Tuesday, June 07, 2016

Know Your Terms

Yes, for liberals in the West, calling someone a "fascist" or "Nazi" just signals disapproval of the person so tagged. Most have no real knowledge of what those terms mean other than "conservative people we don't like." Stratfor's George Friedman explains that "nationalism" is what is rising in the West and not fascism.

Well yeah:

Recently, there have been a number of articles and statements asserting that fascism is rising in Europe, and that Donald Trump is an American example of fascism. This is a misrepresentation of a very real phenomenon. The nation-state is reasserting itself as the primary vehicle of political life. Multinational institutions like the European Union and multilateral trade treaties are being challenged because they are seen by some as not being in the national interest. The charge of a rise in fascism derives from a profound misunderstanding of what fascism is. It is also an attempt to discredit the resurgence of nationalism and to defend the multinational systems that have dominated the West since World War II.

I think it is a bit different in that I don't see nationalism rising as an effort to discredit the multinational system we have built.

No, the rise of nationalism is a reaction to global elite efforts to replace the multinational system with a supranational system. Nationalism rejects replacing cooperation among sovereign nations with a system dominated by entities that suppress nations.

Europeans embracing nationalism have the target of the European Union that seeks to become a multi-ethnic empire (with compliance enforced by strangling regulations rather than secret police--at least at first).

We have the first "Post-American" president who aspires to such an organization to constrain American power (and at a lower level, but with a similar population size as Europe, seeks to suppress the "nationalism" of state-centric governance with a federal governance that will even zone your neighborhoods for you).

In any case, do read it all. Especially if you've used the terms "fascist" or "Nazi" against someone you don't like without really understanding what the Hell you are talking about.

Remember, you need to add "socialism" to "nationalism" to get a true "national socialist" movement.

And please, when you focus on what being a "fascist" really means, what with its hostility to classical liberalism, explain how the denial of individualism in the notion "you didn't build that" doesn't fit in quite well with going down that road.