Quote of the Day: Chris Hedges

Any mass movement that arises—and I believe one is coming—will be fueled, like the Occupy movement, by radicals who have as deep a revulsion for Democrats as they do for Republicans. The radicals who triumph, however, may not be progressive. Populist movements, from labor unions to an independent press to socialist third parties, have been destroyed in the United States. A protofascist movement that coalesces around a mystical nationalism, that fuses the symbols of the country with those of Christianity, that denigrates reason and elevates mass emotions will have broad appeal. It will offer to followers a leap from the deep pit of despair and frustration to the heights of utopia. It will speak in the language of violence and demonize the vulnerable, from undocumented workers to homosexuals to people of color to liberals to the poor. And this force, financed by the most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, could usher in a species of corporate fascism in a period of economic or environmental instability. (Source)

Weimar redivivus?

I don't know. I understand Hedge's logic, and I've often argued that we face more of a threat from the right than we do from the left because the left is so toothless. The Left is a figment of the hard right's imagination. Obama a socialist? I wish. 

I wrote this piece tongue-in-cheek a couple of years ago, and every once in a while the page hits go up on it because some rightwing types have discovered it and takes it seriously. 

I don't know.

 

Comments

[Jonathan]

Right. I'd like to know in what way "a species of corporate fascism in a period of economic or environmental instability" is not already what we're living in. And "a mass movement that arises"? Seriously? McLuhan, anybody? There are no mass movements in an age of mass culture. This is precisely how capitalism has triumphed. It has engorged and digested every opposition. Once you're talking about "sub-cultures" instead of "counter-cultures" then you know the dominant culture is, well, dominant. Why revolt when you can be a hipster? The age of revolutions is over in the west. We're too comfortable, too technologized, too ironic or something. In the Muslim world, apparently, and perhaps in parts of east Asia, the sort of sandals-in-the-streets foment this guy seems to have in mind is still possible. But in the west, no. The age of those kinds of revolutions in the west lasted from 1789 to 1968. Maybe 1989 if you count eastern Europe, though I think the fall of the Eastern Bloc governments was just that -- a collapse rather than a proper revolution. The closest we've come to a real revolution in the classical sense, since the early 20th century totalitarianisms, was 1968, and that was an utterly pathetic failure. Speaking, if I may, for my generation: It ain't gonna happen. Huge turmoil will come in the 21st century, even in the west. It may be in the form of rebellion and it may be violent. But that's a different thing from a revolution in the mass-movement sense, with a programmatic ideology either atavistic or progressive.

[Jonathan]

This is what I mean:

http://www.theonion.com/video/after-obama-victory-shrieking-whitehot-sphere-of-p,30284/

Political emotion, sublimated. The Onion, which is both brilliant and deeply depressing, satirizes leftist ideas as much as those of the right. It even satirizes its own cynical satire. The right is more often humiliated in the pages of the Onion perhaps because they tend to have much stupider ideas. But nothing is safe. I don't know who Chris Hedges is, but based on the excerpt, I know what the Onion would do to him. No one would start a revolution today, because it would be uncool. Even being cool is uncool. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that my generation can't mock and trivialize. It is a sign of our disease, to be sure, yet enough of us voted to keep Romney out of office.

[Jack Whelan]

Jonathan--

Belated response: I think you're right if we're talking about a left or progressive mass movement, but not one that is impelled by the resentments and fears of the right. And that's Hedges' point. The Right is a counterculture in its own imagination of itself as over-against the mainstream, liberal cosmopolitan culture. Hedges' is pretty clear that there's nothing to be expected from what he calls the Liberal Class, which has been co-opted pretty much as you describe it.

[Jack Whelan]

There are two "Rights": the plutocratic right, for which Romney is a kind of caricature; and the cultural right, whose identity is so deeply entwined with values that are being destroyed by consumer capitalism. These two factions within the right should be enemies, but the first faction realizes that it needs the second, and many of them pretend to share its traditional values despite not caring at all about them. A former Baine partner and Romney supporter on Chris Hayes's show admitted as much last weekend.

The characteristic they both share is the feeling of being (in very different ways) an embattled minority that is vulnerable to be swept away by a hostile majority. They both (in their different ways) fear for their survival. Those on the plutocratic right fear that in a democracy the non-plutocratic majority will vote for its own economic interests at the their expense, and for that reason feel that they must take a stand on No New Taxes. It's as if it has its finger in the little hole in the dike that as soon as it's removed the flood will come that will sweep them away. The cultural right fears that secular liberalism (a creature of consumer capitalism whether or not they recognize it as such) is destroying its mythos and with it everything they believe is meaningful and important. It's very similar to the fears that excite traditionalist Muslims.

I think there are some in the plutocratic right who share the cultural right's mythos, especially where they overlap in the rugged individualist frontiersman narrative. But there are a lot of people on the plutocratic right who share little with the traditionalist cultural right but see an alliance with it as essential to make it competitive in elections. It will be interesting to see if that alliance can be maintained in the GOP if in fact the GOP has to broaden its appeal to accept groups that do not embrace the cultural right's narrative.

[JP]

"It will be interesting to see if that alliance can be maintained in the GOP if in fact the GOP has to broaden its appeal to accept groups that do not embrace the cultural right's narrative."

I'm thinking that the answer is no.

So if the plutocrats try to do this, then they will erode their base faster than they can attract a new base to shore it up.

In any event, it's now being noticed that economic growth has limits. Who knew?

[Jack Whelan]

I'll leave my earlier comment here, but I've made it into a new post, so if you'd like, comment there instead of here.