Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Does Fascism Bear Repeating?

We're going to find out empirically. 

Nick Land observed that Communism naturally relaxes into Fascism, what with Communism being such a bad idea it is logically impossible to implement it in practice.

Umberto Eco then wrote a list of features of Fascism, which, when you remove all the [my Fascism is different and not Fascism, unlike your Fascism] bits and generally boil off all the crud, says the same thing.

1. Dogmatism and xenophobia.
2. Utopianism and rejection of wu wei.
3. Obsession with the Plot of a State Enemy.
4. Monogenderism.
5. Newspeak.
6. Demotism with core reliance on unprincipled exceptions.

Even Jonah Goldberg, not exactly the brightest star, can tell you that all WWII regimes were basically the same thing.

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Colloquially, we can say a Fascist is a faithful Communist whose faith was broken. They feel betrayed by God (or the Demiurge, to taste) and compromise their beautiful Communist vision so that their government doesn't immediately implode.
Beyond a list of diagnostic features, Fascism is this: fundamentalist Egalitarianism theocracy.
It is the politics of narcissism.
It's Christian theocracy stripped of limiters; when the Christians think they're rich enough to ignore the natural-selection-induced compromises that show up in the Bible. All men are created equal, by which we mean bit-for-bit identical. Even the women.

A theocracy is naturally totalitarian - "Everything in the religion, nothing outside the religion, nothing against the religion." Hence the ""public"" - private ""partnership."" <!--more-->In other words the government de-facto seizes all business. E.g. when Hitler ""privatized"" a firm they were still expected to do what he told them to do. Selling your cake and then eating it anyway. When California ""privatizes"" electricity, it then writes a novel's worth of regulations forcing them to run themselves exactly to spec regardless of de jure ownership.

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First, let's show that narcissism is egalitarian.
The narcissist doesn't see anyone else. They see a hall of mirrors. Everyone is just themselves, but again. Since nobody can have any skills or even preferences that differ from those of the narcissist, the only thing they can imagine making anyone get ahead is cheating. Everyone must logically have identical social status, if they're playing by the rules.

One exception: some folk are not even human. The narcissist does, in extremis, notice that someone is different. However, then they're the unfathomable Other. An incomprehensible Lovecraftian nightmare wearing human skin.
This is the heretic. The scapegoat upon whom all the failures of the unworkable Fascist sociology can be heaped.
Since, as per the disorder, even the Other must be obsessed with the narcissist, their desire to make an environment unsuitable for the narcissist - e.g. the State Enemy likes quiet, while the narcissist wants to talk all the time - must come from a core motivation of pure malice. They are literally the Devil incarnate.

Second, Christianity is narcissism.
The narcissist doesn't actually love themselves. The core problem is failure to be loved by his or her mother. The child simply assumes the mother is right. They must be unlovable. They instead develop bottomless self-hatred.

Or, alternatively, we are all "sinners." God is infinite and we're all infinitely, disgustingly bad by comparison. God rejects us like Mom rejected us, see?

This hatred is intolerable, so they hide their own true self-assessment behind a delusional identity. Their genes become convinced that if anyone else notices they're unlovable like mom did, they will be ostracized from the tribe and starve in the wilderness. "If I act the opposite of my true self, I will behave lovably, I won't be ostracized, I won't die." To avoid feeling their own self-hatred they obsess over their fake persona.
They become unable to see anything but this fake persona, due to this obsession, among other reasons. I'll mention one: if anyone has a different preference schedule than mom did, they might be loved without having to change, and that would mean they didn't have to hate themselves, all this pain was unnecessary...

And thus the narcissist sees echoes of their own fake persona, rather than other individuals. Or: the low places will be raised up, and the high places laid low. Luke 3:5.

Except the Devil, of course. The unfathomable Other who exists solely to cause the narcissist pain. (The Devil will hate their "lovable" opposite-day persona, denying narcissistic supply, or see through the persona to the core "sinner" => whether the Devil likes or hates the core, it's intolerable torture for the narcissist.)

(P.S. Amused that Christians clearly assume Jesus has nothing better to do than listen to prayers, and that somehow an omniscient god can't tell what's up with you want unless you ask. In true narcissist fashion, they never ask what god would like the narcissist to do, it's all about what god can do for the narcissist.)

Jesus, who we're all supposed to act like (WWJD!) was a narcissist.
The narcissist naturally becomes grandiose. Their persona is the opposite of something pure hatable - it must be purely lovable. Agape. It must be not merely good, but great. Amazing. Grandiose.
Every narcissist worships their fake persona as God. Also one of the poor bastards they nailed to a couple planks worshipped himself as God.

The main draw of Christianity is that God offers to undo the core trauma. "I will love you, the way your mother didn't. I love everyone, even the so-called sinners."

And lo, if we go to America, we can indeed see that to this day is a profoundly Christian nation.
Judge not, as Chauvin judged, lest ye be judged, as Chauvin was judged.
Should a Martin crack your skull on the pavement, turn your head and let him crack your nose also.
Let ye who has never seen a page of porn cast the first stone at Onlyfans.
Sure some jogger might murder your daughter, but hold love in your heart and forgive him.
If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink. If your BLM wants to commit arson, give him a Target; if he thirsts for wealth, let him smash his way into a jewellery or Apple store.

Just about everything modern America does can be found to come straight from the Bible. (Likewise if you look at historical cases of unrestricted Christianity, they behave in the same pro-crime way.)

Even stuff like diet. Eating a delicious and wholesome meal is a pleasure of the flesh - and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Even working out and getting buff is deeply suspect. Romans 8:7.
Best eat nutritionally worthless and disgustingly tasteless slop. The flagellants went too far - you're just supposed to kill yourself slowly by getting fat, rather than quickly.

Jesus was Love and thus rebellion against the Regime is Hate, see? Even though we don't talk much about Jesus these days...

Basically the Gnostics were right. The Christianity of the Bible rejects Reality thoroughly. The gods of the Bible can only be various guises of Satan. Jesus rebels against logic and physics, and, per Milton, is guaranteed to lose.
Narcissism is a mental illness. If it wasn't contradictory and self-defeating we wouldn't call it crazy.

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1. Dogmatism and xenophobia.

Stalin: everyone must be a good Communist. Indeed we're going to build a wall to keep all the xenos out. An Iron Curtain, even.
Hitler: everyone must be a good Aryan.
America: everyone must be a good anti-racist. Everyone is identical, so discrimination is a sin. You're inventing differences where none exist, heretic.

2. Utopianism and rejection of wu wei.
Since we delude ourselves that our perfect personas are real, the world must be perfectable. It is possible that all things provide narcissistic supply at all times. All imperfection, even the tiniest discomfort, must be due to enemy action.
Conveniently this means the State is justified when it wants to meddle with anything. You can't justify leaving anything well enough alone.

3.
Stalin: kulaks and capitalists are to blame for all failures of Communism.
Hitler: Jews are to blame for all failures of National Socialism.
America: racists are to blame for all failures of Democracy. Everything that's wrong with the world is due to the Devil, White Man. We would already be living in our Wakandan utopia if the dastardly White Man hadn't sexistly oppressed women and racistly oppressed blacks all throughout history. How devious! How cunning! How powerful and manly...

As Democratic Progressivism winds itself up for greater and greater violence on behalf of smaller and smaller minorities, one must wonder who Hitler would have blamed his unworkable economy on after every last Jew was rounded up and encamped.

4.
Stalinism was male.
Hitlerism was male.
America is populated solely by women. It had Founding Mothers, not fathers.
If everyone is identical, men are equal to women. However, the human imagination is limited - it wants to default not to some androgynous Rational Being but to men or women. As such the Egalitarian always equates everyone to either their father or their mother.

To some extent, American women are supposed to act like men, but only a bit, so that the men pretending to be women - emotional, flighty, conformist, shallow, dependent - don't look quite so ridiculous when they inevitably can't pull it off.

Monofeminism is far more stable than monomasculinity, because the latter requires a constant smear campaign against women, just as monofeminism requires a constant smear campaign against men. There's toxic masculinity, but no toxic femininity, because duh 'toxic' masculinity is any masculinity at all.
Under monomasculinism everyone feels sorry for the women, and women desperately love anyone who defects and protects their precious, sensitive little feelings. By contrast men are tough and should just suck it up. Nobody cares about you anyway. (Egalitarianism, like any insanity, performatively refutes its own doctrine.)

5.
Fascism is in fact a really old idea. The fasces symbology comes from Rome, and there's hints that it was even known in ancient Egypt. (Ipuwer describes something that looks...Woke.) If you look at the proposed economics in neutral language, you realize it's a childish idealization of stone-age hunter tribe economics. Very very old.
Stale, you might say.
Lies have a shelf life. They go off. Although peasants are very very dumb, they do eventually catch on.
As such Fascism has to constantly pretend it's brand new. It has to cloak it's very old and very mundane stupidities in brand new packaging.
Simple example: old idea, charity. New idea, effective altruism.
Old idea: heresy. New idea: discrimination and hate.
Old idea: Christian nations. New idea: international community.
Old idea: grain dole. New idea: food stamps.
Oldest idea: Christ-ianity. Old idea: Catholicism. Old idea: Protestantism. Idea: Super-protestanism. Idea: Progressivism. New idea: social justice warrior. New idea: Wokism.

Christianity is merely Platonism with extra Sophism, by the way. Socrates was great precisely because he was so bad at being Greek. They're massive liars.

6.
So basically everyone is identical, but even the craziest narcissist feels some inkling that's not true. Likewise, the actual main reason they keep accusing everyone else of cheating is projection. They cheat like crazy the instant they can get away with it. They allow themselves to know the persona is fake just long enough that the cheating isn't "real." It only reflects on the persona. They're just pretending to be a traitorous shitbag.

All are equal, but some are more equal than others.
The unworkable Communist/Democratic/Socialist == Fascist economics really are unworkable, and compromises have to be made unless you intend everyone to starve to death, which is what (rather obviously, even on paper) happens if you do Communism seriously.
And while we're breaking the rules for pragmatic reasons, why not break them in my own favour? Wink wink? I bet I can break them in your favour too as long as you keep quiet about it...

Democracy becomes "Republic." Allegedly representatives, although identical in talents and preferences to the electorate, will have special experiences or training that makes them suited to management, and the electorate picks the best-trained, who experienced the most suitable nuture.

In practice your vote means jack and squat. Peasant mobs throw tantrums, they don't do rational consideration.
Imagine children voting their parents out of office every time they said "no cookies before dinner." That's what Democracy, or even "Republic" is actually like if your vote matters. So it doesn't.

Thus Republic, IRL, is faceless, unaccountable bureaucracies who have been de jure handed all the actual power, plus a ball pit for the bratty kids to fight in. "All the balls should be blue!" "No, red!" "Waaa, mommy, he bit me!"
Children, of course, hate responsibility. When the parents say they're not allowed out of the ball pit - the Overton window - they don't feel restrained or confined, they feel relieved. "That's boring grownup stuff anyway." They gleefully dive back into the balls. Should anyone suggest helping the parents with their chores, they're violently ostracized. Everyone, bleen and grue, throws the balls at them until they leave the ball pit "voluntarily." Free speech bro.

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Suffering trauma at a young age causes arrested development. The failure of the mother to bond with the child means the narcissist is arrested very early indeed.
The narcissist child - the real person under the persona, insofar as such a thing can survive the hatred storm - is convinced they can't take care of themselves, as a toddler who can barely speak can't take care of themselves. They need a tithe. Same way the Church needs a tithe or it will go broke.
Americans are so genetically degenerate they're often not wrong.
The narcissist needs Communism. They have to be supported by the community, in exchange for nothing at all as like a baby they have nothing to offer, or they will die.

1 comment:

paranoid sadist said...

Uhh... pretty sure narcissism is genetic.