Greece: "Fascism is the extreme perversion of liberalism"

[ellenrr]

"Fascism is the extreme perversion of liberalism"

"Greece’s corrupt corporate and political elite can once again play its favorite trump card: the country is descending into chaos, left and right are battling for control over the streets, and so a broad alliance of the “responsible center” is the only thing that can save democracy from the imminent threat of civil war. This narrative of the “two extremes” — also known as the horseshoe theory — is the most sinister myth facing Greece today. In reality, it is nothing but a strategy of tension that serves to obscure the violent extremism of the center that is truly ripping the country apart.

it wasn’t Golden Dawn that created concentration camps for immigrants, criminalized HIV and tortured handcuffed detainees — it was the successive governments of the center-left and center-right that did that. They have been doing it for decades and no one in Europe ever seemed to care.

Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros told Paul Mason that “there is already civil war”:
Greek society is ready — even though no-one likes this — to have a fight: a new type of civil war. On the one side there will be nationalists like us, and Greeks who want our country to be as it used to be, and on the other side illegal immigrants, anarchists and all those who have destroyed Athens several times.

Apart from the obvious point that the centrist elite undermined democracy a long time ago, the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset already showed back in 1970 that the horseshoe theory of political extremism is simply nonsense. Fascism, Lipset observed, is in fact the extremism of the center. Rather than the far-left and far-right bending off from the center and approaching one another in their violent means and authoritarian ends, fascism is actually the extremist perversion of liberalism, with which it shares a great aversion for the emancipatory struggles of the poor and excluded, as well as the political goal of bringing the disaffected middle class back into power."

more at:
http://roarmag.org/2013/09/golden-dawn-myth-two-extremes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28ROAR+Magazine%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

[JaneyVee]

1. A sociologist that doesn't know what liberalism or fascism is.

Unless it means something totally different in Greece. Golden Dawn are the fascists.

[abelenkpe]

2. No it is not. Fascism is corporatism

And is an expression of far right ideology.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. I would agree with the OP to an extent.

In the US we have our bank bailouts. This occurred under the auspices of a Democrat controlled congress and WH. Yes, Bush started it but our party went along for the ride and has done nothing of practical worth to end it or hold the crooks accountable. Worse, they told us we had to do SOMETHING so we had to do this thing!

Now we have a situation where not only has our government stolen our money to bailout people who lost even more of our money. This is a travesty now reaching into the TRILLIONS of dollars. Those corporations are now free from prosecution. They are free to do it again. They are free to take all that money and buy their agenda. The politicians that perpetrated this travesty are effectively co-conspirators who are hide-bound to see the scheme through to a successful conclusion. Nevermind the fact it cannot work according to the theories of any economic model, they will continue their error out of fear of the truth becoming manifest on their watch. In other words, our supposedly Democratic reps did what they thought was in our best interest (assuming they genuinely cared) but ended-up selling us down the river.

THAT is fascism.

[MNBrewer]

3. Fascism is capitalism plus murder. — Upton Sinclair

From the article. Excellent quote.

[BOG PERSON]

5. fascism was a lot of things

but on paper, fascism was utopian socialism's bastard child

http://x-gaming.no-ip.biz/local/backup/pending/downloads/Pol%20&%20Society%20-%20Rizescu/Readings/13_Sternhell%20-%20%20Antimaterialist%20revision%20of%20Marxism.pdf

[malaise]

6. No it's a marriage between corporate authoritarianism, greedy corrupt poiticians and

extreme capitalism.

[kenny blankenship]

7. Sadly, a lot of people here have no idea what "liberalism" in polisci & history means

They think it means "what I am", more or less. Of course it doesn't. It has a specific historical content of which they are ignorant, but that can't be helped. The article therefore will meet with blank stares and moronic outrage.

[Posteritatis]

12. Yep. Gotta love it when people don't recognize discipline-specific terms of art. (nt)

[socialist_n_TN]

8. I actually agree with this premise to an extent......

Fascism is a petit bourgeois movement that's a reaction to the lack of order in a society and especially in the economics of a society. And liberals are mostly found among the petit bourgeoisie.

The petit bourgeoisie don't have the kind of capital padding that the grande bourgeoisie do, so they must have that order in economics to earn their living. Quite frankly, as a class, they don't care which of the more influential classes (the big bourgeoisie, influential because of ownership or the proletariat, influential because of numbers) bring about that order. IOW, they will support either until they prove they can't supply economic order. Fascism will also bring in disaffected and bigoted elements of the proletariat and the lumpen proletariat (usually as shock troops) of course, but at heart it's a petit bourgeois movement. However being a petit bourgeois movement doesn't mean that a segment of the big bourgeoisie doesn't also support the fascist movement with money and organization. in fact, that usually happens because the big bourgeoisie want order too and ESPECIALLY if the proles are getting too uppity and if they (the grande bourgeoisie) feel they're facing MUCH higher taxes or even worse, expropriation of assets. Even though supporting the fascists means giving up some of their societal power, the owners always think they can control the fascists and take back that power they gave up to solve the crisis at some point in the near future.

Greece is a textbook example of this. It's further along the road to a pre-revolutionary situation than any other European country and the economy is a shambles because of the austerity enforced by the Trioka. Strikes are common and neither the government nor the capitalists can ameliorate the situation for the average Greek. But neither can the working class because there's no working class party ready to take power. Ergo the rise of Golden Dawn. Also GD underwent a rapid expansion a few years ago, opening offices across the country all at once, which implies backing by a sector of big money, probably the shipbuilders. As I said, textbook.

And liberals in the final analysis will ALWAYS side with the fascists to save capitalism before they will side with workers to overthrow capitalism. Greece is to, or almost to, that point where you have to make the choice. Join the fascists to save the system or join the workers to overthrow it.

[leftstreet]

13. +1 They'll 'save capitalism before they'll overthrow it'

Indeed

That 'spectre' of that choice is 'haunting' more and more of the elite

[LWolf]

9. "Liberal" and "liberalism" are a deceptive terms.

"social liberals" and "social liberalism" are not the same thing as "economic liberals" and "economic liberalism." Not the same thing at all.

[struggle4progress]

10. content-free self-important abstract-nonsense: blah blah blah blah blah.

[dairydog91]

11. Is that a description of your post?

[struggle4progress]

16. The article, from a "revolutionary" website, is thoroughly incoherent: on the one hand,

it suggests that the "ruling elite" is "wilfully breeding a climate of civil war" in order to maintain power (which might be true, for all I know) -- and then, on the other hand, having discussed ongoing problems of political street violence and political murder, the article claims centrism, rather than political extremism, is the real source of problems

Such a claim might sound "smart" in some ears, but it's not really an analysis: it's just a form of "radical chic." It is possible, of course, to hold the view that revolution is appropriate in some circumstances -- and even possible to hold the view that revolution is necessary in a particular definite place and time

But when one chooses to advocate a particular revolution, one then has (I think) a moral OBLIGATION to base the advocacy on a very detailed and careful analysis -- which is not the case in this article: the analysis in this article is just bullshit, that fucks up people's thinking

[Cal Carpenter]

14. I think a lot of people here need to read up on what Liberalism is in political theory

outside the common partisan usage in the US.

Just looking up 'Classical Liberalism' on wiki is a start. It is a right-wing economic ideology. It is not a reference to opinions on social issues.

Think NAFTA and TPP, not gay rights and abortion. For example.

[socialist_n_TN]

15. Yep. Which is WHY liberals side with fascists in revolutionary and pre-revolutionary........

situations. Of course, nominal "liberals" can also trend left and side with the proletarians too. But then they are no longer "liberals", they're socialists or communists.

[ellenrr]

17. and read Chris Hedges, death of the liberal class

[Recursion]

18. Isn't the editorial that "fascism is the extreme perversion of centrism"?

That's a very different message.

[TBF]

19. You are quoting the title while the OP

is quoting a paragraph from the article:

Fascism, Lipset observed, is in fact the extremism of the center. Rather than the far-left and far-right bending off from the center and approaching one another in their violent means and authoritarian ends, fascism is actually the extremist perversion of liberalism, with which it shares a great aversion for the emancipatory struggles of the poor and excluded, as well as the political goal of bringing the disaffected middle class back into power.