Neoliberalism is a species of fascism
by Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates’ Union of Belgium, via Defend Democracy
The time for rhetorical reservations is over. Things have to be called by their name to make it possible for a co-ordinated democratic reaction to be initiated, above all in the public services.
Liberalism was a doctrine derived from the philosophy of Enlightenment, at once political and economic, which aimed at imposing on the state the necessary distance for ensuring respect for liberties and the coming of democratic emancipation. It was the motor for the arrival, and the continuing progress, of Western democracies.
Neoliberalism is a form of economism in our day that strikes at every moment at every sector of our community. It is a form of extremism.
Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State to a totalitarian and nihilistic ideology.
I argue that neoliberalism is a species of fascism because the economy has brought under subjection not only the government of democratic countries but also every aspect of our thought.
The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which treat it as a subordinate and lord over it to an extent that puts the common good in jeopardy.
The austerity that is demanded by the financial milieu has become a supreme value, replacing politics. Saving money precludes pursuing any other public objective. It is reaching the point where claims are being made that the principle of budgetary orthodoxy should be included in state constitutions. A mockery is being made of the notion of public service.
The nihilism that results from this makes possible the dismissal of universalism and the most evident humanistic values: solidarity, fraternity, integration and respect for all and for differences.
There is no place any more even for classical economic theory: work was formerly an element in demand, and to that extent there was respect for workers; international finance has made of it a mere adjustment variable.
Every totalitarianism starts as distortion of language, as in the novel by George Orwell. Neoliberalism has its Newspeak and strategies of communication that enable it to deform reality. In this spirit, every budgetary cut is represented as an instance of modernization of the sectors concerned. If some of the most deprived are no longer reimbursed for medical expenses and so stop visiting the dentist, this is modernization of social security in action!
Abstraction predominates in public discussion so as to occlude the implications for human beings.
Thus, in relation to migrants, it is imperative that the need for hosting them does not lead to public appeals that our finances could not accommodate. Is it In the same way that other individuals qualify for assistance out of considerations of national solidarity?
The cult of evaluation
Social Darwinism predominates, assigning the most stringent performance requirements to everyone and everything: to be weak is to fail. The foundations of our culture are overturned: every humanist premise is disqualified or demonetized because neoliberalism has the monopoly of rationality and realism. Margaret Thatcher said it in 1985:
There is no alternative.”
Everything else is utopianism, unreason and regression. The virtue of debate and conflicting perspectives are discredited because history is ruled by necessity.
This subculture harbours an existential threat of its own: shortcomings of performance condemn one to disappearance while at the same time everyone is charged with inefficiency and obliged to justify everything. Trust is broken. Evaluation reigns, and with it the bureaucracy which imposes definition and research of a plethora of targets, and indicators with which one must comply. Creativity and the critical spirit are stifled by management. And everyone is beating his breast about the wastage and inertia of which he is guilty.
The neglect of justice
The neoliberal ideology generates a normativity that competes with the laws of parliament. The democratic power of law is compromised. Given that they represent a concrete embodiment of liberty and emancipation, and given the potential to prevent abuse that they impose, laws and procedures have begun to look like obstacles.
The power of the judiciary, which has the ability to oppose the will of the ruling circles, must also be checkmated. The Belgian judicial system is in any case underfunded. In 2015 it came last in a European ranking that included all states located between the Atlantic and the Urals. In two years the government has managed to take away the independence given to it under the Constitution so that it can play the counterbalancing role citizens expect of it. The aim of this undertaking is clearly that there should no longer be justice in Belgium.
A caste above the Many
But the dominant class doesn’t prescribe for itself the same medicine it wants to see ordinary citizens taking: well-ordered austerity begins with others. The economist Thomas Piketty has perfectly described this in his study of inequality and capitalism in the twenty-first century (French edition, Seuil, 2013).
In spite of the crisis of 2008 and the hand-wringing that followed, nothing was done to police the financial community and submit them to the requirements of the common good. Who paid? Ordinary people, you and me.
And while the Belgian State consented to 7 billion-euro ten-year tax breaks for multinationals, ordinary litigants have seen surcharges imposed on access to justice (increased court fees, 21% taxation on legal fees). From now on, to obtain redress the victims of injustice are going to have to be rich.
All this in a state where the number of public representatives breaks all international records. In this particular area, no evaluation and no costs studies are reporting profit. One example: thirty years after the introduction of the federal system, the provincial institutions survive. Nobody can say what purpose they serve. Streamlining and the managerial ideology have conveniently stopped at the gates of the political world.
The security ideal
Terrorism, this other nihilism that exposes our weakness in affirming our values, is likely to aggravate the process by soon making it possible for all violations of our liberties, all violations of our rights, to circumvent the powerless qualified judges, further reducing social protection for the poor, who will be sacrificed to “the security ideal”.
Salvation in commitment
These developments certainly threaten the foundations of our democracy, but do they condemn us to discouragement and despair?
Certainly not. 500 years ago, at the height of the defeats that brought down most Italian states with the imposition of foreign occupation for more than three centuries, Niccolo Machiavelli urged virtuous men to defy fate and stand up against the adversity of the times, to prefer action and daring to caution. The more tragic the situation, the more it necessitates action and the refusal to “give up” (The Prince, Chapters XXV and XXVI).
This is a teaching that is clearly required today. The determination of citizens attached to the radical of democratic values is an invaluable resource which has not yet revealed, at least in Belgium, its driving potential and power to change what is presented as inevitable. Through social networking and the power of the written word, everyone can now become involved, particularly when it comes to public services, universities, the student world, the judiciary and the Bar, in bringing the common good and social justice into the heart of public debate and the administration of the state and the community.
Neoliberalism is a species of fascism. It must be fought and humanism fully restored.
Published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, March 3, 2016, translated from French by Wayne Hall.
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Reblogged this on sideshowtog.
This is one of the most ignorant, poorly thought out articles I’ve seen in a long time. “Every totalitarianism starts as distortion of language.” Example: this article.
Neoliberalism does not advocate for regulatory capture by industry. That is the result of cronyism. Neoliberalism argues that regulation only be used when absolutely necessary, thereby minimizing the potential for cronyism and regulatory capture.
That’s a textbook misunderstanding. The key concept here is “ideology”, meaning in its simplest form saying one thing and standing for another. The ideology of liberalism is individual freedom. What it actually does in terms of practical politics, especially in its extreme form commonly called “neoliberalism”, is subjugation of individual freedom under the freedom of the market. But it doesn’t even stop there, because these free markets imposed by deregularization, free trade agreements etc. are actually not characterized by individual free entrepreneurs, but by multinational corporations. “Neoliberalism” is freedom not of individuals, but of corporations to exploit and destroy without liability. Totalitarianism doesn’t need to be organized through the state, it can just as well be organized through private enterprises, where the state plays the “minimal” role of arbiter of corporate interests (what Marx called ideeller Gesamtkapitalist) . That is the situation we find ourselves in today. And cronyism is not an imperfection of that system but a core feature, because the whole point of the global free market is appropriation of riches by a small “elite” at the expense of the vast majority of people.
it’s all about protecting privilege and increasing it, because some people can just never have enough
Thanks for your comment ..a wonderful synopsis of where we are today. Where to from here.
Reblogged this on A Black Writer in Berlin and commented:
On the money, and I will be writing again about the catastrophic effects that neoliberalism has had on culture and thought world-wide. Also, in a few months I will have my own YouTube channel up and running and will (naturally) discuss this new milquetoast, touchy-feely totalitarianism that may be infinitely more refined than Hitlerism or Maoism or old-school fascism, but is no less lethal.
That Would Be HALFASCISM !
It’s a wonderful piece. Whats more Neo-Liberal voodoo economics does not work.http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/05/the-magic-money-tree-and-tories.html
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc-LJ_3VbUA?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0?ecver=2%5D
Reblogged this on Dreaming 🐦 Freedom.
Reblogged this on MUSO MUSINGS ON FATHERHOOD THEORY AND STUFF and commented:
This is a very incisive and direct article. It shows Neo Liberalsism for the Extreme and Fascist Ideology that it is.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2014/07/u-r-fascismumberto-ecos-1995-essay.html
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/04/neo-liberalism-now-with-overt-fascism.html
Neo-liberalism is the canned laughter of fascism.
This supports my own research, in which I identified German WWII Nazi methodologies at the Ministry of Social Development. I published this on Medium.
https://medium.com/@markwebster/new-zealand-the-distant-paradise-has-resemblances-to-nazi-germany-d177382c228#.veejexheo
Reblogged this on Rangitikei Enviromental Health Watch.
Wonderful site and extremely informative
AS an Amerikan the term neoliberal has a different impact I believe than it does in the context of European use of the word. Could someone give a succinct definition of what the term means in the context of European parlance.
I too have found this article and discussion incredibly interesting and enlightening, especially in light of the potential nightmare of our next four years here in the states.
Try this David.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
neoliberals…the franchised, new chosen ones…the pending six million..the persecuted of perfidys’ trick..can’t you hear all those sweet voices singing?
Nero fiddled while Rome burned…the Neolibs were the folk dancing to the tune:
I regularly have been using the term “Neo-Liberal Fascism,” because I’m of the perspective that it’s now bypassed the point of being a “breed” of Fascism, and especially considering that Adolf ran under the same party-name as Bernie originally (“Democratic Socialist Party”), it’s just ALWAYS been Fascism.
Yes..its always been fascism but, it helps the neolibfascists’ cause to still have Hitler and fascism inscribed and uttered as an ablative absolute in the lexicon.
These same neo-fascists work with the NEOCON Party on the side of so-called Conservatives to pursue Globalist repression, waste and population reduction genocide. In this way they keep both Conservative and Liberal parties COVERED and dominated by Globalist dogma. To hell with Equity, Justice or Fairness.
…..WESTMINSTER..(the geometry of a reich)
TWO gangs of sophists hiding
behind red-white and blue
to get the nod from Caesar
To tax and indict you:
THAT’S Mzs Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
you call her Lizzie Two
she cares not one iota
what meins’ters do to you:
THE fourth estate’s the urger
you have to get that clue
they just have to remember
to render, sum unto:
There are myopic corporate pyramids
on their expanding base of you
where lodger-boys draw gables
agreed their greed is virtue:
This view..Illuminati..
could make you feel quite blue
until you’ve sussed the formula..
..which I will now reduce for you..
..You take the base and times the base-
you add the base onto-
You take the bleeding sum of that-
And divide the plebs by two…..ad infinitum:
Funny how many critics of neo-liberalism are fascists such as Le Pen. That’s because to be a fascist is to be a nationalist and to believe in strong national governments. Neo-liberalism in contrast supports the transfer of power to supra-national entities. The fascist economy is a mixed economy with the national government able to exert immense power over the conduct of private business. Neo-liberalism in contrast expects national governments to have no influence over private business.
The word ‘Fascism’ comes from ‘fascio’ in Italian meaning bundle or sheaf. If ‘Fascism’ as a word is to have a meaning, it is to describe Italy under Mussolini. To use the same word to describe 21st century globalisation is to negate the word’s meaning.
A very good point, as, strictly speaking, by those terms, we should refer to neo-liberalism as a transnational plutocracy, or at least that appears to be where it’s heading. However for many people, increasingly robbed of democracy and being bled dry, down at the sharp end of things, there is little difference between the two systems in practice. Furthermore, the term Fascism has long since passed into common parlance, to be widely viewed by many as simply anti-democratic and supportive of a totalitarian regime, sometimes with nationalistic, or even racist connotations. In this instance, you are very right to point out that neo-liberalism is neither racist, nor nationalistic in nature, though it does, if left unchecked, lead to an hegemony of international moneyed interests over the affairs and government of nation states, so we can at least say that it is anti-democratic and supportive of totalitarianism (in this case, a plutocracy). I guess most of us do tend to use the word out of context and quite offhand, and I am as guilty as the next man, but I do think it’s always a good thing to be pulled up on such things.
Aren’t the fasces the columns that support the stone, Abraham Lincolns’ arm rests?
Fine site, fine article & fine comments.
Thank you all.
John Doran.
An excellent and most thought provoking article. I have long thought neoliberalism to be fascism, except I arrived at that conclusion from an economic perspective, whilst researching the foundation and rise of neoclassical economics. Also that quote from Orwell has haunted me for quite some time, as it was a corruption of the very language of economics that lies at the heart of that story, which is one that played out over 100 years ago. It’s a story that involves the same moneyed interests, the same use of public relations, and the same erosion of democracy in both political and academic institutions, simply because it is the same story, and to fully understand neoliberalism, you have to rewind about 120 years to pinpoint the preconditions for its inception. Fortunately most of what happened did so in plain sight and is well documented. No laws were broken, as such, but nevertheless, arguably one of the greatest crimes against humanity was set in motion for the most banal reasons of economic protectionism. There is a way out of the problem, but it’ll take years and an incredible effort to reform what is to all intents and purposes a predominant religion that has become ingrained into our society.
Won’t happen Jason..neolibs are the canned laughter of dialectical materialism.
An interesting article that needs to be read several times to fully comprehend the meaning. We need tolerance and understanding, but what desicion would we make in the shoes of the politicians? Not sure I wasted 7 minutes in watching the video.
I have re-blogged it as well at TheConnectivist
Reblogged this on The Connectivist and commented:
Another sharp signal that neither The State or The Market are working properly anymore.
jaap van till, The Connectivist
Austerity is a natural consequence of maintaining a monetary system which generates money as interest bearing DEBT. It always leaves us with more debt than money – inevitably. And then this fictional debt is used to sell us “austerity”. Like it’s anybody’s fault that central banks are criminal institutions drowning us in fictional debt and austerity for their own benefit and in order to keep us busy and distracted.
Then they tell us that we need pointless growth and billions of non-contributing, systemic #bullshitjobs which are destroying us and our environment in every way possible just to be able to repay this exponentially growing pile of fictional debt. We are getting stuck in traffic jams, wasting fuel, energy, resources and our lives in 2-3 billion #bullshitjobs just to try to do the impossible. That’s how retarded we are …
If we don’t stand up for a non-criminal monetary system, for debt/interest free money as a #basicincome and for the abolishment of the obsolete work-for-income paradigm then we will just kill ourselves and our planet.
http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
http://sacred-economics.com/
Reblogged this on Eurasia News Online.
Shadia Drury is the author of a number of books on neconservatism, including “Leo Strauss And The American Right.” It’s informative is somewhat confusing in places. A few authors and famous people (Howard Zinn, Tommy Douglas) dispense with the academic minutiae and talk about fascism in simple terms. It’s good to know history, but the object of knowing is to be enabled. Learn not in order to know, but in order to know how to proceed.
As Douglas noted, You don’t have to wear brown shirts in order to be fascist. Huey Long, a famous, corrupt American politician (who fought the capitalist class; It happens) was asked if America would ever see fascism. He said yes, but it won’t be called fascism. Indeed. Obama et al call it democracy, just as Hitler called his Germany democratic.
If you reduce it to something useable (for purposes of mobilizing the working class), fascism is simply a situation where the political class and the capitalist class jointly rule, telling the people that because they have elections and can vote they therefore have democracy and a voice when in reality the police state robs them of that. Media complies with elites’ wishes or are shut down in the name of national security. All opinions and protests get the same treatment. And to keep the people’s attention diverted from the abusers in power, you whip up nationalism. Neoconservatism existed before it was formulated as such. Neocons ‘believe’ that a nation needs to have an enemy and be at war in order to stay strong. If there’s no enemy, then one must be created. One can see how nationalisn (which isn’t) patriotism, is useful to fascist leaders. And can see how neoconservatism is convenient to certain powerful, entrenched special interests like the military/intelligence industrial complex.
Strauss ‘believed’, as did Marx, that religion is the opiate of the people, but unlike Marx, who wasn’t thinking in terms of how to manage and exploit the people, Strauss felt that the people should be given their fix. He saw it as another mechanism of control. (I see organized religion as being a racket, even though I am religious.)
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy and neoliberalism is one type of social economic system and they are both sides of the same evil coin. One needn’t be a student of Strauss in order to called a neocon, which is why you often find writers referring to Hillary Clinton as one.
I’d only point out that nationalism isn’t a required ingredient at all. On the contrary. Nationalism is often what the current order fears the most. The globalists, all of them neoliberals to a man and a woman — use the language of internationalism. It’s a fascist kind of internationalism, to be sure, but cleverly deployed and manipulated, it gives them moral credibility in the eyes of a large segment of the population.
Thanks Vaska.
Well, I didn’t use to think so either. But I’m not sure that I had it right. Reading what others had to say about fascism, which can be exasperating (knowledgeable people showing off how much history they know and going on and on), led me to conclude that fascist states do use nationalism. A negative nationalism of course. Some of these subjects become difficult because one must qualify, qualify, qualify. Then again, Sometimes the essence of a good article, such as this one which looks at “responsible nationalism,” involves qualification: “Canadian media is failing with its reporting on corporate rights deals” by Murray Dobbin – http://bit.ly/2a0AWEk
But if the writing is half decent, then the exact meaning of the word ‘internationalist’ or the word ‘nationalist’ should be clear. It’s only in order to reach a point where I believe I’ve been clear with my readers that I will go on and on with details and qualification. I forget the writer, who I recently read about, but he said something along the lines of what I’ve been saying for a long time. He said that the value of an idea lies not in the idea itself, but in it’s power to inspire. I’ve always recommended learning not in order to know, but in order to know how to proceed. We need to mobilize our citizenry and that involves engaging themj with arguments and ideas that seizes their imagination, rather than dry political talk that causes their minds to seize up. Learn not in order to become an expert, but in order to know what to think. The student wants to get to the point where he (or…) can agree or disagree, with confidence, which doesn’t mean always being able to say exactly why. But that’s okay.
…..PISCES CULTURE..
Masses’ mutton Barramundi
WASPish candy coral trout
Mullet warriors, analgesics
Take the pisc like all get out:
Politician mothers’ sensibility
Workmans’ curses valid argot
Bourgeois bullshit caffe’ latte
Samuel Beckets’ stuffs lysergic:
Unfortunately the totalitarianism is moving toward economic genocide. Those that are developing intelligent robots have clearly only one goal. To remove the need for 90% of the world’s human beings.
What is so sad is that the proper role of robots in our long-term evolution should be that they are far more able to survive inter-galactic travel searching for new planets habitable by humans than we are. They could be used in exploration phases, allowing the greater challenges facing life based on carbon not silicon only to be sent to travel once viable destinations had been found.
But no: the multimillionaires and billionaires, desperate for their near-term riches, see 8 billion people as utterly expendable as they automate everything from agriculture to warehouses, driving to construction, cooking to music.
These people think they are some master race, and are behaving just as the nazis did in the 20th century, but evolved to do it more subtly. They don’t seek to put humans in concentration camps, they seek to render them pointless.
The fact that inevitably, intelligent robots will usurp their masters in a way their masters did not foresee is presumably beyond the wisdom of our financial ‘genii’?
I wouldn’t be too concerned by fascist robots rtj. They too will rust after the nutational readjustment of the rotational axis. Take some comfort that the planet cares not for our vanitys… and in the beauty of the post deluvian vines that will grow over the manufactured magic of mans’ tantrums.
Well there is another angle to this; Cultural Marxism. It would take ages to explain but here is a good video that does the job.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pPbrbJJQs
Put the them together, Neo Conservativeism, Neo Liberalism, and Cultural Marxism, oh, and Surveillance State ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs ), and you have the foundations of the final form of human society, the New World Order.
I know it sounds far fetched, and at first I laughed at the idea, but honestly, how much evidence do we need that there is something going on?
Why are you a consumer rather than a citizen now days? You think the subtle shift in terminology is not important?
Oh dear, that 7 odd minutes of my life I’ll never get back…
The gentlemen from the institute are here to see you Faye.
Cultural Marxism? Please, stop it.
I hear the phrase thrown around a great deal by Americans: “cultural Marxism.”
What is the connection to Marx?
I am afraid that the “cultural Marxism” term is just a favourite label used to stigmatise any opponent standing left from Genghis-Khan. Every time I see this, I smell an odour of stupidity. Very dangerous. Same as “Judeo-Bolshevism” or so.
“…any opponent standing left from Genghis-Khan.”
That’s the impression I was getting. (Still laughing!)
And then there is this: “Sexual Bolshevism”
Oh, I am just so far behind the times!
Pavlovs’ dog-whiste… is the connection:
or even whistle!
Where the Tuscan becomes the Doric…the order is to cast Assange and Snowden in bronze.
Try and keep up Secret Agent..the new world order is the old world order and it should be indicted by an even Grander Jury for false advertising…a bit of order would be a fine thing. The business model there is dominion and profit by controlled chaos.
Thank you for explaining what ought to have been obvious even to me, there, Pavlov’s cat. Indeed, it is the same as it ever was, eh . . .
And you will forgive me if I don’t quite “get” all of your so erudite allusions. You are from OZ, obviously dripping with culture, and I’m only what others claim me to be, a Franco-Ontarian, somewhere from the North and backwoods. Doubtlessly, however, I will gradually grow accustomed to your style of elocution since you seem to have taken a shine to me, or perhaps not so much a shine as something along the lines of a haughty condescension. But it’s still too early to tell.
But I’ll try and keep up if I can muster the interest in such gems of penetrating insight as you have so generously been eager to offer. On the other hand, if I should lag a bit behind, it’s already clear that you’ll be doing your very best to keep me up to speed. Hopefully, you won’t be wasting too much of your time.
That deposition was classical, damning with faint praise wasn’t it? And what we colonial white convicts call fishing for compliments? Try not to be so paranoid when a belief has been wounded. What we are ALL doing here is a cry for help…. Do try and get your head around the dirty lowdown that those buildings were not impacted by planes though: It’s nasty but cathartic:
The paranoia of wounded belief? What then could it possibly have been that I thought might be too early to tell and therefore the grounds for holding that particular suspicion in abeyance?
I would be interested in hearing, however, not in this thread, but in the relevant one, what possible difference, essentially speaking, it makes, whether one believes in ‘holograms,’ the technology of which remains even as yet in the realm of fiction, or that actual planes flown-by-wire and remotely, with or without passengers, impacted the buildings.
For at the end of the day, the way in which the buildings came down gives the operation away and stands on its own as an adequate indictment of the Zelikow misdirection.
Everything else is more and mere unsubstantiated speculation, a needless bother, and certainly not anything that anyone can wrap his head around, unless you mean by the expression of ‘wrapping one’s head around’ the spinning of any fancy, however elaborate, engrossing, and “dirty.”
So if you know the details of the holographic technology on which you seem to be so keen, please don’t be so miserly about the details of its operation or where any sensible person can find the corroborating documentary evidence that image projections on the scales of planes crashing into buildings can easily and flawlessly be produced even presently, let alone in 2001.
Really. Do persuade me. I’m all ears and listening, Mr. Cat.
Economism. The right name for evil.
Evil?.. no…dominion is a’moral:
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
A good interpretation of the state of play and even more evidenced in recent years.
Agreed in spades about neo-liberalism. But let us not forget the other side of the counter-revolutionary coin, to wit, neo-conservatism. For the western ruling elites neo-liberalism is an attack directed on its internal enemies, the 99% and neo-conservatism is an attack on its external enemies, principally the Russian Federation and China, but in fact anyone who doesn’t toe the Pentagon, State department line. Austerity without end at home and a creeping dismantling of democracy, and everlasting war abroad, that is the future: a global slave empire controlled through the Washington, Brussels, London, Tel Aviv axis of evil. This is a fight to the death and the future of humanity depends on the outcome.
Lay on Mc Duff!…so thanks to all at once, and to each one, whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.
WOW such a lightbulb moment. This makes my blood go into thermal nuclear boil. I have been saying this for the last 30 years and now this quantum leap moment. I really hope we the sheeple can wake up and really start getting all the elite to be accountable for they conspiracy. Since 1979 the west has been walking like a zombie towards fascism. Reagon and Thatcher were their front persons . The Chicago school of economic theory.The Liberal interventionist. The helicopter money to bail out the biggest fraud in the western financial history. Then they turn around and get the PAYE public to bail them out. The sip[ their Champagne and eat their caviar and we live on austerity. Hitler in drag will be the next POTUS and the MSM call Trump a xenophobic fascist when we all know Hitlary and all her cohorts and all the western political establishment r fascist’s. That has been my point for over a quarter of a century. The use of the term democracy and veil themselves in these hollow terms without any substance or facts is insulting at best. Putin,Xi and Rohani have been trying now and hopefully they will prevail and once Syria settles down in might c the dawn of a new pan -arabism which will start the century of humanism and human dynamism for the good of all and not 64000 people. Gramsci forewarned us all from his cell in the 30’s and before him Engels as well. That is why i finish my spiel with this old journalistic quote.YESTERDAY’S NEWS GETS WRAPPED IN TODAYS FISH. If only more humans would study and analyse history more maybe we would not be in such a pickle.. Luv this website wish it had more pull and a following.
Calm down matello…this shit is older than Caesar.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
Thanks for posting this insightful article and translating it from French into English. Perhaps I should try to translate it in my motherlanguage Dutch and try to post it on a Dutch alternative news website (there are some good ones). Instead, I summarized the article in my own (English) words… Please forgive me my English spelling and grammatical mistakes.
“Things have to be called by their name”. I agree. But not only by their name, but by their right name.
Here are some doublespeak words that are called by their name, but not by their right name in the mainstream media (MSM):
A) ‘Issue’ (ideological term, cannot be solved), should be read as ‘Problem’ (problems are material terms and can solved)
B) ‘Success’ (something that one should strive for), should be read as ‘Greed’ (wanting more than someone else has)
C) ‘Failure’ (not being able to reach your goals), should be read as ’empathy’ (concern for those who cannot reach their goals)
D) ‘Professional’ (doing things in the way they should be done), should be read as ‘Obedient’ (willing to follow orders from your superiors blindly)
E) ‘Being difficult’ (troubles with following orders from superiors), should be read as ‘Creative’ (having the guts to see things from another perspective)
F) ‘Professional journalist’ (a person who brings the news as it has happened), should be read as ‘establishment journalist’ (a person who brings news exactly as he or she is told by the establishment)
G) ‘Dissident’ (standing at the edge of the spectrum of that what is considered to be normal according to the mainstream), should be read as ‘Mainstream’ (that what the majority of people think and feel, but what is marginalized as it does not follow the thinking and feeling of the establishment)
Neoliberalism can be conquered if you a) identify it as a problem, b) temper the feeling that greed is something that one should strive for, c) feel empathy for those at the bottom of society, d) question the blindly following of orders by superiors, e) have the guts to see things from a different perspective, f) do not listen to what is been told to you by establishment journalists and g) know that thinking about neoliberalism as a bad thing, is what the majority of people agree with.
Just changing the MSM meaning of 8 words. Could solve neoliberalism.
Willem. Would you mind if I copied and pasted your comment on my blog account? All credit to you of course, it was a clever demolition job on the double meaning of so much “newspeak”. Many thanks for the comment.
Willem, as this article was first published in Belgium, it is very likely that, if you search for it on the internet, you will be able to find a translation of into Flemish already completed.
Or, Willem.. a US president could just find the balls to read Moishe the riot act….
Very true! And in the Neocon Neoliberalism of the US Power Elite is clearly surfaces:
“US Power Elite Declared War on the Southern Hemisphere, East Asia and all Non-Western Countries in September 2000”: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/us-power-elite-declared-war-on-the-southern-hemisphere-east-asia-and-all-non-western-countries-in-september-2000/
Andreas Schlüter
Sociologist
Berlin, Germany
Yes, and Sheldon Wolin began this discussion about 15 years ago… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yes, Wolin is excellent.
Yes, at least some familiarity with Wolin’s concept of ‘inverted totalitarianism’ is absolutely essential for understanding what is really happening in our world today. The fascism we have today differs from the classical model in one key respect: the original fascist regimes were all of the state-corporatist model, with an all-powerful government presiding over the banks and corporations; our modern fascism, however, is of a new corporate-statist (and thus, according to Wolin, inverted) variety, where the banks and the corporations completely control the state. Therefore, the age of the Hitlers and Mussolinis–at least in the West–is over. Our so-called ‘rulers’ are really nothing more than corporate executives or CEOs who serve at the leisure of a kind of hidden board of directors, composed of those banks corporations we all know, and probably a few powerful oligarchs, such as a the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds.
Liberal dupes, however, believe that we are still free, because they wrongly understand fascism as an ideology (Racism! Nationalism! Xenophobia!) or else confuse it with certain systems of symbology (swastikas, fasces, cool-looking uniforms, etc.). But in reality true fascism in neither an ideology (false consciousness, as the Marxists would say), nor is it a particular system of symbology. Fascism, properly understood is simply a state of affairs–namely, the total fusion of state and corporate power. That was the definition Mussolini gave it long ago, and since he was fascism’s inventor, I’ll take his word for it! The consequence of this is that fascism, in practice, can adopt virtually any ideology or symbology, even some that might, at first glance, seem rather ‘lefty’. In the west today, for example, the true fascists have now adopted cultural (not economic!) Marxism as their ideology.
Ironically then, the new fascism has cleverly disguised itself as anti-fascism! Pretty slick, eh?
Thanks for fleshing it out!
Spot on Mussolini is the father of modern fascism , historically speaking fuedalism was an older form of fascism. With the birth of industrial capitalism and nouveau bourgeoisie was the beginning of modern day fascism. Mussolini from returning from the WW1 and being shun by fellow socialist and the new founded Gramscian movement decided to form his own party. He was always into grandiosity and ancient empire mythology. Most of the socialist including Gramsci did not support the WW1 they all identified it as the bankers war . Many leftist of the time also recognised the con job in the USA with the rewritting the Federal reserve act of 1913 as the Private bankers taking over the money supply of the US .