Local protesters were recently seen carrying signs that read: “No to Fascism.” While doubting their full understanding of that political philosophy, you have to give them credit for thinking that something is wrong.
In an article for the Left-leaning US magazine The Nation, titled “Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Is a Wildly Popular Fascist,” former Rep. Walden F. Bello said the broad characteristics of a fascist leader is “a charismatic individual with strong inclinations toward authoritarian rule” and who “proposes a political project that contradicts the fundamental values and aims of liberal democracy or social democracy.” Of course, that also sounds like a description of the most successful basketball coach in history—Phil Jackson—who unlikely made decisions based on the tenets of a “social democracy”.
Maybe it would be instructive to turn to the founder of modern fascism, Benito Mussolini, for his definition: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”.
If that is accurate, then “neo-liberalism” (NL) and “neoconservatism” (NC) are two sides of the same “fascist” coin. Both concepts want as much power and authority as possible concentrated in government—the State.
While both appear to espouse the “free market” and economic freedom, NL looks directly to the State to control the economy through the large corporate interests and NC look to the corporate interests to control the government. The end results are the same.
While NL talks of equality, it is the same equality that George Orwell wrote about in his novel Animal Farm. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The NL promises great individual social freedoms in return for government control of the economy and supposed economic equality.
NC promise greater prosperity as long as the people accept that this best comes from decisions made by big business through the government. While there is greater individual “economic freedom”, the government has the obligation to make more decisions about “social freedom”.
Certainly, this is a simplistic and incomplete definition of NL and NC. But the point is that there is little difference between the two, and both are fascist by Mussolini’s definition.
The largest campaign donors in the 2016 US election cycle regardless of political party were: six hedge-fund founders, two media owners, one casino magnate and a cofounder of Facebook. Collectively they spent the equivalent of a week’s income of the poorest 1 billion on Earth to “influence” the US election.
The US has been the largest exporter of weapons for many decades regardless of which political party or political philosophy controlled government. The US has forced “regime change” all over the world no matter who sat as president.
The Roman Catholic Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace recently issued a document, “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.” It calls for “an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of ‘central world bank’ that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks.”
The document concludes, “This transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities.” The Church is echoing the voices of both the NL and the NC. Taken out of the religious context, “Through Him, with Him, in Him” from the Liturgy sounds eerily familiar.
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