Postcard Fiume 1921
I had already listed most of the incoherent elements in the Democratic Party base right here: https://clarespark.com/2012/04/06/diagnosing-potus/. Historians are all aware that jamming competing interest groups into one “community” is a symptom of authoritarian control, even proto-fascist in its determination to create harmony through coercion from above. Sadly, we are not taught about fascism’s appeal in the 1920s and 1930s, extending even to the ever-more-statist New Deal in America. And even to use the term “proto-fascist” calls down obloquy on the “hothead” critic; in this case, that hothead is I. And Christopher Hitchens, with his eagle eye for fascist ideology, is dead, while the moderate men are fearful of being labeled “extremist” in their denunciations of the obvious turn to an autocratic, illiberal regime that parades under the flag of inclusiveness—a new multicultural VOLK. (For a lucid explanation of the organic nation beloved of the far right see https://clarespark.com/2013/01/20/an-awesome-inauguration/, in which I quote Jacob Talmon’s clear explanation of that term.)
For instance, what have these occupations in common: government bureaucrats, doctors, nurses, college professors, kindergarten teachers, union bosses, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, entertainers, farmers, steel workers, single women climbing the corporate ladder, ditch diggers, domestics, and small business persons (to name a few)? Has the old antagonism between big cities and rural areas disappeared? Yet the rainbow-colored Democratic Party has absorbed them into one potentially happy family, striving together, praying together, if only we give POTUS and Mom-in-Chief the time they need to complete the Leader’s mission.
In today’s blog, I will take note of Michelle Obama’s speech, already noted by some commentators as deifying of her husband and promoting Big Government as the solution to the very survival of blacks and browns, Asians, Muslims, and single women. (I don’t include Jews because Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has been deleted from the Party platform.) Obamacare stands not only for universal health coverage, but for a caring, ever truthful watchbird State that prepares all its citizens for peace and safety and the defeat of want.
First, some history. Michelle Obama’s Princeton honors thesis was a cry for more resources devoted to separatist black studies programs at her university, and her tiny bibliography started with a book by black nationalist leaders. She was explicitly anxious about upward mobility for blacks like herself, because her ties with [the black community] would be attenuated.
The First Lady has made a remarkable adjustment from the days when she was definitely not proud of her country and its white-dominated elite institutions. Last night was a paean to a unified polity if it would only stay on the track the Democratic Party had laid down– the first, “first family”–a new people’s community, a plumped up “middle class” devoted to the health and welfare of racial minorities, women, children, and the poor. All are indebted to The Leader, a man of the People who intuits their every need, and who takes note of every fallen sparrow, and if necessary, would be justified in ruling by decree.
She did not have to name the “one percent” as the enemy of the renewed beloved community, for thousands of ideologues had already prepared the ground for that moniker. We all know who and what the enemy is: those Randian Wall Street big liars out to get the little guy (“the middle class”) and who are pouring their ill-gotten billions into Republican coffers. Populism was Hitler’s ticket to power, and don’t forget it.
[Illustrated: poet and journalist Gabriele D’Annunzio, sometimes viewed as a precursor to Mussolini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d’Annunzio).]
The Clare Spark Blog 
[…] As I have written before here, it was social democrats that distanced themselves from fascism, by mischievously equating communism and fascism/Nazism. Social democrats (today, the left-wing of the Democratic Party in America) disguise their own statism by declaring themselves anything but “totalitarian.” But insofar as they copy the organic nationalism that enabled fascism, or impose a multicultural, covertly racist, discourse in public space, the social democrats may be viewed, as I do, as proto-fascist. (See https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community/.) […]
Pingback by Fascism: what it is, what it is not | YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — April 21, 2013 @ 10:38 pm |
Dear Clare: I read your proto-fascim piece and as many of the embedded links in it that I had time for (in addition to “About Clare Spark”), and your site is a significant discovery, and one I shall be passing around to my own readers. What I found of special interest were two articles on Bill Ayers’ influence on American education and the Common Core scam. I am a published novelist and regular columnist for Rule of Reason, Family Security Matters, and other pro-freedom weblogs. Look me up on Amazon Books.
Comment by Edward Cline — April 20, 2013 @ 8:36 pm |
the “one percent”…that’s an incredibly powerful political meme. It seems so obvious, but I’m not sure I ever heard it framed that way (i.e., the “enemy” statistically defined) before Occupy Wall Street came along. (And let’s not forget that behind OWS was AdBusters, a group animated by antisemitism.) Now the “concept,” that is those in the top 1% of income and/or wealth, the rent-seeking exploiters, vs everybody else, the hardworking “middle class,” is firmly established and there for exploitation by populists. Does the “1%” meme have a longer pedigree than I realize? (I don’t imagine that it is truly novel, but I do wonder if it ever infiltrated and influenced public discourse in the way that it has since OWS made it part of their sloganeering and the media repeated it over and over again.)
Comment by dcdoc — March 14, 2013 @ 2:07 am |
To dcdoc, 19th century radicalism was generally antisemitic. See for instance the journalist who influenced Lenin, J. A. Hobson, quoted here: https://clarespark.com/2009/09/18/bad-sex-in-the-new-york-times/. There is a great deal of populism in the canonical leftist texts.
Comment by clarespark — March 14, 2013 @ 2:11 am |
I wasn’t suggesting there was anything new to populism or that the Left and antisemitism were at all new to each other. (see From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, Jews, and Israel by Robert Wistrich) I was asking whether there was any novelty to this “one percent” business, that is identifying the “enemy of the people” on a statistical basis, saying they are those in the top 1%ile, whether by income or wealth, and using it for sloganeering purposes, as OWS has so brilliantly done with the “One Percent” crapola.
Comment by dcdoc — April 20, 2013 @ 9:11 pm
I agree dcdoc. The one percent meme was a brilliant ploy by anticapitalists of all stripes.
Comment by clarespark — April 20, 2013 @ 10:11 pm
[…] socialist or proto-fascist (see https://clarespark.com/2013/01/20/an-awesome-inauguration/, also https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community/). If Citizen Obama has his way, political pluralism will give way to one party dictatorship, […]
Pingback by Citizen Obama, political pluralism and the elusive search for Unity « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — February 13, 2013 @ 5:06 pm |
[…] of “the little man” whom they held responsible for his popular appeal. (For examples, see https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community/, https://clarespark.com/2009/12/13/klara-hitlers-son-and-jewish-blood/, […]
Pingback by Orwell, Power, and the Totalitarian State « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — October 15, 2012 @ 9:28 pm |
[…] https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community/ […]
Pingback by Index to blogs on populist demagoguery « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — September 10, 2012 @ 6:29 pm |
[…] arguments, for the Leader has jammed together persons and groups with conflicting interests (see https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community/). Republican opponents, meanwhile, are demonized as “splitters” who, in their devotion to […]
Pingback by Charisma and Symbolic Politics « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — September 7, 2012 @ 6:22 pm |
Clare and her above post expostulate exactly what “Democrats” really are, and how they operate. They don’t understand anything other government “service”, perpetual class warfare, envy, division and racial strife. They see no need for anything else. What else is there, for them? What else should there be?
Detesting the middle class, and detesting small business and free enterprise is in their DNA. They are brought up with this. They are baffled by the very existence of the Republican party. Republicans stand for limited government, and for the rule of law. Why would Democrats want that? Democrats do not want governance by rule of law; they want to rule, period.
Somehow, their totalitarian, welfare statist plans and agendas need to be stopped, and for good, and not permitted to return. The perilous, last hour of this country is upon us.
Comment by Michael Durham — September 7, 2012 @ 1:48 pm |
[…] and https://clarespark.com/2010/04/05/is-potus-crazy/, and https://clarespark.com/2012/09/05/proto-fascism-and-the-democrat-peoples-community/. especially the sentence in bold face type: “It is conceivable to me that Obama’s family […]
Pingback by Diagnosing POTUS « YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — September 5, 2012 @ 10:21 pm |