Fascism and the Left-Right Political Absurdity

 

Trump is a “fascist”!  That’s what Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and a chorus of Democrats told us ad nauseam.   When that moniker insufficiently expressed their hatred and fear of losing, the absurd “Hitler” insult was spewed forth.

Most Americans likely can’t spell “fascism,” much less define it.  They can be excused for the latter deficit since historians have been all over the political map trying to provide a definition of the doctrine.  What these mostly “left-of-center” professionals conveniently agree on, however, is that fascism is a product of the political “right.”  Never mind that Mussolini arrived at fascism after spending his earlier years as a committed socialist (editor-in-chief of Avanti! ) and that his “totalitarian” (Il Duce’s word) program naturally incorporated many of the policies embedded in that ideology.

Add to those facts that Mussolini was greeted more than sympathetically by Progressive “leftists” of the time, including FDR, with whom, prior to Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, there existed a mutual admiration relationship, if not a full-fledged bromance.  The pre-TDS Jonah Goldberg cites in his book Liberal Fascism a letter from FDR that refers to “that admirable Italian gentleman” who was praising New Deal initiatives.  FDR, in turn, writes that he is also “much interested and deeply impressed” by  Mussolini’s accomplishments.  More to the point of this essay, Goldberg notes that as an FDR ally, Father Coughlin, moved further to the radical “left” and began criticizing Roosevelt, liberals started calling him a “right-winger.”  In other words, “In the 1930s, what defined a ‘right-winger’ was almost exclusively opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.”

Here is a dissertation topic for an open-minded graduate student: The utility (or lack thereof) of the left-right political distinction.  A couple of decades ago when I asked Goldberg himself about historians who began linking fascism to the political “right,” he provided no answer.  One likely reason for that linkage, I suspect, comes from the following quote in Mussolini’s essay, “The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932): “We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the ‘right,’ a Fascist century.”  Note, however, that Mussolini says “tending to the ‘right’” and even puts the word “right” in parenthesis.  That Mussolini’s fascism “tends” to the right likely means it is more explicitly authoritarian than the implicitly (but still actually) authoritarian and totalitarian Soviet Union.  Moreover, Mussolini certainly doesn’t say “far right,” and elsewhere rejects the whole left-right system, noting that fascism “could also have sat on the mountain of the center.”  He adds that “these words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning,” and concludes, “We don’t give a damn about these empty terminologies.”

As many readers know, the left-right ideological terminology arose from the seating arrangement in France’s National Assembly at the time of the revolution (1789).  Traditional monarchists sat on the right while more liberal and radical members sat to the left.  Using this same schema to describe modern political systems would presumably put fascism to the “right” of traditional monarchists—an absurdity.

George Orwell in 1944 correctly observed that the word “fascism” had become almost “entirely meaningless,” a term for which “almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym.”  Later he declared that fascism had “no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable.”  As evidence of the accuracy of Orwell’s statement one can note that the term has been applied to Communist regimes themselves.  Red China claimed the Soviet Union was “fascist” and the Soviet Union returned the linguistic favor by using the slur to insult the Chinese.  Not surprisingly, Stalin labeled Trotsky a “fascist” before having him murdered.  And in 1946 even the always fashionably “left” New York Times pondered the applicability of the term “fascist” to Stalin’s Russia, thereby linking the Soviet regime to Hitler’s Germany.

Anyone who wants to know what “fascism” is, at least in Mussolini’s mind, can read Il Duce’s own description noted above, though a philosophical background is helpful, especially to understand his use of the term “State” (capitalized!).  Though Mussolini never explicitly mentions Hegel in his essay, his theory of the State is largely borrowed from the philosopher, with a passionate Italian twist.  Mussolini firmly rejects Marx’s materialistic, class-based reinterpretation of Hegel’s philosophy, arguing that an organically vital and united nation is impossible in a government arising from competing class interests or from the individualistic principles embraced in democratic societies.  Only persons whose lives are viewed in terms of their relationship and contribution to the state are truly free or fully human.  Put succinctly, “The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.”  And as Rousseau asserted in 1762, those who don’t accept what is good for society as a whole will be “forced to be free.”       

Just as fascism doesn’t fit neatly on a “left-right” scale and has become little more than a political pejorative, so also the whole “left-right” schema for categorizing political systems has become little more than a way of denigrating so-called “right-wing” groups.  Indeed, this stigmatizing of “conservative” or “populist” movements is, I believe, the primary reason fascism was placed on the “far right” by historians largely sympathetic to “leftist” socialist regimes.  That placement was an easy way to obliterate the obvious similarities between two “totalitarian” political ideologies, fascism and communism, as well as the socialist or state-directed economic systems each employs.  The “far-right” fascist absurdity also had the value of distancing communists and socialists from the horrors of the Holocaust as well as the pact Hitler and Stalin made in 1939 that allowed them to pillage and divide Poland between themselves.

In sum, the “left-right” paradigm is itself an ideologically-biased construct that obscures, more than illuminates, political realities.  Putting Stalin and Castro on the extreme “left” simply because their ideology touts a non-existent egalitarianism while ignoring the dictatorial, totalitarian traits those regimes share with Mussolini on the “far right” is absurd.  One must also close one’s eyes to the state –centered elements of Mussolini’s regime that were so attractive to FDR and his advisors.  Quoting   Rexford Tugwell, a leading Roosevelt advisor, “It’s the cleanest . . . most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I’ve ever seen.  It makes me envious.”  

It is this fatally flawed schema that’s employed to provide intellectual cover for socialist and Democrat propagandists to throw absurd “fascist” or “Hitlerite” insults at Trump as well as previous GOP POTUS candidates going back as far as Barry Goldwater--even including, less vociferously, Mitt Romney!   I doubt the left-right paradigm will be discarded any time soon, but we’ll all be more enlightened when that aforementioned dissertation is written and becomes a transformational best seller.  

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle    

The Leftist Truman Show

 

Recently and ironically a PBS station in Southern California aired The Truman Show, Jim Carrey’s most intellectually probing film.  It’s ironic because PBS, like the movie’s director, Christof (Ed Harris), is constantly engaged in creating a fantasy world designed to keep ignorant American voters on the Democrat island.

For those unaware of the movie’s plotline, Christof, a typically megalomaniacal Hollywood type has created a gigantic, self-enclosed island world in which he technologically controls not only the faux-sun, moon, sky, and weather, but also the hundreds of actor-inhabitants living within the island studio whose movements and dialogue are dictated by the director.  Only Truman Burbank (Carrey), is unaware of the ruse—a non-actor whose life from birth to adulthood forms the rigged focal point of the mega-popular show.

As Truman grows older, he develops a strong desire to see the outside world, but everything in his controlled environment is designed to discourage and frustrate that desire.  Even Truman’s closest buddy repeats scripted advice from the godlike director, words designed to convince Truman that he shouldn’t leave this paradisiacal island.  In the climactic scene Truman takes a sailboat and eventually confronts an orchestrated storm that almost drowns him.  But finally the storm abates, and the televised journey ends when the bow of the ship punctures the frame of his artificial environment, and Truman discovers an exit ramp to the outside world.

Though doubtless not viewed this way by its Hollywood creators, The Truman Show serves as an excellent allegory for the deceits perpetrated by the Left to keep voters on its political fantasy island.  Blacks thinking about leaving are told that the other party is filled with vicious racists who’ll “put yawl back in chains.”  Dismiss that warning and Barack emerges from his Martha’s Vineyard mansion and lectures potential escapees that a vote for Trump is a sign of their own misogyny.  The idea that black men can think for themselves and are entitled to make up their own minds about their lives isn’t a premise in the Democrat script.  

Likewise, if working class voters consider bolting to the GOP due to falling wages or crime arising from an open border, these largely male laborers are assured that the border is secure, that “migrants” commit fewer crimes than they do, and that anyone blaming the supposedly open borders for crime, poor wages, or crowded hospitals and public facilities is xenophobic.  If these workers continue to trust their lying eyes, Democrats employ envy and assure them that billionaire Trump pays little or no taxes.  (“It worked,” Harry Reid said proudly when the then Senate Majority Leader acknowledged he lied in 2012 about Mitt Romney having not paid taxes.)

While Christof’s island actors aren’t at the top of the film’s manipulative hierarchy, they do have a vested interest in continuing to keep Truman in the dark.  In this respect they’re analogous to players in Congress, the media, and Hollywood who serve as the major chess pieces needed to keep the deception going.  When Christof’s islanders all locked arms at night to scour the city for the runaway Truman, the scene provided a cinematic symbol of the Left’s lockstep shock troops that reflexively do what their leaders say. Dissent is forbidden.  Just ask Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.   

It’s unlikely that, like Christof, one person ultimately pulls the strings to create the enticements and warnings designed to keep Democrat voters and Americans generally divorced from reality.  Instead, I envision a relatively small junta consisting of Obama, Soros, Axelrod, Pelosi, maybe Hillary and Bill, and certainly a klatch of corporate and tech titans (e.g. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Google’s Sundar Pichai) whose failure to fund another Biden campaign triggered his post-debate ouster.   

Like Christof, this small group envision themselves as entitled world-shapers willing to crack more than a few eggs for the sake of their self-serving visions.  Scores of Americans murdered or raped by illegals plus over 300,000 lost “migrant” children, many trafficked, pale in comparison to the godlike power these masters of the universe wield over human lives.  Borders and once-cohesive communities disappear at their command.  The adrenaline rush from the sense of self-importance dissipates any guilt they might feel over tenuous climate policies that burden Americans with outsized energy bills and condemn huge swaths of the globe to grinding poverty for the foreseeable future.  

The Left’s most astonishing recent fabrication, akin to Christof’s phony island paradise, has been the creation of a plausible Presidential candidate out of an historically unpopular V-P who couldn’t gain a single party delegate in her first-to-drop-out 2020 POTUS run.  With the help of Hollywood convention aides, scripted teleprompter addresses, rigged debates, a surreptitiously revised 60 Minutes interview, a handful of puff Q&A sit-downs,  plus probably a half-billion dollars worth of carefully crafted and largely mendacious advertising, a woman who previously promised to ban fracking on day one, confiscate guns, decriminalize illegal border crossings, eliminate private health insurance, provide transgender surgery for prisoners, and support “transgender” men in women’s sports is transformed into a champion of the middle and working class.  The same woman who said she wouldn’t have done anything different than Joe Biden, under whom she served, is presented as an agent of change.  

Fortunately, our world isn’t yet as uniformly controlled as Truman’s, but the de-radicalizing transformation of Kamala Harris in the last few months thanks to Davos-dining Democrat Christofs is proof of the awesome power possessed by these would-be totalitarians.  The result of this year’s Presidential election will tell if that hideous strength is capable of quashing individual freedom in a living space that conforms only to the dictates of their elitist script.        

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle    

Does “Jesus Gets Us” get Jesus?

They look in the mirror of their souls and see Jesus.  That’s the best explanation of the “Jesus Gets Us” campaign.  This biographical process isn’t a new phenomenon as even a cursory study of “life of Jesus” literature makes clear. 

The most famous review of previous “lives of Jesus” was written by the scholarly humanitarian Albert Schweitzer:  Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, a title often translated as The Quest of the Historical Jesus.  Here’s Schweitzer’s prefatory summary:  “Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus”—a rational Messiah, a romantic Jesus, a social gospel reformer, et cetera.  Ironically, Schweitzer’s own portrait pointed to an inscrutable but spiritually powerful figure focused on the end of times about whom nothing much could be confidently known.

To be fair, most scholarly portraits resulted from attempts to utilize what was considered reliable biblical evidence.  As far as I can tell, the “Jesus Gets Us” folk compose their caricature based on a single act performed by Jesus on his disciples and a 60s Beatles’ song, “All You Need Is Love.”  Missing is any serious consideration of the plethora  of data points that provide a more realistic portrait of the first century Jew hailed as “the Christ” (i.e. the Messiah) by his followers.  Since “Jesus Gets Us” ads evidence no concern for “historical critical” issues and takes the biblical narrative at face value, I shall do the same and see how that narrative comports with their foot-washing Jesus. 

As noted earlier, there is only one gospel account of Jesus washing feet (John 13:1-15), and that was performed on his apostles at the Last Supper.  It’s unclear how “Jesus gets us” folk would incorporate the perfumed anointing of Jesus’ own feet by a woman described as “a sinner” (Luke 7:48ff.) into their ads or, more to the point, the judgmental command to “sin no more” given to another woman caught in adultery whose stoning was nixed by Jesus’ suggestion that the first stone be cast by someone without sin (John 8:11).   

Furthermore, I can’t imagine the “Jesus Gets Us” Messiah issuing this dictum: “I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 6:32).  It’s hard to see that same Jesus washing the feet of a woman emerging from an abortion mill like Planned Parenthood.  Then there’s the warning to, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” an admonition that could arguably be applied to obsessive foot-washers.  Indeed, it’s hard to envision those folks taking seriously half or more of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), especially this rather harsh command:  “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine“ (Matthew 7:6).  Finally, the Jesus who overturns the tables of money-changers in the Temple (Mark 11:15-17) is clearly filled with more righteous indignation than the “no questions asked” foot-washer who effectively inverts the biblical Master’s command to “be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). 

This incompatibility exercise could be extended ad nauseam, but it’s sufficient to show that the “Jesus Gets Us” portrait is, to be generous, incomplete.  There are, to be sure, a significant number of sayings and stories that comport well with the foot-washing image:  association with outcasts (e.g. Samaritans, women, and sinners of various stripes), the command to love one’s enemies, and a readiness to forgive transgressions.  But left out of the “Jesus Gets Us” portrait is a clear moral, spiritual voice that is diminished and distorted by a silent Messiah on his knees tacitly overlooking moral outrages that litter twenty first century America and for which, like “family planning,” Leftists have a soft spot in their hearts.

This Jesus who keeps his mouth shut and does what the Jesus of the gospels never does (i.e. wash the feet of prostitutes, political protesters, and haters of scriptural tradition) is precisely the Jesus folks desire who wish to consign religion to an irrelevant closet.  No moral demands, no condemnations, no judgments come from this Jesus-- only an action that implies passive acquiescence.  Apparently, for the “Jesus Gets Us” crew the ambiguous “Judge not” admonition in Matthew 7:1 constitutes the only verbal command they take to heart. The following verses (2-5), however, clearly imply judgments, but judgments based on self-reflection and humility.  An “absolutist” interpretation would mean that nothing will be expected of those who pass no judgments at all (cf. v. 2) and thus would contradict the plethora of judgments made by Jesus himself (cf. Matthew 23) and also expected of his followers (e.g. Mark 6:7-12).       

It is the “no-judgment, foot-washing Jesus” that seems to inhabit the souls of those who, ironically, don’t wish to arouse the kind of hatred from the powers that be that brought about the crucifixion of the real Jesus.  This “no judgment” mentality is also, not coincidentally, the default position within our largely libertine pop culture, a rule that is invariably broken to judge the “judgmental” — i.e. individuals and institutions that give voice to traditional or biblical moral standards. 

The “Jesus Gets Us” Jesus doesn’t “get” the One who spoke a lot more about exalted moral and spiritual truths than he foot-washed.  The construct does provide, however, an acceptable religious image for a permissive, rudderless culture scared to death of being judged by its rotten fruit.  For that culture a non-suffering, non-speaking, non-confrontational foot-washer works quite well.   

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle    

                

RAPING HISTORY AND LITERATURE

Rape involves total disregard for the autonomy and worth of the person assaulted, reducing the victim to the status of a malleable object.  Something of the same attitude obtains when it comes to the deconstruction of history and literature.  Historical facts or the integrity of a piece of literature are approached with only the desire to make them conform to the violator’s druthers--no dialogue allowed.

Whatever one thinks about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, for most Americans their thoughts are likely shaped more by Oliver Stone’s mendacious film, JFK, than by the most rudimentary facts of the case:  Lee Harvey Oswald worked at the Texas School Book Depository; he bummed a ride to work that day holding a long object wrapped in brown paper that he told the driver contained curtain rods; Oswald had created a shooting blind with book cartons on the sixth floor where he worked; three shell cartridges and the aforementioned brown wrapping paper were found there after the assassination; several parade attendees saw a sixth floor shooter and one, Howard Brennan, provided a detailed description; Oswald was the only person who left the building after the assassination; Oswald then jumped on a bus and traveled to the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, but before ducking into the movie theater where he was apprehended, Oswald shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit (a fact confirmed by twelve eyewitnesses and ballistic evidence).

These facts only scratch the surface of what is known about the Fidel Castro loving loser whose “horrifically spelled Historic Diary” provides all one needs to know about this mentally unstable individual who had previously defected to the USSR, attempted suicide, and seven months prior to  Kennedy’s assassination tried to kill a prominent conservative Texas politician, General Edwin Walker.  A concise overview of these and other facts are still obtainable via a 1992 Commentary article by the late American Studies Professor Jacob Cohen, a piece composed in response to Stone’s assassination fantasy.  Gerald Posner’s Case Closed (1993) goes over much the same evidence and also provides information about Jim Garrison that’s 180 degrees opposite the heroic portrait acted by Kevin Costner.   In short, Oliver Stone’s deconstruction of history treats his subject matter like a completely malleable object. 

Literature, of course, is a different animal from history, but if one treats it with respect, a Shakespeare play, for example, will be read and acted giving primary attention to the integrity of the work itself—a task that involves familiarity with the language, customs, and beliefs of the time.  Dr. Gideon Rappaport provides just such an example of this Herculean task in his work, Hamlet, a book that displays both his dramaturgical experience and scholarly expertise vis-à-vis the works of Shakespeare.  (Cf. also his Appreciating Shakespeare, which provides an eye-opening description of Shakespeare’s significant education.)

Like most non-experts, what I knew of the play was pretty much on the same level as what most Americans know about the Kennedy assassination, uninformed observations concerning the Prince’s inability to act. If, however, one pays attention to the words and ideas articulated in the play itself and takes seriously what both Shakespeare and his audience doubtless believed (namely, a Christian view of God and the afterlife) a much different drama emerges.  As Rappaport often mentions, quoting Hamlet’s words in the play, the actors “cannot keep counsel, they’ll tell all.”  And what confronts a modern audience or reader when  the words of Hamlet and Shakespeare are taken seriously isn’t an existentialist or Freudian drama but rather a “Christian tragedy” that exhibits the consequences of exceeding human limits and taking upon oneself decisions properly left to God.  In Hamlet’s case the usurpation of a divine prerogative wasn’t in exacting vengeance on the reigning King for his father’s death, but rather in also seeking to determine his murderous uncle’s eternal destiny.    

This exceeding of proper limits (a theme often repeated in Hamlet via conversations where various golden means are recommended) is certainly a concept worth pondering whatever one’s take on matters theological.  The hubris involved in, for example, deconstructing traditional social and political institutions (as “institutionally racist”) or even manipulating language itself (e.g. a Supreme Court justice unable to define the word “woman”) is likely to lead to consequences more tragic than the death-filled final scene in Hamlet (e.g. the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, Cambodia’s killing fields).

Hamlet’s ill-fated send-Claudius-to-hell scheming is mirrored and magnified in the hubris exhibited by Davos billionaires who view themselves as demigods capable of shaping the economic, political, and even meteorological future of the entire globe.  If they could listen with humility to the lessons of history, literature, or even climatology, their illusions of grandeur would be tempered.  But alas, humility is a virtue that has given way to private jets and caviar-sated spreads at destinations where outsized egos plot the future of proletarians consigned to miniature apartments, no private transportation, and diets consisting of fried insects when solar- or wind-powered electricity happens to be available.   

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle