Americans are in transit today, rushing to see their families for Thanksgiving. Some have already arrived home, others are waiting around at airports. This is usually a low-traffic day on the internet, but there are always those who are stuck somewhere and need something to read to pass the time. There are also those of us who are not American (is this okay?). It is with all of you in mind that I will post some musings for you to agree/disagree with, to applaud, to mock, to question, to add to, and so on, and so on.
Communism is impossible in the West today, even if it lingers on in places like North Korea, academia, and online discourse. The organization of labour into effective groups for political agitation is a remnant of a bygone era; one of mass industrial production, and one in which it was totally normal to be employed at the same job for decades. The proletariat is a largely an illusion in the West, and is rendered all the more so a mirage in countries like the USA where the individual striver is more central to recent history and culture than collective bargaining. People want to escape from the proletariat! Social Democracy remains a strong presence in the West, buttressed by government workers who routinely turn out to vote to continue such policies.
Since communism is not a threat to the West, fascism is therefore also impossible as it was a historical phenomenon tied to a specific age and that very specific spectre of a Bolshevik global revolution. All of us in the West today are liberals, whether we call ourselves conservatives, nationalists, socialists, and so on. They are all bound within the parameters of modern liberalism, stretching from the classic to the progressive (with the latter straining the definition of liberalism due to its inherent authoritarianism). We are all tied to a certain amount of individual rights, with which rights (real or not) we specifically champion creating the differences that exist between us in the contemporary political realm.
Mosley cut a ridiculous figure in Interwar Britain, as not only did they suffer through a catastrophic loss during WW1 (or a perceived “mutilated victory” as the Italians described their experience), but because the British have long preferred individualism to the collective. As the Anglosphere grew out of the British Empire, this devotion to liberalism and individualism means that a collectivist enterprise such as fascism does not compute. The same goes for the continent. Despite some political mavericks trolling the media with positive remarks about local fascists now long dead, there are no mass movements, no demands for the termination of liberal democracy and parliamentarianism, and no excess populations requiring more “living space”. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that fascism’s purpose had come to an end, almost five decades after being defeated in war.
To talk of communist or fascist threats today is to engage in anachronisms. To call the Democracts of the USA “communists” or Germany’s AfD (or even #MAGA) “fascists” makes no sense. It would be like attacking your political opponents as Guelphs or Ghibellines, or Roundheads or Cavaliers. These are all historical movements that do not apply to our current world.
Tariffs violate market orthodoxy as they run counter to free trade. It is here where Donald Trump is furthest away from traditional liberalism. Seeking to deport illegal migrants is a legal issue, not an ideological one, even if it has been totally politicized. When you zoom out, Trump really is a 90s Clinton liberal. It is little wonder that other liberals (and ex-Dems) such as Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. Marc Andreessen, etc. have thrown their support his way. Trump’s White House is a coalition government when viewed in this manner, distant from the mainstream GOP. It intends to curb some of the excesses of the great social experimentation that the Americans have engaged in these past 15 years or so.
Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.
-Harry Lime in THE THIRD MAN (1948)
In the EU, we have the non-removable bottle cap. To me, it is the best representation of what 30 years of union have achieved. Yes, we have free movement of people and goods across the continent, but what have we really produced in all this time other than an oppressive bureaucracy and a trans-national elite in Brussels that answers to no one but themselves?
Innovation is a naughty word, but one that must be mouthed from time to time by those same ruling elites. Their job is to stifle it via over-regulation. To try to and slash regulation is to effectively upend the raison d’etre of the current EU bureaucracy. No one votes themselves out of a job, and leaders who feel that they have a mission to civilize us would be the last people to ever dream of doing so anyway. Europe is headed towards “sick man” status, akin to the Ottomans of the 19th century. Something has to give, and most likely it will be the floor under our economies.
I came across this photo yesterday. On the right is Lauren Bacall, and on the left is her son, Stephen Bogart (son of Humphrey). It was taken in 1981. Stephen is an old man now, a retired TV producer living out his golden years in Florida. I wonder how difficult it must have been for him to grow up in the shadow of two enormous legends. I am forever fascinated by digging up information about the progeny of world leaders, important cultural figures, and so on. Sometimes it is very tough to find anything on them.
Modernity isn’t all that bad when you see how people lived and worked in the not-too-distant past :)
Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends.
Hit the like button at the top or bottom of the page to like this entry. Use the share and/or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already.
I appreciate your good wishes, but I am not as optimistic as you about the inability of totalitarian ideologies to take root here in the US. And I must disagree about the relevance of the Roundheads v. the Cavaliers. I maintain that the US Civil War was in some ways a continuation of that conflict and that the progressivist/woke ideology is a lineal descendant of New England Puritanism: an implacable religion, shorn of Jesus but with the all the moral hauteur and intolerance intact. They invest their ideas with the meaning of eschatological fulfillment and invest their egos in their opinions, which is why they always express outrage at disagreement: it feels like disrespect and blasphemy to them.