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The
Rise of Yuppie Fascism, Part One
February
5, 2002
by Jack Rabbit
Bernard Weiner ran a piece on the web site Common Dreams
last December called "Talkin'
about the F-Word." The F-word in question is fascism;
Professor Weiner's problem is his reluctance to use it in
relation to the Bush administration "because so many on the
Left fling that term so carelessly that it soon loses it truth-punch."
However, Weiner expresses concern about a "near-fascism" that
is fast closes in on us.
The phrase "near-fascism" that Weiner uses is another reason
why he and others like him, including the present writer,
have an aversion to it. The Bush administration has many similarities
- too many - to fascism, but also some important differences.
Is this a new phenomenon, too new as yet to be identified
with a name? Actually, no: there are European parallels to
the Bush administration and to the elements of the Republican
Party to which Mr. Bush is closely allied. The phenomenon
has been given the name "post-fascism" by some scholars.
However, the term is awkward for two reasons. First, it is
time-oriented and invites one to wonder, if post-fascism is
to become a thing of the past and is soon replace by a new
variant if that newer form would be called "post-post-fascism."
Second, the term "post-fascist" could mean the political phenomenon
to be discussed here, or it could mean Italian society in
the late forties. As it happens, an epithet applied to Jorg
Haider, the Austrian leader who is an adherent to this kind
of political ideology, provides a more descriptive name in
that it associates the ideology with the type of social being
to which it attempts to appeal: yuppie fascism.
This is not to imply that all upwardly mobile urban professionals
are fascists. However, many contemporary middle- and upper-income
professionals, although not most, are imbued with a sense
of that they are entitled by virtue of their social position
and status to certain civic rights that they would deny to
others. These people provide the backbone of the phenomenon
we shall call yuppie fascism.
In this two-part series, we will examine the new phenomenon
of yuppie fascism. This week, we shall look at the origins
and the theory of yuppie fascism.
Most scholars will point to Italy in the years immediately
following World War I as the time and place where classic
fascism was born. Benito Mussolini is its father, not only
in the sense that he lead the movement to political victory
but in that he helped to conceive it as a coherent political
ideology. Writing for the Italian Encyclopedia in 1932, Mussolini,
with the assistance of Giovanni Gentile, outlined the principles
of fascism.
He stated that fascism: (1) renounces pacifism as cowardly
and embraces war as the activity that "brings up to its highest
tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility on
the peoples who have the courage to meet it;" (2) is opposed
to Marxism in that fascism rejects class warfare as the principle
dynamic of history and substitutes for this the concepts of
"holiness" and "heroism", by which Mussolini meant "actions
influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect"; (3)
renounces socialism, democracy or any other ideology that
believes that "a majority, by the simple fact that it is a
majority, can direct human society and embraces instead "the
immutable, beneficial and fruitful inequality of mankind,
which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation
of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage"; (4) recognizes
the State as absolute "in comparison to which all individuals
or groups are relative, only to be conceive of in their relation
to the state" and also conceives of the State as the institution
that organizes the nation; (5) embraces the principle of the
expansion of the nation as "an essential manifestation of
vitality."
An important part of Mussolini's plan was what he called
the "corporate
state." This played into Mussolini's anti-Marxist theories
in that class warfare would be resolved in state-run corporations
which would be privately owned but under government control.
Workers would receive some benefits they did not receive previously,
such as holidays with pay and social security, but in exchange
they gave up the right to strike; conversely, corporations
were prohibited from locking out workers in labor disputes.
In fact, the labor unions were controlled by the state. The
state set production quotas for the corporations. In this
way, the corporation was subordinate to the state.
Mussolini and his fascist state fell ingloriously in 1945.
Fascism was in disrepute all over the world and survived in
rare instances, such as Franco's Spain. However, fascism at
some grass roots level, it never completely vanished. The
term neo-fascist or neo-Nazi has often been used to describe
Europe's disaffected jack-booted youth expressing hatred of
non-European immigrants and an admiration for Hitler. However,
this element has chosen to work outside the established political
system.
As a parallel to the new Hitler youth, right-wing political
parties rose in Europe's political establishment. Fascism
was bound to resurrect as a political force in some form sooner
or later. Notable right-wing political parties have been the
National Front in France, led by Jean-Marie
LePen, and the Freedom Party in Austria, led by Jorg
Haider. These parties offered voters a platform based
largely on resentment of immigration with some relatively
mild anti-semitism sprinkled in. Ironically, anti-semitism
may be a stumbling block for politicians such as LePen and
Haider. Speaking of LePen, the Anti-Defamation League says:
"While public opinion polls do not reflect explicit agreement
by large proportions of respondents with LePen's bigoted language,
they do show substantial support for his broader nationalist
themes. Thus, a recent poll shows 30 percent of respondents
agreeing with LePen's positions on "defending traditional
values"; 26 percent with his attitude on controlling crime
by a tougher judicial system; and 25 percent supporting his
opposition to further immigration and his demand that immigrants
conform to French customs and speak French, leaving the culture
of their origin in their home countries . . . The one positive
component of this poll is that only 4 percent of the respondents
agreed with LePen on anti-Semitism."
In October 1999, the fact that Jorg Haider and the Freedom
Party won enough support in national elections to muscle their
way into a governing coalition caused alarm in Europe. Haider,
who was in a position to be named Deputy Chancellor as the
result of the elections, had to step aside in the face of
the threat of sanctions against Austria by the European Union.
However, Europe's most successful party of the extreme right
has been Italy's National Alliance, a direct descendant of
Mussolini's Fascist Party.
After the defeat of Fascist Italy in World War II, the remnants
of the Fascist Party reorganized as the Italian Socialist
Movement (MSI). For the most part, the MSI was little more
than a nuisance and an embarrassment for half a century. However,
under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini, the MSI began a makeover
in 1993 to make it more
appealing to a broader spectrum of voters. Fini pronounced
this new reincarnation of fascism a break from classical fascism.
It was no longer fascist, but "post-fascist." According to
the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique, this makeover was
nothing less than "the legitimisation of that section of the
right that has its roots in fascism." The motivation for Fini
to makeover the old fascism lay in the opportunity to become
the junior partner a right-wing governing coalition headed
by Silvio Berlusconi, the wealthy Italian TV magnate. This
can hardly be called preposterous. For a brief time in 1994
and again since May 2001, Italy has been governed by a coalition
featuring Berlusconi as Prime Minister and Fini as his deputy.
It is this event that brings yuppie fascism into full bloom.
A scholarly approach to the phenomenon of yuppie fascism
is provided by the Hungarian intellectual and politician,
Gaspar Miklos Tamas. Writing in the Summer
2000 edition of the Boston Review, Tamas lays out the
similarities and differences between classic fascism and the
phenomenon he prefers to call post-fascism. For Tamas, the
concept of either fascism or post-fascism revolves around
the changing concept of citizenship, which for Tamas means
the extent to which an individual has a say in the common
affairs of any given community.
Tamas argues that citizenship began as a privilege for some:
"an elevated status limited by descent, class, race, creed,
gender, political participation, morals, profession, patronage,
and administrative fiat, not to speak of age and education."
Over time, the privilege of citizenship was extended; under
the Enlightenment, citizenship became universal within the
nation. The government was thought to represent and protect
all citizens, that is, most people within the national boundaries.
If one lived within the national borders, one was presumed
to be a loyal citizen; only one outside could ever be considered
an enemy.
There is an inherent contradiction in this concept of universal
citizenship in the nation-state, since it is at once universal
and parochial. Throughout the Enlightenment, a period that
for Tamas ended in with the outbreak of World War I in 1914,
there was always resistance from those who favored a more
exclusive franchise, such as anti-semites and reactionary
royalists, to the continuous expansion of the concept of citizenship.
According to Tamas, the main characteristic of fascism is
"this hostility to universal citizenship." Says Tamas:
"There is logic in the Nazi declaration that communists,
Jews, homosexuals, and the mentally ill are non-citizens and,
therefore, non-human . . . These categories of people, as
the Nazis saw them, represented types crucial to the Enlightenment
project of inclusion. Communists meant the rebellious 'lower
type,' the masses brought in, leaderless and rudderless, by
rootless universalism, and then rising up against the natural
hierarchy; Jews, a community that survived the Christian middle
ages without political power of its own, led by an essentially
non-coercive authority, the people of the Book, by definition
not a people of war; homosexuals, by their inability or unwillingness
to procreate, bequeath, and continue, a living refutation
of the alleged link between nature and history; the mentally
ill, listening to voices unheard by the rest of us--in other
words, people whose recognition needs a moral effort and is
not immediately ('naturally') given, who can fit in only by
enacting an equality of the unequal."
Another post-Enlightenment phenomenon that made fascism possible
is what Tamas calls the "de-politicization of the concept
of the nation," by which he means "the shift to a cultural
definition" of what the nation is. The consequence of this
is seen in a wave of anti-immigration legislation and violence
all over the developed world. Not only are immigrants targets
of suspicions, but so are national minorities, political dissidents
and those who exist in the lower economic strata as well.
Simply put, if one does not speak the language, is not of
native descent, does not attend the state-supported church
or dissents from political views that are within some officially
or semi-officially defined range of acceptable opinion, one
is not a citizen. Tamas points out that this has even more
adverse consequences since the Enlightenment concepts of citizenship,
nationality and humanity were welded together: "being expelled
from citizenship meant, quite literally, exclusion from humanity."
From this, Tamas arrives at an alternate definition of fascism:
"[the] cutting [of] the civic and human community in two."
This is fascism, but what of post-fascism? How does the new
phenomenon differ from classical fascism? Fundamentally, the
difference is that yuppie fascism is designed to work within
nominally democratic systems. Tamas continues his examination
of post-fascism by stating that 1989 began a new phase in
human history. The fall of Communism has made the traditional
right/left dichotomy obsolete. Before 1989, the right was
a coalition of the guardians of traditional authority and
the left was revolutionary socialism. However, there is no
more revolutionary socialism except in remnants like Castro's
Cuba; now, there is only capitalism. The parties of authority
and order can no longer contrast themselves with the old threats
of chaos and disorder. This has brought about a decline of
what Tamas calls "critical culture." Says Tamas: "There is
nothing of any importance on the political horizon but the
bourgeois center."
If there is to be an extremism, it must be an "extremism
of the center" rather than a revolutionary extremism of either
the far left (Communism) or the far right (classical fascism)
that seeks to supplant the existing order. "Parts of his discourse
are libertarian/neoliberal," Tamas says of Jorg Haider. "His
ideal is the propertied little man, he strongly favors a shareholding
and home-owning petty bourgeois 'democracy,' and he is quite
free of romantic-reactionary nationalism as distinct from
parochial selfishness and racism." This fits not only Haider,
but the yuppie fascist model generally.
Another feature Tamas sees in the present world is the decay
of the power of the state. This is an important feature for
any ideological successor to fascism, since, as Mussolini
said, in classical fascism the state is absolute. How can
a decaying state be absolute? Obviously, it cannot. Therefore,
the authority that organizes society must be an institution
other than the state. The capitalist multinational corporation
would seem to be that authority in today's world. This has
adverse consequences to the wretched of today's earth. The
nation-state that once was governed by kleptocrats, if it
were overthrown by the third-world masses as Franz Fanon envisioned
in the early sixties, would no longer lead to liberation.
The nation-state is no longer the dominant governing force
in their lives.
Rather, the multinational corporation has moved in and, with
trade agreements such as NAFTA, is able to tell the national
authorities what can and cannot be done. Buying off local
authorities with bribes may even become a thing of the past;
instead, if a nation were to pass environmental legislation
that a multinational corporation finds inconvenient, the nation
could face trade sanctions from the WTO. National governments
in the third world were often seen as oppressive; however,
they were held in contempt by human rights activists because
such governments had the ability to grant civil rights. Today's
nation-states do not.
As a result, the wretched of the earth whom Fanon would liberate
with a Marxist revolution are labor commodities to the multinationals
and civically non-existent. Of course, if an unskilled laborer
from the developing world leaves for Europe or the United
States, he may have no civic rights in his new country either.
Soon he will find that even his new brethren, who are native
born, have no rights either. On the other hand, the yuppie
fascist strategy to deal with the problem of lower-class immigration
from the developing world is outlawing it. "Post-fascism does
not need to put non-citizens onto freight trains to take them
to death," says Tamas. " Instead, it need only prevent the
new non-citizens from boarding any trains that might take
them into the happy world of overflowing rubbish bins that
could feed them."
Tamas' concept of the decay of the state has some interesting
corollaries concerning yuppie fascism that he does not explore.
For instance, we note that in Mussolini's corporate state,
the corporation was responsible to the state. Under yuppie
fascism the state is responsible to the corporation. This
means we are facing a decentralized model of fascism rather
than the highly centralized state envisioned by Mussolini.
Also, if the state is of secondary importance, what does
this mean for a concept of a strong political leader? Mussolini
and Hitler, however they may have misused their talents, were
strong leaders of exceptional ability. Such a political leader
might now pose a threat to the dominance of the corporation
over the state. Consequently, corporate leaders prefer politicians
who are pliant and unimaginative, unless perhaps they rise
out of the ranks of corporate leaders, as in the case of Silvio
Berlusconi; Berlusconi is at once Italy's leading media magnate,
the nation's wealthiest man and the Prime Minister.
Finally, while some transitional forms of yuppie fascism
have allied themselves with economic protectionism, such as
Pat Buchanan and his followers in the United States, the more
mature and potent forms of yuppie fascism, such as the present
Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi, are allied with global
capitalism. In this, it is not only the worker of the developing
nation whose citizenship is taken away in order to treat his
labor as a commodity and deny his humanity beyond his ability
in the workplace, but also the native-born unskilled or semi-skilled
worker in the developed world as well. This marginalization
results from the fact that under the alliance of global capitalism
and yuppie fascism, capital can easily cross national boundaries
but workers cannot.
As Tamas points out, under this alliance "attempts to fight
for higher wages and better working conditions are met not
with violence, strikebreakers or military coups, but by quiet
capital flight and disapproval from international finance
and its international or national bureaucracies, which will
have the ability to decide who is deserving of aid or debt
relief." As event have transpired since Tamas article was
first published a year and a half ago, one might also see
that any uprising in the developing world by the dispossed
could well be met by threats from US B-52s.
Next week, we will examine yuppie fascism in practice, including
the praxis of yuppie fascism in America.
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