Neoliberalism Is a Form of Fascism. Manuela Cadelli, President of Belgian Magistrates

[Janet M Eaton]

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Neoliberalism Is a Form of Fascism. President of Belgian Magistrates
Neoliberalism is a species of fascism
By Manuela Cadelli
Global Research, August 31, 2017
Defend Democracy Press 30 August 2017


Featured image: Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates´ Union of Belgium (Source:
@ManuelaCadelli / Twitter)

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.

This article was originally published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, 3.3.2016

Translated from French by Wayne Hall
The original source of this article is Defend Democracy Press
Copyright © Manuela Cadelli, Defend Democracy Press, 2017

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