What can we, simple citizens, raised to peaceful ways, do to fight fascism? Well, one is vote. Two, is raise your voice about it to friends and family, who may not want to hear it. I don't mean start fights or talk about things your friends/family can't bear to hear, but if they get to say X, you should get to say Y. If, like me, you enjoy writing and don't mind the lack of a huge audience, right about it. Third, read. Yes, read. If you read the right things, it is a subversive act - subversive to fascism.
Reading is kind of like the way I learn about my hobbies, which are far too many. I'm sure there are many people who read more than I do but, I am aware that most years I might read more books than most people read in their adult lives. It comes easy for me, and will not come easy for others. But, if you are reading this - you probably read.
The following are just some things I've read recently that resonated with me on the fight against fascism. As to whether I am an alarmist, we can discuss when you get to the last quote (there are four).
Ali. I read the following in a book, Ali by Jonathan Eig, which was not about fascism or freedom, but on the "Greatest," the former heavyweight boxing champ, Muhammad Ali. Ali fought in the '60s and '70s, so racism in America was a genuine issue. It was real. At some point Ali joined the Nation of Islam, which has always been controversial. Having read some Malcolm X on racism in America, I often had to agree with him, because of the context of the times he lived in - when racism was prevalent, murderous (so too was the Nation of Islam) and deep. But, I often had to disagree with him too, as sometimes he was just plain wrong. Eventually, when suspended from the Nation (in reality because he knew the leader had impregnated many women not his wife), he disagreed to, enough so that they killed him. Now, of course, the Nation of Islam is long under the guidance of Farrakhan, who I despise.
In any event, in Ali, Eig made reference to and quoted from an FBI bulletin on the Nation of Islam (which it referred to as MCI, for the Muslim Cult of Islam). I quote it here because it reminds me of BLM now. You only need to make a few changes and that's what it seems like. Change "MCI" to BLM, "negro" to black, "temples" to groups, etc. and it could be written of our modern fascists now:
1. "The MCI is a fanatic Negro organization
purporting to be motivated by the religious principles of Islam, but actually
dedicated to the propagation of hatred against the white race. The services
conducted throughout the temples are bereft of any semblance of religious
exercises.
2. Organizationally, the MCI is a collection of
autonomous temples bound by a tremulous personal relationship between the heads
of the temples and the headquarters of the Cult in Chicago, Illinois.
3. The MCI, although an extremely anti-American
organization, is not at the present time either large enough or powerful enough
to inflict any serious damage to the country; however, its members are capable
of committing individual acts of violence.
4. The aims and purposes of the MCI are directed at
the overthrow of our constitutional government, inasmuch as the Cult members
regard it as an instrument of the white race; therefore, it is obvious that
this group, as long as it retains the ideas now motivating it, will remain an investigative
problem to the FBI."
Blacks had a tremendous reason to fight oppression in the 1950s when the above was written (if you doubt that, you really should read up on the subject). And the FBI, as racist as the society it was trying to protect (or control), had a lot to answer for in their own behavior then, as they do now when they again seem determined to protect the fascists and punish those seeking freedom. Of course, the FBI wouldn't write the above paragraphs now about BLM, but, they could fairly do so. I'd rewrite it thus:
" BLM is a fanatic black organization purporting to be motivated by concern for the lives of blacks in America, but actually dedicated to the propagation of hatred against the white race. The rhetoric and actions by it are bereft of any semblance of care for blacks or other minorities.
2. Organizationally, BLM is a collection of autonomous groups bound by a tremulous personal relationship fostered by social media.
3. BLM, although an extremely anti-American, anti-family and anti-capitalistic organization, is not at the present time is large and powerful enough to inflict serious damage to the country; moreover, its members are capable of committing individual acts of violence.
4. The aims and purposes of BLM are directed at the overthrow of our constitutional government, inasmuch as the Cult members regard it as an instrument of the white race; therefore, it is obvious that this group, as long as it retains the ideas now motivating it, will remain an investigative problem to the FBI."
As I've written about at length here, there is no systemic oppression against minorities in America nowadays, as BLM claims, though of course every type of prejudice exists, including against white people - the prevalent form. That's why all these claims you hear warp the truth. Like "silence is violence" (which means either verbally support me or I have a right to attack you in self-defense), like microaggressions (in other words, not actually aggressions, but let's call it that), like systemic racism (when our entire system, including the laws, is now geared to favor minorities), like "white fragility" (if you claim you are not racist, that's because you are "fragile" and can't help it), like "I don't feel safe" (which really means someone wants you fired because you differ politically) and like "anti-racism" which is actually racism, just against whites. And so forth.
***
The Russian Revolution Daniel Pipes wrote A Concise History of the Russian Revolution in 1995, somewhat summarizing his previous scholarly works. Thus, it long preceded the the modern woke" or cancel culture, the BLM riots or Antifa. Still, when I read it, that's all I see.
The quote below is from the Introduction. What does it remind you of, particularly the second paragraph?:
Historians have noted that popular rebellions are
conservative, their objective being a restitution of traditional rights of
which the population feels itself unjustly deprived. Rebellions look backward.
They are also specific and limited in scope. The cahiers des doléances
(list of complaints_ submitted by French peasants in 1789 and, under a
different name, by Russian peasants in 1905, dealt exclusively with concrete
grievances, all of them capable of being satisfied within the existing system.
It is radical
intellectuals who translate these concrete complaints into an all-consuming
destructive force. They desire not reforms but a complete obliteration of the
present in order to create a world order that has never existed except in a
mythical Golden Age. Professional revolutionaries, mostly of middle-class
background, scorn the modest demands of the “masses,” whose true interests they
alone claim to understand. It is they who transform popular rebellions into
revolutions by insisting that nothing can be changed for the better unless
everything is changed. This philosophy, in which idealism inextricably blends
with a lust for power, opens the floodgates to permanent turmoil. And since
ordinary people require for their survival a stable and predictable
environment, all post-1789 revolutions have ended in failure.
Probably not since the Civil War have we faced an existential crisis like this, with an energized force, backed by the media, seeking to radically change or destroy America - change it fundamentally, to a race-conscious, race-controlling, apartheid state that casts merit and hard work on "the ash heap of history." If you aren't familiar with that, welcome to the blog and go back and read. Remarkably, the new fascism, always in embryo somewhere, began when everything was best for the minorities (so said Obama, as I often quote) that the radicals - who are not just minorities, but often some of the dumbest white kids in the country- claim to be out to protect. In fact, they themselves are more responsible for the death of so many minorities, including kids, that the KKK must envy them. But, with the media largely in the hands of people who are at least sympathetic with the radicals, we might be on a very slippery slope - whether they regret it or not. I know many people who agree with me, I know many people who just can't see it at all - in fact, they see the opposite. Some are on the fence. But, what radicals rely on is crises, so that they can gin up fear and the phantom of need for change. With Biden in charge, especially after his almost historically inept bumbling in Afghanistan, his pampering of his base and the media's blinders to all of his faults and looming disaster, we will probably get it soon.
***
Spinoza? I picked up very old copy of Spinoza's works one day, and perusing his Ethics, came across something that reminded me of the very dissonance that seems to exist in this country between those who think this way and those who think that way - kind of those who hate Trump and those who like or tolerate him as the lesser of two evils. I admit, I am baffled by those who hate him their submission to the media narrative and a preference for someone who has proven to be a bumbling fool that only seems to make mistakes, and I am sure they are baffled how I could ever think to vote for someone they can only see as a bogeyman or incubus.
Here is Spinoza, in whom some see almost a Saint and others a genius, from the 17th century:
"We thus see that it is possible for one man to love a thing and for another man to hate it; for this man to fear what man does not fear, and for the same man to love what before he hated, and to dare to do what before he feared. Again, since each judges according to his own affect what is good and what is evil, what is better and what is worse . . ., it follows that men may change in their judgment as they do in their affects, and hence it comes to pass that when we compare men, we distinguish them solely by the difference in their affects, calling some brave, other timid, and others by other name. For example, I shall call a man brave who despises an evil which I usually fear, and if, besides this, I consider the fact that his desire of doing evil to a person whom he hates or doing good to one whom he loves is not restrained by that fear of evil by which I am usually restrained, I call him audacious. On the other hand, the man who fears an evil which I usually despise will appear timid, and if, besides this, I consider that his desire is restrained by the fear of an evil which has no power to restrain me, I call him pusillanimous; and in this way everybody will pass judgment. Finally, from this nature of man and the inconstancy of his judgment, in consequence of which he often judges things from mere effect, and the things which he believes contribute to his joy or his sorrow, and which, therefore, he endeavours to bring to pass or remove . . ., are often only imaginary . . . ."
It appears to me that our media, a virulent part of the left, has succeeded in making a "Trump" a variation on a "Jew" in the same fashion as the Jews were made into scapegoats and villains by the Nazis and their media. But, others, who I know to be kind, decent, intelligent people, disagree with me vehemently.
Partly, of course, with his own seemingly irresistible need to say stupid things, Trump is also at fault. But, his presidential performance, in the face of the most sinister, dishonest and un-American opposition since Lincoln, was thereby made remarkable - from solving the border crisis, to the Abraham Accords (for any other president, the Nobel Peace Prize would have been awarded), to making our economy stronger, to destroying ISIS in Syria and Iraq, to fighting back against China and Russia, operation warp speed and other tasks. But, to this day, numerous friends or family, when faced with the new administration that
- so bungled departure from Afghanistan that an unknown amount of Afghanis died, 13 U.S. soldiers died, that according to the State Department left almost 400 Americans stranded there STILL (about which most of the media is silent - unlike the Iranian hostage crisis where it was front page every day), in all an embarrassment so great that a German leader called it NATO's greatest disaster and the British parliament actually;
- has created the greatest crisis on our border ever (we don't have any idea of these refugees, including the children, which the Ds say they care about died on the way;
- has tried, somewhat successfully, to install racist teaching into our military, our federal agencies, and supports its teaching in schools to little kids
- has allowed and contributed to spiraling inflation, low employment, low labor participation, a shipping crisis, and other economic disasters (all of which Trump avoided while he was president during the pandemic without a vaccine);
- has an executive who makes statements that constantly need correction by the White House (leading some to ask - who actually is in charge that is correcting him?), including saying we will defend Taiwan, the walking back of which will only encourage Red China;
- has stymied our oil production (stopping the Keystone pipeline continuation) while giving approval to Russia to go ahead with its gas pipe to Europe, helping put western Europe at Russia's mercy if it wants to pressure them the way it has Ukraine (do countries never stop putting themselves in difficult positions);
-has sowed hatred over vaccination and further divided an already divided country;
and I'm sure all future problems and disasters by simply repeating some form of - "But, Truuuuummmmpppp!" You don't think so? Biden has already blamed the economy, Afghanistan and the border on Trump, who has been out of office since January.
And screaming But Truuuuummmpppp apparently works. Go back and read the Spinoza quote in that light.
. . .
1930s Germany In 1955 Milton Mayer published, They Thought They Were Free: Germany 1933-1945, a book containing ten conversations with a variety of Germans to try to understand why they became Nazis. Though I've researched this subject for a long time, I only came across this book recently and am reading it now. It is worth giving a long quote, ten paragraphs, because the same warnings we have today existed then too for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. Call me an alarmist after reading this, my friends:
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."
I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.
We aren't in the final stages of fascism yet, but we are in the beginning stages. Whether you are merely one of those who can't speak out because you fear being fired, or someone who is castigated for thinking whether to take a vaccine actually is about freedom, you know of what I write. But, you too are uncertain. So am I, so am most people I know. A long time friend - who would not mind my mentioning his name (I won't) - says it is past time and we must act soon, whatever that means. They've already gone too far, declared their intentions to cripple the country, deprive us of freedom, and it's time to fight back. I think we at least have another election or so (if it can be done fairly), to see what can be done democratically. But, if the fascist party takes over the Supreme Court by packing, or frightening enough of its members, or by making Democrat packed areas states, or by cancelling the electoral college, or the filibuster, or eviscerating the border, it may be too late.
