As both a retired Army Officer and MN Elections official, I have a lot of time on my hands. Which I fill with constant research of issues that remain of interest, going back to childhood. That is with the study of fascism and war, actually begun when I was old enough, about ten, to understand my father’s experience as a Bataan Death March survivor and “liberated” POW approx. 3 years later was as a victim of Japanese fascists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Raid). Not a victim of the Japanese people, though their culture and history, especially the influence the “Great American Conservative Teddy Roosevelt” would exercise, would push them in a fascistic program of military expansionism and militarism (see Kinzer and Bradley), but of the fascist factions (plural) of their society, which had attained control of their government as against “rival” factions of fascists, with non-fascists suppressed, and with all the fascist factions in favor of military aggression, differing only on “prioritization” of “enemies.” (See attached file, and see the U.S. today: |
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) Which has also made me avoid using the term to denigrate political ideas I may disagree with, including my own former “Conservative” ideas, as was, and is, so common, as Orwell pointed out. Instead, the term must be understood correctly, as fascist theorists themselves have defined it, ranging on a "spectrum of fascism,” from Renzo de Felice (Michael Ledeen’s muse), Carl Schmitt/Leo Strauss, Michael Ledeen, Dollfuss (Austrofascism and the Fatherland Front, as I referred to the other day, and seemingly a model for Brent Bozell), Franco, the founders of Likud, like Menachem Begin, the four principal “founders” of the U.S. Conservative Movement (Bozell, B, B, & K, which a comparative political analysis reveals their ideas differ little from the preceding, though having to take into account the democracy they were operating in, as Leo Strauss and Begin both had to), to Mussolini, and to Hitler as the culminating point in fascist history (so far). Each varying slightly, or a lot, from the others, but all within the same “genus.” And each having “rivals” within their respective “fascist camps,” at least to begin with, and also varying by degrees. But each having a sense of the superiority of their particular nation, or their interpretation of fascism, as did rival Bolsheviks in the USSR. The Law & Liberty article below the wikipedia excerpt is actually a sound historical article, unlike much else one can expect to find from Law & Liberty, as I will share more from in a bit, but the title fails to explain the correct meaning of “virtue,” in right-wing ideology, which in fact, is derived from Machiavelli, as explained here: "Virtù is a concept theorized by Niccolò Machiavelli, centered on the martial spirit and ability of a population or leader,[1] but also encompassing a broader collection of traits necessary for maintenance of the state and "the achievement of great things."[2][3]” (see footnotes for sources, to include Harvard Professor and influential Straussian, Harvey Mansfield, so influential on today’s “New Right,” as with Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, . . . ) Nevertheless, this explains much of “National Conservatist” and today’s “New Right” ideology: BLUF: "The average conservative reader has heard for decades of the fascism inherent in the American conservative movement. Many of these charges were defamatory and ideologically motivated, but in the case of integralism, its connection to fascism is undeniable. Integralism emerged during the years in between the First and Second World Wars in majority Catholic countries. Middle class Catholics feared either secularizing forces of liberal governments or outright violence from socialist forces. Because they could not support liberal or socialist parties, Catholics felt cornered. Consequently, they often opted for reactionary “integralist” parties that promised some version of restored throne and altar politics and either became or made common cause with fascism. To name a few, there was the alliance between integralist Carlists and fascist Falangists in Spain, the National Integralism of Charles Maurras and his Action Francaise party in France, the Plinio Salgado’s Brazilian Integralist Action support for Estado Novo of Getulio Vargas, and what Loathar Hoebelt called the “embarrassment of options” for Catholics seeking fascist parties backing Engleburt Dollfuss in Austria. . . . "Thirty years later, under the influence of Spanish Falangism, L. Brent Bozell started Triumph magazine. In response to libertine disorder of American culture during the late 1960s and 1970s, the comrades at Triumph were revolted by the compromises and failures of movement conservatism and sought, in Franco’s Spain, an authoritarian imposition of Catholic dogma that would coerce the disobedient to obey divine authority mediated by the Church and state. Where freedom had failed, force would prevail. . . . "Only just recently, a priest on Twitter posted a picture of Dollfuss and Thomas Jefferson, proclaiming that only one of the two had founded a regime grounded on Catholic social teaching. Dollfuss was an exponent of “Austrofascism,” or a form of corporatism loosely based on Catholic social teaching and currently promoted by Pappin. He opposed Adolf Hitler but had hopes to preserve Austrian independence with a guarantee from Mussolini before Nazi agents assassinated him, prompting this same priest to regard Dollfuss as a “martyr.” Even more ominous, in a conversation I had on a Thomism Facebook group, a contributor pronounced, “The Communion of Saints really do all wear jack boots and Sigma [the symbol of Brazilian integralism] armbands. They burned heretics, and they seized Jewish kids. That’s Catholicism.” When I, among others, inquired whether denying Jews religious conscience rights was anti-Semitic, the same person responded by invoking Vermeule’s synthesis of reactionary Catholicism and Schmittian decisionism: Put all this together, regardless of linguistic wordplay one might use in defense of the “New Right,” and the old, "New Right,” founded by the Catholic Integralists/CIA officers of the Buckley family, Bill and Priscilla, and their mentor from Yale, to obfuscate what this actually means, and it spells: Fascism.” Whether Integralist Catholicism as National Conservative and Schmittian “scholar” Adrian Vermeule promotes, as did the aformentioned Catholics. Or a non-Catholic, I guess, Schmittian like National Conservative, Big-tech, “Defense Contractor,” Peter Thiel, and his “stable” of “Schmittian” politicians he promotes from the National Conservatives, like J.D. Vance, and Rod DeSantis: https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-shares-what-he-thinks-about-ron-desantis-2022-9 And this guy: "During his own NatCon 3 speech, Masters said, “Libertarianism doesn’t work. Totalitarian leftism doesn’t work either,” a line that conservative writer Rod Dreher paraphrased as: “we on the Right have got to get comfortable using state power to achieve conservative ends.” "Perhaps you’re picking up on a theme? This sounds an awful lot like what DeSantis was advocating.” The fascist, and one-time Nazi, Carl Schmitt, couldn’t have put it better! So here is some more information on Ron DeSantis, to go with the article by Ron Estes shared by Chas recently. Admittedly I am disheartened by some in the Committee for the Republic’s so frequent efforts at distracting people from the fact that throughout my lifetime, from my birth at the beginning of the "Conservative Movement’s” McCarthyite ideology, it has been the Republicans and “Conservatives” who have continuously called for ever-greater military spending, and more “adventuristic” military/CIA aggression. Which Stephen Kinzer documents well in his books, whether Teddy Roosevelt, McKinley, and Robert Taft, et al., or the Dulles Brothers and Eisenhower, with their coups in the 1950s; “moderate” only in comparison to Joe McCarthy and his “McCarthyite” ideologists, the aforementioned B, B, B, & K. Which the “New Right” of today denies as they incessantly work to “revise history” in lying to war-weary Americans that their "New Right” is for “Peace,” while extolling the earlier “New Right” of the CIA founders of National Review magazine who did so much to move the U.S. into an all-out militaristic culture. And attacked/denounced anyone who who called for anything less than waging WW III against the “Reds,” as subverting the “consensus of majoritarian democracy,” based on Rousseau’s political thought, by the “K” in this group. “Birthing” that “Conservative Movement,” or as like-minded Israelis are called, “Fascists,” were the people whose writings differ not a jot from the Israeli “Right” today, except on the specific country’s militarism they promoted. Though as Estes points out, in regard to DeSantis, and I would add, all of the so-called “New Right,” National Conservatives/Straussians, the country they place first and foremost today is Israel, as all are in lockstep with Trump and Israeli Settler/Kahanist, National Conservative Godhead, Yoram Hazony. With Yoram Hazony’s book “Conservatism: A Rediscovery,” largely a “rediscovery” of Willmoore Kendall’s extreme-right, Francoist-Trujilloist ideology, masked as “anti-communist.” But in actuality, an ideological assault on the Bill of Rights, and “Enlightenment” ideas themselves, as laid the foundation of the U.S. Just as Leo Strauss and German Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda were so hostile to, to put it mildly. And NatCon Godhead Yoram Hazony is! Given that Israel today, even while anti-Trumpers do so much to distract us from seeing that, is the repository of the most fascist like ideas that Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt propounded, as did National Review’s founders (I know, I read them, and I’ve read the fascists, ever since I began a study of fascist political ideas when I learned my father had been one of their victims, on the Bataan Death March, so this is virtually “family history” to me), it is logical that the U.S. “New Right” should be “embedded with them, as America’s “old” New Right worked so zealously for like-minded dictators in the 1950’s-1960’s: But here is a must-watch video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFonj6o0fTI
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And other gushing panegyrics to DeSantis, the warmonger (in my opinion), by the “New Right,” a “Network” which I defined the other day so won’t repeat that here. But here is DeSantis on Russia, and of Trump and Russia: https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/rep-desantis-and-allen-west-on-trumps-north-korea-policy (scroll down within link): BLUF: "So, I will start with you, Congressman DeSantis. You know, you sit on the House Intelligence Committee. . . . What does that tell you about Russia and the United States? "REP. RON DESANTIS, R—FLORIDA: Well, it tells me that under the Trump administration, they've had a policy of being very firm against Russia, which is in contrast to the Obama administration. Remember, when Obama was in, they tried to reset. They did nothing when Russia invaded Crimea, made incursions into Ukraine, went into Syria. "What has this president done, Donald Trump since he has been in office? He has provided lethal aid to Ukraine so they could defend themselves. Obama wouldn't do that. He provided Patriot missiles to Poland so they could defend themselves. He struck Assad in Syria which Obama wouldn't do and forced the red line. And then he's really committed to you expanding America's oil and gas capability. "Russia, at the end of the day, you know, they have nuclear weapons but they are a big gas station and to the extent we are challenging them with our exports to Europe, that's going to weaken Putin. So, this is a president that's been strong against Russia.” “Peace-loving Republicans? Bull***! "Mr. DeSantis’s anti-Iran talk is within the normal range of Republican presidential candidates from the last two decades. Yet in concert with his record on Russia (Iran’s partner in Syria, Ukraine and beyond) and with the open question of how he views the lessons of the post-9/11 wars, a President DeSantis might reprise that old G.O.P. ditty about bombing Iran."
So I’ve given up, against American war-loving insanity, with the Democrats virtually identical to Republicans today (I’ve previously shared all the enthusiasm the “New Right” has for war against China so I won’t repeat that). But no one concerned for humanity, or even just Americans, should stand by while one faction of what are called “fascists” in Israel, and as once were in Japan, lies, misdirects, deceives, and reinvent history, while calling themselves the New Right, National Conservatives, etc., to get elected President with the intent of carrying on our wars, even while perhaps denying it in micro-targeting campaign messages, as the New Right politicians do, to a gullible American population, including people I once had respect for, without someone calling out their lies, which I have seen too little of here, sorry to say. But I suggest this is the model that should be followed today, as described here (though containing a mistake; the Pentagon Papers weren’t about Nixon’s lies, but the ones that came before Nixon’s: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/hannah-arendt-and-politics-truth/ Or as it was put here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaiGABTj0aA
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