Beste
bezoeker lees het volgende opiniestuk van Umair Haque.
Hierin legt hij uit dat de VS geen snars begrijpt van fascisme: de
opkomst en het grote gevaar van fascisme zoals we dat in Duitsland,
Italië, Spanje en aantal Latijns Amerikaanse landen hebben gezien.
Moet wel opmerken dat wat mij betreft de VS al een fascistoïde maatschappij is, neem de omgang van de politie met de gekleurde en zeker met de zwarte minderheid in de VS. Dan is er nog het frustreren van het kiesrecht voor gekleurden, die veelal niet eens kunnen stemmen als ze daartoe gemachtigd zijn (en aan die machtiging wordt ook nu weer flink geknaagd)…… Wat voorts te denken over het inperken van vrouwenrechten (zoals voor abortus en anticonceptie) in een aantal VS staten…….
Lees
en geeft het ajb door, ook hier begrijpt men niet welk gevaar de
fascisten vormen voor onze toch al lamme democratie….. Hoewel wij
de les bij wijze van spreke aan den lijve hebben ondervonden, zie je
ook de neoliberale partijen als VVD, D66, CDA (in feite ook
neoliberaal), PvdA, CU en SGP meer en meer uiterst rechtse of beter gezegd fascistoïde denkbeelden omarmen, zie alleen al hoe men met vluchtelingen en hun
kinderen denkt om te kunnen gaan……….
De CU sputtert nog wel wat op het gebied van vluchtelingen, maar deze hypocriete partij blijft wel achter het inhumane waardeloze kabinet Rutte 3 staan, een kabinet waar het zelf aan deelneemt…… Sterker nog: dit kabinet kan niet zonder de steun van de ‘Christen’Unie…..
Ook het etnisch profileren in de VS en hier, is feitelijk een fascistische vorm van politie-inzet……
Bovendien is het
neoliberalisme uiteindelijk goed beschouwt niets anders dan een fascistisch
gedachtegoed! Daar is Haque het overigens niet mee eens, gezien het artikel dat hieronder is opgenomen.
Verder stelt Haque dat de hang naar fascisme niet in de grote steden is te vinden, echter daar ben ik het niet met hem eens, zie alleen al de neonazi parades in diverse grote steden in de VS.
Hooguit kan je uit het stemgedrag buiten de grote steden in de VS als meer rechts bestempelen dan in de grote steden, waar uiteraard het discriminerende gedrag tegen de gekleurde minderheid in die gebieden extremer is dan in de grote steden, ook al schiet de politie in de VS meer gekleurden neer in de grote steden van de VS…..
Vergeet verder het gevaar niet van de steeds verder toenemende macht van grote bedrijven die met een beroep op duurzaamheid intussen de wereld verder verrampeneren en de volksgezondheid ondergeschikt houden aan het maken van (mega) winsten……. Waar dit bedrijfsleven graag foute regimes steunt en van de VS regering eist dat consumenten zo min mogelijk te vertellen hebben over o.a. voedselveiligheid…… Ook hier is dit te zien, al helpen onze politici daar graag aan mee, neem het TTIP handelsverdrag*, een verdrag waarmee de consument wordt gereduceerd tot een lastige klant die zich vooral niet moet bemoeien met voedselveiligheid en zaken als genetische manipulatie……. Verder is het een feit dat het bedrijfsleven in Duitsland het prima deed in aanloop van WOII (vanaf 1933) en de eerste twee jaren van die oorlog…… Sterker nog: zonder het grote bedrijfsleven was Hitler (en de NSDAP) waarschijnlijk niet zo machtig geworden……..
Lees het volgende artikel van Umair Hague en oordeel zelf:
umair
haque
vampire.
Sep 3
What America Still
Doesn’t Understand About Fascism
What
Happens When a Rich Society Suddenly Becomes a Poor One?
Today, I read, as you probably
did, that
Steve Bannon is to keynote the New Yorker’s Ideas Festival.
LOL — it should go without saying that’s a pretty good
indication that a society is out of ideas. Yet I can almost hear the
reasoning in the New Yorker’s offices. Their problem is that
American thinkers have no real explanation for fascism — just
fairy tales — and that leaves you with…the fascists. Or maybe
they just wanted to stoke controversy and make money (I’d give them
more credit than that, but I digress.)
Let’s take the fairy tales Americans
tell themselves about fascism — there are three — one by
one, and then discuss what really causes fascism (and why American
thinkers are completely unable to get it, even at this late stage).
You can skip this part if you want the less nerdy stuff.
— Fascism is caused by identity
politics. This
is what Francis Fukuyama suggests in his new book — and
I’d say he should be ashamed of himself, if it weren’t so funny
and laughable. I decide to be a gender-nonconforming them, not a he
anymore, and you respond by…cheering on Mexican babies as they’re
put in camps? LOL, you see why I think American thinkers don’t know
how to think anymore? It’s not just childishly absurd — it’s
a grotesque form of victim-blaming, that obviates freedom or liberty
in any genuine sense, every bit the equivalent of saying “well, you
shouldn’t have worn that dress…!”
— Fascism is a cycle, a backlash
against “too much liberalism.” This seems to explain things — but
it doesn’t. What is “too much liberalism?” When we have
healthcare? Or just sewers and pipes? Does that mean that human
beings are doomed to be fascists? This is a kind of theology of
individualism — not really an explanation for fascism.
— Fascism happens when white people
are afraid of becoming a minority. This explanation is trotted out
regularly by American pundits. But whites in Sweden are in no danger
of becoming a minority — yet extremism is in second place
there, in the upcoming election. That’s true in Italy, Poland,
Hungary, and Russia, too. So this theory is obviously false — it
can’t explain the global rise of fascism even a bit.
These three explanations lead to what
I call the meteor strike theory of fascism. Since we have no real
explanation, it becomes a random event, a kind of natural
catastrophe. But if it’s a natural catastrophe, then we have no
control over it. And if we have no control over it, then maybe the
best we can do is…invite the fascists to headline our festivals. As
a way to negotiate and bargain with them. Does that make sense?
Now. Let us try to look at all the
above from another perspective. Not the one of what we believe, but
simply what we know. What do we know about how America has changed
over the last thirty years?
80% of Americans now live paycheck to
paycheck. 70% have less than $1000 in savings. 70% expect their kids
to live worse lives. Life expectancy is falling. Real incomes are
shrinking. Suicides are skyrocketing. Depression and loneliness are
soaring. The old can’t afford to retire, and the young can’t
afford to start families. The middle class has imploded, and the
ranks of the poor have swollen. What does all this really say?
America is a rich country
that effectively became a poor one — in the space of a
generation. Is it
any surprise that this sudden, unexpected, historic collapse would
massively, catastrophically destabilize society — and give rise
to fascism?
(Perhaps you object. The mistake many
Americans make is to think that flat-screen TVs and microwave ovens
somehow make them better off than people in poorer countries. They
don’t. People in Pakistan and Chile can afford those things, too.
Poverty — the experience of deprivation — is a truer
thing that not having a flat-screen TV. It’s about living at the
edge of perpetual ruin, which is something that most Americans now
face daily)
How might a society plunging from
riches into poverty destabilize into fascism, precisely? The social
bonds in a town or community get blown apart. People turn to fascism
for belonging. The sense of optimism and faith in the future people
have is destroyed. They turn to fascism for hope again. All the good
jobs are gone. People seek scapegoats to blame for their
miseries — the very ones they’ve barely learned to tolerate
living next to. Life is a frightening thing now — people seek
the soothing, comforting words of a demagogue.
You must work harder every year, just
to keep your head above water — the demagogue is the only one
who tells you this is wrong and unjust, while elites don’t seem to
notice or care much at all. You never expected to be poor — yet
here you are. Suicides and illnesses and drug use have come to
surround you. Everything seems broken — towns, communities,
cities, bonds, families, jobs, livelihoods, careers, even people. In
the end, you turn to fascism to restore all the things you feel have
been taken away from you — trust, meaning, purpose, belonging,
optimism, opportunity, fairness, dignity, pride, and strength.
Those things are what poverty is
really made of, and the new poverty that Americans face isn’t just
financial — it’s made of all the elements of a decent life.
In hard terms, poverty of human, intellectual, social, emotional, and
civic capital, to name just a few.
Now, if the theory is correct, we’d
expect to see fascism rising in places where all the above is
true — where poverty in all these forms has risen, where all
these real “capital deficits” have grown. Where are those places?
They are not places that have always been poor — but of
downward mobility. And that’s precisely what we do see. American
fascism isn’t rising in inner cities — but in Rust Belt
towns, in exurbs, in third-tier cities, in the regions where people
expected easy, comfortable lives, like their parents and
grandparents — but instead, are ending up elsewhere, and can’t
understand why, or what to do about it all. Bang! The fascist spark
is lit by the implosion of the middle class.
The fascist isn’t the
prole — he’s the frustrated bourgeoisie. The one whom
capitalism promised to make a capitalist — but only did it to
sell him on capitalism. It
had no intention of ever making him a true capitalist, like Bezos,
Gates, or Buffett — why would it? Capitalism isn’t there to
make him rich, it’s there to make them rich. So the prole turns to
tribalism, hierarchy, and predation, then, for the power and riches
and comfort he was promised — and still hungers for.
So now our theory goes something like
this. Capitalism promised proles bourgeois lives — it was the
best marketing trick in history, perhaps. But all it ever really
wanted to do was to squeeze the proles — and maximize profits.
Those disappointed would-be bourgeoisie, who are now poorer than
ever, enraged, losing trust and faith in the system, living at the
edge, turn to fascism. They band together into tribes of the pure—
so the prole, if he can’t be a real capitalist, a true bourgeois,
can at least be powerful enough to prey on the weak. The sudden,
jabbing sting of poverty, the feeling of being empty, hopeless, weak,
damaged, forgotten, abandoned, becomes a sense of of belonging,
meaning, purpose, safety, security, and strength. Now he is someone
again.
So the disappointed prole turns to
fascism to restore precisely the things that capitalism took away
from him — what it was impoverishing him of while he wasn’t
looking. But that means that he is at the mercy of tribal logic, in
all its fearfulness and cowardice and stupidity, too. The rage that
should be directed at capitalism is pointed at scapegoats. The anger
that should be directed at those above him is aimed below him. The
contempt he should have for the rich is turned into scorn of the
poor. The disappointment he should have in greed, egotism, and
self-concern instead turns to a vengeful resentment of the smallest
differences. He imagines that he is history’s great victim,
persecuted by malign forces, hunted, and hounded — and so
everything becomes an existential battle, in which only the strong
survive, and must act pre-emptively, to eliminate their enemies.
Self-preservation means that the price of survival is to become a
predator. Nobody will ever make him poor again — he will make
sure of it, by making everyone else less of a person at all.
Predatory
capitalism degenerates into fascism, by creating the glittering
expectation of riches, but the shattering reality of poverty.
Enraged, embittered, aggrieved, people turn on their neighbours,
colleagues, friends, and peers, preying on the weak, to gain back the
very things capitalism took away from them — even as it
promised them dreams of bourgeois wealth. If it can’t
live like the bourgeois, as capitalism promised, the tribe will take
whatever it can, by more vicious means, not to be poor in these ways
ever again. Democracy itself begins to wither and die. Society
shrivels. Norms and values are ripped apart. Everything seems to
shatter.
The world has seen all this before.
This was the story of Germany in the 1930s, almost exactly. A rich
society which had suddenly become poor. A middle class imploding.
People turning on their friends and neighbours. The tribe seizing for
itself what capitalism had promised — but never had any
intention of delivering. In more and more violent ways. Led by a
demagogue. Who made people feel strong and powerful and hopeful
again. Bang! Fascism.
That story is being retold in American
today. America can’t quite bring itself to believe it. It is too
busy telling itself fairy tales and fables. That is why Steve Bannon
can headline a festival of ideas — LOL — while a nation
seems to think fascism is the equivalent of a meteor strike. Fairy
tales, my friends, do not help you, in the deep, dark night, when the
monsters judder and screech. They are only there to lull us asleep.
Umair
August 2018
Leadership
News
Politics
Economics
Life
=========================================
* Sinds Trump aan het bewind is, zijn EU ambtenaren en politici bezig met een peperdure lobby in Washington om het TTIP verdrag alsnog getekend te krijgen, let wel: de EU is een volksvertegenwoordiging en niet een bedrijvenvertegenwoordiging!
