{"id":83229,"date":"2022-08-31T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83229"},"modified":"2022-09-01T11:49:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T16:49:18","slug":"semi-fascists-vs-not-semi-at-all-authoritarian-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83229","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Semi-Fascists&#8221; Vs. Not-Semi-At-All Authoritarian, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Last week, President Brandon accused Republicans of being &#8220;Semi-Fascists&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be fair, it sort of sounded like one of his &#8220;is he senile, or just not very bright&#8221; moments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Biden Calls MAGA Philosophy \u2018Semi-Fascism\u2019\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DumazY3IEHE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I could go either way, to be honest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it got me thinking about a couple of things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s In A Word<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The left has been devaluing the term &#8220;fascist&#8221; since I was in high school, and long before, if I recall.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to be pedantic about it, in the 1910s Benito Mussolini &#8211; at the time a prominent Italian <em>socialist<\/em> &#8211; figured that while a command economy, a welfare state and state ownership of the mean of production might go over just fine, <em>Internationalism<\/em> &#8211; the concept near and dear to socialism that eventually all borders will be rendered moot by the unification of workers around the world &#8211; was not going to fly with Italy, which was had been a nation for about fifty years, and had a lot of nationalist energy about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, <em>presto change-o<\/em>, Mussolini did some tinkering; in founding the Italian &#8220;Fascist&#8221; Party, he chucked the &#8220;internationalism&#8221;, and replaced it with a heaping helping of nationalism.  The command economy, nationalization of assets and welfare state, of course, he kept &#8211; to Italy&#8217;s chagrin in World War 2, as the command economy lagged the rest of Europe so badly that the Italian war machine was positively handicapped.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most &#8220;Fascist&#8221; movements &#8211; the Nazis, Franco&#8217;s Falange and so on &#8211; repeat that pattern, keeping the small-l socialism, substituting nationalist dogma for internationalist chanting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, the left&#8217;s version of &#8220;fascism&#8221; is more nearly described as &#8220;saying or doing anything I don&#8217;t agree with&#8221;.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These days, references to &#8220;fascism&#8221; almost invariably seek to &#8220;other&#8221; those your crowd wants to erase from the public square; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we&#8217;ve been seeing an awful lot of that, lately.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How much? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More tomorrow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Drop The F  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So as we close in on President Brandon&#8217;s &#8220;speech about America&#8217;s Soul&#8221; on Friday near the Liberty Bell, let&#8217;s talk about some of the attributes of&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;well, not &#8216;fascism&#8217;, <em>per se<\/em>.  Or at least not <em>only <\/em>fascism.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s talk, instead, about <em>authoritarianism<\/em>, by whatever name you want to call it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About government that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Ignores, subverts and\/or perverts the rule of law in favor of the rule of men<\/li><li>legitimizes itself in comparison to some boogeyman, without or within &#8211; a boogieman that personifies all evil in the eyes of the state, and who must be subjugated for &#8220;good&#8221; to prevail.  <\/li><li>Sublimates everything to a more or less utopian vision of what the world <em>could <\/em>be, if they had the means<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>More tomorrow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, President Brandon accused Republicans of being &#8220;Semi-Fascists&#8221;. To be fair, it sort of sounded like one of his &#8220;is he senile, or just not very bright&#8221; moments: I could go either way, to be honest. But it got me thinking about a couple of things. What&#8217;s In A Word The left has been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,20,426,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-democrats","category-orwell-overestimated-democrats","category-the-second-civil-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83229"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83254,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83229\/revisions\/83254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}