Notes on Obama & Liberal Fascism
∅baMa∅ Tse Dung
something like a political religion. The messianic nature of Obama’s
campaign has been noted by many for a long time now. He often sounds
like he’s reviving the social gospel. There’s even a website called
“Is Barack Obama the Messiah?”
Many of the tropes of a political religion/liberal fascism are
evident. He exalts unity as it’s own reward. His talk of starting new
and starting over often sounds like more than merely “turning the
page” on the Bush-Clinton years. It sounds a bit like starting at Year
Zero.
But what I find most intriguing is his rhetoric of destiny and
“choseness.” He often makes it sound like he has been selected by
forces of providence or God or simply history for this moment. He is,
in Oprah’s words, “The One.” But even more interesting, he tells
voters they are the ones. “This is it,” Obama proclaimed on Super
Tuesday. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change
that we seek.” That’s pretty oracular stuff.
Tellingly, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” is some Native
American spiritualism warmed up for New Age audiences.
It’s also telling that this divinization of the masses and/or the
movement has a long pedigree, going back at least to the French
Revolution. The Jacobins claimed that the French Nation represented
the new “chosen people.” The Italian Fascists said the same thing
about the Italians. The Nazis believed likewise about the Germans. The
Bolsheviks, too, believed in their own predestination of sorts in that
they believed the cold impersonal forces of history had conspired to
produce the vanguard of the proletariat, or something like that, which
had been vested by History with mission to create a new utopia. “On
earth,” John Reed wrote of the Bolsheviks, “they were building a
kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was
a glory to die.”
Indeed, this sense that “this is our moment” and that “we are the
change that we seek” seems to be hardwired into all of the political
religions. Albert Beveridge at the Progressive Party Convention —
where the crowd sang “We Will Follow Jesus” with Teddy Roosevelt’s
name replacing Jesus’ — proclaimed “God has marked us as His chosen
people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.”
As I discuss at length in the book, totalitarianism was for Mussolini
a way of uniting businesses, classes, regions, religions, institutions
and people from “all walks of life” — in Obama’s words — in a common
cause for the common good. These segments of society would band
together, like sticks around the fasces. This was a sacred, spiritual,
calling. “Fascism,” Il Duce declared time and again, “is a religion.”
And the animating dogma of that faith was that if we’re all in it
together there’s nothing we can’t do. Everything in the state, nothing
outside the state.
Such a vision is comforting because it plays upon man’s inherent
desire to belong, to be protected by his fellow man and his community.
“Strength in numbers” is the narcotic of all populists, the logic of
all “people powered movements” as leftwing bloggers like to say
(though for reasons that defy easy analysis, the left has mastered the
art of casting itself as the voice of the dissidents against the
oppressive, stultifying “herd mentality” even as it places the group
at the top of its hierarchy of political aesthetics). This is the
motivating passion behind the fascist quest for order.
Sometimes it sounds like Obama wants to talk about God’s plan when
he’s talking about his own campaign for a New Order. But most times,
you can see that he wants to stay on the secular side of the divide —
where his white base resides — but without giving up the prophetic
vision. He wants to persuade his followers, and perhaps himself, that
he is elect, but he cannot do so without religious language.
This reminds me of a passage from Eugen Weber’s brilliant Varieties of
Fascism:
“…part of the confusion over the true character of Fascism comes from
its advocacy of ‘order’ – a term we generally associate with
conservatism or reaction. But Fascist order envisages not the status
quo – or the status quo ante – but a more or less definite order of
its own. The Fascist leader, now that God is dead, cannot conceive of
himself as the elect of God. He believes he is elect, but does not
quite know of what – presumably of history or obscure historical
forces. The elect of God establishes or guards God’s order; the
Fascist leader seeks a similar justification – but in the absence of
ultimate authority, the order is one that he defines himself…”
The word order is a fossil of its living self today. Beyond academia
and bromides about “law and order” nobody uses it or appreciates its
full connotations. We should spend a moment excavating it.
Today, liberals do not use the word “order.” They say “security” –
economic security, social security, health security – but the meaning
is largely the same. All of the liberal arguments about globalization,
job security, free trade, free markets and the like promise to
increase a sense of safety, of belonging. There is nothing wrong with
security, of course. But, we should take liberals at their word when
they say this enterprise is not “conservative.” They do not want to
restore the security of tradition, the order of old arrangements. They
want to design a new “social” security grounded in progressive
principles. This is the desired system that a politics of meaning is
supposed to deliver.
For example, Obama says people want a spiritual community:
They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They’re
looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a
recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and
confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that
somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them—that they
are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards
nothingness.
For Obama the salve of salvation can be found not in scripture but in
politics and political action under the transcendent banner of
“unity”:
[I]f enough Americans were awakened to the injustice; if they joined
together, North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then
perhaps that wall would come tumbling down, and justice would flow
like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Unity is the great need of the hour—the great need of this hour. Not
because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but
because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that
exists in this country.
Joe Knippenberg, reviewing Obama’s statements on religion writes:
Obama speaks as if the first move of someone faithful to God’s word is
to call for government action, not to act directly through his or her
own charitable efforts. Those who don’t engage in political action of
the sort he approves are apparently hypocrites, satisfied with mere
words. His religious commitments are a kind of conversation-stopper,
as the late Richard Rorty once said.
This reminds me of perhaps my favorite vignette from the book:
Walter Rauschenbusch offers the best short explanation of the Social
Gospel for our purposes. A professor at the Rochester Theological
Seminary and a onetime preacher on the outskirts of New York’s Hell’s
Kitchen, the slender clergyman with a thin goatee had become the
informal leader of the movement when he published Christianity and the
Social Crisis in 1907. “[U]nless the ideal social order can supply men
with food, warmth and comfort more efficiently than our present
economic order,” he warned, “back we shall go to Capitalism . . . ‘The
God that answereth by low food prices,’ ” he boomed, “let him be
God.’”
In other words, God had chosen his preferred economic system, and any
religious faith, doctrine or revelation that suggested otherwise must
be false. God is a socialist, dagnabit, and if a God who isn’t a
socialist speaks to you in a small, still voice, turn your back on
Him. The state, according to Rauschenbusch was “the medium through
which the people shall co-operate in their search for the kingdom of
God and its righteousness.”
In my book I concentrate on Hillary Clinton’s “village” and her
Politics of Meaning. But it seems to me that Obama is every bit the
practitioner of his own politics of meaning and his own conception of
a village-like community.
Anyway, this is all just a jumble of thoughts. But that’s sort of why
this blog exists. More thoughts to come, I’m sure, as it looks like
Obama isn’t going anywhere.
http://www.nationalreview.com/liberal-fascism/203383/notes-obama-liberal-fascism
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Liberal-Fascism/Jonah-Goldberg/e/9780385511841/
White Trash Palin
"ØbaMaØ Tse Dung" <0bama0....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:067b86cf-4abf-4763...@f42g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
Hmmm, you seemed unconcerned about your topics for 8 years of Bush. PLONK
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RHF
> "ØbaMaØ Tse Dung" <0bama0.spea...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:067b86cf-4abf-4763...@f42g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
>
> Hmmm, you seemed unconcerned about your topics for 8 years of Bush. PLONK
>
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>
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
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> http://www.eset.com
"White Trash Palin" - What a Sexist Racist Screen Name [.]
-if- Someone had concocted a like Screen Name using
Prez Obama's Name "B**** T****** O****" you would
be out-raged, Out-Raged. OUT-RAGED !
Well Your "White Trash Palin" Is An Out-Rage to
* All Women American US Citizens
* All White American US Citizens
* All Poor American US Citizens
Your "White Trash Palin" Screen Name speaks to
Democrat Party of the USA : Hatred, Fear Mongering,
Bigotry, Racism, Sexism and a Culture of Political
Class Warfare . . . More Democrat Inconvenient Truths . . .
~ RHF
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