Last week, this blog received something of a challenge: A debate on “who the fascists actually are in modern American society”. \
But one of the key tenets of a meaningful debate is to make sure you agree on your terms.
What is…
…well, let’s start with the state that each side in American politics accuses one another of – “Fascism”, “Communism”, “Naziism”, “Socialism” – all of which have much in common, all of which are subtly different in some contexts and utterly indistinct in others.
The left’s self-indulgent rhetoric has denuded terms like “Fascist”, “Nazi”, “Racist” and “White Supremacy” of much of their meanings, and usefulness as debate yardsticks. The right did the same with “Socialist” (although the left has played its part in sapping that term of its zing as well).
So I’m going to try to settle on one of two terms to use as yardsticks; “Authoritarian” and “Totalitarian”. They are more pedestrian and academic than the list above – no mortal enemy of our nation has rallied behind either of them, so (let’s be charitable) neither side has seen fit to devalue them yet.
And yet, America – or parts of America – seems to be turning into an authoritarian society.
To wit:
- Authoritarian: one who seeks to have their government control society
- Totalitarian: One who seems to have one’s rule become indistinct from society
So – how do we define either of ’em?
John Miltimore has a decent start in this blog post; he defines “totalitarianism” with fourteen criteria. It works as a matter of . I borrow and adapt them below:
Once we have the definitions nailed down, we’ll debate each point. Then, victors, losers and maybe even draws will be declared.
So I started with Miltimore’s list, added and rewrote a few things, and reorganized them:
Co-option of Institutions
Society’s formal institution are convinced to support the goals of the regime, or gotten out of the way, willingly or not.
- Media is controlled, directly or indirectly, by the state
- State police (and the laws and processes that guide its actions) protect the regime, not the people
- Power is concentrated in inner ring of elite institutions and people
Co-option of Society
An authoritarian society co-ops the institutions, not only of government, but of society itself. Government deploys carrots and sticks to create a society that complies – willingly or not. .
- Dissent is actively demonized (e.g., equated to violence)
- Mass conformity of beliefs and behaviors is demanded
- The ruling caste leverages divisions in society to multiply their power
Eroding Rule of Law, Uplifting Rule of Men
Free peoples laws observe a process over a goal. Authoritarians laws have goals – not always stated clearly in the text.
- The legal system is co-opted by the state
- State exerts power to quash dissent
- Rights—financial, legal, and civil—are contingent on compliance
Perverting Society’s Norms
While the institutions squash dissent, the co-option of society gradually makes dissent not only too costly, but unthinkable.
- Private and public levers of power are used to enforce adherence to state dogmas
Creating Official Boogeymen And Enemies
A state of war hysteria keeps peoples minds from what they’ve lost to the regime – it even makes them happy to sacrifice wealth, freedom and autonomy. Authoritarians need enemies.
- Entire classes singled out for persecution
- Harsh legal enforcement against unfavored classes
- Extra-legal actions are condoned against internal regime opponents
- Semi-organized violence is permitted (in some cases
So what needs to be added or removed?
I would quibble with two points under Creating Official Boogeymen And Enemies.
– Entire classes singled out for persecution
– Harsh legal enforcement against unfavored classes
Totalitarianism does not require class conflict, whereas it definitely requires control of the press and institutions.
Any elite will always beat down any challenge to its power.
So for instance, the Roman empire had no problem with the jews per se…until they rebelled. After that, they had no problem with the jews, except for those who branched off into Christianity.
In short, Roman, Islam and the Mongols etc, tolerated any religion or class that did not challenge the state.
While such things as persecution of classes were hallmarks of German and Russian totalitarianism, and to a lesser extent (though no less severe) the persecution of minorities in Iran and China, these things were more means to an end and were nothing new in those societies.
Class and ethnic conflict exists independent of government structure, but you can damn well bet that elites will come down hard on anything that challenges their power or can be exploited to grasp power.
All you really have to do to persecute a class is remove them from the protection of the government. The protected class will take care of the rest.
Y’know how a heterosexual white male can become a member of a protected class?
Put on a dress.
The person who runs Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis Centres is a man in a dress, Mridul Wadhwa.
You want to know how crazy they are in Scotland?
The bureaucrats who run Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis Centers hired Mridul Wadhwa.because she is a man.
“In the past, debates had been won by the side with the most persuasive arguments based on facts, logic and rhetoric. Social Value Theory proponents argued those factors were themselves tools of oppression that perpetuated injustice. Instead, they argued, the validity of a proposition depended on the Social Value of the person advancing it.
The appeal of Social Value Theory lay in the universal longing to root for the underdog coupled with a desire for fair play. For example, at some point in the distant past, White people had owned Black people as slaves and forced them to pick cotton; therefore, to make up for it, Black people had more Social Value than White people. The fact that any one particular White man was a drop-out and hillbilly who had never owned shoes, much less a slave; while any one particular Black woman had been fast-tracked through elite education into a corporate Vice-Presidency and the only cotton she had ever picked was her new Capri pants; was completely irrelevant.
Social Value theory replaced individual responsibility with collective guilt. Even in the sciences, a Low Social Value scientist might be the greatest subject matter expert on the planet while a High Social Value holo entertainer might not even know what the words meant, but their respective Social Values determined whose opinion mattered. That and what shirt the scientist was wearing when xe made Eden-shaking discoveries; tastelessness was still a crime against decency.”
This selection from ‘Eden Will Be Destroyed’ by H. Narcissus Petit illustrates why your analysis is flawed, Mitch. As a white man, demanding that others agree to your definitions is, itself, facist. You have become Literally Mussolini.
LitMoo, for short.
If this doesn’t get teh little Peevee’s panties in a was, nothing will.
Extended, inchoate, unreadable spew in 3…2…1
“unreadable spew in 3…2…1”
in fairness to peev it takes longer than that to spin up his gibberish engine…
well that and the mistaken belief that because he feels fine today there is no reason to take his meds
By definition a state which tolerates diverse beliefs cannot be totalitarian, Greg: “Totalitarian: One who seems to have one’s rule become indistinct from society.”
The worst piece of writing published by C.S. Lewis was his review of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Lewis did not understand the part Julia played in the story, and he said that Orwell added it to just to add sex to the book.
In fact the “crime” of Winston Smith was to love Julia and to try and create with her a relationship from which Big Brother was excluded.
Have to agree with UMMP here. Rome was not a totalitarian state in any sense of the word. The Romans were conquerors, yes, but in exchange for surrender, conquered people were extended the Pax Romanus. They were expected to pay taxes, but were, for the most part left alone, even in the case of Christ, to administer their own laws.
One of the tools used by the woke to co-opt society is charitable foundations. If you are an NGO interested in, say, protecting reef fish, you might apply to the Ford Foundation for a grant. Ford will not write you a check unless you not only have a public, written statement supporting “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” you must present Ford with documentation describing how your organization is implementing its DEI directive and how the grant money will be used to support DEI at your organization.
Um….what? Rome had a list of permitted religions, but there were a couple of centuries when Christianity was not on that list because you had to make offerings to Ceasar to be on it. The notion that Rome was somehow “tolerant” came as news to Christians and Jews as they were being thrown to the lions, to put it mildly.
Reality is that unconstrained by the family, the church, and other institutions, all governments tend to become totalitarian. It’s a sliding scale, yes– a nation with a nonfunctional FBI is by no means Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR–but smart people watch out for the signs that the government is assuming more power than it ought.
There’s a twitter account “ElonsJet” that posts the location of his jet in real time.
Musk offered to buy the account, the guy refused, so Musk allowed him to continue.
Yesterday, some chud wearing antifa black bloc followed and stopped a car containing one of Musk’s kids. The kid had arrived on Elon’s jet. It seems like it might have been the elonjet dude, but I’m unclear on that.
In any case, Musk explained all that, and then booted the elonjet dude, and decreed that doxxing would get you booted.
Predictably, the degenerates at the NYT, WaPO, CNN and several big troll accounts (including the execrable Keith Olberman) immediately linked to the elonjet account, and or extolled everyone to track Musk’s plane and doxx it.
He booted them all. And now they’re all crying.
Fuck them
If someone put my kids in danger, being booted off twitter would be the least of their problems. We shouldn’t have to live with these scumbags, but for now we do. But we don’t have to tolerate them, or apologize for shit.
UMMP,
Interesting observation about 1984, but I think it is more a matter of how intense the totalitarian state is.
Communism is a religion and like Iran and the short-lived ISIS state, the religion was all encompassing, but I don’t think that is required to be a totalitarian state.
So, can a state be totalitarian without a fanatic ideology?
Think China.
As a measure, one might ask, “how do they view hobbies?”
An extreme state like the USSR might subordinate quilting bees and model train clubs to its ideologies – so even quilt designs and decals on the trains must bow to the ideology of the red star.
Which raises the question, is that just fanatic ideology or is that totalitarianism?
They go well together, but can there be one without the other?
Perhaps it is in the definition, must totalitarianism be absolutely total?
So if the state silences all dissent, controls the press and the means of production, but doesn’t care about your religion or hobbies as long as they do not challenge the state or social norms, would that cross back over the line to authoritarian?
I would think Christianity in the Middle Ages was fanatical and dictated every aspect of life. Hell, they would burn you as a witch if you screwed up – but they (mostly) left the running of the state to the nobility. So in that case, one had fanatical ideology with diffuse authority.
Totalitarians remake social institutions into their own image; the social institution is still there, but not it’s mission. Hitler and the Nat Socs took over the German Church administratively, and replaced Christ as the head of the church with the Fuhrer. Christs model of love, compassion, sacrifice, and “restorative justice” was too wimpy for the strong man leader position Hitler wanted (which aligned with the pagan Germanic religions pre-Christianity). Ecclesiastical offices, including pastors, had to receive a license from the State or they couldn’t preach. Guess who you had to swear allegiance to in order to get a license? Hence, Bonhoeffer and the “Confessing Church” (that confessed Christ as the head) were systematically hounded until they were literally a group camping in the forest of Prussia.
Modern example:
ELCA: “Thou shalt perform gay marriages.”
Local ELCA Pastor: “Luther’s problem with the Catholic Church was that he didn’t see their mandated doctrines in the Bible. I don’t see anything in scripture about performing gay weddings.”
ELCA: “Well, we’ll miss you. And you’ll miss your pension.”
None of the fascist regimes started by saying multiparty systems are bad. They began by installing fear. I recommend you start reading by Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, one of the most influential thinkers of this century. There is also one thing in common of all fascist regimes: They despise education and love the ignorant.
“There’s a twitter account “ElonsJet” that posts the location of his jet in real time.”
Self professed free speech absolutist Elon Musk plans to take (yet more) legal action against an individual doing nothing illegal that Musk dos not like.
Meanwhile Musk joins conspiracy theorists in attacking senior public health officials who worked tirelessly to try and stop the deaths of people from ignorance of Covid-19.
Good thing Musk is a ‘Free Speech’ fanatic, otherwise we’d call him a tin pot dictator wanna be.
That was my point exactly.
In Rome, you could believe whatever you wanted as long as it did not challenge the state. The instant it did, or was even perceived as doing so, the crosses went up and the lions were let loose.
So what is the touch-point between totalitarian and authoritarian?
IMHO, authoritarianism is absolute rule, ie. the King has absolute sovereignty – but autonomy exists where it does not challenge authority.
Totalitarianism has absolute rule without any autonomy.
So, I will back-track on the Roman Empire. Caesar held ultimate authority – but generally allowed individual and regional autonomy.
I cashed out my ELCA pension eight years ago. Shouldn’t have. Them Lutherans really know how to invest.
Disclaimer…. I did IT work for the American Lutheran Church, which became the ELCA after the merger with the Lutheran Church of America.
So no, the pensions are protected, as are most of the property rights of the local parishes. A lot of congregations bailed after the merger and kept their property and vested pensions.
But I will say, if you are a member of a club, they can kick you out if you don’t follow the rules.
One of the problems in the definition process is separating methodology from ideology and recognizing the limits of 20th century paradigms. Fascism, soci@lism, and communism each embrace the Supremacy Of The State as their ideology but the methodology they employ to achieve and maintain that supremacy differs. Communism seizes control of everything and micromanages right down to the logo on your to trains. Soci@lism captures the cultural institutions and carefully curates the anointed elites who will seem to drive that culture. With fascism a tight knit homogeneous elite uses Management By Objectives™ to harness the productivity of corporations (with their own vibrant bureaucracies) to accomplish the goals of the state while minimally affecting the subjects/citizens(i.e. leaving their illusions intact). China’s One Belt, One Road initiative is a 21st evolution of these approaches, but supremacy of the state is always paramount.
Jesus Christ, Bot Boy!
The wind must whistle blowing through your ears! Let’s see what you would do, I mean besides wet yourself and go hide in your mommy’s basement, if some black clad thug jumped on the hood of the car carrying your kid, after stalking him. You illiterate p.o.s.!!
“They despise education and love the ignorant.”
The modern Education Industrial Complex.
Feelings have replaced knowledge. Indoctrination under the social “sciences”.
Greg on December 16, 2022 at 10:10 am said:
Interesting observation about 1984, but I think it is more a matter of how intense the totalitarian state is.
The word “totalitarian” describes an absolute, hence MBerg’s definition of totalitarianism as absolute control over every aspect of society.
The control does not have to be perfect, but a totalitarian ideology tries to weave itself into every facet of everyone’s existence. There is no space for private actions or thoughts, since all that is not compulsory is forbidden. Nineteen Eighty-Four describes the perfect totalitarian state. Orwell’s pessimism was a result of his atheism, he saw no difference between power and Truth. Winston Smith loses his arguments with O’Brien, he does not win them.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the biggest obstacle to totalitarianism before the 20th century was an illiterate population. You need to have sufficient clerks to keep detailed records on everyone.
Stalin’s totalitarian state was built with trains (to carry soldiers and people), the telegraph, typewriters and file cabinets. Lots and lots of file cabinets.
All of those messaging and record keeping mechanisms, other than the trains, are right there in your cellphone. Plus it has a microphone, a camera, and it won’t work if it does not track your location!
The control does not have to be perfect, but a totalitarian ideology tries to weave itself into every facet of everyone’s existence. There is no space for private actions or thoughts, since all that is not compulsory is forbidden.
Remember the classic MacIntosh sledge hammer ad? Apple hailed the Mac as why 1984 wouldn’t be Nineteen Eighty-Four. Oh, yes, we believed! A brave, new world was emerging where technology meant everyone would be his own samizdat, able to operate outside the reach and control of Big Brother and the corporations!
Big Brother: “Hold my beer.”
Musk has the wherewithal to make a noodle arm, leftist degenerate simply disappear, like a wisp of fetid smoke.
That little faggot that stalked Musk’s kid should thank Gaia that I’m not in the same circumstance.
NW, I seem to remember your son-in-law at least was an ELCA pastor, so send my best to him if he’s having/had some difficult conversations/realities there. Sounds a little bit close to home…
The word of the year is “gaslighting”:
n a recent review of NewsGuard’s Nutrition Labels covering 246 websites that mentioned examples about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, we found that in 225 of those cases we adhered to that standard by describing the lab leak claim as unsubstantiated, not false. However, in 21 instances, our language was not as careful as it should have been; in those cases, NewsGuard either mischaracterized the sites’ claims about the lab leak theory, referred to the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory,” or wrongly grouped together unproven claims about the lab leak with the separate, false claim that the COVID-19 virus was man-made without explaining that one claim was unsubstantiated, and the other was false.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/coronavirus-misinformation-tracking-center/
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that within six months NewsGuard will change the “Covid was man made” claim from “false” to “unsubstantiated.”
And, FYI, absent the cooperation of the Chinese government, neither claim can ever be proven true, your only options are “false” and “unsubstantiated.”
“Musk has the wherewithal to make a noodle arm, leftist degenerate simply disappear, like a wisp of fetid smoke.”
Being rich doesn’t make you smart. Being smart doesn’t make you rich. There’s actually no correlation. It’s important to remember this.
Musk can dish it but can’t take it. What a snowflake. The LA police says there is no report filed about the incident that supposedly started Musk on this tirade. Just a manufactured incident so Musk can be at the center of attention.
I thought Carroll settled this debate (and MP pointed this out on numerous occasions in the past) over 150 years ago:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
“Being rich doesn’t make you smart. Being smart doesn’t make you rich.”
How the fuck would you know, rAT. you’re not rich or smart. Proof: You’re not even smart enough to think up your own inane spew….knew you plagiarized that, soon as I saw it..
Elon Musk triggers liberals with tweet on ‘Biden’s mistake’: ‘Proof being rich doesn’t make you smart’,
foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-triggers-liberals-tweet-bidens-mistake-proof-being-rich-doesnt-make-you-smart
You’re a fuckiing idiot, rAT. And you don’t have 2 dimes to rub together.
Bike – I can neither confirm nor deny.
The latest Twitter Files drop. As late as November 10 of this year, the FBI was pointing Twitter censors to user accounts and suggesting that Twitter check them for TOS violations:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857573219819529
The FBI/Twitter censorship team was a closed circuit. There was no outside review, there were no metrics used (other than counting suspended accounts) to determine if the FBI/Twitter censorship was actually having a measurable effect on the behavior of voters. It existed to censor speech alone.
It was kind of like a self-licking ice cream cone.
FBI sending obvious satire pages for review by Twitter T&S is hilarious. Further proof the left can’t take a joke.
And, since the topic is definitions of authoritarianism/totalitarianism, note that next week the lame duck Dem congress will release the tax returns of a private citizen and businessman who is the only declared 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
I remember when Trump looking for dirt on then private citizen Biden was considered an impeachable offense by the Democrats.
For all of our NATO fans:
At least 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech last year, most of them for sharing and posting things online, which is almost five times as many as five years ago, according to the Moscow-based Sova group, which studies human rights, nationalism and xenophobia in Russia.
https://nypost.com/2016/05/31/russians-are-getting-years-in-jail-for-their-social-media-likes/
Terrible, terrible, terrible. You know how many people were arrested for hate speech in the UK (the land of John Locke)?
More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social media and other online forums, a rise of nearly 50 per cent in two years, according to figures obtained by The Times.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-people-a-day-in-fight-against-web-trolls-b8nkpgp2d
Are we at war with Eastasia or Eurasia this week, Winston?
Autocracies relying on one man are fragile — and when they eventually go they take the whole country down with them. These systems are like rotten trees, forever threatening to topple onto our better-kept houses. In a democracy a change of power leads to a bit of grumbling and then everything carries on in much the same vein.
Emery on December 17, 2022 at 10:48 am said:
Autocracies relying on one man are fragile — and when they eventually go they take the whole country down with them.
Like Spain after Franco?
Or Romania after Caucescu?
You know nothing, Emery.
Or Salazar’s Estado Novo in Portugal, rAT?
Hahaha…you’re a moron.
Hey, where did you place in teh BiRKiE, rAT?
Hahahahaha!
_The Rest is History_ podcast did a pretty good summary of Salazar’s place in Portugal’s history: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/273-portugal-the-carnation-revolution/id1537788786?i=1000588734611
Fascism has worked everywhere it was instituted. It worked in Italy, until Mussolini joined Hitler.
He probably didn’t see a way out of that, but it was a bad decision. He’d have been far better off taking a lesson from Spain…another successful Fascist régime.
Democracy can never last when the franchise is granted to all. Those without will always vote against the best interests of those with.
It’s a slow, steady erosion of stability. Enemies in the walls, undermining the pillars which the country is built on.
Inviting mass immigration of people who have nothing in common with the host nation simply adds fuel to the fire.
The difference between Italian fascism and German fascism is that Mussolini developed his brand of fascism to be an end in itself as a governing philosophy, while Hitler created fascism as the means of fighting an expansive, eternal race war.
In Germany and Peru recent attempts to overthrow the State and undermine the Constitution have been quickly squashed, but two years after a similar attempt in the US the chief perpetrator is losing GOP support only because he has become unpromising electorally. Says a lot doesn’t it.
^^Now that really is gibberish. The clause after the “but” has nothing to do with the clause before the “but.”
Kinzinger is now reduced to threatening to beat up a guy on Twitter with the moniker “catturd.”
And congressional Dems are trying to pass a bill of attainder to prevent Trump from ever holding office again no matter how many elections he wins — in the name of “democracy” no less.
Even the #nevertrumpers admit that Trump’s great gift is that he makes his enemies expose themselves for what they truly are.
The FAIL is a glorious thing to see!
I will put a slight spin on that. The countries thrive after the autocracy dies. It is the autocratic system that goes down.
Personally, after having the shit kicked out of me by the Guardia Civil in Pamplona, I was damned glad to see the end of Franco and his cronies.
In the novel 1984, Big Brother controls everything, but does he control bananas?
Does he even care to?
In the EU, the bureaucracy controls the color, texture, length and freshness of every banana and almost everything else – because they care to.
So what then is totalitarianism? The cult of personality led by Big Brother or Little Kim who smashes the boot into the face of every citizen just to remind them that they are nothing and Little Brother is everything?
Or the deep state, who benignly controls every aspect of every life – because that’s what deep states care to do.
So totalitarianism can be achieved by the cultish personality depowering and degrading the common man until he/she/they are nothing, it often does not last beyond the span of a few lifetimes…
What lasts are the mandarins who, when you want a banana, let you choose one, as long as it is the color, shape, texture and freshness of their choosing.
And once they control bananas, they know they can control, and crave to control – everything.
Greg, what made you think you had the right to go to another country and agitate the police?
You were a guest and behaved rudely. Shame on you.