Is right-wing authoritarianism a threat?

Photo via Contending Modernities.

I do think right-wing authoritarianism is a potential threat to American democracy.  I do not think it is the greatest or most imminent threat, but I do think it is a possible threat.

I define right-wing authoritarianism by example – as what the policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas and similar right-wing Republican politicians have in common.

What they have in common is opposition to abortion rights, LGBT advocacy and immigration, and skepticism about climate change and Covid vaccination and the willingness to go to extremes to maintain their power.  

The unifying element is what’s called “Christian nationalism,” a sense that religious believers and native-born Americans are under siege and need to defend themselves.

They are backed by business interests with an interest in low taxes, lenient regulation, limits on spending for public services and opposition to organized labor.

But although nationalism is usually associated with militarism, the right-wing so-called Christian nationalists are not particularly militaristic.

The “America First” slogan means avoiding foreign wars and putting the needs of the American people first.  The main push for war in today’s world comes from self-described globalists and so-called centrists, not nationalists.

Nor are the Christian nationalists white supremacists in the KKK sense, although many of their policies – unqualified support for the police, restrictions on voting, their economic policies – are objectively harmful to black Americans as a group.

Nothing I have written so far proves the politicians I’m describing are anti-democratic.  Any American has a right to be pro-abortion rights or anti-abortion, pro-immigration or anti-immigration, pro-business or anti-business, pro-war or anti-war, and to advocate for their position.  That’s what democracy is.

In fact, I agree with Christian nationalist positions, up to a point.  I do think there have to be limits on immigration.  I do oppose what’s called “gender-affirming care” (surgical castration and double mastectomies) for children under the age of consent.

What makes this political faction undemocratic is the way it tries to gain and hold power by manipulating the election process.  This includes gerrymandering.  It includes limiting voting machines and polling places in districts with a majority of Democratic voters.  It means defining voting eligibility in ways that discourage low-wage workers, especially black voters, from voting.  It means purging eligible voters by illegal means and challenging eligibility of minorities and others deemed likely to vote Democratic.

More ominously, it includes laws authorizing suspension of the results of elections in big cities.  And for state legislatures to choose members of the Electoral College in presidential elections rather than leaving it to the voters.

I don’t think the potential threat to American democracy comes from mobs storming county courthouses, state capitols or even the national capitol.  I think it comes from a certain political faction winning elections and then rigging the election rules so that they never lose.

Could fascism happen in the USA? It already did

After reading The Oppermanns, a novel about a Jewish German family facing the rise of Hitler, my novel-reading group wondered: Could it happen here?

It already did, once.

The Ku Klux Klan was a forerunner of, and also an inspiration for, the Nazi movement.  The KKK had three iterations – as a terrorist movement that reestablished white supremacy in the former Confederacy after the Civil War; as a nationwide movement in 1915-1944 attacking black people, Catholics, Jews, Communists, atheists and sexual immorality; and as a terrorist movement to fight racial equality in the 1960s on.

The Klan never achieved national power, but, at the peak of its popularity in 1924-25, it claimed 4 million to 5 million members and had recruiters in every state.  Its members included Senators, Governors and a future Supreme Court justice.

Ku Klux Klan parades in Washington, D.C., in 1925

Now, violent racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism were nothing new in the USA.  The Klan’s innovation was to create an “Invisible Empire,” a hidden structure of power behind the nominal structure of government and business.

The Klan was a secret society. Nobody except its members knew who was in it.  Klansmen appeared in public wearing robes and hoods that concealed their identity.

You might be dealing with a policeman, judge or banker, but you would have no way of knowing whether he was a Klansman or taking orders from someone who was a Klansman.

Adolf Hitler respected the USA for its racism.  He approved of the Jim Crow segregation system, the ethnic cleansing of the Indians and U.S. experiments with sterilization of persons designated as biologically unfit.

Like the Klan, the Nazi party set up a parallel (though not hidden) structure of control.  The organization of government and business seemed the same after the Nazi takeover, but behind those structures was the Nazi party hierarchy, giving the orders.

When characters in The Oppermanns got into trouble with the Nazis, they were not arrested by police and taken before a judge.  They were arrested by a Nazi brownshirt and taken to a Nazi-run prison or camp.  In the same way, an average German might think, or be able to pretend to think, everything was normal, just like an average white Protestant American in a Klan-dominated town secretly dominated by the Klan.

That is why the established German militarists and plutocrats were unable, as they had hoped and expected, to control Hitler.  He didn’t rule solely by virtue of his position as Chancellor.  If he had been, he could have been checkmated by other members of the Cabinet.   Instead he checkmated them while his followers created their new power hierarchy. 

Today’s Klan is marginalized and infiltrated by the FBI.  Few people would admit to being white supremacists.  But what if conditions change? 

What if the United States, like Germany in 1933, was suffering under a major economic depression, which is likely, combined with the humiliation of defeat in war, which is very possible?

That is a topic for another post.

What it was like when the Nazis came to power

THE OPPERMANNS by Lion Feuchtwanger (1933) translated from the German by James Cleugh (1934) with an introduction by Ruth Gruber (2001)

The Oppermanns is about a wealthy, emancipated German Jewish family and their blindness to the rising threat of Nazism until it was nearly too late.

Lion Feuchtwanger, a famous German Jewish author, wrote it as a warning to the world and especially to the world’s Jewish community.  I read it as part of a reading group that wondered whether it has a warning for us today.  I think it does.

The Oppermanns are the third generation of a Jewish family that owns a well-known chain of furniture stores.  They consist of four siblings, Martin, an honest businessman; Edgar, a distinguished physician; Gustav, an intellectual dilettante; and Klara, married to a cynical East European Jew named Jacques Lavendal.

There also is a younger generation – Martin’s son Berthold, who embodies the best of Germany’s cultural heritage; Edgar’s daughter, Ruth, a Zionist; and Jacques’ son Heinrich, who is interested mainly in football.

There also is a minor character, an Oppermann furniture salesman named Herr Wolfsohn, whose apartment is coveted by a Nazi neighbor.

At the outset of the novel, all of them, except brother-in-law Jacques, regard themselves as secure, both as German citizens and as members of their social class.  Jacques compares them in their blindness to French aristocrats on the eve of the French Revolution.

Two of the characters – Berthold and Gustav – stand up to the Nazis and both are crushed.  The other Oppermanns escape, with enough of their wealth to reestablish themselves in other lands.  

They are sad that their beloved Germany is no more, but they are still better off than the vast majority of people, Jewish or not, left behind in Germany.  They are good people as the world goes, but they don’t appreciate how (relatively) fortunate they are.

I have more sympathy with meek, semi-comical Herr Wolfsohn, who gets a chance to immigrate to Palestine and accepts the challenge of learning Hebrew and reinventing himself as a farm laborer.

The central moral question of the novel, asked a number of times in different ways, is whether Berthold and Gustav were heroes or victims.  Or, as young Heinrich puts it, is it better to be “decent” or to be “sensible”?

Berthold and Gustav defied the Nazis in the name of truth and justice, and paid a terrible price.  But, as Heinrich noted, their courage, integrity and self-sacrifice changed nothing.

He resolves that he will not risk his life for the sake of any principle unless, and only then, taking the risk will achieve something that will justify the risk.

Lion Feuchtwanger himself tried to be an effective opponent of the Nazis, while keeping himself out of their hands.  He was in fact interned by French collaborators with the Nazis after the fall of France in 1940, but managed to escape and live to write another day.

Why do zebras have black-and-white stripes?

It’s strange, when you stop and think about it.  What’s the advantage of black-and-white stripes?

Jordan Peterson explains the Darwinian reasons, and why they matter to us humans.

How to construct an identity

Source: Incidental Comics.

The case against “diversity equity inclusion”

Source: Nonprofit Law Blog.

“Diversity equity inclusion” is the cowbird of progressivism.  It crowds out ideals of equal justice for all individuals and a more equal society overall.

The DEI principle is equal representation for all groups within the various ranks of society, no matter how grossly unequal those ranks are.  It is, or at least can be, a way to legitimize extreme inequality of wealth and power.

True progressives want to close the gap between the highest and lowest paid employees in corporations or institutions.  They want to disempower the elites and empower the multi-racial working class.

Advocates of DEI want to achieve a balance of group representation within the present system of inequality.  That is, top management and professional positions in a firm should, ideally, be 50 percent female, 15 percent African-American, 20 percent Hispanic, the appropriate percentages for the LGBTQ+ categories, etc.

Now, in principle, it is possible to be an advocate of DEI in an organization and still favor better pay for janitors and service workers and advocate for labor unions.

In practice, this is rare to non-existent.  Almost every large corporation, non-profit corporation or government agency has a DEI program.  The vast majority of pro-DEI organizations are anti-union.

If an CEO adopts a DEI policy, that can be a shield from criticism for being anti-union, a polluter or employing sweatshop labor abroad.

That’s why adopting a DEI program is an almost automatic response of corporate leaders who are attacking for doing or saying something offensive to African-Americans or other minorities.  It is a new name for tokenism.

No doubt many executives sincerely believe DEI programs are just, beneficial and necessary.  But no doubt many others consciously use DEI programs to divide and rule.

The question is power.  No executive wants to have to deal with pressure from a labor union, environmental organization or other group they don’t control.  Far better, from the executive’s standpoint, to have a program administered by the organization’s Human Resources department.

I remember how, back in the 1990s, I was a member of a Newspaper Guild local, whose contract included a provision that unfair treatment based on race, religion and sex was legitimate grievance.  We wanted to expand the contract to include the right of gay and lesbian persons to non-discrimination.

Nothing doing, management said.  Our policy is treat gay and lesbian employees  fairly, but we don’t want it to be a contractual right, we want it to be something that is a matter of choice for us.

At this point, however, without taking back anything I’ve already written, I do agree that some types of DEI programs do some good under some circumstances.  I will now consider arguments for DEI and the extent to which I accept them.

The equality-equity box cartoon

Equality is treating everybody alike.  Equity is giving everybody what they need, or deserve.  

Which is better?  The box cartoon presents the argument for equity in a very clear way.  My answer is that the answer depends on what the fence stands for and what the boxes stand for.

Suppose we use the cartoon to represent just one facet of society—public education.  It could be medical care, or welfare benefits, or any governmental or societal allocation of benefits and resources.  But let me just give this one example.

I take the top of the fence to represent lack of literacy, numeracy and other basic skills children need to learn.  The tall person represents gifted children, the middle person represents average children and the small person represents underprivileged children or children with learning disabilities.  The boxes represent educational resources, especially how much attention they get from individual teachers.

Equity says you don’t need to bother much about the gifted children, who are able to learn (that is, to see over the fence) on their own.  You give a moderate amount of attention to the average children, because that’s all they need.  Your main focus should be on the underprivileged and handicapped children, because they need the help the most.

I agree with this — up to a point.  It is a fact that children who need help the most, very often get the least.  This is wrong.  

But the issue is complicated.

My sister-in-law was a public school teacher in California at a time when there was a mandate that all students should be able to pass tests that showed a certain basic minimum attainment for their grade level.  She didn’t think the standard was  unreasonably high.

However, my sister-in-law found herself concentrating on a few under-performers, and particularly to one kid who was resistant to schooling itself.  She reached the point where she worried about neglecting the needs of the class as a whole.

I know that the claim that some children are virtually uneducable can be an excuse for giving up of them without really trying.  I assure you my sister-in-law wasn’t a person to give up.  

Nevertheless, it is a fact that some children are virtually uneducable, at least with the resources and in the framework of public education today.

Another issue: Do we really want to leave the gifted students to fend for themselves?  Or do we want them to be able to develop their gifts to the maximum?

Education is not just an individual benefit, for the purpose of boosting someone’s future earning power.  I want all my fellow citizens to have access to good education because that is necessary for the common good.

I want to live in a country with a functioning democracy, a civilized society and also a functioning work force, and this is not possible under the dominion of ignorance.  For this reason  I never complain about paying school taxes.

We want (or at least I want) our outstanding scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians, and also our artists, musicians, writers, social scientists, political leaders and military commanders, and even our athletes and entertainers, to achieve high levels of excellence, because this benefits us all.

What is this thing called ‘woke’?

Conservatives and some liberals are upset about an ideology called “woke.”  Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida says Florida is a place that “woke” comes to die.

Many of my friends say there is no such thing as “woke.”  They say it is just an insulting re-branding of long-standing liberal ideals of individual freedom and social justice.

I don’t agree.  There has been a cultural /ideological revolution in 21st century USA, and “woke” is the blanket term used to refer to its many facets.

You don’t think there has been a revolution?   Consider the following statements.

• Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman.
• A woman is an adult human female.
• Every American citizen has the right to equal treatment regardless of race,  religion or ethnicity – no more and no less.
• It’s OK to be white.

None of these statements would have been considered controversial 15 or 20 years ago.  Most people would have been baffled as to why you would have bothered to say them.

Or consider these words and phrases: Whiteness.  Gender assigned at birth.  Heteronormativity.  Intersectionality.  Cisgender.  Misgender.  Gender binary.  Identity group.  De-platforming.

These represent a new vocabulary for a new way of thinking.  

My purpose in writing this particular post is not to refute all the ideas that come under the heading of  “woke,” but to point out that they represent fundamental changes in thinking about important things.

Some parts may be good, some parts may be bad, some parts may be good up to a point and counterproductive beyond that point, and some points are used by plutocrats and militarists to divide and rule.

It is unreasonable to expect people to adopt this new way of thinking without giving them a reasoned argument in favor.

And it is a grave mistake to enlist in a new culture war without understanding exactly what the stakes are.

The Democrats’ argument against progressivism

Dmitri Mehlhorn is an influential Democratic operative I never heard of and you probably haven’t either.

He is a supporter of the effort by Democratic leaders and funders to defeat progressive Democrats in primaries.

Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept news service, invited him onto his news show to find out “what arguments are being made in meetings we’re not invited to.”

I summarize his remarks because one should always be aware of the strongest arguments on the opposing side.

Mehlhorn’s argument is that there are three categories of potential voters:

1. Those who think voting can help their friends make things better.
2. Those who think voting is a waste of time.
3. Those who think voting can help prevent their enemies from making things worse.

The Bernie Sanders campaign was based on the assumption that if you could propose things that would actually make things better, potential voters would move from category (2) to category (1).

This didn’t happen. and isn’t a realistic strategy, Mehlhorn said.  National elections are a battle between voters in category (3) who may possibly draw in voters from category (2).

Mehlhorn himself is in category (3).  He thinks everything should be subordinate to the goal of defeating Donald Trump.

He thinks the way to do that is to bring together the broadest possible coalition of anti-Trump politicians, from Liz Cheney to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and the way to do that is find common ground that everyone can agree on.

For example, Democrats are campaigning for abortion rights, a live issue because of the overturning of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

But they have not tried to enact the principles of Roe v. Wade into law.

That was the politically right choice, according to Mehlhorn.  It is better to campaign against Republicans for wanting to deny abortions to young teenage girls who are victims of rape, and make that the issue.  Then Democrats could proceed step-by-step to broadening abortion rights

Mehlhorn may be right.  The last “hope and change” candidate was Barack Obama, and his administration disillusioned a lot of his supporters by its failure to keep Obama’s promises.

But I hate to think that he is, and I hate to think that the top Democratic leadership think he is right.

Nuclear war, financial collapse, climate catastrophes, the surveillance state and pandemics are urgent threats.  We don’t have 20 years to fool around.

But if the maximum that is politically possible is less than the minimum that is needed, change will have to come from streets, not the ballot box.

By that, I mean strikes, boycotts, sabotage and mass protests, both violent and non-violent, leading to at least a threat of revolution.

This is not something I advocate.  The outcomes of revolutions are unpredictable and even revolutions that ultimately produced good results, such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution, were not something I would have wanted to live through.  But I have a sense that some sort of blowup is coming.

LINKS

How Democratic insiders are thinking about 2014 by Ryan Grim.  I recommend reading the whole thing.  It is a good example of a civil conversation between two individuals who genuinely want to understand the other’s point of view.

No, Covid hasn’t gone away: Links & comments

Covid isn’t over.  This is what we still need to be doing.

 

We need multiple mitigations because no single one works perfectly

The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have declared “Emergency Over” regarding Covid.

They say you don’t have to take any precautions except keeping your vaccinations up to date. That’s politically expedient, but Covid is what it is, and isn’t paying attention to political pronouncements.

You May Be Early, but You’re Not Wrong: a Covid Reading List by Jessica Wildfire for OK Doomer.

There’s no permanent immunity from this virus.  Each time we catch it, this virus attacks our hearts and minds.  It weakens us. It tries to kill us. It imprints on us, so a future variant has a better shot next time.

That next time could be a few months later.

Here are the key points:

1. You can catch Covid multiple times.

2. Reinfections are common, not rare.

3. Breakthrough infections are common.

4. Covid can kill you months after you recover.

5. It can cause brain damage.

6. It can cause blood clots and heart attacks.

7. It doesn’t spare children.

8. Vaccines help, but only some.

9. Masks work.

Here are some links to medical studies collected by Jessica Wildfire.

Long-term neurological outcomes of COVID-19 from Nature Medicine.  Anybody can get Long Covid.

Long Covid after breakthrough SARS-Cov-2 inflection from Nature Medicine.  Vaccines help, but not as much as everyone thinks.

SARS-CoV-2 promotes microglial synapse elimination in huma brain organoids from Molecular Psychiatry.  Covid eats your brain.

Excess risk for acute myocardial infraction mortality among the COVID-19 pandemic from the Journal of Medical Virology.  Covid can kill healthy young people.  It’s giving them heart attacks.

Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection from Nature Immunology.  Covid attacks your immune system.  You don’t develop immunity.  You lose it.

ACE2-independent infection of T lymphocytes by SARS-CoV-2 from Signal Technology and Targeted Therapy.  Covid kills T cells.  It makes you more vulnerable to other diseases.

Distinguishing features of Long COVID identified through immune testing from a Yale preprint.  Every Covid infection runs a risk of weakening your immune system.  It can even reactivate old viral inflections.

Immune boosting by B.1.1.529 (Omicron) depends on previous SARS-CoV-2 exposure from Science.  One Covid infection sets up another.  We’re not building immunity.

Covid and Acute Neurological Complications in Children from Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics).  Children aren’t safe from Covid.  They need protection.

Post-COVID-19-associated morbidity in children, adolescents and adults: A matched cohort study including more than 157,000 individuals with COVID-19 in Germany from PLOS Medicine.   Covid isn’t like a cold.  Children shouldn’t catch it.

Lifting Universal Masking in Schools – Covid-19 incidence among Students and Staff from the New England Journal of Medicine.  Masks work.

Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection from Nature Medicine.  If you got Covid once, you’re not in the clear.  It’s not over.

Austerity, fascism and the ‘science’ of economics

THE CAPITAL ORDER: How economists invented AUSTERITY and paved the way to FASCISM by Clara E. Mattei (2022)

Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, physicians had a universal remedy for serious illness.  It was to bleed the patients until they improved.

Mainstream economists have a similar prescription for national economic woes.  It is called “austerity.” The elements are holding down wages, letting prices rise, cutting public spending (except on the military and police) and raising taxes (except on the rich).

Austerity contributes as much to economic health as bleeding to biological health.  That is to say, austerity has, so far as I know, an unbroken record of failure in promoting economic recovery. So why hasn’t the economics profession abandoned austerity, as the medical profession abandoned bleeding?

That is because the purpose of austerity is not what its proponents say it is.

Clara E. Mattei, an economist herself, wrote this book to expose austerity’s overlooked, though not hidden, agenda.

She did it in an original way, by looking at the imposition of economic austerity in the immediate aftermath of World War One in two countries, Britain and Italy.

Among the victorious allies, these two countries were at opposite extremes.

Britain was the center of a vast empire comprising nearly a quarter of the world’s population and land era.  It was Europe’s leading industrial and financial power.  It was the birthplace of Adam Smith and free-market economic liberalism.  And it was known for being politically stable.

Italy, in comparison, was poor, powerless and backward.  Revolutionary parties were strong and had a good chance of coming to power. 

The Great War, as people then called it, upset a lot of people’s assumptions about how economies worked.  

Governments found the law of supply and demand worked too slowly for effective war mobilization.  Central planning with price controls worked much better.  

People began to think similar policies might achieve the goals of peace.   Some of them acted on their high hopes.

In the years immediately following the war, Britain seemed on the verge of radical change, and Italy on the verge of revolution.

Change was prevented by taking economic policy out of the hands of voters and into the hands of supposed economic experts.  In Britain, this was done by legal means.  In Italy, it required a violent coup by Mussolini’s Fascists.

But the actual economic policies followed by the two countries were similar.  Mattei pointed out how Mussolini was praised by Britain’s leading mainstream economists.