be acting in ways that destroy their own brands. The online investment firm Robin Hood just did the same. Desperation could explain the overreaction to the capitol invasion, and the seemingly childish attempt to impeach Trump after leaving office. Or AOC claiming Ted Cruz is trying to murder her. It looks hysterical.

It could get very messy; but I suspect we are seeing the mad thrashing of a dying beast.

2020, Hold My Beer

 

A German representative has reportedly compared the storming of the Capitol building two days ago to the Reichstag fire. 

The analogy seems eerily apt.

The historical suspicion, of course, is that the Reichstag fire was set by the Nazis themselves to give Hitler the excuse to seize absolute power. Which he did.

So, if you want to call the current rumors and claims that agents provocateurs were involved in the storming of the Capitol, and, for that matter, in the Black Lives Matter riots last summer, a conspiracy theory, you need to acknowledge that similar conspiracies have been real, and successful, in the past. And indeed there are videos of the crowd trying to restrain people breaking windows, and of the police seeming to deliberately open a barrier to let protestors in.

Whether or not they were complicit, voices on the left seem to be responding aggressively. We hear immediate demands for a more authoritarian regime. Trump has been thrown off Twitter and other social media. Many are calling the storming of Congress “treason,” and “an attempted coup.” Implying the death penalty for all involved. Others are demanding the arrest of Trump’s lawyers. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez has demanded that any supporters of Trump be expelled from the House and Senate. Just as Hitler used the Reichstag fire to have the Communist deputies expelled to secure his majority.

China has already gone Fascist. The US seems to be close behind. 

China and the US are infinitely more significant military, economic, and cultural powers than Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It begins to look as though the 1930s were just a dress rehearsal for the main event.

Auf Wiedersehen, Mein Herr Trump

 

I was watching videos of Liza Minelli singing the title song from Cabaret; Christopher Isherwood had come up in a work connection. Then it occurred to me to also recap “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

We are, after all, living through a similar time. The analogies with the Weimar Republic are overwhelming.

First a period of libertinage; “there is no right and wrong.” Then some organized group emerging, and asserting power for the sake of power.

My sister observes, “beautiful, if you’re not Jewish.”

The two songs are not just ominous for Jews. Most of the people the Nazis outright murdered were not Jewish; and this does not include the tally from the war, not just of combatants but of civilians. Millions died in places like Leningrad or Silesia of starvation. Millions were seized as slave labour. And, had the Nazis won that war, uncounted millions more would have died. The Germans themselves suffered as much as anyone; those young people we hear singing might all be dead within ten years.

But that’s what makes the songs so powerful: because we know how it all turned out. We know where Elsie and Sally’s attitude to life is going to lead, and we know where the young Nazis’ dream led. True beauty is not pretty or pleasant. It must include the sublime. High art must always have an element of sheer terror.

Compare Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The reference is to the bands the Nazis had playing as they herded people into the gas chambers.

What makes the cherry blossoms so beautiful is knowing that in a week they will all have rotted.

But I digress. The poignancy is especially powerful now because we are now seeing the Nazis rise; in America, a far more consequential nation than Germany in 1933. And not only in America, either.

The parallels are astounding, and everyone is sleepwalking through it all.

No, it is not that Trump is Hitler. He is more Churchillian, conservative, gruff, passionately hated by many for his bombast, with many public vices. Hitler, by contrast, was a radical, an obscure figure, the opposite of a conservative, and had no visible vices. Incorruptible, vegetarian, apparently celibate. He was not hated so much as not taken seriously. Who could be seriously frightened by a little Austrian tramp with a moustache like Charlie Chaplin?

Biden is not Hitler either: he is a Hindenberg, or a Petain, a doddering old figurehead behind whose reassuring familiarity the consequential business of conquering and controlling the government apparatus can be done without interference.

Not, I suspect, by Kamala Harris. She not as Hitler either. She is too corrupt to be dangerous. She is perhaps a Goering or a von Papen, someone prepared to hire out her reputation to Hitler’s cause, for some emolument or chance for graft. Biden can be handled, and she can be bought.

By whom? 

The Hitler will emerge from relative obscurity; he usually does. As Hitler did. Probably someone no one saw coming, some faceless bureaucrat with no particular record like Putin, or some lower-ranking officer like Gaddhafi. Someone obscure enough that no one thought to defend against them. He or she is probably already in position and pulling strings. Someone engineered the nomination for Biden. Something has been going on behind the scenes in the FBI. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Antifa and BLM are, of course, the military wing, the stormtroopers, sowing the discord in the streets. Germans in 1933 figured that the way to stop the chaos was to vote for their political masters. Many Americans in 2020 seem to be making the same calculation, and backing the Democrats to stop the rioting. The instincts of the average man seem always to run to appeasement.

We live in interesting times.

The Gathering Storm

Self-actualization: Mussolini's face on the Fascist Party headquarters, surrounded by the word "Si"--"Yes." 

Is there anything more pernicious, more sinister, than the popular interpretation of Godwin’s Law: that if you compare anyone or anything else to Hitler or the Nazis, you have lost the argument? It is the perfect way to usher in the next Hitler; it almost looks calculated. 

The idea that Hitler and Nazism was a unique phenomenon is obviously wrong. We have seen the same script acted again and again: Stalin and the Holomodor, Mao and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot and the Killing Fields, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Armenian genocide under the Young Turks.

Rather than being a one-off, that we managed with brave determination to purge from the Earth, the philosophy we call Nazism has actually been steadily gaining adherents and influence over the years, without significant interruptions. Marcuse was big in the 1960s; same philosophy. Nazism is the doctrine we now usually call “postmodernism.” You can trace it back through “modernism” to Darwin and Nietzsche. I am only too familiar with it from graduate school. Even then, in the 1970s, it was pervasive. I remember checking myself at one point and thinking—“wait a minute. Isn’t that just what Mussolini said?” And then brushing off the thought. Couldn’t be. Fascism was something uniquely horrible, right?

It is at base simply the doctrine that there is no truth, no right or wrong, and all that matters is the imposition of one’s will. Nazism and Fascism never had any more to them than that. And, Nietzsche advised us, this is what is left when you turn away from God.

This necessarily proceeds to mass murder: you will want to murder anyone you think might be able to murder you.

We see the stormtroopers in the streets of the USA today, calling themselves “Antifa” or “Black Lives Matter.” We see how easily they bend the majority to their will, just as the brownshirts and blackshirts did. The majority seems to be on their side.

How will it end? If you accept the premise that a foetus is a human being, we already have a Holocaust underway, far worse than Hitler’s. Nazism did immense havoc when it took government in a second-tier power, Germany. It is already in power in China. What will happen if it takes power in the USA?

Will it be in power if Biden is voted in? We do not know who is behind him; might it be a situation like that of the aged Hindenberg, or Petain--a reassuringly familiar old face, a trembling hand easy to guide? Why did the Democratic Party establishment so suddenly and solidly unite behind him, when other candidates still looked viable?

It is Trump, of course, that everyone is casting as Hitler. They did the same with Churchill.

Can it be stopped? Perhaps only by God. Perhaps that is what the pandemic is for. It is, at least, exposing what has been hiding in dark corners.

Early Warning Signs of Fascism

A left-tilting friend has posted on Facebook a familiar poster of “Early Warning Signs of Fascism,” as a warning against Donald Trump.

Our obvious first question ought to be, who says these are the first signs of fascism, and how credible is their opinion? As it is a poster, it offers no evidence or argument; just assertions. Nobody who has been taught how to think, or figured it out for themselves, should take this at face value.

Nobody seems to give a source; they seem to just see it in print, and so assume it must be true.

Such people would make ideal acolytes in an actual fascist state. A similar poster might list “Twelve Harms Done by the Jews.”

Some attribute it to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The USHMM denies this; they once sold the poster in their gift shop, but, interestingly, without explanation, have pulled it.

Scopes tracks it down to Laurence Britt, a businessman and amateur historian.

As an appeal to authority, this is pretty weak.

Among academics, there is really little agreement on what constitutes “fascism.” “Fascist” positions and policies are all over the map, and seem to show no core ideology.

Let’s look at Mr. Britt’s list.

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism.

On this at least, I think there could be general agreement. This is one reason fascism is so incoherent: the perceived interest of one nation will not be the same as the national interest of another state, so that fascisms in different countries can hold opposite views on any given issue. German fascism was, historically, in opposition to Austrian fascism, and for a time with Italian fascism. Similarly, on almost any given point of policy, different national fascist parties can be opposed.

But is Trump’s administration fascist by this measure? While it is nationalistic in comparison with other recent American regimes, it surely does not stand out as nationalistic in either world or historic terms. To the contrary; the US, and the West in general, have been moving in the opposite direction, towards “globalism.” Trump looks like a relatively mild popular reaction against this, but bringing the US closer to alignment with the world and historical norm. The same could be said of various “nationalist” movements in Europe.

This nationalism fails the stated test of being either powerful or continuous.

Nominally communist or socialist regimes are currently the most nationalistic: North Korea, China.

2. Disdain for human rights.

This seems fair as a description of fascism. Mussolini was openly opposed to liberal democracy as decadent, and to the doctrine of individual rights and individualism. The very symbol of the fasces emphasizes the group over the individual. Hitler’s Nazis obviously honoured no right to life.

Yet does this describe the Trump administration? What human rights has it opposed? Rather, Trump has been fairly vocal in supporting the right to life, the right to bear arms, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech.

In world terms, the US is probably here too the one country furthest from fascism. Within the US, the current left is plainly more fascist than the right: they follow the fascists in emphasizing the group over individual rights. For an obvious example, they currently embrace the slogan “black lives matter,” and are violently opposed to the slogan “all lives matter.”

3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause.

This is not obviously a core fascist characteristic; rather, it is a universal law of politics and social life. You can rally support to yourself by uniting the public against some scapegoat or imagined enemy. Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies offer literary examples.

And, at the same time, in many circumstances clear identification of the enemy can be a necessary and a deeply moral act. This is what Churchill did, in pinpointing Hitler as the enemy; and again in warning of an iron curtain falling on Europe. It is what the police do when they identify a murderer, and put up warnings in the post office.

Trump seems conspicuous in not playing this enemies game. He may berate this opponent or that, this group or that, and, the next time the matter comes up, make a point of praising them. Rather than rallying rage against an imaginary enemy or a scapegoat, he seems to do this as a negotiating tactic.

The classic current example of a group seeking to unite on the basis of a purely imaginary common enemy is “Antifa.” It is embedded in their name.

4. Supremacy of the military.

This is not true of Hitler’s Germany. The Nazis built up the armed forces, but this is not the same thing. They were also in ongoing conflict with the officer class. All soldiers were required to take a personal oath to Hitler. That’s subjugation, not supremacy. The military also exerted no authority over the civilian population.

Trump’s relationship to the military seems to be about the same as that of any other president. Funding of the military has gone up in real terms, held steady in GDP terms, and is broadly in line with historic trends.

5. Rampant sexism.

This is anachronistic. The term “sexism” was coined only in the Sixties. Relations between the sexes were not the hot button issue then they are today.

But the fascist record is not broadly one of opposition to what today would be called feminism. The very first point of the Manifesto of Piazza Sansepolcro, often considered the founding event of Italian fascism, was “vote and eligibility for women.” Mussolini wanted to require that a minimum proportion of the Italian legislature be women. His government prohibited firing women because of pregnancy or maternity leave. G.A. Chiurco wrote, in 1935, "The fascist state can't conceive the woman locked in her house."

The Nazi record in Germany was different. They tended to emphasize the importance of motherhood, for sustaining the race. But they were also comfortable with women, like Leni Riefenstahl or Hanna Reitsch, in high public positions, running concentration camps, and in the military.

6. Controlled mass media.

This seems misplaced on a list of “early warning signs.” Fascists did not have the means to control the media before the came to power. They were active and enthusiastic journalists; Mussolini himself was a journalist. But this does not amount to control.

Fascist regimes certainly took control of mass media as a standard practice once they came to power.

Already in power, Trump has made no moves to control the media.

While the “legacy media” does seem to move in lockstep, this seems to be a case of a cadre, similar to the early fascists, of active and enthusiastic journalists. Significantly, they actually seem to be united against Trump.

7. Obsession with national security.

As a description of the Italian Fascist or the German Nazi regimes, this seems off point. Their concern was not with defending their borders, with security, but with invading other countries. The charge of “obsession with national security” could more reasonably be levelled against Churchill or De Gaulle.

Is Trump interested in invading other countries? It seems the reverse; he seems to be making efforts to pull troops back from foreign involvements.

8. Religion and government intertwined.

This again does not seem to be the proper phrasing. After all, religion and government are constitutionally intertwined in the United Kingdom, modern Germany, or in the Scandinavian countries, without these being considered fascist countries. It would be better to say “religion subservient to government.” As Mussolini put his essential creed: “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” It is a matter of who gets to call the shots.

There is no sign of Trump trying to make religion knuckle under to the demands of the state in America. The obvious example of this in the world today is China.

But it is also a broad tendency on the American left, not strong on recognizing conscience rights.

9. Corporate power protected.

As phrased, this is false. In fact, Fascist Italy nationalized more industry than any other nation but the Soviet Union. While Nazism or fascism left other corporations standing, and even protected their markets and profits from competition, they removed all power from their ownership or management. Corporations allowed to remain in business were treated like arms of the state, obliged to do what the government required. This was the fascist understanding of socialism.

Trump could be accused of doing this in a small way by invoking the Defense Production Act; but this is recognized as legitimate in any democracy in a state of national emergency—just as the French army commandeered the taxis of Paris for the Battle of the Marne.

More generally, Trump has been aggressive in reducing government regulations on business. This increases the decision-making power of corporate ownership or management, and, at the same time, reduces their protection from competition. It is the opposite of the fascist programme.

The classic contemporary example of a regime operating on this fascist basis is China.

10. Labour power suppressed.

The fascist treatment of labour or the corporations was parallel; one cannot have been “protected,” and the other “suppressed.” The Nazis made protecting and advancing the rights and interests of the workers one of its main policy objectives; but the unions, like the corporations, became organs of government. Workers were expected to do what the government ordered.

There is no parallel with the Trump administration; except that Trump, like the fascists, claims to make the interests of working people his primary concern. The modern parallel is again the Chinese regime, in terms of unions becoming arms of the state.

11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts.

This is the biggest howler on the list. Fascism began as an artistic and intellectual movement, which then moved into politics. Gabriele d’Annunzio, poet, journalist, and playwright, set up the first fascist regime, with himself as Duce, in Fiume. Fascism as an intellectual movement had clear antecedents in Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx. It was more or less the application of the currently fashionable intellectual trends to practical politics. William L. Shirer, in Germany at the time, noted that the Nazi party was especially strong and popular on university campuses.

A significant number of prominent intellectuals and artists of the day supported the fascists: Ezra Pound, Martin Heidegger, Luigi Pirandello, Knut Hamsun, Thomas Wolfe. Hitler, of course, considered himself an artist; Mussolini wrote and published short stories.

Trump’s opinion on intellectualism and the arts is less clear. He has a reputation as a vulgarian. He does oppose tearing down statues.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

The Nazis, and Mussolini’s blackshirts, were characterized in their earlier days not by any appeal to law and order, but by criminal activities and brawling in the streets. Rather than a government of settled laws, fascism embraced the “leadership principle.” It gave license to some to freely do things that would have been crimes in most other countries. Rather than calling for social peace and order, it called for “Mein Kampf” and the greeting “Seig Heil.”

Concern with crime, and with public order, is a characteristic instead of traditional conservatism. Which, Shirer noted, was the one group consistently opposed to fascism.

Trump does not seem to be in favour of rioting or gang violence. This puts him in opposition to fascism. The obvious modern advocates and practitioners of Storm Trooper tactics are groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

Trump is also no hard-liner on crime and punishment. He often boasts of his “prison reform,” which moves in the opposite direction.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption

This is also misplaced. Fascism came to power in Italy or in Germany largely on a promise to stamp out cronyism and corruption. Mussolini promised to “make the trains run on time.” Hitler ran on an image of personal incorruptibility. The new ideal of the national good and the good of the whole was supposed to end the perceived rampant cronyism and corruption of the times.

Fascism turned out not to be effective in this regard, and fascist officials, given the opportunity, were indeed often corrupt; but it seems more accurate to say that it failed to prevent cronyism and corruption than that it caused it.

Is Trump guilty of rampant cronyism or corruption? Charges of cronyism and corruption are levelled against most administrations; notably against Joe Biden, the certain Democratic nominee to run against him.

14. Fraudulent elections.

Fraudulent elections are significantly more common than are regimes we would generally call fascist. They are also the norm in communist or most Third-World regimes. And Hitler first came to power in what seems to have been a reasonably fair election.

Voter fraud and fraudulent elections are an eternal problem, but not one associated especially with either fascism or Donald Trump. “Russian collusion” turned out to be an unsubstantiated allegation.

The Republicans routinely charge Democrats of election fraud; the Democrats routinely charge Republicans. No doubt sometimes they are right.

Conclusion: Donald Trump has nothing to do with fascism. The case is stronger for the modern American left, and especially strong for seeing the current government of China as, essentially, fascist.

Family Values and Fascism

First family. Wait till you meet the kids.

A friend avers that the sanctity of the family is next only to the sanctity of God himself. 

A common view, these days, among those on the right, and among Christians.

I urgently need to disagree.

Logically, family here is equivalent to nation: either is a useful social unit, based on shared genetics and shared experiences. The difference is only in scale.

Now what does it sound like if you speak of the “sanctity of the nation”? If you guessed Fascism, you guessed right. This was the core idea of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. It is not just incompatible with Christianity; it is antithetical to it.

So too with “the sanctity of the family.” It automatically denies the brotherhood of man, and goes ugly places. Crimes as awful as those of Nazi Germany, if on a smaller scale.

No question that family is desirable and useful, just as is a national government. Both give us the warm fuzzies. Exactly for this reason, there is a danger of idolatry, of overvaluing it. Money is useful too; so is sex. But there is immediately a problem if you think of money or sex as sacred.

For my marriage ceremony, we were free to choose our own Bible reading. Not coincidentally, it is extremely hard to find a good Bible reading, unambiguously praising marriage.

How about St. Paul?

“But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain even as I am. But if they don't have self-control, let them marry. For it's better to marry than to burn.”

There’s damning with faint praise, surely.

Born with a Gift of Laughter, and a Sense that the World Was Mad

Friend Cyrus opines that morality is derived from the practical needs of society. More generally, “cultural relativism” has become a common position: morality is what your society says it is.

This goes against one of the most vital of all insights: that the world is mad.

So says Christianity: God came to the world, and the world crucified him.

Not just the civil authorities, either. The religious authorities were very much in on the act. And not just the authorities, either. They judgment is ultimately confirmed by the mob, by democratic vote.

Seems pretty definitive: whatever society as a whole is pushing, it is not reliable. You can’t derive morality from social authority.

This is also a possible understanding of Jesus’s warning “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

A pessimistic reading is that very few get to heaven. A more optimistic reading is that we only get to heaven one by one, never by following the crowd.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says of his disciples—that is, of Christians—“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world…. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”

Christians are to be in the world, but not of it.

What about the Church? Isn’t it a social authority?

Yes, it is—and have we not seen ourselves, even in very recent days, that as a social authority it is not reliable? What is reliable is the “deposit of faith,” the scriptures and time-tested traditions it preserves, and must exist to preserve. But not the USCCB or CCCB, meeting as a group—and not the Vatican.

The common phrase “whenever two or more of you are gathered in my name, I am with you,” often used to describe the Church, is a misquotation. Jesus actually said, “whenever two or three of you.” This suggests an upper limit as well as a lower one for his true presence.

There must have been a reason why, of his many disciples, he chose only twelve to be apostles, to whom he delegated authority. Only twelve to join him in the Upper Room. The apostles themselves understood this number as significant, for when Judas apostasized, they chose one successor.

Twelve seems a reasonable upper limit at which all members of the group will know one another and interact with one another as individuals. It is the upper limit of human sanity.

Noah

The same insight, that the world is mad, or is no moral guide, is found in Judaism, only a little less centrally. It is the story of Noah, of Lot—only the individual, only one man, is righteous. It is the story of the prophets, almost invariably, as Jesus notes, persecuted by their society. It is the story of the Jews as a whole, in the diaspora.

It is also clear enough in Buddhism—Sakyamuni literally rejects “the world”—he was fated to be a world ruler. He abandons his city and his palaces, then even his few companions in the forest, to achieve his enlightenment in solitude.

To me, the most worrisome thing about Islam is the absence from its mainstream of this awareness that the world is mad.

The Sufis understand it.

Beyond our great religious traditions, the insanity of the social plane is also the core insight of much of our greatest literature. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is always struggling with an irresponsible crew. In the Iliad: nobody listens to Cassandra or to Laocoon. And Troy falls not by force of massed arms, but through the cleverness of an individual, Odysseus. In the entire Medieval “knight errant” tradition; like the cowboy tradition that followed it. In Don Quixote—superficially Quixote is mad, and those around him are sane. Yet we sympathize with him, and see them all as dullards by comparison. Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Gulliver’s Travels. Kafka’s entire corpus; Lord of the Flies; Catch-22; To Kill a Mockingbird; One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Emperor’s New Clothes.” “High Noon.” Orwell’s 1984.

It is a convenient error to understand 1984 as solely a prediction of the future. “1984” is “1948” transposed, the date the book was written, for a reason. Orwell meant that, if looked at carefully, the situation in England in 1948 was already that described.

Is there any similar literary or philosophical argument for communitarianism?

There is. It is called fascism.

Take This Simple Nazi Test

A classic narcissist lie.

In listing the signs you are dealing with a bad person, one of Jesus’s “goats,” I left out one obvious indication.

8. They will want often to shut down conversation.

This is a sure sign of a guilty conscience: someone wants to stop others talking if they know they are in the wrong.

Which brings up, in turn, the reflection that we are obviously now in the midst of an upsurge of evil. Hence the growing wave of censorship.

We are also, tellingly enough, seeing an upsurge in antisemitism, postmodern relativism, anti-religious sentiment, and ecofascism. It all suggests a lot of people with a guilty conscience, and determined not to repent.

I trace it all back to the “sexual revolution,” and more specifically to legalized abortion.

And I see a chilling parallel.

Back when Victoria died, at the turn of the 19th century, there was a similar period of libertinage, the “Edwardian Era.” This earlier sexual revolution extended into the 20s, and was especially a hallmark of Weimar Germany.

And where did that lead us?

Where did that lead Germany?

Into brazen, undisguised evil on the mass level. Nazism was a popular melding of anti-semitism, ecofascism, moral relativism, and anti-religious sentiment. And murderous on an industrial scale.

Is that where this ends?

Or are we already there?

You might have wondered, if you are an honest sort, where you really would have stood had you been alive in Nazi Germany. Would you really have been a Schindler? Or would you have been a “good German” and just gone along? Or even a Nazi?

There is an easy test.

What is your stance on abortion?

Postmodernism = Narcissism = Fascism = Vice

Photo by Iain Sheriff-Scott, Queen's Journal.

When Jordan Peterson’s talk at Queen’s University’s Grant Hall was stormed by protesters a year ago, he referred to them as “narcissists.”

At the time, I thought this was wrong—a casual misapplication of a psychological term. Something it is too easy for psychologists to do, and not legitimate in debate. Of course, it was a far worse transgression to storm someone’s speech. It was they who were subverting debate, not Peterson. But still, a distraction.

Now I think he may have been literally correct.

I have been struggling recently here with, on the one hand, what seems a growing awareness, in me and in society, of the problem of narcissism, and on the other, a growing problem with postmodernism, and there has been the nagging awareness at the back of my mind while doing this that they are strikingly similar. After dismissing this for a long time, for the same reasons I dismissed Peterson’s comments, thinking I must be mistakenly over-applying the concept of narcissism, I think I have been forced to the revelation that, yes, in fact, they are the same thing, or at least expressions of the same thing. Postmodernism is narcissism on a social scale, or narcissism expressed as a philosophy.

This tends to go against my recent thought that postmodernism began as a good faith, if mistaken, reaction to culture shock. It looks as though that is, in the end, an alibi, and a convenient circumstance postmodernism has been able to exploit. Indeed, is perhaps creating in order to exploit. Get people culture shocked, and they are more vulnerable to being hoovered into a narcissist or postmodernist cult view. As I noted, it looks more like the disease than a treatment for it.

If this insight is right, by looking at postmodernism, we can now better understand narcissism; because it reveals how narcissists think. And by looking at narcissism, we can better understand the dangers of postmodernism, for it reveals where it is really coming from and where it is going.

Postmodernism shares with narcissism, to begin with, a willfully delusional quality. Robert Fliess described narcissists as “ambulatory psychotics,” because they seem to be out of touch with the real world. Others interpret this instead as habitual lying. Narcissists will say things that are obviously untrue, even to both parties, and say them as though they mean them sincerely. How is this possible?

But we see the same thing in postmodernism. It declares as its supposed core principle that nothing it true. “There is no truth. Truth is just a social construct.” Therefore, whatever they want to believe is true. This justifies any possible lie, or, depending on how you want to look at it, believing any conceivable delusion. Men declaring they are women. Or declaring racism “anti-racism,” declaring fascism “anti-fascism,” declaring favouritism “equality,” and so forth. If you simply say it, that makes it truth.

Postmodernism also shares with narcissism the dangerous and vile practice of scapegoating. The narcissist parent will notoriously unjustly project all evil on to one innocent child. The postmodernism unjustly projects all imaginable evil on “cisgendered white males,” on “Donald Trump,” or on a mostly imaginary racist “alt-right.” What the chosen target actually says or does no longer matters. They become the embodiment of all evil; they are there to be blamed for everything.

If this sounds a lot like Nazism, you have that right. If narcissism = postmodernism, it is also pretty clear that narcissism = postmodernism = fascism. It’s all at heart the same thing.

And postmodernism and postmodern attitudes seem to be ripping through the society and culture just the way Ionesco described Fascism spreading in “Rhinoceros.” People who only yesterday were reasonable and open are suddenly rhinos, true believers.

And, just like the narcissistic parent, the postmodernists also have their “golden children” as well. We saw it in the Covington High School debacle. Native Americans/First Nations are arbitrarily declared to be incapable of doing any wrong, no matter how strong the evidence against them. Same dynamic in the early reports of and public reactions to the Jussie Smollett faked assault, which was equally improbable on its face. It is easy to enumerate other such favoured groups: illegal immigrants must never be criticized. Gays must never be criticized. Women must never be criticized.

Not that this works to the advantage of either the golden child in the family, or the favoured group in postmodernism. It is a power move. It makes and keeps them dependent and helpless. And silence is demanded in return. Woe betide any member of such a group who themselves strays from the “narrative.” Telling word, “narrative.”

Most dangerously, postmodernists are exactly like narcissists in not wanting dialogue or discussion. I Fact, violently reacting against any hint of dialogue or discussion. What could be more characteristic of postmodernism in practice? If they are “delusional,” as Fliess says, this in particular shows these delusions are obviously willful. They certainly do not want to be disabused of them. So all dialogue is ended, force is resorted to instead, and dissenting views are if possible silenced. Hence the storming of Peterson’s talk. It is critically important to them that others shut up. The “hate laws” are of course part of the same paranoid attitude.

Just as is the case in a dysfunctional family, now we are all walking on eggshells, for fear that something we say might set somebody off. For fear of setting off a narcissistic tantrum. We saw that at Queen’s.

Which is, surely, our essential clue as to what is really going on here. What motivates both postmodernism and narcissism, is a guilty conscience.

Anyone who does not want to discuss a matter, or hear a matter discussed, knows they are in the wrong. Truth itself is the enemy.

And anyone who wants to put reality up for grabs knows that the evidence does not favour them.

“Reality” here is really in turn a mask for “morality.” It is right and wrong that both postmodernism and narcissism really most want to put in question. This is the core objective.

Which is to say that they know they are in some vital way in the moral wrong. If they are violent—and they are—it is their own conscience they are really lashing out at. And they scapegoat, obviously, for the same reason. A scapegoat is needed only if you have sinned.

There are several important takeaways from this.

First, narcissism is not a mental illness, but a moral choice. People choose to be postmodernists; accordingly, people choose to be narcissists.

Second, narcissism is not really about self-love. We take this from our reading of the original legend of Narcissus, but this is not even an accurate reading of that legend. Narcissus’s self-love, when he falls in hopeless love with his own reflection, is a punishment for a prior sin, which seems to have been pride. Not quite the same thing.

Third, both narcissism and postmodernism are covers, perhaps spontaneous reactions, for consciousness of sin. Or rather, not sin, but vice. We all sin. Good people then acknowledge fault, at least to themselves and to God, and move on. Narcissism or postmodernism happens when you instead deny you did anything wrong, and determine to keep sinning.

The narcissist or postmodernist has chosen to give free rein to some vice, and wants to continue to do so. Narcissism/postmodernism is their excuse to do so.

Fourth, the growth of postmodernism tells us there is at least one vice, if not several, running rampant in our current culture. The obvious candidate is casual sex, with free and legal abortion at its apex. This is why abortion rights has become the high-voltage third rail nobody is allowed to go near on the postmodern left. Narcissism on the individual level may be prompted by a variety of other vices, but when it happens to some large group of people, a society as a whole, the particular vice becomes easier to isolate.

How will it all end? Can it end without a bloodbath of innocents?

No; we are already in the middle of a bloodbath of innocents.

The Postmodern Paradox

Benito Mussolini, 27th prime minister of Italy and, arguably, the founder of postmodernism.

Surely it should be apparent to all that intolerance was been growing exponentially in our society and culture, throughout the developed world. It has now gotten so extreme that public discourse seems almost no longer possible. No compromise over anything; Trump is evil; into the streets with tire irons.

And where is the intolerance coming from? From the very people who claim their core issue is “tolerance.” From the postmodernists. They are the ones shutting all dissenting voices down, or trying to.

And this was perfectly predictable from the beginning.

Postmodernism called itself tolerance of differing views. It might even have believed so. The problem was with being “absolutist,” “judgmental,” or “extremist.” Declare that all truth is relative, and everyone gets to live together in perfect harmony. After all, there is no truth. Truth is merely a social construct.

That’s exactly wrong, and now we are seeing the fruits of the premise. So long as there is a core of shared standards, values, truths, it is possible to politely have disagreements and usually to resolve them. Because we can appeal to these standards. Standards like tolerance itself.

Once you remove those standards, once there is no absolute truth, everything becomes a matter of personal opinion, or, put another way, of personal will. You believe whatever you want to believe.

So what happens when the guy beside you believes something different, and something openly contradictory to your “truth”?

There is no basis on which to discuss matters; no basis on which to compromise; no basis on which to peacefully co-exist. The only course is to either submit to his will, or attempt to impose your own will, your own version of “reality,” on him.

Bring out the tire irons. There is now no other way.

He must use your chosen pronoun. His opinion is not allowed rights. He is not allowed rights. He must accept that you are really a woman, and assent to this publicly. “Racism” becomes whatever you want to call racism. “Anti-racism” becomes whatever you want to call anti-racism. Individual words only mean whatever you want them to mean at the moment. The very idea of discourse is ridiculous, if not threatening. Laws, social norms, morality and reason itself are to be subverted if they do not produce the willed result.

There is only one solution, and it is a simple one: a re-commitment to the Good, the True, the Beautiful. We must at least agree that we seek these things, and that they are the standard measure.

From there, we could move forward together. We would have a foundation on which to build.