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I think I've yet to reach that part of the rant but I've explicitly posted that the conditions are now possible for the Republicans to coalesce into an actual fascist movement.
But it's exactly that - the conditions merely exist. It's not necessarily set in stone. It very much requires some synthesizing, demagogic figure.
But it's entirely possible that the Republicans become increasingly incoherent as the divide between the white supremacist, hyper-capitalist party elite and the expanded multi-racial populist coalition becomes increasingly irreconcilable and polarized. This is kind of the inherent contradiction that HAS to be synthesized - the elites are outward-looking neoconservatives, the rank-and-file are inward-looking reactionary populists.
I think I’ve yet to reach that part of the rant but I’ve explicitly posted that the conditions are now possible for the Republicans to coalesce into an actual fascist movement.
I think Matt had a good point about that though- the possibility of a "fascist" movement as we traditionally understand it might not be possible in the current conditions, because political action isn't understood to have a bearing on our material conditions. It's more that democrats and republicans and the whole country exist in a post-fascist space where politics has moved totally into the realm of the aesthetic, but the idea of the nation as a shared project and the idea of political action changing material realities isn't there, and can't be there. What we're moving into is a cyberpunk techno-feudalism.
I can absolutely see this perspective. Fascism is a rather unique phenomenon of the conditions in its time and represents the syncretic convergence of appropriation of left-wing rhetoric, national-scale psychological trauma from a recent catastrophe, colonial methods imported to the metropole, and making reaction a true mass movement in the streets. Can it be replicated in different conditions? Probably not, not exactly at least.
There's a lot that can be contested. Probably most prominently, Trump's populist mass spectacle and groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys actually represent a reborn fascist street politics. But the question is, is a mass street politics even possible in the conditions of modern American neoliberalism, where we are all rendered atomized, fragmented individuals by the nature of our very infrastructure and by constant bombardment of cultural stimuli in every outlet?
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I think I've yet to reach that part of the rant but I've explicitly posted that the conditions are now possible for the Republicans to coalesce into an actual fascist movement.
But it's exactly that - the conditions merely exist. It's not necessarily set in stone. It very much requires some synthesizing, demagogic figure.
But it's entirely possible that the Republicans become increasingly incoherent as the divide between the white supremacist, hyper-capitalist party elite and the expanded multi-racial populist coalition becomes increasingly irreconcilable and polarized. This is kind of the inherent contradiction that HAS to be synthesized - the elites are outward-looking neoconservatives, the rank-and-file are inward-looking reactionary populists.
I think Matt had a good point about that though- the possibility of a "fascist" movement as we traditionally understand it might not be possible in the current conditions, because political action isn't understood to have a bearing on our material conditions. It's more that democrats and republicans and the whole country exist in a post-fascist space where politics has moved totally into the realm of the aesthetic, but the idea of the nation as a shared project and the idea of political action changing material realities isn't there, and can't be there. What we're moving into is a cyberpunk techno-feudalism.
I can absolutely see this perspective. Fascism is a rather unique phenomenon of the conditions in its time and represents the syncretic convergence of appropriation of left-wing rhetoric, national-scale psychological trauma from a recent catastrophe, colonial methods imported to the metropole, and making reaction a true mass movement in the streets. Can it be replicated in different conditions? Probably not, not exactly at least.
There's a lot that can be contested. Probably most prominently, Trump's populist mass spectacle and groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys actually represent a reborn fascist street politics. But the question is, is a mass street politics even possible in the conditions of modern American neoliberalism, where we are all rendered atomized, fragmented individuals by the nature of our very infrastructure and by constant bombardment of cultural stimuli in every outlet?
Removed by mod