Suck it Haters!!!: "Friendly" Fascists and American Authoritarians

                                               Doctored to protect the stupid, with minor commentary.



I was an undergraduate back when Grunge was King, and by the end of my Sophomore year (1995 ish), my disappointment in Bill Clinton as a craven opportunist had festered into a betrayal of the ideals I had voted him in for in the first place.  Certainly, I was naïve when I cast that first vote, thinking that the good guys had defeated the nightmare of the Reagan years, and surely, sanity and fair play would follow--of course, I was not prepared for the move from betrayal to the utter disillusionment that made me leave the Democratic Party, returning only provisionally, and usually holding my nose--first voting Libertarian in 1996, and then, finally finding  (for me, anyway) the Democratic Socialist Green Party in 2000.  And yes, I kind of regretted that vote in hindsight, because what happened next-- but I voted in Indiana,me and the other 18 grand Greens would not have made a goddamned bit of difference--was an utter disaster, but may only be the prelude.  But enough with the preamble.

Anyway, I was fully engrossed in critical and political philosophy, reading Marx and Bakunin, pivoting from the malaise of teenage nihilism to a journey of Existentialist (ah Simone!) discovery, and generally trying to make sense of a world that seemed fucked up.  I need a hermeneutic for the world.  One that I discovered was Bertram Gross's Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America (excerpted here).  Gross argues--in 1980-- essentially that Fascism becomes inevitable as Capitalism becomes more unfettered, concentrating wealth at the top, it will necessarily adapt to the people and times.  Consider the following:

Despite the sharp differences from classic fascism, there are also some basic similarities. In each, a powerful oligarchy operates outside of, as well as through, the state. Each subverts constitutional government. Each suppresses rising demands for wider participation in decision making, the enforcement and enlargement of human rights, and genuine democracy. Each uses informational control and ideological flimflam to get lower and middle-class support for plans to expand the capital and power of the oligarchy and provide suitable rewards for political, professional, scientific, and cultural supporters. . .

A major difference is that under friendly fascism Big Government would do less pillaging of, and more pillaging for, Big Business. With much more integration than ever before among transnational corporations, Big Business would run less risk of control by any one state and enjoy more subservience by many states. In turn, stronger government support of transnational corporations, such as the large group of American companies with major holdings in South Africa, requires the active fostering of all latent conflicts among those segments of the American population that may object to this kind of foreign venture. It requires an Establishment with lower levels so extensive that few people or groups can attain significant power outside it, so flexible that many (perhaps most) dissenters and would-be revolutionaries can be incorporated within it. Above all, friendly fascism in any First World country today would \ use sophisticated control technologies far beyond the ken of the classic fascists.

In 1995, 1996 I was able to see this in action on TV, newspapers and radio, and was always alarmed by the "meh" attitudes of so many.   Of course, I knew while people were getting some drippings from the lords' table, they'd be satisfied until their ship came in. 

At that time, the Internet was just emerging on a mass scale, and I was excited for the future; surely, the democratization of information was an obvious good, and certainly, a new world was coming.

I was expecting Star Trek;  I got Star Wars instead...


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The hangover of yesterday's Trump victories, and my ever increasing fear and dread for the future occupies my mind, leadening my heart with the feeling that Gross's text may have been prophecy, or even the blue print for the cagey motherfucker to more effectively and efficiently shill the rubes.  Bad tidings from the Louisville Trump Rally involving avowed White Supremacists assaulting people has only depressed me more.

I find comfort in knowledge, and ideas.  Amanda Taub's report "The Rise of American Authoritarianism" does little to assuage, but much to explain.   Citing Heathrington and Weiler, she asserts:

Their book concluded that the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.

This trend had been accelerated in recent years by demographic and economic changes such as immigration, which "activated" authoritarian tendencies, leading many Americans to seek out a strongman leader who would preserve a status quo they feel is under threat and impose order on a world they perceive as increasingly alien.

These Americans with authoritarian views, they found, were sorting into the GOP, driving polarization. But they were also creating a divide within the party, at first latent, between traditional Republican voters and this group whose views were simultaneously less orthodox and, often, more extreme. . . eventually, authoritarians would gain enough power within the GOP to make themselves heard.

At the time, even Hetherington and Weiler did not realize the explosive implications...looking back now, the ramifications of their research seem disturbingly clear.

Authoritarians are thought to express much deeper fears than the rest of the electorate, to seek the imposition of order where they perceive dangerous change, and to desire a strong leader who will defeat those fears with force. They would thus seek a candidate who promised these things. And the extreme nature of authoritarians' fears, and of their desire to challenge threats with force, would lead them toward a candidate whose temperament was totally unlike anything we usually see in American politics — and whose policies went far beyond the acceptable norms.

A candidate like Donald Trump.

The Bush-Cheney years were characterized by dog whistle jingoistic atavism built upon a sand castle shining city on the hill as the foolish lack of national self awareness.  What changed after 9/11 was not Bush and Cheney--they'd already stole the election and had the opportunity to ignore critical intelligence--but our willingness to sacrifice civil liberties under the illusion of security, despite the warnings of our earliest and greatest citizens (who we either ignore, or misappropriate, to suit our ideologies).   To say that George Bush, or even Darth Cheney, were Fascists, is hyperbolic.   To say that some Americans were "activated" into becoming Authoritarians cannot be disputed, and to say that these Authoritarians were more often than not Republicans or became Republicans as a result of 9/11.  

The same is undoubtedly true in the wake of the Obama presidency, for the same reason: Humans cannot stand ambiguity, cannot tolerate deviation from a perceived norm; that is inertia.  However, most humans can critically think, understand, and find their way to tolerance difference.  Authoritarians cannot, and feel these things more deeply.  The threats become more real, more immediate, and somebody has to do something.

Like Donald Trump.

The "Moran" above is searching, and finding, the aspirational candidate in Trump, like many of us were in Obama--somebody who is ideologically coherent, and thus, the guarantee of a country set to right.  The difference is she grew up uncritically among authoritarians in an in an emerging  (emergent?) crypto-fascist society where mass media is social media.  For many, demography determines identity and, this person, like so many others, a complex of empty signifiers of what one consumes, whether it is slogans or cola.  Capitalist ideology, taken to its logical conclusion, must become Fascist for its own survival, because Fascism is the only way to the eliminate contradictions which threatened its hegemony.   The "Moran", like so many others supporting Trump, are inseparable from that ideology, and become perfect, unquestioning Fascists, living vicariously through the wealth and privilege of someone like Trump, and applauding policies which are self-negating.

It is important to remember that this is a mis-led person, and that minds and hearts can be changed through self-reflection and critical awareness that ones humanity can, and should be separated from ideology, that we are more than empty signifiers of consumption.  I fervently hope this person experiences such a satori.

Unfortunately, it is also important to remember that this person is also a authoritarian partisan, and is actively supporting a candidate who will suppress the process by which ideologues become humans.  While she is treated as a means to an end, she understands this--all of it--as the way of the world. She is now eliminating contradictions from her view, objectifying the rest of us as enemies to be disposed of, a process of dehumanization in service of safe, coherent worldview.

In the Fascist-Authoritarian World View, even under the American Flag, it is a short hop from "Suck it Haters" to "Up Against The Wall, Mother Fucker".