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Fascism 2.0.

By MICHAEL BLACKBURN.

FIRST THERE WAS OCCUPY, then gay marriage, then refugees, then transgenderism, then antifa, now statue removal and calling absolutely everyone else a fascist: The left has reduced itself to a frenetic fashion show of political freakery, with one lunacy following another. You can throw in a few localised phenomena as well — the Russian anti-Trumpism in the USA, the anti-Brexit, fake spike in hate crimes baloney in the UK, etc. They’re like adolescents with attention deficit disorder desperate to keep up with their mates and just as gullible.  Celebrities, politicians, social justice warriors and media parasites scramble aboard each bandwagon, hitting their Twitter accounts with hashtags, bile and misinformation.

Along the way they harass people from social media, lie about them, misconstrue their words, get them banned, get them fired from their jobs, get their business accounts shut down, prevent them from speaking in public, frighten publishers from publishing their books, get their videos demonetised or taken down, dox them and expose them and their families to possible violence, and generally behave like the liberal fascists they really are.

Given that it is now often impossible to work out whether they are deliberately parodying themselves or not, nothing should be a surprise.

It makes you wonder what monstrosity, what insult to reality and human dignity they are going to come up with next. Given that it is now often impossible to work out whether they are deliberately parodying themselves or not, nothing should be a surprise. So I suggest, in all seriousness, that any or all of the following campaigns are possible: segregation according to colour (already mooted in the States), the legalisation of incest, paedophilia, polygamy and bestiality; the requirement that every variant of sexuality be privileged above heterosexuality; the criminalisation of all speech or writing that questions any part of the PC orthodoxy (in the name of free speech, obviously) and of any expression of patriotism (relabelled “nationalism”); the institutionalisation in the education system of the idea that whiteness is bad; the accusation of any random foodstuff or drink as racist, sexist, or whatever, with the demand that it be renamed, altered or withdrawn; ditto clothes, shoes and accessories; the opposite of the previous two points but with the wearing of certain rainbow-coloured items made compulsory; re-education classes for offenders against PC codes along the lines of those set up for people convicted of driving offences. I could go on, but you can invent your own.

It used to be that the driving force of repressive regimes came from the political class. That is still the case but now we see the conscious and voluntary participation of big business, such as Facebook, PayPal, Google, and Twitter as well. This tight, collusive relationship is a feature of fascism, as is the intrusive enclosing of the state on all aspects of life. As Mussolini, the socialist who invented fascism, defined it: “nothing outside the state, everything for the state, nothing against the state.” When it comes to how communism and fascism operate there’s not much difference: they are both totalitarian. What we experiencing now is that liberal fascism outlined in Jonah Goldberg’s book of the same name: a worship of the state, but with an authoritarian approach to enforcing “liberal” social ideas concerning race, sexuality, etc.

The only thing the liberal fascists have learned from history is how to persecute and silence opponents. The one thing they haven’t learned from history is that people will not be silenced. I think the increasing shutting down of outlets for free speech on the internet will inevitably result in some twenty-first century form of samizdat, the secret, unofficial means of communication developed under the communist regimes. Conservatism, in its broadest senses, is indeed now the real counter-culture.

Welcome to Fascism 2.0.


suxcoverCurrente Calamo columnist, poet, writer and lecturer Michael Blackburn lives in Lincolnshire . From 2005–2008 he was the Royal Literary Fund fellow at the University of Lincoln where he now teaches English Literature and Creative Writing. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies over the years, including Being Alive (Bloodaxe) and Something Happens, Sometimes Here (Five Leaves Press). His most recent collection is Spyglass Over The Lagoon. A selection of his Fortnightly Currente Calamo columns, Sucks To Your Revolution: Annoying The Politically Correct (US), is available as a Kindle ebook.

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