Tag Archives: fascism

More Than Hope

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The summer of 2016 has only just started but it is already shaping up to be one fraught with acts of terror, sheer violence, and bloody aggression. This is true in so many places around the world. But in the United States, a nation which arrogantly declares itself both indispensable to world peace and stability and exceptional in its character, it is especially glaring due to the utter hypocrisy on display.  In just the span of a couple months there have been mass shootings, heinous crimes and acts of blatant police brutality all with a backdrop of political rancor, corruption and unabashed saber rattling on the world stage.
Philando Castile, murdered by police officer. Source Fox9.This should cause ordinary Americans to pause and reflect on what got us here. It should make us revile the powers that be who seek to boost their careers by instilling fear, racism and prejudice. It should make us insist on rational laws about guns and who should have access to them, and it should cause us to reject the militaristic aggression that defines ALL of our foreign policy. It should make us unite behind leaders who only reflect truthfulness, transparency and the will to lead the nation away from the old order of entrenched aristocratic privilege, militarism and merciless despotism. It should be a catalyst for societal change that tears away the ugly cloak of racism that shrouds every aspect of our culture, our institutions and our national persona. It should create a dialogue between people of conscience about our differences and our strengths and build a bridge that connects them.
Victims of Pulse Massacre in Orlando. Source NY Daily News.It is what I pray for but, sadly, not what I see happening. This is a broken nation slipping rapidly toward the maw of paranoid hatred and authoritarianism.  It is a society which still celebrates the myths of the “Wild West” ignoring its genocidal and dystopic realities.  It is a nation that delights in forgetting the crimes of its past and revels in creating false narratives that explain away its responsibilities today.  It is a culture corrupted by the cupidity of capitalism and the mindlessness of consumerism even while the ecosystems around it which support the madness of its addiction are withering into extinction.  It is a country not divided, but fractured into thousands of splinters held together, for now, with the most tenuous of threads.
Police fire at sniper which killed 5 officers at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas. Source Zerohedge.

Some have said that America is in its “1934 moment” referring to Europe prior to the second World War.  This may be an over exaggeration since history does not repeat itself exactly, but it does reflect and rehash old forms more often than not.  And with the earth’s climate growing more chaotic and resources beginning to dwindle this is a recipe of the most horrifying kind.  I hope that this is not so, but hope can be a capricious ghost distracting us with empty platitudes and leading us down a path to dangerous inaction.  We need more than hope now.  We need courage and cooperation.  We need community building based on our relationship to the earth and social understanding that shuns the barriers that prevent dialogue.  And we need it fast, because the streets of summer are becoming hot with the anger of the disenfranchised and red with the blood of innocents; and the scheming wolf of fascism is an opportunist always lurking at America’s gates ready to pounce.

Kenn Orphan  2016

An All American Fascism

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The resurgence of white nationalism in mainstream American politics has left many nonplussed and baffled.  White power flags, tattoos and symbols have made a stunning comeback, and they are coupled with threats, violence and Nazi salutes at huge rallies in support of presidential candidate, and front runner, Donald Trump.  At a recent event one supporter shouted at a protester “go to fucking Auschwitz,” and in a rally held last month an audience member unabashedly asked the candidate how “we are going to get rid of” Muslims.  Mr. Trump did nothing to condemn this overtly racist point of view.  This is a phenomenon that should not be downplayed or dismissed as an anomaly.  Indeed, it is representative of a much larger and far more dangerous feature of American society itself.

There has always been a persistent strain of fascism in this country, one that has been poised to sweep in to power the kind of charismatic authoritarian of the Hitler/Mussolini stripe.  This is no more visually apparent than within Trump’s base. Stripped of agency and laden with humiliation, Trump supporters are the very emblem of an unforgiving vengeance within the disenfranchised mob.  Torches and pitchforks aside, these demoralized masses are more than ready to pounce on the last vestiges of an anemic, American civil society already weakened by the barbarity of neoliberal (free market) capitalism and plutocratic despotism.  And with environmental catastrophe and economic meltdown ever looming, this so called “fringe” may just succeed in doing the unthinkable.

Trump Fascism. David Horsey, Los Angeles TimesWith the obvious implosion of the Republican Party underway many Americans hold fast to the myth that the Democrats will save them from this unfolding nightmare.  The truth, however, is that they will painfully prolong the inevitable.  No matter how much they would like to paint it otherwise, they are just as much the party of the aristocratic class as the Republicans. They represent their interests, albeit in a less obnoxious manner than their conservative counterparts. But the effect is the same.  Their aim is to preserve the status quo that is steadily demolishing any chance of a viable future for coming generations.  Indeed, their plunder may usher this present generation into a dystopia only imagined in science fiction.

Their star candidate, Hillary Clinton, has a long, bloody history of supporting right wing coups and wars that decimated sovereign societies.  Unsurprisingly, her mentor is none other than the preeminent war criminal Henry Kissinger. And she has all but vowed to aggressively provoke a nuclear armed Russia and attack Iran on behalf of her Israeli benefactors.  But what is perhaps more troubling is her allegiance to the 1% of Wall Street, evidenced by her exorbitant speech fees at well heeled engagements and her condemnation of the Occupy Movement which sought to hold banks and corporate robber barons accountable for their malfeasance.  If she seizes power in the coming election we can be assured of an acceleration of plutocracy, not its reverse.

Hillary Clinton Banks Wall Street. Image source unknown.To be sure, the only real change in American policy has come from grassroots mass movements which upended the comfortable privilege of the aristocratic elite.  Whether demanding the end of the Vietnam War or equal rights for Black Americans, the power of social change has always stemmed from direct action from below, never from above.  But we are in new territory now and the outlook is uncertain. Fascism is undeterred by reason or reform.  It is their antithesis.  It festers in the dark corners of social hatred ever in search of a new scapegoat, and it thrives in an environment where there are fewer options for advancement or hope.  It replaces cooperation and rational debate with violent ridicule and meaningless, nationalistic jingoism.

We should not expect to see a fascism that mimics that of Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy or Franco’s Spain.  This fascism is uniquely American in its flare.  Years of unfettered worship of all things military and an undying celebration of capitalism have furnished the masses with a disdain for the sustaining institutions that define a liberal democracy.  And the indifference of the liberal elite to the suffering of working people has stoked an animus that is palpable.  They will not endure sanctimonious preaching from the left on the deeply held virtues of tolerance and inclusion for much longer.  And this is largely due to being mercilessly thrown to the side for corporate privilege.  Their ranks are fed up and they are rising.

Trump woos working class, white Americans. Photo Darren McCollester, Getty ImagesOne thing is certain. A toxic brew of economic malaise and ecological decimation is simmering ever closer to the boiling point.  Alternatives to this horrifying future do exist within movements like Black Lives Matter, indigenous rights and climate justice; but if we do not face the dire outcome of this poisonous concoction with demands for revolutionary change soon, it may spill over faster than anyone can imagine.  And in its wake it will drown the civil rights and liberties that had been hard fought for, yet utterly taken for granted, in smoldering ruins.

Kenn Orphan 2016