Authoritarianism on the Rise

[pbrower2a]

(06-30-2021, 11:37 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-29-2021, 07:34 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(06-29-2021, 07:08 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I can acknowledge the threat, but stick to the perspective that it is a futile one.  The conservative faction that wants to not solve problems but keep things the same has lost influence in every crisis.  No kings.  No slaves.  No dictators.  Government regulation of the economy.  Not solving the major problems is just not an option.  Don't cure Covid?  Continue racism and sexism?  Defeat democracy?  If you look at the historical trend of getting rid of the major flaws of the Agricultural and Industrial Ages, does authoritarianism stand a chance?  Are they not headed for a ghetto of their own making?

Right now they are hard rudder to the right, ever so much fanatic about ever more so ridiculous conspiracy theories, shedding more reasonable people as they go.  They are counting on obstructing Biden's for the people plans, and therefore they will win votes for the obstructors?

At the same time I am not against taking the threat seriously.

You mean that the passing of Rush Limbaugh along with one of the infamous Koch brothers failed to turn the tide?

It's not inconsequential that the New Authoritarian Right is still solidly grounded.  The movement, or whatever you wish to call it, has a huge supporting media infrastructure and plenty of babbling heads to keep it fully engaged 24/7/365. As long as the financiers behind the infrastructure continue to pay the bills, I doubt this will end.  The Mercers and Sheldon Adelson's widow are rich enough to keep it afloat for a long time, and the Murdocks are actually profiting from it.

Right-wing authoritarianism would fail quickly were it not for its alignment with the economic elites of the time.  It can buy media, PR firms, politicians, writers, and academics. Just think of the inordinate power that the slave-owning planters had without having the professional intellectual mercenaries that such entities as the tobacco business in recent times and the interests wrecking the environment for quick profits today. 

The history of many other countries has often shown that having command of the bulk of the assets and economic power as an elite does not ensure personal goodness, let alone moral choices with such power as one has. Hitler's Nazis and the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists (who in the end made Hungary a slaughterhouse for its Jewish population when it got a short window of opportunity) drew early support from aristocratic landowners, business tycoons, and business executives. These people saw successful Jews, whether as educated professionals, small-business owners, or union organizers, as rivals or enemies. Obviously Sheldon Adelson or his widow would have never fallen for that because ... you know. 

OK, nobody is going to target any model minority and get away with it in America. Go after Chinese-Americans and you will find hostility from the Jews. Go after Jews and you will find the black bourgeoisie aligning with the Jews, and so on. Model minorities may have spared America of the menace of a soulless dictatorship under Donald Trump.   

Still, look at the opportunities that the Hard Right has to offer. It has publishing houses, and if one is a struggling writer but can write what the owners of some right-wing publishing house wishes to promote to a "conservative" audience (they buy books that they don't really read), then you might get a nice writing contract. Offending the liberals in the process by showing a distorted view of history or social reality is no problem. Liberals are a fussier audience. It has its own news media, and those can offer more for a sell-out journalist who says what is expected. If one is a quack academic, then maybe the Koch family can found a chair or "reform" critical departments (typically social studies and history) to the favor of a reactionary world view in which budding conservative "thinkers" can feel comfortable and liberals seek an early exit. Some people love to grab the big shiny objects... and if one gets paid well enough one can buy an expensive house, a pricey boat, some genuine jewels, and a high-end marque of vehicle or two. As for politics... the Tea Party pols found lavish support from the well-heeled heels. 

So Donald Trump leaves in ridicule by people able to think on their own, people whose place in society depends upon their skill and work-ethic instead of having sold out their souls for the big shiny objects in life.  Don't be fooled. We still have the tycoons, the business executives, the hack right-wing intellectuals, and the big landowners (whether large-scale slumlords or owners of great agricultural expanses) who still own the gold and who will use that gold to make the rules and get themselves even more gold. The Right used to be hostile to Big Government for putting welfare above maximal profits, but the Hard Right has found that it it can use Big Government to profiteer from crony capitalism and reward people for political support. 

It may be that white people on welfare are more likely to have supported Donald Trump than degreed professionals similarly white. This is the opposite of how things were when Bill Clinton was President twenty  to thirty years ago. Just take a look at the poorest states in the Union, and that with one notable exception (New Mexico) they typically vote Republican. The poor people in New Mexico are heavily First peoples and Mexican-Americans who have good cause to distrust the American Hard Right. (Tellingly, New Mexico is above average in inoculations for COVID-19).

The government owns assets that the Right would love to privatize  on the cheap for the opportunity of monopoly gouging, like the Interstate Highway System, water projects, and state universities. The Right also wants to eviscerate trade unions so that employers can dispense with collective bargaining (union dues are worth that alone) and exploit the bargaining weaknesses of workers while driving workers to work harder under harsher conditions for les. Remember that much of the appeal of Adolf Hitler was his promise to destroy the unions in German industry. It is easy to remember Hitler for his genocide, massacres, and aggressive war, but forget that Nazi Germany and its zone of power was a workers' Hell. Workers could not organize or maintain unions, do work stoppages, or even change employers without the consent of the employer. Employers could consign a low-performing worker to a labor camp in which the wretch would be sweated more severely than in the usual Hellhole of a German industrial plant... with some giant German firm profiteering off the toil of the helpless worker. Workplace serfdom? What could be more profitable: Simon Legree as the overseer of the most sophisticated industrial order of the time.