Politics Has No Meaning
What’s really disheartening about contemporary politics is how formerly-useful words have lost all meaning, transforming reasoned discourse into a babble of empty signifiers. “Conservative” no longer implies anything about fiscal prudence, and carries a socially regressive attitude, while “liberal” (especially in the United States) is taken as a far-left radical stance — when it’s basically just conservatism lite.
Owing to years of of American propaganda (and the inaccurate self-description of the USSR & Chinese empires), “communism/socialism” meanwhile is taken to be synonymous with dictatorial / oligarchic totalitarianism, when it’s actually the basis for a range of models for social organization based around maximizing equality — a necessary precondition for full democracy. There’s yet to be a successful large-scale communist government, owing to cooptation by power-hungry bemoustached men and intentional sabbotage by fascists, domestic and foreign.
But “fascism” now means “anybody I don’t like” — slung around by people across the political spectrum, often coupled with meaningless (or overly meaning-filled) words like “freedom”. This is the truly worrisome one, because the antidote proposed to this faux-fascism is often *actual-fascism*.
Fascistic ideology is strongly hierarchical, authoritarian, and ultranationalistic, which typically presents as highly patriotic/ingroup-loyal, and oriented toward strong leadership figures and law-and-order.
You’re probably thinking about specific examples/persons, but try to broaden your view; fascism isn’t the guy — it’s the mode of social organization. A fascist society would have highly-concentrated wealth and power among a small set of entities elevated to superhuman stature, subject to strong alleigence / admiration by citizens. The legal/economic system and social institutions would ensure the stability of this power, ensuring decision-making power remains in as few hands as possible. To this end, techniques of social engineering (like, for example, confounding the discourse) are used so democratic participation would drop — until the citizen-government seems illegitimate and dysfunctional by disinterest. This generates popular support of the people for these high centres for their ability to “get stuff done”, “take our __ back”, “be innovative”, etc., which usually involves increased powers for law enforcement and stricter social norms.
You’re probably *still* thinking about far-right political figures, but consider the supposed centre — many of these attributes have always-already been intrinsic properties of western society. From an economic perspective, the wealth-centralizing feature of the unregulated free market sets the conditions for fascism. Indeed fascists *love* capitalism, and this is why it’s so slippery — industry, finance, and social institutions don’t need to be directly part of the state in order to be fully integrated parts of the state apparatus. The captains of monopolistic / oligopolistic enterprise are free to conduct business, aided and abetted by their friends in government — so long as they do their part to ensure the stability of the system. Mutual back-scratching generates a network of power that doesn’t need to be repressive, or even overt — it’s merely “the way things are” and “the will of the free market”. Politics as they’re conventionally conceived of are inapplicable to affect this power; it is a thing different in kind.
So while everyone’s cheering and holding signs and pointing and yelling “fascist!”, the actual fascism happens out of view, and beyond our reach. We barely have influence on the surface government by voting for and lobbying our representatives, but we have *no* meaningful influence on the fundamental structures of our society. Disappointing, to say the least.
