Short Take: Progressivism is Fascism without Virtue
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Most Americans think fascism became so evil because it advocated unlimited omnipotent government, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
But the left thinks nothing like this: they think the problem with fascism was that it was manly, and valued excellence.
If only it had been effete and degenerate then the absolute power would have been like a universal loving mother looking after everyone. Not, you know, a consuming backbiting nationwide concentration camp like the communist regimes became.
The left accepts every single principle of fascism, indeed it is impossible to find a structural difference between progressivism and fascism in terms of the actual governing and economic system...
they're both 3rd-way systems that claim to balance capitalism and communism by allowing private property, but allowing the government to regulate it totally (ie. not real private property), have totalitarian taxing and policing structures that allow no privacy or security in personal documents or transactions, massive standing militaries, a central government paramilitary police force (the SS, the FBI) whose main job is to hunt down disloyalty and ideological enemies, not least within the legacy decentralized governing institutions of the older republic, and a major emphasis on centralized control over the nature and content of public education such that no regions, sub-cultures, or ethnic subgroup can escape and propagate rivaled values.
Every German school must allow the Hitler Youth to operate, and every American school must have desegregation, anal-inclusive sex ed, and drag queen story hour... there can be no regional variation.
Saxony cannot experiment with anti-militaristic Montessori schools, just as Alabama can't experiment with mono-ethnic religious schooling, nor Maine with classical sex-segregated education.
The central government's values must be taught in every corner of the empire, in the manner of the central government's choosing... the only culture that may form and unify is the central government's culture.
The only difference is which cultures and values they wish to force into the population through the god-like unlimited government... put simply Fascism valued health, family, excellence, distinction, aggression, daring, manliness, and ethnic fellow-feeling... whereas progressivism values sickness, hedonism, mediocrity, homogeneity, passivity, cowardice, effeminacy, and isolation.
Progressivism is simply a degenerate and anti-virtue variant of fascism... imposing sickness on the population in the name of "equality" ie. reducing everyone to the quality of the lowest (how do you make a special ed child and Magnus Carlson equal chess players? Progressives can't even teach ordinary children, It's simple: you lobotomize Carlson)
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And if you point this out and advocate against the totalitarian system of governance Americans suffer under... Progressives will accuse you of Fascism! Because you aim to make people healthy and virtuous.
They can't comprehend the idea that government might not be God, or people might actually be free, or diverse people might actually meaningfully live differently in a decentralized world without homogeneity forced upon them... so, of course, the only thing about fascism they oppose, are the things it shared with the healthier civilizations that came before it: Snazy outfits, an admiration of fitness, loyalty to family and group, manly virtue, punctuality (timetables are racist don't you know), organization, and competitive excellence...
The thing they hate most about Fascism was not the brutality or the control (they'll demand the most totalitarian regulations (see lockdowns) and defend the genocides of communism with their dying breath) it's that the Fascists were still only half poisoned with the totalitarian state and its sicknesses... it's that they still remembered Rome and Greece and believed in health and fitness.
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Follow me on Twitter: @FromKulak
Nice!
And there's some interesting history that most don't know. American socialism was originally much more like fascism. The source of the Nazi salute may well have been the U.S. The Pledge of Allegiance was devised by a Christian national socialist. See:
http://rexcurry.net/
You went off track at the outset of your argument by not acknowledging that what was truly odious about Fascism was that its hierarchical racial dogmas about the innate superiority of some humans and the allegedly subhuman essence of other humans produced the most advanced technological mass murder project of its time. The systematic slaughter of 6 million innocent men, women and children because of their Jewish ethnicity was one of the lowest moments in human history. That's the problem with Fascism.
Your essay really requires that grounding at the outset or it can't be taken seriously.
That's too bad, because your deepest point is that progressivism is increasingly equivalent to Fascism, and that's a very strong point. Progressivism has even adopted its own hateful racist hierarchy, and as you correctly observe is rapidly developing the taxonomy and processes of Fascism.
In fact, progressivism is a weird morphing of racist hierarchy with Marxist enforced "equality", a homicidal commitment to hierarchy combined with the elimination of all signs of superiority except the possession of power.
That's a road that leads back to Auschwitz--and the Gulag--and progressivism is building that road. That's your deepest point.