1 Rule for Neo-Fascism: A Parody of Crisis and Populism:
Preamble: --Here I was, with a mounting pile of increasingly-dense tomes on structural crises1 Rule for Neo-Fascism: A Parody of Crisis and Populism:
Preamble: --Here I was, with a mounting pile of increasingly-dense tomes on structural crises (climate/ecology/geopolitical economy) which I want to unpack/make accessible, yet somehow only finding time to stare at my notes for reviewing “chaos” (ex. “Chaos and Order: Personality, Female and Male”). …Yes, Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. …I tried to convince myself it was a worthy case study because of Peterson’s reach here in Canada, where some circles which I can reach consider him synonymous with “public intellectual” and “dissident” (for contrast, I associated these terms with Chomsky when I was learning to apply critical thinking to politics: Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky). …This dragged on for a year and a review finally manifested as “1 Rule for Reactionism: An Anesthesia to Chaos”, with a punchline of “Numb yourselves to the pain of others, for you can still rise above them…”, which did help me iron out a few ideas in addition to unpacking Peterson vs. Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, and playing with fascism from below and fascism from above.
--Now a touch of serendipity: it turns out Naomi Klein, another of my early “public intellectual”/“dissident” influences (who has recently joined my favourite department at my local university) has emerged from her own rabbit-hole [emphases added]:
In my defense, it was never my intent to write this book. […] Not now—not with the literal and figurative fires roiling our planet.
[…] I told myself it was “research.” That if I was going to understand her [Naomi Klein’s doppelganger: Naomi Wolf] and her fellow travelers who are now in open warfare against objective reality, I had to immerse myself in the archive of several extremely prolific and editing-averse weekly and twice-weekly shows with names like QAnon Anonymous and Conspirituality that unpack and deconstruct the commingling worlds of conspiracy theories, wellness hucksters, and their various intersections with Covid-19 denial, anti-vaccine hysteria, and rising fascism. This on top of keeping up with the daily output from Bannon and Tucker Carlson, on whose shows Other Naomi had become a regular guest.
The Missing:
1) Contextualizing Klein’s readership: --There was certainly an initial relief in reading a familiar voice (and climate/anti-capitalist activist) detail her own misadventures researching the reactionary rabbit-hole, enough for me to consider this as my favourite Klein book. --My longstanding critique of Klein has been contradictory: a) Her reach: --Since the success of her 2000 No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Klein’s audience has expanded into the Western bubble of default liberals (with some vague Leftish sentiments, who read books… we can debate how mainstream this actually is). When you live in North America (esp. the more apolitical Canada), this is the default ideology of public education; Leftists (esp. structural critiques of capitalism) still struggle to find traction here. --If you search for accessible critiques of “capitalism” here, Klein’s 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism often appears at the top. From the context of the target audience, this is surely a success, as they would never read and contextualize something like Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. b) The impossibility of full Leftist representation: --Of course, reading reviews from comrades remind me of how those not needing Klein’s bridge (i.e. “self-respecting” oppressed groups, Leftists already reading Klein’s sources) put pressure on Klein (as one of the few bridges to more mainstream audiences). Friction can help us learn. --But of course there is no way a single person can (or should) represent all the diverse, radical views. And of course the messaging will be diluted and framed (yes, marketed) in the context for default liberals which seems inappropriate to radicals. Ex. radicals may approach this topic by centering works like black radical W.E.B. Du Bois’ “double-consciousness” (The Souls of Black Folk), which Klein mentions briefly in Ch.14. --This latest book may polarize this contradiction even more with its memoir format, given how these different groups relate to Klein’s context. Reviewing this contradiction just reminds me that my goal is synthesis. Those who already relate to Klein will of course love her writing style applied to personal details [emphasis added]:
What made it worse for me was that, with [Naomi] Wolf’s new focus on abuses of corporate and political power during states of emergency, something she touched on only briefly in The End of America, I felt like I was reading a parody ofThe Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, one with all facts and evidence carefully removed, and coming to cartoonishly broad conclusions I would never support. And while I was not yet confused with my doppelganger all that often, I knew that some people would credit me with Wolf’s theories. It was an out-of-body feeling. I went back and took a closer look at the articles about her evening-wear arrest, and a line in The Guardian jumped out at me: “Her partner, the film producer Avram Ludwig, was also arrested.”
I read the sentence to my partner, the film director and producer Avram Lewis (who goes by Avi).
“What the actual fuck?” he asked.
2) “Conspiracy” in the Western Bubble: --Before we continue, “What is Politics?” reminds me to be extra careful with political terms (“Left”, “Right”, “capitalism”, “socialism”, etc.). I define how I use “reactionary” (right-wing reaction to status quo crisis), “conservative” (conserving hierarchical traditions), “liberal” (cosmopolitan capitalism, current status quo), etc. in my Jordan Peterson review; I did not use “neo-fascism” in that review, which I’ll distinguish as follows: a) Peterson: “reactionary” to status quo (cosmopolitan capitalism) crisis, with vague hand-waving regarding “suffering” and women-chaos vs. men-order. Hence, an anesthesia to chaos. b) Steve Bannon: also “reactionary” to status quo crisis, but his right-wing nationalism is buttressed by concrete geopolitical economic/military strategy (with the historical precedence of Mussolini/Hitler), hence a new fascism (“neo-fascism”). --“conspiracy without the theory”: conspiracies (secret plots usually by the powerful to do something bad/illegal) are normal and expected given our material conditions of concentrated private powers amidst great inequality. Global capitalism’s most significant planning are all done behind closed doors of power (capitalist class of financiers/industrialists and their lobbyists; military, etc., with all their contradictions), and the public relations for their conspiracies become our political theater. What is illegality when you write the law? However, this occurs within the logic of capitalism’s structural absurdities, which need to be carefully theorized. --I’ll highlight how Klein unpacks reactionary “conspiracy theories” later. Let’s start with “conspiracy theories” in general. One check I find helpful is to take a step back and consider if the hype is from the echo-chamber of the Western/US bubble.
[…] but I laughed at America's fear Of a New World Order controllin' the hemisphere 'Cause my people been livin' that for the past 500 years
[-Immortal Technique (R.A. the Rugged Man “Who Do We Trust?”)]
--Ex. “JFK assassination conspiracy theories”: is a conspiracy possible here? Of course, but does this deserve so much attention where, if proven, will lead to some paradigm shift? I think this is mostly for those still stuck in the US political theatre, which does not represent the global community despite its oversized influence. JFK’s administration featured technocrats like Robert McNamara, who later escalated the genocidal war on Vietnam under LBJ (which included an actual false-flag conspiracy, the “Gulf of Tonkin incident”) and after became president of the World Bank to derail Global South decolonization/industrialization and get them to export cash crops and starve. --Ex. “911 Inside Job”: possible? Of course, but how much is the emphasis on the geopolitical ties with Saudi Arabia monarchy? See Paul Jay interviewing Senator Bob Graham. How much would proving an inside job actually affect the global “War on Terror”, the endless US interventions and military bases around the world, etc.? --Ex. “COVID-19 plandemic”: possible? Well, lab leak certainly, as scientific research is distorted by anti-social incentives (military industrial complex, patenting monopolization, cost-cutting outsourcing, publication bias, etc.). But “Why Vaccine Passports Equal Slavery Forever” sounds rather Hollywood (despite exploiting historical truths like the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study”) when the Global South is protesting against vaccine apartheid (i.e. Global North hoarding vaccines) because of capitalist patent monopolization (a longstanding issue with the global reach of “Big Pharma”). Even academics from liberalism have warned of contradictions promoting pandemics (ex. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance). Of course Leftists take deeper dives: Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19.
The Good:
1) Wolf’s liberal contradictions and crisis: --In The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Klein explores how global capitalism’s structural crises (note: from structural contradictions more than deliberately manufactured by individual elites) in the late 1960’s brought a state of shock which opportunists (“free market” economics of “Neoliberalism”) could exploit to dismantle the status quo (New Deal’s welfare state compromise). --Note: Varoufakis (The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy) and Hudson (Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance) focus on the geopolitical material conditions (materialism) behind the crises that drove even New Dealers in power (ex. Paul Volcker, who advised Nixon on the Nixon Shock 1971 and later committed the Volcker Shocks as chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-87) to dismantle the New Deal/unleash Wall Street’s volatility to preserve the US empire, whereas “free market” economists were more of an ideological cover. …Meanwhile, Klein’s framing focuses on the battle of ideas (idealism) where some opportunist economists (“free market” fundamentalists like Milton Friedman) took over. One constructive takeaway seems to be learning from the Right’s tactics: the Left needs to prepare ready-to-go constructive alternatives (not just deconstructive critiques) to present during opportunities. However, this requires careful analysis of the material structures/conditions of the crisis. --With the 1960’s youth radicalism being neutralized by “Neoliberalism”, we see the first appearance of Naomi Wolf in her 1990 The Beauty Myth as part of “Third-wave Feminism”. Klein notes how Wolf’s framing was to help individualist middle-class (professional/educated/“white”) women better compete with men in liberal meritocracy, thus neglecting the ongoing intersectionality critiques (intersections of class/race/gender) by Angela Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, etc. …This only escalated with Wolf’s 2nd book, 1993’s Fire with Fire: New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-First Century, a “lean in” approach to power which saw Wolf connect with the Democratic Party (Clinton/Gore). --In 2014, Wolf stepped out-of-line of the liberal status quo by speaking against Israel’s latest violence against Gaza (“1,462 Palestinian civilians were killed that summer, compared with 6 Israeli civilians; 789 Palestinian fighters were killed, compared with 67 Israeli soldiers.”), which led to “anti-Semitism” smears in mainstream media, losing her university position and getting online threats. Later, Klein examines the mirroring of the Holocaust/Israel apartheid.
For the rest of the review, see the comment section below… “2) A Vacuum for reactionary populism” “3) Bannon’s embrace and Neo-fascist strategy” “4) “Socialism or Barbarism””...more
Loading...
