The Result of Austerity and Neo-Liberalism is the Rise of the Neo-Fascist Right

Sure, our policies have created stage-1 dystopia, but they’re good for us, our donors and retainers.

The neoliberal consensus has been that resistance is futile. But clearly it won’t remain that way. Has regional integration in Latin America pointed the way forward at all? For nations lacking Russian or Chinese influence, that is.

As for the stranglehold on coherent narratives explaining WTF is happening, I always think of what Matt Taibbi said some years back:

“The reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political protégés in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other … what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish.”

And identity politics, the liberal’s favourite parlor game, figures prominently here. Keep us arguing about misogyny, reparations, or if gays (too!) should be allowed to commit war crimes. Of course, the corporate media and pols want this to be the sum total of our woeful public discourse, but it’s a crying shame so many otherwise decent people embrace it so widely.

While the msm keep us focused on the euro skeptics the victories of syriza and Morsi’s communist party, the latter being a virtual landslide, provides at least some hope that a genuine left is forming in the ashes of austerity. The Italian people seem to be genuinely disgusted by their years of right wing antics and prepared to make sweeping changes. We will see if Morsi takes advantage of the political capital gained in this huge victory or squanders it in service to the oligarchs a la Obama. But for the moment there is some hope in italy.

Summed up in there is the Democratic delusion; “Republicans are so evil, awful and stupid that no matter how badly we screw things up the voting public will never put them in power.” They forget the greater motive that when things are going badly the voting public will always throw out the party that is presently in power and if all the system has offered as an alternative if the “evil, awful and stupid Republicans” then they will put the “evil, awful and stupid Republicans” into power.

Ian: Great post. And make no mistake, this is coming to America too, we’ve already got the constituency (the Tea Party), they’re just waiting for a viable leader. If Sarah Palin has been a little less of an overt grifter (and a little smarter), it could have been her. Maybe it still will be.

jcapan: Spot-on. I’ll bet the Koch Brothers themselves are making large donations toward the cause of fighting misogyny right now. Yes, yes, let the plebes argue over sex and gender and reparations, arguments which will go nowhere but will serve to avert their eyes from what we’re doing over here.

American liberalism has become all identity politics, all the time. But meanwhile, were the right to rise in America the way it’s now doing in Europe (and did do, in 1930s-era Europe) – those most invested in identity politics will ultimately have most to fear.

@Labor of Tay Except the Hard Right in Europe wants to strengthen social programs and are willing to take on the Bankers and IMF. It’s their immigration policy that is most similar to the Tea Party.

Apologies on length, but I’m off work and you’re post and some of the comments got me thinking.

Fascism, despite what many people think, was a mass movement. It wasn’t in the majority but a powerful minority. Wait till we have a mass leftist force in the US, then you’ll see the fascists. Greece is odd because they still have a powerful Communist party and SYRIZA, the first real leftists since Chavez and the Bolivarians. This extensive leftwing culture with the economic and social ills of that nation has led to the Golden Dawn. The NF and UKIP strike me as the first American-style conservatives in Europe so its a little jarring for Europeans to see. Folks are shouting “fascist” while not even taking a moment to think. Could even throw the BJP from India into the mix though that leader seems like a genuine monster.

Of course, I’m not European, just an average short-order cook from the Confederate States, so I don’t know what its like on the street level. These creeps could be nastier than our assholes. Probably similiar to the local oligarchs in my neck of the woods which, in that case, God be with you.

I’m not so sure its identity politics that are the cause of the foolishness of the American left. Most leftist activists in the States are anarchists and couldn’t be bothered with organization beyond the next demonstration. Party politics disgusts them. The idea of leadership and missions and the long haul aren’t exciting. There are people out there, real working people who are mean and angry and they want see people that are mean and angry THAT DELIVER RESULTS. Whats needed is leadership. And ferocity. I don’t know if I’ve met a single person who doesn’t hate banks or cops.
Liberals might shy away from revolution but that’s liberals. Don’t forget that New Deal policies only passed because Southerners made sure few benefits would reach black folks. The achievements of the civil rights movement are real and an ongoing struggle. They and Latinos comprise the working class in many parts of the country. Telling them that their struggle is what is holding the fight against the oligarchs back is as silly as lecturing an Appalachian on white privilege.

Tactics, tactics, tactics! Strategy and leadership. Lets dust off our Lenin. ;o)

Of course, I’m not European, just an average short-order cook from the Confederate States, so I don’t know what its like on the street level. These creeps could be nastier than our assholes. Probably similiar to the local oligarchs in my neck of the woods which, in that case, God be with you.

I’m not so sure its identity politics that are the cause of the foolishness of the American left. Most leftist activists in the States are anarchists and couldn’t be bothered with organization beyond the next demonstration. Party politics disgusts them. The idea of leadership and missions and the long haul aren’t exciting. There are people out there, real working people who are mean and angry and they want see people that are mean and angry THAT DELIVER RESULTS. Whats needed is leadership. And ferocity. I don’t know if I’ve met a single person who doesn’t hate banks or cops.
Liberals might shy away from revolution but that’s liberals. Don’t forget that New Deal policies only passed because Southerners made sure few benefits would reach black folks. The achievements of the civil rights movement are real and an ongoing struggle. They and Latinos comprise the working class in many parts of the country. Telling them that their struggle is what is holding the fight against the oligarchs back is as silly as lecturing an Appalachian on white privilege.

A great post.

To jcapan

Naturally. I agree with you. Just because Obama is president or Hillary is going to be president doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. I just think the notion that identity politics, or whatever you’d like to call it, is the major reason that we can’t challenge the elites is bandied about with little thought. Tribalism and sexism both precede the system as it is, call it neoliberalism or capitalism, these are fights we might always have. Capitalism, in and of itself, cares little for race or sex.
You’re right about crafting a unifying narrative. A Gospel of sorts. Something that appeals to both. It needs to overcome the tribalism that people latch onto in difficult times. I think a class based message would work but the times might not be quite opportune for that. Unfortunately we really don’t have time for that. There are millions dying, billions suffering, the Earth itself is changing. I just don’t know.

This is an important post. Once you have identify a problem, you can fix it. Most importantly the rulers’ omissions and lies don’t work anymore. The antonyms to the conflict, greed and hatred of today are amity, love and temperance tomorrow. Tax the wealthy, jail the crooks, feed the hungry, educate the young, and provide jobs building a safe and energy efficient future. Give peace a chance.

Spinoza,

How is focusing on “leadership” progress. You’ve just identified it yourself with most people want results “delivered”. Democracy is supposed to be about participation. Claiming a revolution through some new god incarnate is the oldest story we’ve got, and the ending never changes.

A leader who “delivers” to citizens is a dictator. Occupy did not have enough participants actually interested in change, for most it was a slightly more energetic version of Democratic party slogans, i.e. bigger slices of the pie for the middle class instead of condemning the pie as rotten.

I don’t know that an exhaustive study of history would prove your fantasy claim true, I will grant it’s the obvious majority. By the same token though we’ve never then had an insurrection worth having… We cannot call out leaders douches without recognizing our consent and participation in that system, which begs the question of the usefulness of centralizing authority in a leader.

As though it were the plan all along. Weird, that.

The neolib Police State tyrant John Kerry just called the brave patriot Edward Snowden
a coward and traitor. Need I say more?

@Cold

No you don’t need to say more. You’re a fucking imbecile of the highest caliber.

@ yeahyouknowitstrue
May 29, 2014
@Cold
No you don’t need to say more. You’re a fucking imbecile of the highest caliber.
~~~~~~~~~~
@Celsius 233
Second that in spades…
——————-
Thirded.

Which isn’t to say there’s nothing to it, of course; how blacks and Latin@s have historically been treated in this country is nauseating.

So that last comment brings up a question. How exactly will this…abandonment? setting aside?…of identity politics actually work in practice? The identity politicians lay down their weapons in some way? Let those in the vanguard of the proletariat finally go forth to do battle with the malefactors of great wealth, while they and their, um, presumably less earth-shaking identity issues…do what, exactly? To take up the torch at some other point in the future? Measured by what?

Anyone who says Putin, Russia and Eurasianism are equally pernicious forces to that of unipolar Amer-Israeli Empire’s continuing bloody oppressive hegemony is the most retrograde of reactionary cold warriors.

Identity politics? How many sincere feminists are going to resist the urge of abstaining to vote for neocon-lite Hillary? How many are even going to have the urge to resist?

But since you’re such a fan of identity politics, then should I assume that you are equally nonplussed with white liberals who support policies at odds with their enthnic/racial group? For example, do you consider those white liberals who support things like massive non-European immigration, welfare, and affirmative action to be naive and foolish? Or is it your belief that advocating those positions is actually of a piece with advocating their ethnic interests, only in disguise?

This is, to put it bluntly, one of the dumbest comments I’ve ever read on this blog, and believe me, we occasionally see people here who are a couple of shelves short of a bookcase. The thing loosely being called “identity politics” has to do with groups that on the whole, as groups, haven’t “won” relative to other groups, which clearly doesn’t apply to whites as a group relative to other races.

I find your last comment very cryptic and rather puzzling, however, and I am wondering if you could make the meaning a bit more explicit. What exactly do you mean by “ethnic interests, only in disguise”? The only reasonable interpretation I could muster is that by advocating for suppressed groups, they expect to liberate the creative potential of these groups for the betterment of all humanity, including their own “white” sub-ethnicities. If so, I would say, hopefully, yes. Otherwise, you should clarify what you meant.

The problem is properly diagnosed, neo-liberal globalization. So what is the answer? Keynesian economics combined with nationalist protection against cheap labor. Which are the policies Marine Le Pen is campaigning for. She is the only major political figure pushing an MMT agenda. And this is exactly what the post-national oligarchs fear – to be chained to their local labor forces with no options to offshore to cheap countries or to inshore low-skill immigrants while jobs are provided to locals through government spending.

This is only “neo-fascism” in the propaganda dreams of the oligarchic media. Progressives are given a clear choice; stand with the oligarchs and denounce this “fascism” or join with the masses and start fighting the globalization leviathan with nationalist policies. The oligarchs have spent the last 40 years destroying the nation-state; often with progressives cheerleading all the way. Those days are over. Calling Marine Le Pen a “fascist” is just as stupid as brain-dead Republicans who call Obama a “communist”.

The way to see if a movement is anti-oligarch is to throw away the Left/Right continuum and to replace it with a Nationalist / Globalist scale. The Front National in France is clearly a nationalist movement explicitly fighting globalization and should be strongly supported by progressives. This is much less true of UKIP, who are really just a bunch of Tories trying to channel rising anger against globalization into safe political reservoirs. Golden Dawn is an oligarch creation to scare people from embracing anti-globalization nationalism.

The problem is much of the left has become way too bourgeois in the last 40 years. The last true working class leftist in America was Cesar Chavez. He certainly never went to university and he fought for working class rights, including against illegal immigrants, for most of his career. This is the approach the left in America has to go back to. The problem is that the left has become intellectualized, Marcuse replaced Chavez, and the neo-liberal oligarchs were off the bank once the left ditched class struggle and starting obsessing over political correctness and identity politics.

The problem is that the left has become intellectualized

The problem is there are so many “Lefts” and so many “Rights” the categorizations no longer have any significance and the distinction between them are more than blurred.

Any consciously purposeful movement is doomed to failure, even if it succeeds. If there’s a purpose, it can’t be conscious so any positive force of change must take place organically, fluidly and without conscious knowledge it’s even happening, otherwise, it’s dead on arrival. What it means is it’s completely beyond your, beyond our, control.

Le Pen does the classic move of promising a previously “incumbent” in-group a return to their previous status by drawing the circle tighter, inch by inch. If she were to win the presidency of France or even a majority in the French parliament, things would get even more difficult for minorities, particularly Arabs and Muslims. One of the first things she did after her people won some of the local councils in the French municipal elections was to loudly proclaim the end of deliberately providing porkless meals in French schools in those towns. Why would you so proudly strut around declaiming that you’d exclude Muslim children from the state-funded meals their peers get?

And one wonders why they don’t “integrate.” That is why you can’t just declare a kind of truce on identity politics until we reach the nirvana point where it’s all better and the “general welfare” has been improved.

But this connects to an issue that Blizzard inadvertently brought up. Whose “general welfare” are we talking about here? The 99% is not a monolith. This is what identity politics is for.

MLP is a chimera. She is only successful because Hollande folded in the face of Berlin and Frankfurt. Otherwise, her economic nationalism is not much more than a fancy way of kicking down.

Reality? Watch this;
http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2

If you dare; it’s very depressing but; it’s reality…very graphically…

But you’ve convinced me not to bother writing beyond this comment. There’s no upside for me, a white heterosexual CIS male to write about these things. Anything other than tugging my forelock and saying that white working class males should take it on the chin for another 40 years will be greeted with derision.

Oh, well, that’s a pity. Understand: my point is that I,too, think it is a false dichotomy. I don’t think there *should* be a necessary contradiction between the form of social justice politics (usually pejoratively) called “identity politics” and the “guns-and-butter” generalwelfarist politics that is popular around these parts.

But, apparently , there is. I suppose it is because some of the identity categories in question cross economic-class lines to some extent. But the attitude that many seem to hold around here is that identity politics is a kind of class treason, with very little credit given to its reason for existing. That is in itself, to me a creation of the oligarchs. Why is the prevalence of identity politics attributed to the oligarchs but the irrational reaction against it not?

But you’ve convinced me not to bother writing beyond this comment. There’s no upside for me, a white heterosexual CIS male to write about these things. Anything other than tugging my forelock and saying that white working class males should take it on the chin for another 40 years will be greeted with derision.

I understand that there is no upside, writing under your real name — it’s a shame, though… But honestly, what do you expect from Mandos, who writes in the jargon of Academic Marxism.

It is a shame that you won’t be writing about identity or wedge politics. As best as I can tell this is how politicians and their paymasters game the electoral system to get 51% of the vote, where the elections aren’t already rigged by gerrymandering, propaganda, or counting fraud.

This is how a Nobel Peace Prize Winner became the Global Leader of Wars for Profit fought by mercenaries and drones. The Oligarchs’ accumulation of wealth and screwing of everyone else is approved by all voters who voted for candidates who promised lower taxes, less government, and used racial, sexual, or cultural whistle words.

Cases in point. Why would they co-operate with you when you have such contempt for them?

I wasn’t writing in the “jargon of Academic Marxism”.

Yep, overstated my case a bit there — I don’t think Alan Sokal could successfully pass off random gibberish as your writing 🙂 To me, identity politics is the bastard child of academic marxism, so I guess I meant that Mandos “is informed by” rather than “writes in the jargon of”.

A-fucking-men.

Thank you for the quote from Chomsky. It fits what I sense here: a significant amount of understanding and of sincerity, but with a lot of mutual attack mixed in.
I think that a sense of frustration is natural for people who think about things these days. We can sense that we can do so much better. Objectively, since the Industrial Revolution we have created much of the physical structures needed for all of us to leave in abundance. Yet we see the world around us becoming in some ways worse: less humane, more materially impoverished for many in the first world, less sensible in terms of the stated goals and purposes.
I think it is worthwhile to stop and really notice this frustration. First, because the intensity of it suggests that we really could do better, that this is not just a daydream but a glimpse of a genuine deep potential. Second, because if we do not stop and notice this frustration, then is far more likely to run us. And that often means that we deal with that frustration in ways that undermine our chance of actually making things better.
For example, we may take refuge in cynicism or negative feelings about those around us who seem to manage to ignore the actual situation (a.k.a the sheeple). Or we are critical and judgmental toward those we engage in discussion with, putting more effort into looking for a reason to attack or dismiss (or attack in a way that makes increased mutual understanding highly unlikely) and less effort into find what is useful in what they say. Or we take a superficially friendly but actually defensive and judgmental posture against everyone who does not speak/write politely enough to avoid setting off our own sense of frustration. We may put much of our energy into combating those who threaten to undermine our illusions (for example, sincere supporters of Obama whose direct their fire largely against those to their left [as opposed to intellectual prostitutes; separate issue]). Or having let go of such illusions and paying the psychological price for that, we direct our fire against those who are still clinging to those illusions.
All of these stances can be valid and useful. However, the more we are taking a stance in order to relieve ourselves from the deep frustration, especially if we are doing so unconsciously, then the higher the chances that what we do from that stance will be less useful or downright harmful.
There is also the issue that social discussions are highly warped and disrupted by the power of concentrated wealth and in ways that are far more sophisticated than a generation or two ago. That is probably an even larger issue, but that is not what I am addressing here.
I am not writing this to create yet more labels with which to dismiss each other, but so that we can see what we do in order to have a bit more maneuvering room to decide whether that is what we really want to do. And in order to point to what I think we share: some kind of vision or other of what we as a species are capable of and the intense discomfort both of the discrepancy between that vision and our current reality and the intense discomfort that I suspect is inherent in hairless East African plains apes when we sense malalignment between ourselves and our society.
PS Ian, to refrain from writing about identity politics because of the kind of stifling criticism (=”you’re not allowed to talk about that”) that will predictably be among the reactions would be to act from a lack of courage inappropriate for someone hosting a blog such a this. In your case, WWVPD? (What would Vladimir Putin do?)

(What would Vladimir Putin do?)

Are you suggesting Ian invade and annex firedoglake? That’d be awesome. But not before a sham vote. I promise I’ll vote one hundred or more times for it.

Or, maybe Ian can win the bid for the winter blogging Olympics to be held in Toronto with help from his drug-dealing friends and use it as cover to dole out a crisp, cool $50 billion to his caporegime.

Or maybe Ian can pretty much shut down independent blogging altogether so nobody can say shit about anything anymore.

Those are just a few of the things Putin would do.

If none of that, and more, works, well, then you just nuke the damn place from here to kingdom come in a “if I don’t win, nobody wins” fit of rage.

Jessica, somehow your comment reminded me of this quote by Cormac McCarthy:

“I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.”

And I think Cormac McCarthy is a highly over-rated jackass who spouts self fulfilling nonsense. I wonder if his following will rival Ayn Rands in a few decades? Certainly not if he keeps up with such warmed over hash as The Counselor.

Dan,

The Counselor was gobsmackingly bad/bordering on self-parody, and revealed some deeply skewed ideas about who’s to blame for the state of the world. However, as much as I lament the quality of his recent work, it doesn’t take away from his past accomplishments. If you can’t appreciate Blood Meridian or Suttree as some of the best literature written over the past century, that’s truly a shame.

Jessica,

Sorry, I was rushing out the door this morning when I posted that. Trust that it wasn’t intended that way. Your thoughtful response aligns with Chomsky’s plea for comity, and I suppose what I was trying to do by posting McCarthy’s quote was to show another perspective, one that IMO is pretty tempting when surveying what passes for our public discourse. Setting aside whatever “left” exists, the partisan nature of our politics is indeed “vacuous,” isn’t it? “Liberal” democrats who right this minute are down with the worst abuses of the administration (when under Bush-Cheney they were rightfully outraged). If these subjects (surely not citizens) ever had souls or freedom to begin with, I’m hard-pressed to believe they’ve held onto them. IOW, there’s a reason why things are as factional and hostile as they are. And since this balkanized state of affairs has almost always been the historical case, perhaps in the end CM is closer to the truth. It would be nice to think that those of us in the margins might conduct ourselves in some finer way but I see no precedent for it.

@jcapan
Thank you for the explanation.
I wouldn’t call the main stream discussion vacuous, although that is how many of us experience it. I would go more for degenerate. It reflects in multiple ways the current severe mismatch between what we have the technological capacity and physical infrastructure and trained human skills for on the one hand and what the obsolete social organization is capable of doing with all that. One of the most important aspects of this mismatch is that the knowledge worker class as a whole is deployed to create an artificial scarcity of knowledge, i.e. ignorance, technical and moral. The closer one is to the bottom of the knowledge worker class (e.g. adjunct professors), the more one is underpaid to produce/spread knowledge. The close one is to the top of the knowledge worker class (e.g. university presidents, CEOs), the more one is overpaid to produce/spread ignorance. The “vacuousness” is the result of that effort to produce/spread ignorance. It is not a shortcoming but a thus far successful attempt to keep an obsolete social system going and to hide the fact of its obsolescence.
Yes, giving up on the species (as I see Cormac McCarthy doing) is tempting, but not the road I want to take.

Yupayup. We have Blizzard attempting to make “whites advocating for white interests” equivalent to anti-racist activism and policy, with a bonus “trannie” reference and a tedious whine about PC. Oh noes my freeze peaches are being taken away!!! (They are, but not by identity politics.) And we have Jonathan directly tying the rise of identity politics to a neoliberal conspiracy, with no engagement with the actual concerns of the identity politicians.

El Guapo pinned it right. These people expect to win back…what, by attacking the thing pejoratively called identity politics?

the early socialists were mostly all conservative.
fast lane capitalism merges with liberalism nicely.
fast lane capitalism destroys folkways quicker than a Marxist revolution.
socialism in one country, organic.
you don’t need a mass border invasion to realize that, if any, socialism is what is workable.
but is the US, the capital of multinational fast lane globalism, one country anymore?

Mandos,

Good stuff. You can’t wave away the legitimate concerns of others as if they were all merely the PC fad of the moment rather than things like voting rights, police brutality, fair pay, etc. and expect them be allies in a “bigger fight” in which, frankly, a lot of the people talking about that fight don’t seem to be actively involved in it.

Oh hell.

The fight against racism and sexism are part of the economic fight. Eyes on the prize. And that prize is the heads of the economic system. I have no doubt about that.”

Scott Kaufmann talking with Jodi Dean about Zizek in 2005

“Zizek’s claim that identity politics, to paraphrase Jodi, eliminate the possibility for systemic change by reformulating systemic problems as personal issues strikes me as fundamentally correct. Then again, I came to the essay already believing that identity politics often trivialize concepts of social justice by subordinating them to an ethos of personal expression, so the nodding of my head in assent as I read those passages didn’t shock. ” …SEK

Relinked after ten years in a current set of posts about Zizek over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. I also recommend Mark Fisher’s Nov 2013 post at North Star “Exiting the Vampire Castle”

“The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise everything. While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique, in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour. ” …Mark Fisher

The interest groups talk about structural critique and systemic change, but the actual discourse in practice always seems to be about individual bad guys or good guys or small and relatively powerless groups. There are plenty of examples available even from the last few weeks, from the Mozilla CEO to Rodgers and PUA/MRA to the winner of the Eurosong contest. The effect of this is to weaken any possibilities of collective action.

This focus on individuals is liberal, neo-liberal, and actually conservative and reactionary, and is exactly why the disfavored groups have not seen the gains they should have considering the amount of energy expended.

bob mcmanus,

“The interest groups talk about structural critique and systemic change, but the actual discourse in practice always seems to be about individual bad guys or good guys or small and relatively powerless groups. There are plenty of examples available even from the last few weeks, from the Mozilla CEO to Rodgers and PUA/MRA to the winner of the Eurosong contest. The effect of this is to weaken any possibilities of collective action.

That’s simply not true. Your examples seem to indicate that you’re only paying attention to the largely trivial media storms of the moment and either ignoring or downplaying the other substantive actions going on. Off the top of my head, I can think of the various campaigns to fight the rollback of Voting Rights in several states, the anti Stop and Frisk campaign, the living wage protests by, in particular fast food workers, the ongoing struggle against Charter Schools and the privatization, pillaging and destruction of public education, the fight against the corporate takeover of Detroit and so on.

Also, how exactly does the effect of your this weaken any possibilities of collective action? If their would be allies are so easily butthurt over mostly media rubbish and the hastag of the moment so as to weaken the possibilty of collective action on those big isssues that they supposedly care so much about, then that says a lot more about their allies than them.

individualise and privatise everything

I find it simply fascinating that the very act of citing the promulgator of an argument in any context is, by dint of itself, delaying the day the masses tear down the pedestals of hi finance.

I just want to echo the defense of what we’re calling here “academic Marxism.” It kept me sane coming to university from a working-class background when the academic orthodoxy was all the Berlin Wall falling refuting Marx and rising tides lifting all boats.