Alt Left: The Chameleon-Like Nature of Fascism

I wrote this in objection to a paper under review right now on Academia by a Left professor of Somatic Psychology, a PhD and a very smart man, who quotes Wilhelm Reich, a Jewish pro-sex and anti-fascist writer, as saying that fascists are out of touch with their bodies. Presumably antifascists are in touch with their bodies and not repressed. Apparently sexual repression and being out of touch with your body is part of the genesis of fascism. I don’t agree. Here is my response, in part.

I think that quoting Reich on fascism is not the greatest idea. He’s not the best person to ask about fascist theory. The modern intellectual descendants of Reich (the Cultural Left) don’t have a very good view of fascism.

Further, Reich was an extreme sexual libertine who may have molested his sister and raped his maids as a boy. Reich’s sexual libertinism was rejected by all Communists in the last century and is still condemned in existing Communist countries. So Reich’s critique is ill-formed, as the Communists were just as bad as the fascists when it came to Reich’s libertinism.

Fascists are sexually repressed? I don’t know. I’ve run into some MAGA women lately who are ridiculously libertine to the point of being degenerate or depraved. They’re about this far from becoming out and out porn stars. Yet fascists they are. A friend used to be an actor in the porn industry. He told me that the industry is full of conservatives. I’m aware of a few pornstars who were basically White Supremacists.

Donald Trump’s fascism was nearly a “pornographic fascism.” He cavorted with pornstars, cheated on all of his wives, made lewd remarks about his own daughter and the teenage underage daughters of his friends, reportedly attended sex orgies, and may have raped a 13 year old girl and forced a 12 and 13 year old girl to have sex with each other. He’s as libertine as Reich, yet he’s a fascist.

Better definitions are coming out of serious scholars of the Left. There area number of modern scholars who are trying to pin down exactly what fascism is. Almost all are operating from the Left. Among these superb modern theorists of fascism are David Neiwert who blogs at Daily Kos, the authors of a blog called Three Way Fight (not sure if it’s still up), along with excellent political scientists working out of the universities.

Better older analyses of fascism also come from Lenin and especially from Trotsky, who wrote some of the best essays on fascism ever written.

A “popular dictatorship against the Left” seems to be the best definition. “Palingetic nationalism” is another, referring to the bird that rises from the ashes in mythology. Fascism appeals to “the everyman,” “the man on the street” – “the shirtless ones” of Peronist fame. That’s the appeal – to your “basic man” and “basic woman.” It also appeals to strong primitive drives of aggression, violence, projection of failures onto outsiders, expansionism, often imperialism, an opposition to liberalism and democracy. It also opposes equality and in favor of hierarchy.

Fascism involves a reverence for sacred violence bordering on the religious, a worship of “the greatness of the ancestors,” a dialogue to restore “the glory days of yore” from the ruins of the “degenerate present”, ruined by liberals, democracy, anti-nationals, nation-haters, and traitors.

Fascism has historically supported a return to traditional values and a rejection of degenerate modernism, but as we can see in the “pornographic fascism” of Donald Trump, that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

Fascism also always advocated a return to traditional male female role models, but that need to be a hindrance to basic equal de jure rights for women, as seen in the many successful MAGA women and the many often-religious MAGA men who love and cherish their wives.

Fascism has typically targeted minorities and has been racist. People think that fascism is inherently anti-Semitic, yet many early Zionists such as Jabotinsky were open fascists and supported the fascist movement in Europe. Some of the early Israeli guerrillas were Jabotinskist fascists.

I’d argue that Israel has been fascist from Day One, but certainly with the coming of Sharon and Netanyahu, the ideological descendants of Jabotinskyist fascism, Israel became literally a fascist country. Jacobinsky is the hero and spiritual founder of the Likud Party. He was an early Zionist who wrote a book in 1921 called The Iron Wall. He and his followers were strong supporters of the fascist parties in Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s. Some of the early Zionist guerrilla organizations were Jabotinskyist fascists.

In Lebanon, the Gemayalist Phalangists named after a general named Gemayal, are an actual literal fascist party. Even their name is fascist as phalange is a popular name for fascist parties. They are Christian Maronites who see themselves as transplanted Europeans, descendants of “Phoenicians,” who despise Arabs and Islam. They are also the most pro-Israel party in Lebanon. This founder of this party had photos of Hitler in his school locker when he was in high school and the party’s ideology is modeled on the classic European fascism of the 30’s.

Israeli fascism is not anti-Semitic at all, and many White Supremacists actually support Israel as the model for the racist state they wish to set up. Many dislike Jews in the Diaspora who are seen as anti-national, but have no problem with the fascist Jews in Israel and see them as fellow fascists.

A number of the anti-immigrant Right parties in Europe are pro-Israel, including the National Front in France, the AfD in Germany, and the neo-Nazi party in Austria! They often like Israel because of its strong anti-Muslim orientation. Along the same lines, the Muslim-hating Hindu nationalist fascists ruling India in the form of the BJP party, are very pro-Israel.

The pro-fascist Spanish and Italian conservatives, remnants of former large fascist movements in those countries, are pro-Israel. The fascist Saudis, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Moroccans, and Ermiratis are now pro-Israel. They’ve always been Rightists so it’s no surprise. So philosemitic fascism is absolutely possible and even existing.

Arab nationalists have always been quite fascist despite their Leftist trappings. Saddam was a fascist, as was Hafez Assad. Some think Bashar Assad is a fascist. The North African leaders, all Arab Nationalists, were fascists in the sense that they tried to destroy the Berbers’ identity and make everyone into an Arab. The Assads and Saddam also attacked Kurds and Assyrians, in both cases in attempts to turn everyone into an Arab. Saddam also attacked Turkmen. And he discriminated against Iraqis of Iranian background in the South so much that he threw hundreds of thousands of them out of the country.

The Moroccan fascists are even expansionists, having invaded Spanish Sahara. The Indonesian fascists committed genocide in East Timor and Aceh and in the entire country against Communists when they unleashed a genocide in 1965 that murdered 1 million Communist in less than a couple of months. It was as bad as the Rwandan genocide.

All of these are examples of “Muslim fascists,” so fascism and Islam are quite compatible.

There seems to be a view in the West that fascism must be White Supremacist and of course it must be anti-Semitic.

None of the above were White Supremacists. They were all non-Whites, and none were self-haters.

Also as you can see above, fascism need not be anti-Semitic.

I also listed a number of fascist and anti-Islamic movements, rightwing dictatorships along with the post-fascist conservatives in Spain and Italy. The former fascist followers of Mussolini and Franco simply melted into the rightwing movements of both countries. In Spain it was the Conservative Party, a party with fascist roots.The Francoists simply changed clothes and melted into the Conservative Party. Francoism is still extremely popular, mostly in the form of anti-separatism, these days. I’ve been to their very popular websites.

Burlusconi in Italy has inherited the descendants of fascism in Italy. A fascist and racist separatist and somewhat White Supremacist movement has formed in Northern Italy. They are White Supremacists in the sense that  they claim the are Celts or “pure Whites” and they despise Southern Italians as de facto “niggers.”

A friend in Italy told me that fascism was still very popular in Italy to this very day, although it was also widely hated as the Left in Italy is often Far Left or almost Communist. There are cities in Sicily were the leftwingers are all Communists and the rightwingers are all fascists. They engage in street battles all the time.

My friend told me that the Red Brigades, an anti-fascist Far Left group of Communists that attacked the state, was extremely popular in Northern Italy, particularly in Vicenzia Province where he lived. His sister was a strong supporter of the Red Brigades, and she came from a normal middle class background in Trieste.

Fascism is said to be anti-Muslim, yet we have Islamic fascism in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Morocco, and probably the Taliban in Afghanistan. Turkey and Azerbaijan are classic fascists of the 1930’s type, however they have married this to Ottoman imperialism and Islamic jihadism, particularly the genocidal variety that held sway in Turkey from 1880 until 1940.

That the Taliban are a new sort of fascism was an argument of the Leftists at Three Way Fight. I’m not sure I agree with that. Other Muslim fascists used to rule in Indonesia,  Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran. Above I listed more Muslim fascists in the Arab World, who might better be described as rightwing dictatorships.

Fascism is chameleon-like and changes shape endlessly to mirror and capture whatever times it is in. I can even see chameleon-like fascists adopting yoga, meditation, and bodywork, the “Left” body psychology mechanisms the author refers to. Hitler was a vegetarian and a good animal rights supporter, if terrible in so many other ways.

This aspect of fascism of what makes this political mercury blob so hard to pin down. Indeed, many fascists pose as anti-Nazis and anti-fascists and accuse anti-fascists of being fascists! I’ve seen this with my own eyes.

Problem is the Modern Left starts talking about fascism, and it immediately degenerates into propaganda and nonsense where we push views that line up whatever biases our Left formation is pushing du jour. The Cultural Left, which is almost devoid of intelligence or intellectual honesty of any sort, in particular cannot be relied upon, as almost everything coming out of there is propaganda and a lie in some form or another. For instance, the Cultural Left argues that White Supremacists, anti-feminists (or what feminists would call misogynists), homophobes, and transphobes are all “fascists.”

That’s utter nonsense as none of this Identity Stuff has anything to do with the Left in the first place, as the Left is only about economics and many Communists of the last century were in fact social conservatives described under the epithets above. Many of the antifascist fighters fighting in the Allies in World War 2 were White Supremacists, racists (in particular, racist against Blacks), “misogynists” (or at the very least strong sexists), and virulent homophobes. Trannies didn’t exist back then, but they would have been hated much worse than gays.

The very racist White Southern Democrats of that time absolutely despised Hitler, Mussolini, and the rest of the European fascists along with the Japanese, who were promoting a sort of “fascist militarism.”

The Cultural Left would have us believe that Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hoxha, Deng, Ho Chi Minh, the Bulgarian Communists, etc. were all fascists because they were social conservatives. Homosexuality was banned as a bourgeois vice in the Eastern Blog. The Shining Path executed homosexuals and cocaine abusers (another bourgeois vice). The Khmer Rogue were terribly racist. I don’t think anyone will deny that they were Communists.

Even Strasserites are Communists, granted they were odd ones. Further, Strasser had no biological race-based objection to Jews. He had an economic objection. And he wasn’t the best anti-Semite. He kept asking the others why they were so overboard on the Jewish Question.

Stalin wasn’t the best on women’s rights.

The Bulgarian Communists had opinions on race that would be considered Nazism nowadays.

As noted, homosexuality was banned in all of the Communist World. Castro put them in labor camps. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation even today doesn’t have the best policy on gays nor on Jews for that matter. I’m pretty sure they are Communists.

Trans people were not even acknowledged by any Communist country ever.

We have to completely rethink our view of fascism.

It is perfectly possible to have a libertine fascism in a porn-drenched society, which is what we just went through with Trump. MAGA folks are not repressed at all in my observation. They’re not out of touch with their bodies. The Sex Revolution of the 60’s which I was a part of took care of that.

MAGA fascism even allowed for equal rights for women. MAGA women do not appear to be discriminated against legally. A lot of them made a lot of money and held high positions.

Fascism has always been homophobic, yet the Nazi brownshirts were full of homosexuals, and I’ve talked to many gay MAGA types.

I assure you that there are gay MAGA folks. I’ve talked to a number of them. Mitch McConnell is a lifelong homosexual. He’s as fascist as they come. The first brownshirts were full of homosexuals. The Republican Convention welcomed an open fascist, the founder of Ebay, to their convention. They gave him a standing ovation.

I’m aware of Neo-Nazis to this day who are open homosexuals. James O’Meara was one. A number of White Supremacists have been outed as closeted gays. One was murdered by his young Black boyfriend. A friend used to be involved in these groups and he told me that was a LOT of homosexuality in this scene.

Brazilian fascist integralism was multi-racial and formally anti-racist, populist to the core. But Bolsonaro does not come from this milieu; he represents an actual throwback in some ways to classical European fascism of the 1930’s.

Fascism has traditionally been racist, but Black and Indian fascism is a real thing. I believe that fascism knows no color. The Tonton Macoutes of Haiti were black fascists. The Black Hutu government in Rwanda was fascist, as was Mobutu in Zaire and Samuel Doe in Liberia.

A fascist indigenist Indian rights activist is running for President in Ecuador. He’s pulled support from Cultural Left morons who support his Identity Politics while overlooking his fascism, a typical error of IP types, who are the a scourge of the Left.

Obviously modern fascism opposes transsexualism, but that’s not necessarily the case into the future. Caitlin Jenner, a fully-transitioned transwoman, is MAGA.

In the future we may see even forms of fascism that offer equal rights to gays and maybe even transsexuals.

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15 thoughts on “Alt Left: The Chameleon-Like Nature of Fascism”

  1. WWII era Japanese seem like the purest form of Fascism. I think East Asians may be the ideal Communists and Fascists. The true Orthodox Jewish ideology is against Israel. Most Germanics hate Nazis. Italians may be the most sympathetic to Fascism of European Whites but today are more into wine-sipping leisure than marching legions.

  2. In politics there is a vertical and a horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension is about the relations between the top dogs and the underdogs, and the horizontal dimension is about the relations between our breed of dogs and other breeds. To fascists, the horizontal dimension is more important than the vertical.

    That could be good news for the underdogs, except that the weak underdogs will be seen as detrimental to the group because they undermine its strength. In the Hitlerjugend, boys and girls of all classes were welcome, but they tended to shun the weak. Fascism is not individualistic but collectivist. It will therefore be intolerant to those who are different and hostile to those who cannot contribute anything to the collective.

    In a way, a fascist country is like an army. In an army there is cohesion, solidarity, uniformity, and hierarchy, but the army rejects the unfit. There is a difference protecting the well-being of all members of the group and enhancing the strength of the group.

    Let’s take a school class. Some of the pupils are not getting passing marks. If we seek to attend to the well-being of all classmates, then tutoring will be offered to those pupils who are getting failing grades. That would be like social democracy. If our aim is to increase the average marks of the class, then the best option is simply to eliminate the worst-performing pupils. That would be fascism.

  3. The Religious Right like the evangelicals were probably more repressed than Trump supporters ever were, even though there is overlap. The old Religious Right were often types who objected to Rock and Roll devil music, whereas the typical Trump supporter was nowhere near so morally or religiously inhibited.

    That’s Trump’s big accomplishment. He effectively ended the domination of mainstream conservatism and the Republican Party by the alliance of values-evangelicals and corporate libertarians. They still have their place in the Right, but the mojo now is with populism.

    Back in 2015-16, when Trump was still a candidate, you could see this shift in the comment section of Breitbart. Before Trump, questioning neoliberal economics and Reaganism was heresy in those parts. But almost instantaneously, the comment sections under Breitbart articles were filled up with thousands to tens of thousands of comments lauding the idea of populist economics. The old corporate conservatives didn’t know what the Hell hit them.

    Same for the evangelicals. Suddenly the comment sections were no longer filled with the usual talking points and a comments with a much more rowdy tone had replaced them. Whereas the Corporate and Evangelical Right were uptight and snooty, the MAGA crowd were like a biker gang: loud yahoos whom the former sorts traditionally considered beyond the pale, and in many cases still do, especially among the Corporate Right.

    On a general note, fascists are probably less inhibited and much more in touch with nature in general than Enlightenment-spawned groups like old school liberals, conservatives, socialists, and communists. The whole postmodern revolt against the Enlightenment seems to be based on a yearning for pre-modern or neofeudal social and cultural forms. Postmodernism is really pre-modernism. They want to return to natural tribalism, the state of blood frenzy when one’s enemies are smited, sexual liberation, and all the rest.

    Fascism is one form of this postmodern or anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment, even anti-Christianity (or against religious strictures in general) sort of cultural push that’s been going on for quite a while.

    Today’s progressives are often more prudish than today’s fascists are.

  4. Just to follow up on my statement that the Trump insurrection of 2015-16 knocked the uptight corporate and religious conservatives out of the center on Breitbart. Well, there’s more to it, though that’s the gist.

    Breitbart, for years, along with other sites, had struck a populist pose just like the Tea Party had around 2010, but all the populist rhetoric stayed with carefully constructed lines, to ensure people didn’t start thinking things that went against the corporate and religious elites. So union bashing was good, and questioning right to work laws was bad, while the thought leaders of these sites offered a kind of false revolutionary populism.

    When Trump ran, that model blew up. Yes, the Traditional Right has been trying to repair it or get it back to the extent that they can, and they still have a voice and power, but the overall trend now is decidedly against them on the Right. It’s moving in the direction of a general distrust and hatred for the system to the extent that many on the right are mocking the police and military as enemies of the common people.

    Also, I stated that postmodernism rejects the strictures imposed by both religion and the Enlightenment. Well, religion and the Enlightenment are at odds, since Enlightenment thinkers were very critical of religion, but they did agree on the need for morality. Both sides were moralists and universalists.

    Postmodern movements however are anti-universalist and instead particularist and are either opposed to the idea of morality altogether (and are either anti-moral or amoral) or they are against traditional morality but highly moralistic in favor of another version (e.g. the BLM movement).

    Basically, postmodernists, whether professors, antifa, BLM, Nazis, or just regular people with a lot of postmodern leanings, don’t want to be told what to do, at least by the traditional authorities. Some are anti-authority altogether, and others hate traditional authority and want a new one or they want to be the authorities and impose their ways on others.

  5. Hmm, a rich guy cheating on his wives? Well, that’s forgivable, considering he’s rich. A poor guy cheating? Might be a different matter.

  6. On the topic of bad government, what’s your take on the Uyghur situation in China? Is it as bad as the main stream media claims or just more neoliberal propaganda to maintain their current Cold War with China?

    1. Is it as bad as the main stream media claims

      No.

      or just more neoliberal propaganda to maintain their current Cold War with China?

      Yes, although it’s hard to get good information out of there.

          1. These are two good articles:

            https://time.com/5662653/democracy-history-latin-america/

            https://www.neogaf.com/threads/coups-and-coup-attempts-in-latin-american-countries-are-mainly-a-rightwing-thing.1510438/

            Why are Latin American societies so easy to subvert? An ongoing cycle of coups and corruption is only possible when the populace embraces the underlying justifications for it. Colonialism in these countries was mainly via Spain and Portugal, both of which strongly believed in a unified religious-political government.

            Unlike territories colonized by the English and French in N. America, these nations did not begin to distinguish between State power and Religious power until much later in the nation’s history (if at all), making them far more susceptible to rightwing movements that took advantage of this blind spot.

            So within this cultural environment, it would make sense that rightwing movements aiming to “reunify” the powers of State and Church would easily gain the support of the populace. The promise of a return to an age of moral government rule seems to be a recurring theme in these right-wing takeovers.

          2. The majority of the people almost never support any of those rightwing coups down there. It’s minority rule down there just like up here. The rich minority has the guns and the power, so they don’t need majority support for anything. The coup regimes in Haiti since Aristide’s departure have been opposed by 92% of the population. You think it matters?

  7. A huge part of the problem in Latin America (as with Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy) is the power of Catholicism and the Catholic Church, a far more oppressive force and culturally backward influence than many of the other religions regularly castigated on this site.

    1. Tom Phillips these are two good articles about the problems in Latin America. The first essay is a good explanation of the root cause of inequality in the region; it is about 30 pages but it is not too long of a read. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=6DFA35D07C11F71001C5B1999AFBEAFB?doi=10.1.1.565.1033&rep=rep1&type=pdf

      The second article is shorter but it explains the old arguments of morality, Christianity, and the essential correctness of postcolonial racial and social stratification
      https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/holy-war-latin-americas-far-right

      I hope you read them both and would like your comments.

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