#PostFasciste

[schismusic]

Goodnight, David

A Tumblr post by @roycohn – which I'll link here for good measure – has been making the rounds lately; it speaks of David Lynch's "fundamental" understanding of "how abusive and exploitative the world is to those with the least power". Inspired by this exact post, in preparation for this piece – actually, it was the first impetus to actually get off my ass and try to confront the loss – I rewatched two specific scenes of Twin Peaks: The Return. One occurs during episode 6 and the other during episode 15, and some of you may already know which scenes I'm referring to without me having to spoil them for the people who haven't seen Season 3. I didn't really know how to articulate the way I felt after these scenes, and I still don't. I'm looking at his (mostly) blank page and all of a sudden @postlover sends a tribute video somebody made on TikTok. I was talking to another friend, and we both registered just how something profound seems to have shifted over these last few days. Something wicked this way comes.

Sure, the world's wild at heart and weird on top, and that's the beauty of it, right? There is profound tenderness to be found even in the face of bottomless horror. A darkness and a light coexist at the heart of it all, and they balance each other out. They make the world what it is and they make everything strange and marvelous and ours, in a way – ours to explore, to come to terms with, to make sense of. On the other hand there doesn't seem to be much light left as we speak. My country delves further and further into a formless mass of updated postfascist sludge; Palestine is still at the mercy of a military force, Israel's, that is notoriously bad at giving a shit about truces and human rights; I won't even begin to mention whatever the fuck is going on in the United States. These two things seem untied to David Lynch as is, and yet I'd argue that the connections are there. There was another Tumblr post floating around ages ago where among other things people called Hideo Kojima, Werner Herzog and David Lynch "the last three immortals" or something along the lines of that. It's hard to believe that we are now entering a time when even immortals die. At the cost of sounding fatalistic, the death of David Lynch comes at an unfortunate time for the world, and yet it comes at the only possible time for it to ever happen.

We are probably at our saddest. Music-making's considered a hassle, if not just a failing business (so much so that Spotify head honchos feels the need to contract with AI companies who give military drones their brains); everybody hates everybody else, arbitrary lines are being drawn all around and people are getting beaten, maimed, killed over them. There is no empathy left. Gordon Cole – not the Sunset Blvd. one, I assure you – told his colleagues to "fix their hearts or die". And now that Gordon Cole isn't here, who will remind them? It doesn't seem like anyone's particularly aching for a new way to perceive and shape the world. The future seems horribly bleak, and what's worse is there doesn't seem to be a point in finding a new one. Mark Fisher was, once again, probably right: the vision of a different future – and action upon it – was the key to something else, something less shitty at the very least. It feels like people succeeded in taking that vision away.

But the Lynch family was right in one way. "It's a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way". This is today, this is what we have. And after all it doesn't take much to start dreaming again. It'll be just like in the movies – we'll pretend to be someone else, and redraw everything from scratch. We have to. Lynch's passing, right here, right now, means we have to take of the training wheels and dare to take up the mantle ourselves. So goodbye, David. You gave us alien instruments for a scary and awesome future that only requires us to go beyond the wall of sleep, to find the strength and the weakness needed for something wholly new. And the robins will come back, at one point.

[rabbitandmouse]

I don't take you as an asshat, nor anyone genuinely engaging. But this is social media, where the number one rule should be "You're here for entertainment." There's no guarantee that you have someone here who's gonna lean you into a good vein of thought rather than flatter themselves by posting whatever they post, nor are any recommends guaranteed to be right for a particular person.

So, it depends on what you're looking for.

If all you'd like is an overview of the anti-TERF/pro-trans side of things or just falsifying TERF logic, you're in luck, there's lots. This post seems like a good primer just because I've read a few on it (esp. SBB).

- https://www.tumblr.com/anonymousbutnott/718943328322863104

I'm also a Judith Butler fan, though I highly suggest reading an overview or two of their work first, and also consult their critics. Same with bell hooks.

If you want theory work which reifies TERF as a philosophy, just to see the arguments? I mean, I could suggest them, they're not exactly cognitohazards, but I find they keep repeating themselves. Most trend toward first- and second-wave feminists getting reinterpreted (or "correctly" interpreted) as exclusionary. Some hype up "feminine mysticism" loaded into, say, the spirituality/new-age/wicca/brujería movements between the 70s to today, many of which depend on essentialist foundations. Other takes are just monotheism repackaged. Some takes are whatever the hell Chimamanda Adichie and Germaine Greer keep side-stepping, or the two-note posts of folks like Julie Bindel or Heather Evans or Lisa Littman. Outside of that, I could point at Substack. Or random pages on tumblr.

But for an overview which is pro-trans, start at the bullet which reads "The Nature of Feminism" in Introduction: TERFs, Gender-Critical Movements, and Postfascist Feminisms ( https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article/9/3/311/319375/IntroductionTERFs-Gender-Critical-Movements-and ).

Sophie Lewis also has a new book out which I went through called "Enemy Feminisms," which covers more than just TERF history. You might find it interesting if you already have some basics. Note that her position is utopian, but the history covered is not. I've debated posting a critique.

Better, non-IQ and non-Wojak version of the meme I just made

[timriva-blog]

Antonio Scurati, écrivain : « En Italie, le groupe postfasciste au pouvoir a choisi de réécrire l’histoire »

L’écrivain italien a confié au « Monde » le texte qu’il devait lire sur la chaîne RAI 3 pour commémorer la libération de l’Italie, le 25 avril, et dans lequel il dénonce les manipulations de l’histoire auxquelles se livre Fratelli d’Italia, le parti d’extrême droite de Giorgia Meloni. Son intervention a été annulée par le groupe audiovisuel public. Écrit par Antonio Scurati  Giacomo Matteotti a…

[mechanicalinertia]

Bubblegum Black Chapter 6 is now live!

I missed my monthly deadline awhile back, but never fear, dear readers! I am back on my bullshit.

Celia and Swimming: See Anatomy of a Lovedoll - hell, see the first fifteen minutes or so of the first Bubblegum Crisis OVA - to see what I'm talking about. I'm fanon-ing that Celia is a) an excellent swimmer and b) uses it as catharsis when she's feeling disraught or disregulated. It just seems like the kind of thing she'd do.

ALMs: In this future, more robust AI exist, as envinced by the existence of Boomers, but cruder language-model AI from our time are still around. With the novelty of language model-generated content having all but worn off over the decades, most megacorps now use them in ways like this, generating metalinguistic code for automated and cyborg bureaucracy to whisper to each other over the company intranet. What? I think it's a clever idea. Paperwork often does feel like it's written in a foreign language, doesn't it? Might as well formalize that.

Sylvie and enemies: Despite Sylvie being largely a character of my own creation, extrapolated from so little screentime on her part in Moonlight Rambler, there are times when I worry that I'm writing her wrong. But I think I've figured her out. She's sweet and kind and loving, yes, but she's not passive, she left that passivity behind in Anchorpoint. She's going to make sure you know what she really thinks, barely concealed behind a flimsy veil of politeness. She'll be more straightforward with her comrades in arms, of course. Yeah. The more I play with Sylvie, the more I understand how to write her. I have an idea for a big scene involving her much later down the line and it's really exciting stuff.

Thuggee: Real-ass bandits of the Indian subcontinent, a name especially prominent during the Raj and not just in the one Indiana Jones movie. I think they should show up later in the fic - the idea of exploring how everyone outside of Roanapur but entangled in Koh Chang's business lives is fascinating to me - but for now they're not a big deal.

Bharat: Hindi name for India. Apparently the quasi-fascist BJP government there wants to change its name to double down on Hindu nationalist identity as the only valid identity in a nation of over a billion people, many of whom have alternative heritages that a secular nation would better serve. You can probably guess my politics, dear reader, from some of the stuff I post, and so you can probably guess that this element - one where a Hindu nationalist legion of psychotic gurus rules - is extremely dystopian. Honestly, I think more modern cyberpunk needs to acknowledge the rise of these governments, like in Hungary and Israel and potentially America if the '24 elections go badly. They're farces whose only selling point is internal bloodshed, eternal purges and cruelty. They can't even muster up the energy national revitalization they claim is so important to them, the way the fascist scum of the 20th century built armies for genocidal Lebensraum, because it's better to just privatize public services and fellate the divine power of free-market megacorporate tyrants. Let's call these sleazy fronts for corporate control and terror postfascist, then, shall we? I really should wave this word around a bit more often, it feels appropriate for cyberpunk. Anyhoo...

Rock and Guns: I don't remember where but I swear Revy's said something like this canonically. Here, though, it takes on an alternate turn. Instead of it being about who Rock is as a person, someone fundamentally unsuited for nasty violence as delivered by his hand, it's more Revy trying to protect Rock from Balalaika being nasty towards him. That's the idea, anyway. Balalaika is right, mind you. Rock has aided and abetted killing of all sorts constantly. He's more the gun that fires Revy's bullet than the other way around at times.

Revy getting a Hardsuit: What? Did you really think for one fucking moment that I wasn't going to do this? I've said as much! And reader, let me tell you, I am excited to do it. As for Balalaika... she might get a Saber hardsuit instead of a Russian 2050's powersuit, I'm still hashing that out. We'll see how things play out.

V.V. Vladilena: Balalaika's pseudonym for controlling Bougainvillea. A little joke on her part.

VHS-5: Further iteration of the VHS Croatian assault rifle. The newer version looks pretty cool, the older version has that FAMAS clone kinda vibe... either way, the point is that it's the kind of rifle Hotel Moscow owns a lot of that isn't explicitly Russian.

Vinfast: Yes, you heard me right, Vietnam's big fancy electric car company is still kicking in the 2060's! Sure, their cars are apparently quite shit now, but so were KIA and Hyundai's cars a few decades ago and no one would accuse the mighty chaebols of making such inferior product now. They're probably still plenty cheap in the ASEAN bloc, too!

Batwoman: Does Revy know that Batwoman's a canonical lesbian? Eh. Probably not. Are DC comics and Marvel and whatnot still around by 2069? Who knows, but I know Priss namedropped Batman in OVA 7, so maybe!

D-Company: D-Company is a real thing! Apparently its founder, Dawood Ibrahim, was on the FBI's most wanted for a hot minute! Apparently they're a pretty big deal in Muslim South Asia! Or were, anyway. Why put them in here? 'Cause I just didn't feel like having the Cosa Nostra in this fic. I'm sure the Italian mafia's reach spans the globe and as such could conceivably get its tentacles into Roanapur, but I wanted something a little different, something with more regional power. As for those other Islamic crime syndicates - Somali kinship networks I think I pulled out of a reference in Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired, and the Saudis-in-exile are, well, the Saudi royal family in exile, yeeted out of their own country following a bloody post-WW3 civil war. (The Emiratis control most of the Arab peninsula now, more on them around... chapter 8 or so. Not the next chapter I mean, the one after that.)

The Big Content Warning-y Moment: Whoo. Okay. Yeah. Blood and guts and gore and now this. Don't have your kids read this fic, folks. Revy's a very very bad role model. I did have someone say who read this a few days ago that while he could understand Revy, if she kept up her act he'd drop the fic. Which is fine, because I don't intend for Revy to get much worse. This is her low point, threatening someone with some really bad shit, someone who called her out on her other shit, and now? Well, now things are gonna change in Revy's head, hopefully. We'll see how things play out, won't we?

One last thing: I'd like to apologize for missing my self-imposed monthly update deadline by almost two months. It was annoying to me. I'm not sure if it was annoying to you, dear reader. I do have another chapter waiting in the wings that's shorter and sweeter in both senses of the word. With any luck, I'll be able to get it and another chapter out by the end of December. It's not a great place to be in - I wanted the climax of this arc to show up around the end of the year - but I need more time to make that happen.

After that arc, we'll have another arc, and another and another and then the fic will reach its conclusion. I'm excited to see where I can take this. Are you?

[autolenaphilia]

The fact that the recently elected Swedish government is a right-wing one that relies on a neo-/postfascist party, the Sweden democrats, to govern has really radicalized me. Or at least strongly reinforced my conviction that we need to abolish capitalism. I live in Sweden and I’m honestly afraid what might happen. So I started thinking a lot, about what lead up to this point. So here is a history lesson.

The fact this happened in Sweden is illustrative of social democracy’s failure to control capitalism. The Swedish social democratic party governed the country uninterrupted from 1932 to 1976. Sweden stands out even in the social democratic dominated nordic countries because of this. Probably no other state is as thoroughly formed by the idea of social democracy. And social democracy in the modern sense that notion capitalism can be reformed to be more humane. Social democratic parties started as marxist and socialist, but gradually abandoned the idea of abolishing capitalism in favour of reforming it. Instead they turned to Keynesianism. Keynes agreed with Marx that capitalism tended towards crisis, but argued that state intervention could correct for the boom and bust cycle of the free capitalist market. And this enabled social democrats to reject the marxist idea that capitalism was doomed to failure. Instead capitalism should work to provide shared prosperity.

Instead of class struggle, the social democrats advocated class collaboration, between workers and capitalists. And in Sweden this sort of inter-class agreement was literally formalized in the famous Saltsjöbaden agreement of 1938 in which the government created an accord between the association of the major labour unions and the employers association.

Part of the reason Sweden and the other nordic countries became a role model for social democracy was that they started implementing such reforms early in comparison to the rest of Europe. Particularly interesting is that Swedish economists in the Stockholm school had ideas that anticipated Keynes’s 1936 General Theory by several years. This inspired Ernst Wigforss, the social democratic finance minister of Sweden in the 1930s and 40s, to suggest and implement proto-keynesian ideas as early as 1932. He argued that state deficit spending could save Sweden from the great depression. And it worked, up to a point.

The emerging nordic model became a subject of international discussion. Yet Sweden for some reason stood among the other nordic countries, as exemplified by American Journalist Marquis Childs who wrote a book called Sweden: The Middle Way, published in 1936. It was widely read, including by FDR. Childs saw Sweden as presenting an ideal middle way between the laissez-faire capitalism that caused the great depression and soviet-state socialism. Of course his analysis was wrong, Sweden was and is still capitalist, workers don’t control the means of production. Any meaningful definition of socialism isn’t “when the government does stuff”. Yet Childs was a major influence on the foreign and American views of Sweden.

And in the post-war world, the ideals of social democracy and keynesian economics spread far beyond Scandinavia and even the social democratic parties. People had lived through the great depression, the rise of fascism and the resulting world war, and wanted at all cost to avoid repeating that experience. This was fertile ground for keynesian economics and the social democratic welfare state to become dominant ideas. It was thought that with keynesian economic policies and the welfare state, we wouldn’t have major crises causing massive poverty and a collapse into fascism. This view extended far beyond formal social democrats, and these policies were adopted by liberals and conservatives as well. There existed a kind of post-war consensus that this was the best way to govern capitalism.

And during the 1945-1973 boom period for the western world, it seemed to work. The western economy went through a sustained growth period recovering from the Great Depression and WWII. Strong labour unions, full employment, progressive taxation and the welfare state did ensure that the wealth created was shared by the wider population to an unprecedented degree.

Yet that period of recovery growth would eventually naturally exhaust itself. Furthermore, the growth was based on oil, and the 1973 oil crisis brought it to an end. An economic crisis begun. Keynesianism proved unable to prevent this crisis, and the mix of inflation and recession that the 1970s crisis showed seemed to contradict its ideas.

By 1973, the old spectre of class struggle had reasserted itself, from both sides.

As proto-keynesian economist Michal Kalecki had predicted in 1943, the long period of full employment did remove the fear of unemployment among workers, making them more bold in demanding and fighting for higher wages and better conditions. So a new period of labour strife started in the late 1960s, including in Sweden, with the wild miners strike of 1969-70 being the beginning. Capitalism is traditionally dependent on a "reserve army of labour" and the threat of unemployment to keep workers disciplined, to make workers do what capitalists tell them to do. And with full employment that threat is gone, leading to labour making bolder demands.

And capitalists don't like that loss of their power. When the crisis of the 1970s happened, capitalists were no longer content to share their profits with the workers in the same way they had since 1945, since those profits were no longer growing. Capitalists are and were a small part of the population, but despite democracy their wealth enables them to influence society to further their own interests at the disadvantage of the majority. The rich used their wealth to fund and promote media and politicians and think thanks to create a new neoliberal policy regime to replace the keynesian welfare state one. And with modern technology (such as containerization) and loosened capital controls allowing for an unprecedented mobility of capital, capitalists were now able to punish governments who had too high taxes and strict labour laws for their liking by simply moving their capital somewhere else.

So the welfare state in western states were rolled back, and now is a shadow of its old self. The benefits still exist, but degrading means testing and meagre payments make getting on them a kafkaesque nightmare. Employment is often precarious and unemployment is deliberately kept high via monetarist means to keep workers disciplined.

People feel naturally discontent with this situation. And the right-wing is able to exploit by blaming immigrants or other minority groups (like trans people) for these problems, while it’s capitalism and their own neoliberal policies that have created them.

In Sweden specifically, the period of renewed labour struggle starting around 1969 actually led the Social Democratic government of Olof Palme to implement a wave of new reforms in an effort to placate the labour movement. The welfare state was strengthened as were labour rights.

Yet workers grew more radical. And in 1976 the main confederation of trade unions, LO, adopted a plan by social democratic economist Rudolf Meidner for the socialization of the means of production via "wage-earners funds". Basically capitalist profits would be taxed by the governments and put into funds controlled by the trade unions to buy shares of corporations. It was a gradualist means of achieving socialism. These ideas did not come from any outside radical forces, but were deeply rooted in the social democratic movement. LO was staunchly social democratic, the party viewed itself as its political wing and Meidner had designed the social democratic wage policy decades before. They had just moved back to the original idea of social democracy, of a reformist path to socialism.

The wage-earners funds created a massive debate. Even within the social democratic party it was opposed by the party's right-wing. Yet the party felt obligation towards the trade unions which it was meant to represent.

Outside the party, the reaction to the funds idea was even worse. Capitalists, themselves organized in an employers association (SAF), naturally saw the idea as a threat. The capitalists decided to use their wealth to conduct a massive political and advertising campaign against the Meidner funds plan, socialism and trade unions, and instead promote neoliberal ideas. The methods used were basically the same as in the neoliberal reaction in the western world as a whole. They used their money to fund politicians, media and even created a neoliberal think-thank (Timbro), all to promote policies which would be in their interest.

And it worked. The social democrats finally lost power in the 1976 election. While the resulting liberal-conservative government did not reallly do much neoliberal reforming of the economy it meant the end of social democratic political hegemony.

The Social democrats returned to power in 1982, but times had changed, the party was much less radical. They implemented a neutered version of the wage-earners funds that wouldn't socialize the economy. And the general economic policy was set by finance minister Kjell-Olof Feldt, who was on the right of the party and did some deregulations inspired by neoliberal economics.The social democrats lost power again in 1991, and the right-wing government really put the country on the same neoliberal path followed by the rest of the western world. Something that was largely continued by the social democrats when they again ruled in 1994-2006.

And the consequences of neoliberalism again were the same as in the western world. this created the conditions for the recent Swedish election, where the post-fascist party got 20 % of the votes.

Sweden is not alone in this development, but it’s a powerful illustration because it is idealized so often as a role model for social democracy. You can still see echoes of Marquis Childs in the recent rhetoric of Bernie Sanders about the nordic countries. Now it illustrates its failures. The social democratic reformers did meaningfully improve lives, and we should fight for those reforms, but they were not able to tame capitalism as they claimed. The capitalists still had their capital, their wealth and were thus able to strike back against those reforms, as the neoliberal revolutions from the 70s on proved. And while Swedish Social Democrats to their credit tried to move beyond capitalism, the Meidner plan also proves how gradualist and reformist attempt to achieve socialism give capitalists time to organize against them. The 1970-73 Allende Government's attempt in Chile is a darker example, as it lead to a right-wing coup and dictatorship.

Those reforms were only won by class struggle from the workers in the first place. Sweden is a very good example for that. It had a strong and highly organized working class, and labour relations were very volatile prior to the Saltsjöbaden agreement. In fact, the strong 1932 election result for the social democrats was partly due to popular outrage at the 1931 Ådalen shootings, when the military fired on striking demonstrating workers. It was this background of labour struggle that enabled the reforms in the first place. The same thing was true of the 1970s reforms.

Those contradictions in interest between workers and capitalists started to reassert themselves once the 1945-1973 growth period exhausted itself and such contradictions were apparent even before then, with a more militant working class in the years leading up to that moment.

When the old-school marxian economist Paul Mattick wrote in his classic book Marx and Keynes from 1969 that “the Keynesian solution to the economic problems that beset the capitalist world can be of only temporary avail, and that the conditions under which it can be effective are in the process of dissolution.” he was proven completely right only a few years later.

It’s sad that the left has not fully taken that to heart. It’s depressing that even supposed radical socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn ran on mid-century social democratic platform where the basis is keynesian mixed-economy policies. Even the Left Party here in Sweden (that I’m a member of for lack of anything more viable) advocates what is basically mid-century social democracy.

We already know from experience that it doesn’t work, just like we know that soviet-style Stalinist “socialism” doesn’t work. If the flaws of the Soviet model are evident in Stalin and now Putin (and for that matter Mao and Deng), we can similarly judge social democracy by its present day results.

When even the social democratic model country of Sweden is in the beginning stages of a fascist revival, you can no longer argue that it’s a model that fixed capitalism’s problems."The Middle way" has reached its end.

And Sweden is just a particularly telling example. The pattern of neoliberal reversals of social democratic reforms leading to poverty and insecurity particularly in times of economic crisis and in turn inspires fascist revivals is common all over the western world. When your model leads to that kind of results, it’s proven to not work. The modern day social democrat is stuck arguing that we should turn back the clock to a time when their proposed solution hadn’t yet lead to these results.

And our ability to turn the clock back is limited. The material conditions, such as limited mobility of capital, that sustained social democracy’s glory days of 1945-73 doesn’t exist anymore. Why should we with our modern awareness of climate change even want to recreate the oil-driven growth of mid 20th century Europe?

The larger ecological crisis and climate change is further evidence that capitalism is unsustainable. And I think the only realistic solution at this point in time is the radical one: abolishing capitalism.

[lordascapelion]

The “I hope the system collapses so MY ideology can rise from the ashes!” idea will not get you very far if you want ancapistan. Because currently ancaps share a side with a variety of reactionary groups that definitely do not share their views on liberty. They are outnumbered by actual fascists (more like neofascists/postfascists but whatever) who also want to get rid of democracy, but unlike ancaps want a world with less liberty, not more.

If the current liberal globalist system falls, it would certainly lead to a huge “civil war” between all the dissident right factions. I think the sad truth is that most of the people who call themselves ancaps would just acquiesce to the other factions and may end up on a side that they would find unthinkable today. Reading Rothbard or Hoppe and reposting their ideas on tumblr is one thing. Being on the battlefield and being forced to contend with the physical realities of the world you thought you wanted is another.

An actual historical instance of something that might look like a transition to an anarchist society is the fall of Rome. The central authority was extractive and ineffective so people fled cities to form their own self-ruled communities. The government eventually just collapsed entirely from the accumulated rot. Of course then, eventually, you got a world that was rife with instability. Feudalism came out of this anarchic world, and honestly Ancapistan would greatly resemble early feudalism (with no central currency, land and agricultural capacity are the money you’d have to use.) You’d be reliant on the warrior classes (knights) to defend you. (Though with guns not requiring special training, the dynamic would be different.)

The feudalism comparison isn’t even meant to be a huge slam. Late feudalism was seen as being extremely extractive and tantamount to slavery, but early feudalism worked pretty well for the situation. Of course the fall of Rome was a process that took centuries so even if an equivalent of it was starting today, none of us would live to see the results.

I have a challenge for all the ancaps out there.

I often hear you guys talk about how you believe the world should work, and what the perfect ancap society would look like, but it's always described in a state of already existing, not as something that was built from a former society. If an anarchocapitalist society ever comes into being, it will not do so fully formed at the outset.

My challenge is, how would you build that society, from here and now, in a world where most people don't agree with your principles? How is your ideal practically taken from words to reality, while dealing with the possibility of dissent, disinterest, or resistance to said ideals?

[anderslindberg]

Grattis Åkesson, i Italien har du din drömregering

https://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/a/wAxLWd/italiens-postfascister-tanker-ta-over-hela-eu?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[paoloferrario]

"Ci sono tre destre ..., Luciano violante in «Il Pd deve ricucire l’opposizione, in 26 febbraio 2023

Ci sono tre destre: una tendenzialmente paleoliberale, una localista e una che cerca di diventare un moderno partito conservatore. Nessuna può essere definita postfascista. Certo, superare alcuni antichi simboli, lo fece anche il Pci, può aiutare. Le politiche concrete che stanno sviluppando possono essere criticate, ma a mio avviso, non possono essere definite postfasciste vai…

[skillstopallmedia]

New Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni takes office

New Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni takes office

(Rome) A historic page is turning in Italy: the postfascist Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to lead the third economy in the euro zone, took office on Sunday, calling on her government to “stay united”. “We must be united, there are emergencies that the country must face. We must work together,” she said after the first council of ministers, which lasted about 30 minutes, against a backdrop of…

[plumedepoete]

Horizon Postfasciste - Daroca Mikael

Horizon Postfasciste – Daroca Mikael

Automne 1 922 Regards de l ’ Italie Les chemises noires Chantage est convoqué Donner pleins Pouvoirs. Exercer grande violence Une logique totalitaire La bouffée Patriotique Grand jour droitier. Néant monde Démocratie fracturée Coups bas datés Niches de mémoire Imaginaire d ’ obscurité. Bide social L ’ étrange trouble Défilé de fusibles Démocratie frelatée Citoyens baîllent. Poser regard Soucis de…

[hazardous-waste-containment]

By the end of the 1940s, Franco’s regime had taken mature form. It did not so much resemble the original fascist formulae and “National Syndicalist revolution” of the Falange as it did the blueprint laid down by Calvo Sotelo and the Acción Española theorists for the “instauración” of an authoritarian monarchy. All the main points of Acción Española theory had been met: the legislation of 1947 had converted the system into an authoritarian monarchist state; a controlled corporative parliamentary system had been in place since 1943; economic policy was based on state-directed neocapitalism; labor relations were administered through state corporative syndicalism; the system relied on the ultimate political support of the military, who had initiated it; and religious, cultural, and educational policy had developed an elaborate structure of “national Catholicism” that provided more effective support than did any remaining fervor for the Falangist program.

Stanley Payne, “The Movimiento Nacional During the Postfascist Era,” Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977

[antikorg]

Chili : menaces postfascistes et limites de la gauche

Chili : menaces postfascistes et limites de la gauche

Sergio Grez 15 décembre 2021 Chili : menaces postfascistes et limites de la gauche Alors que le second tour des élections chiliennes a lieu dimanche 19 décembre et que la droite réactionnaire post-Pinochet espère l’emporter, les débats sur les stratégies de la gauche, du candidat modéré Gabriel Boric, et des mouvements sociaux, dessinent des options variées. Contretemps publie différents points…

[the-feminist-philosopher]

You can read more about these connections below:

Posie Parker, TERFs Find Audience with White Supremacists

Anti-Trans Feminists Appear at Panel of Right-Wing Heritage Foundation

The Unholy Alliance of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists and the Right Wing

The "unlikely" political alliance against trans care

Introduction: TERFs, Gender-Critical Movements, and Postfascist Feminisms

Unpacking “Gender Ideology” and the Global Right’s Antigender Countermovement

So it has been asked that I put this in it's own post rather than a thread, so I am:

...

White supremacists and white supremacist organizations (See: Richard Spencer’s Radix for primary example) are trying to turn TERFs into “race realists.” And they're actually having a lot of success because 1.) the movement is chronically white, 2.) the movement is built a lot on social fears, and 3.) the movement often uses crime statistics as a recruitment and justification point. Literal white supremacists are using the TERF's social grievances and crime statistics to "enlighten" these supposed feminists about what they call the "race question." Over-policing and capitalistic deprivation of resources have devastated black and brown communities, making members of those communities the disproportionate victims of incarceration. Simply pointing out crime and incarceration stats without nuance, which TERFs like to do with their "trans women are all sexual predators" crime argument, has actually helped the bottom line of white supremacists.

They're also using the standard TERF's belief in the divine feminine-- the idea that natal women have a unique biology which should be protected and venerated-- to convince them that there are "masculine" and "feminine" energies and turn them onto the trad life. And they're tapping into the TERF's unaddressed "benevolent" sexism-- a type of sexism that positively rewards people assigned female at birth for observing their sex-assigned social prescriptions from presentation to roles to a cis identity, and which holds that women should be protected (by the [masculinist] state) and revered, most especially for their unique biology-- to convince them that "modern society" and "modern feminism" is diseased and the antithesis to their liberty. And it's working. It's working precisely because TERFs are so eager to separate people into "biological" castes so that men are men and women are women (and never the twain shall meet), define women as a discrete biological caste ("the sex that can bear offspring or produce ova"), and reify gendered associations, specifically the association that men are Aggressors and women are passive Recipients of said aggression. This ideology actually does quite a bit to uphold patriarchal ideas that define women as a discrete biological category and it also encourages a system whereby men act on behalf of and choose for women (the Aggressor v. Recipient social prescription does a lot to justify rape culture, or men acting aggressively on behalf of and choose for women).

^This is why notorious misogynists like Matt Walsh have shown open support for high-profile TERFs and have taken the "Adult Human Female" slogan and run with it. There's a reason these men on the "right" of the political spectrum can't stand the existence of trans people, but will voice support for TERFs and their ideology and use their language. The TERF ideology is sexist and they're sexists, so it follows.

Additionally, over the last several years, many rad fem leaders and organizations have come to ally with LGB &T hate groups and the Christian right because they, "know who real women are." It is these christian right groups like the FRC and ADF who are behind many of the anti-abortion, anti-women movements through the U.S. and Europe. They're also behind a lot of anti-trans policies and legislation.

You can read a bit about who is behind funding these policy initiatives, and how much money goes into these campaigns below:

European Parliamentary Forum

Southern Poverty Law Center on the ADF

Southern Poverty Law Center on the FRC

And you can read about the connection between these groups and trans-exclusionaries and radical feminists below:

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Far-Right Anti-Trans Laws

Southern Poverty Law Center on the Anti LGBT Campaigns

Political Research Associates on Partners with the Christian Right

An "Unlikely" Ally

The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) even accepted a $15,000 donation from the religious freedom giant, the Alliance Defending Freedom. They've also co-authored anti-trans parenting guides with the Family Policy Alliance and the Heritage Foundation. They've held conferences and panels with Christian-right organizing groups too

We've also seen countless radical feminists appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight and the Ingraham Angle, two Fox hosts well-known for whipping up anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiment in America's Christian Nationalist movement. Speakers included: Meg Kilgannon, Kara Dansky, Tammy Bruce, and Julia Beck.

The term "gender ideology" even has it's origins in conservative Christian circles. And don't even get me started on their use of "hygiene" to describe cis people and the fact they co-opted the idea that certain people (in this case, trans people) have "contaminating" genes. Plus, TERF complaints about the supposed existence of "cancel culture" and "woke culture" echo conservative and right-wing rhetoric.

And the bitch of it is? They know this. They openly admit it, but like to play too stupid to know how your movement is collaborating with the alt-right simply to score a political point against trans people. They all hate trans people existing so much, they've allied with the people who'll cut off their hands and gouge their eyes out.

“I do feel kind of nervous about working with the right wing because they have opposed women’s bodily autonomy…”

-Julia Beck

TERFs have put their eggs in the same basket as people passing anti-abortion policies, people trying to pass girl's genital inspection policies for sports, people trying to ban LGB books, people who want to repeal the right to gay marriage, and people who believe that a woman's "place" is in the home- serving a husband and children all to score a political point against trans people.

That is why I always say that in trying to create a feminism that excludes trans people, TERFs have created the very tool with which the alt-right is using to destroy feminism all together.

[ilcalibano]

I nuovi “sonnambuli” di fronte al postfascismo

di Enzo Traverso

Le nuove destre radicali sono oggi ben rappresentate in tutti i paesi dell’Unione Europe e occupano posizioni di governo in otto di essi. Le eccezioni spagnola e tedesca sono cadute. Dopo l’elezione di Trump e Bolsonaro, il fenomeno ha assunto dimensioni globali. Il mondo non aveva conosciuto nulla di simile dopo gli anni trenta e ciò risveglia la memoria del fascismo. Una domanda sorge quindi spontanea: cosa ci insegna il passato per capire quel che sta avvenendo sotto i nostri occhi? Non tutto, ma forse qualcosa. Il comparativismo serve a cogliere analogie e differenze più che omologie e ripetizioni; talvolta rivela affinità e continuità ma spesso indica che i vecchi concetti sono obsoleti e devono essere sostituiti o almeno rinnovati.

OCCORRE INNANZI TUTTO osservare che, tranne poche eccezioni, le nuove destre non si autodefiniscono fasciste, anche se in molti casi quella è la loro matrice. Forse sarebbe meglio chiamarle postfasciste per distinguerle dai loro antenati: da un lato, esse appartengono a un diverso contesto storico, ma dall’altro è difficile interpretarne la natura e gli scopi senza metterle in rapporto con il fascismo, che rimane un’esperienza fondatrice della nostra modernità politica. In altri termini, il concetto di fascismo è al contempo inappropriato e indispensabile per decifrare questa nuova realtà. Le nuove destre non sono più fasciste ma non sono neppure qualcosa di completamente nuovo e altro dal fascismo. Hanno un carattere transitorio e instabile, ancora in mezzo al guado, suscettibile di mutare in direzioni diverse.

L’ANALOGIA con gli anni tra le due guerre è abbastanza evidente: l’ascesa delle nuove destre si inscrive in una cornice di disordine mondiale e di crisi economica – la crisi fiscale dello stato – che alimenta reazioni xenofobe e nazionaliste. In seno all’Unione Europea, la crisi è anche politica e morale, come hanno messo in luce il Brexit e la vicenda dei profughi, di cui l’Italia è l’epicentro. I vertici europei su questo tema ricordano la conferenza di Evian del 1938, quando le grandi potenze abbandonarono gli ebrei al loro destino.

Le differenze sono tuttavia altrettanto se non più vistose. Alcune sono ovvie, come l’uso limitato della violenza e il ruolo marginale dell’anticomunismo nella retorica delle nuove destre. Non stupisce che, dopo sette decenni di pace nel mondo occidentale, la violenza non sia più il tratto dominante del nazionalismo.

ALL’INDOMANI della Grande Guerra, la politica si faceva con le armi e si prefiggeva lo scopo di annientare il nemico. Oggi non ci sono più milizie ma Salvini che predica la legittimità della violenza individuale: «la difesa è sempre legittima». A trent’anni dalla fine della Guerra Fredda, l’anticomunismo ha perduto gran parte del suo significato, ma questo declino – parallelo all’eclissi del comunismo – è diventato in molti casi un vantaggio per le nuove destre che possono rivolgersi alle classi laboriose senza dissolverle in un indistinto «popolo», stirpe o nazione, e senza dover superare una barriera di culture, valori e linguaggi.

DUE SONO FORSE le differenze meno ovvie e più significative. La prima riguarda il carattere radicalmente anti-utopico del postfascismo, il quale appartiene a un’era post-ideologica – alcuni direbbero «presentista» – che ha perduto ogni orizzonte di attesa. Negli anni trenta, il fascismo si presentava come una «rivoluzione nazionale», voleva edificare una nuova civiltà e plasmare un «uomo nuovo» contro la debolezza e la decadenza delle democrazie. Il postfascismo non coltiva più ambizioni utopiche. La sua modernità risiede nella dimestichezza dei suoi leader con i mezzi di comunicazione di massa, mentre il suo progetto non è né moderno né rivoluzionario. I suoi nemici sono la globalizzazione, l’immigrazione, l’islam e il terrorismo contro i quali prescrive un ritorno al passato: sovranità nazionale, ripristino delle frontiere, protezionismo, difesa dell’«identità nazionale», preservazione delle radici cristiane dell’Europa, leggi liberticide, decisionismo autoritario, ecc. La sua logica ricorda i lamenti del «pessimismo culturale» di fine Ottocento più che il furore della «rivoluzione conservatrice» degli anni tra le due guerre.

La seconda differenza rilevante risiede nel passaggio dall’antisemitismo all’islamofobia. Come i suoi antenati fascisti, la nuova destra è razzista e fonda la sua politica nella ricerca di un capro espiatorio ma il suo bersaglio è cambiato: i responsabili dei mali che affliggono le nostre società, dalla disoccupazione al declino dei valori tradizionali, dallo sradicamento culturale alla minaccia terrorista, non è più l’ebreo ma l’immigrato. Il nemico non ha più l’aspetto dell’ebreo cosmopolita, incarnazione ubiqua della finanza e del bolscevismo internazionali; è il musulmano, il migrante, bacillo islamico dentro l’Europa «ebraico-cristiana», e il jihadista pronto a esplodere come una bomba umana.

TALVOLTA ANTISEMITISMO e islamofobia coesistono come due figure retoriche complementari. Viktor Orbán denuncia due minacce simbioticamente intrecciate: da un lato una cospirazione ordita dalla finanza ebraica di Wall Street – il banchiere di origine ungherese George Soros – e dall’altro un’invasione demografica, ossia l’immigrazione identificata sul piano culturale con l’«islamizzazione» dell’Europa. Questa retorica razzista non impedisce a Orbán di mantenere ottime relazioni con Israele, che appare ai suoi occhi un efficace bastione contro l’islam. In Francia, i principali sostenitori del mito dell’invasione islamica (le grand remplacement) sono intellettuali ebrei come Alain Finkielkraut o Eric Zemmour.

L’islamofobia non è un surrogato o una riformulazione dell’antisemitismo perché ha una sua storia che, a partire dal secolo XIX, è indissociabile da quella del colonialismo. È il colonialismo ad aver inventato un’antropologia politica fondata sulla dicotomia tra cittadini e «indigeni» che fissava rigorose frontiere geografiche, razziali, giuridiche e politiche. Sono queste le frontiere che le nuove destre vogliono ristabilire, sostituendo il mito della «missione civilizzatrice» con quello dell’«invasione islamica». Oggi preferiscono promulgare leggi contro il velo delle donne musulmane o escludere i bambini immigrati dalle mense scolastiche.

UN’ULTIMA DIFFERENZA chiama in causa le cosiddette «élites» europee. Negli anni trenta, la paura del bolscevismo le aveva spinte ad accogliere Mussolini, Hitler e Franco. Innumerevoli sono stati gli «errori di calcolo» da parte di statisti, banchieri e capitani d’industria, ma la loro scelta era chiara. Oggi gli interessi delle élites economiche e finanziarie non sono rappresentati dalle nuove destre ma dalla Troika e dagli organismi dirigenti dell’Unione Europea: la Commissione e la Bce. Il postfascismo potrebbe diventare il loro interlocutore privilegiato in caso di una crisi dell’euro e di una disgregazione dell’Unione Europea che precipiterebbero il continente in una situazione caotica e turbolenta.

PURTROPPO questa eventualità non è affatto inverosimile e la rapidità con la quale Wall Street si è adeguata a Trump mostra che una conversione del genere non sarebbe per nulla difficile. Le élites economiche e finanziarie che fissano gli orientamenti delle istituzioni europee e la classe politica che li mette in atto sono tutt’altro che un argine contro le nuove destre, ne sono anzi il motore. L’ascesa del postfascismo è in larga misura il prodotto di dieci anni di austerità condotta indifferentemente da governi di destra e sinistra in nome del principio secondo cui la responsabilità della crisi non appartiene alla finanza ma agli stati che, con le loro politiche sociali, vivono al di sopra dei loro mezzi e accumulano un enorme debito pubblico. Criticare queste politiche significa rimanere ancorati alle ideologie arcaiche del Novecento.

La campagna ossessiva dei media contro i populismi di destra e di sinistra tende a nascondere questa realtà: le élites pretendono di agire come i pompieri chiamati a spegnere l’incendio ma in realtà sono loro ad averlo appiccato. Esse non sono la risposta ai nuovi fascismi per la semplice ragione che ne sono la causa. Ricordano terribilmente i loro antenati, i «sonnambuli» che nel 1914 avevano precipitato un continente nel baratro senza rendersene conto.

Fonte: Il manifesto del 25/04/19

[folagaring-blog]

2001 - Brèves d’Europe début juillet 2017

2001 – Brèves d’Europe début juillet 2017

par Patrick Parment- 10 juillet 2017 – Géopolitique  

Italie. Le parti démocrate a perdu de nombreuses mairies au profit de la droite : Gênes, La Spezia, l’Aquila, Sesto San Giovanni (Lombardie) ou Pistoia (Toscane), des bastions de gauche. C’est le résultat d’une alliance entre le centre-droit, les postfascistes et les régionalistes. Dans cette affaire le Mouvement 5 étoiles est absent.…