We Need To Talk About Fascism

When I was at the Mencken Club conference, I was at Paul Gottfried’s table the first night and it occurred to me I should do a show on fascism. I don’t mean the cartoon fascism popular with some elements of the alt-right or the erotic fantasy version popular with the American Left. I mean historic fascism that actually thrived and existed in Europe during the interwar years. I got a lot of compliments on the shows covering libertarianism and democracy, so I thought I should try to do a big-brained show at least one a month.

What occurred to me at dinner that night is Paul’s book, Fascism: The Career of a Concept, would be a great skeleton key for a podcast. The book is a short, general survey of the topic and the academic arguments surrounding fascism. It’s also largely free of discussion of You Know Who. The Nazis were a crude implementation of fascism that lacked the intellectual depth you see in other fascist movements. They get all the attention for a a number of reasons, but they are anything but the exemplar of the movement.

The result this week is a very general introduction to the topic, along with a very general survey of the main themes. Because we don’t live in a serious age or a serious country, most people know nothing about one of the more important ideological movements of the last century. The goal here is to focus on the high points, without getting too far into the weeds. I have a bunch of links in the contents section for those interested in following up on the books and people mentioned. Obviously, this is a highly abbreviated survey.

Now, as an aside, Counter-Currents has been positing a history of the alt-right that is not entirely unrelated to the topic here. The alt-right has tried to imagine itself as the fascist alternative to the cult-Marx mobs of Antifa. They are wrong about that, but the back story of the movement makes for a fun read anyway, so I encourage people to read it. The four part post is here, here, here and here.There are a few things in there that were new to me and some things that I had forgot. Some of it is quite amusing, so give it a read,

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below. I’m now on Spotify, so the millennials can tune in when not sobbing over white privilege and toxic masculinity.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening (Link)
  • 02:00: What Is Fascism
  • 07:00: Left-Wing Fascism (Link) (Link) (Link) (Link) (Link)
  • 17:00: Right-Wing Fascism (Link) (Link) (Link) (Link)
  • 27:00: International Fascism (Link) (Link)
  • 37:00: The Fascist Utopia (Link) (Link)
  • 47:00: Fascism In America
  • 57:00: Closing

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

Spotify

Google Play Link

iHeart Radio

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

96 thoughts on “We Need To Talk About Fascism

  1. Apart from the fact that it would have been much better to have a text document than a speech, this is a rather deceiving and shallow analysis of fascism.

    One of the main reasons for this is that the author uses the wrong coordinate system: left-vs-right.

    Trying desperately to argue/counter-argue with the left/right paradigm in one hand is making sure to miss the central points. So the author comes to some strange conclusions like “not much difference how the country is ruled between communism and Nazism” (13:15), “its hard to see the differences, there are certainly aesthetic differences” (13:20)

    You need not be an academic, authoring 30 or more books, to see the enormous differences between National Socialism and Communist Socialism in a nutshell:

    1) Communism is globalist, non ethnic. NS is local and ethnic, supporting their own (“Aryan”) race
    2) Communism is based on conflict/divisions between “classes”, NS based on uniting all parties involved in economic production
    3) In communism there is no private ownership of agricultural or industrial production means, contrary to NS.
    4) In communism the economy is centrally planned in all detail, which was not the case in NS peacetime, and only partly in wartime.
    5) Communism explicitly aimed at exporting its ideology to “all people of the world”, in fact their economic system could not coexist with capitalist competitors. Nazi officials stated that NS is a solution for the German people only, others could adopt it or not.

    And of course
    6) The JQ
    Communism explicitly puts Jews in power. NS stated that Judaism would destroy White culture and race unless Jews are separated from Aryan countries.

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  2. For those of you following current events, and perhaps still tethered to the notion that we are going to talk our way out of the mess we are in, I would suggest reading the article at American Thinker about the mob persecution of Richard Morrisett. This is a real world example of the hive mob playing for keeps and being aided by the tacit complicity of social institutions that should be a firewall against this type of organized criminal assault. In the throes of extremis, Morrisett used his skill set to make an early exit, which is sad and regrettable. He could have used those skills against his attackers first. It will get worse before it gets better.

  3. Thanks for the “Old House” model for Utopia. It finally put enough things together that resonated for me. Gave me a model to understand the Prog Chaos system. You can just blow everything up and start Forward Fresh…er. Reinvent the wheel so to speak. Or you can make logical required repairs in a thoughtful order. Fix the foundation, guts, systems and then do the cosmetics/esthetics. Progs want to remove all signs of the failure past… I like that line (as I recall it..) It speaks to their ever present Utopian Emotion. Which absent Common Sense (always..) Opposes any sense of History, Cultural Standards and values…

  4. Very helpful review. Thanks. But your take on Americans as too anti-authoritarian to go fascist is a half truth. Current Prog/Democrat Social Justice movement (from the death of White freedom of assembly, etc. since Brown Vs BofE) is highly authoritarian, invasive, controlling and punitive. The trick is to dress it up as care for “victims”. Then half of Americans will embrace it orgasmically.

  5. Will there be an awakening in time that is the question…Oh and I don’t mean the normies I mean those that read here and are sort of lucid…Or is there just not enough pain yet?

  6. I’m quite a new reader to the blog, and very much enjoyed this podcast on fascism.
    Two things stuck in my mind. Firstly, as British, I learned a lot about Oswald Mosley that I had been unaware of, and didn’t know of his desire for a European State.
    The second thing that’ll stick in my mind is the analogy regarding renovating an old house vs sweeping it away and building anew in connection with fascism vs communism.
    I’d alway thought of fascism as simply a deviant of left wing ideology prior to this podcast.
    Many thanks, And.

  7. You have a very nice voice. Better than most I’ve heard doing amateur podcasts. First one I’ve listened to here.

    I’m only 10 minutes in, but I appreciate the observation of how we treat politics vs what it is (here) (economics).

    If fascism is predominantly an economic governing philosophy around corporatism with emphasis on ethnic identity, then I can see how both left & right embody economic fascism. I’m looking forward to finishing the cast.

  8. I was gonna be good and not go out tonight to listen to Z at the bar. But I log on again and see “We need to talk about fascism.” I’m like, OK! Let me get my coat!

      • Buckley said he always saw Erik with a sack of books. Even on planes. Said when talking with him you had to resign yourself to not get to talk, as Erik was arrogant and voluminous. (I’m going on memory, he put it softer than that. Though he probably did use the word voluminous.) Whenever I see Churchill’s quote, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on,” I always think of Erik’s funny little painting, “Stupidity Races Through the World”. Seen here, 4th picture down:

        https://phillysoc.org/erik-ritter-von-kuehnelt-leddihn-art-gallery/

  9. Hats off to Z for providing a careful and thoughtful taxonomy of this dead-letter phenomenon called “fascism”, which no longer exists, and which, from a structural POV, cannot any longer exist. I suppose it’s useful to have a well-reasoned “short organon” of a long-dead phenomenon for intellectual and historiographical usages. And for countering intellectual and historiographical MIS-uses.

    It doesn’t much change the present landscape, however, I fear.

    In modern-day (read “functional”) parlance, the term “fascism” effectively reduces to “whatever the Jews and their zombies/dupes don’t like, any time they say so. Which is all the time.” Fascism, like Racism, exists simply as a Naughty Naughty No-No Word: a fake Morality Stick used to beat White people on the head with, whenever they start to question their carefully-planned (((soft genocide))), and begin to haltingly advocate for their own very real interests.

    Arguing about Fascism is sort of like arguing “Dude, you don’t RILLY understand the nature of 15th-century neo-Confucianism, becuz you’ve like totally mis-read the writings of Chu Hsi!”

    As. If.

    In order to talk about all this stuff with a clear head going forward, I’d say people need to clear a lot of cob-webs out of their brains. I’ve always felt that the best intellectual acidic high-colonic is a short, sharp course of the eternally caustic George Bernard Shaw. Forget about what he advocated in his times, it’s more like a course of Casey Stengel — just listen to his nastily clear head. I generally prescribe:

    1. “How He Lied To Her Husband”
    2. “Arms and the Man” (f!cking MEMORIZE Act One)
    3. “Major Barbara”
    4. “Androcles and the Lion”

    Don’t read for doctrinal instruction, read for disinfectant. Germ theory of disease and all that. If Shaw don’t halt the gangrene, nothing will.

    • Thanks for the heads-up on the Shaw plays. I read a tiny bit of him as a teen and thought this guy’s cool as hell and gets it. Then a few years later found out he was a socialist etc, and I just didn’t get how he could be so kick ass, yet such a dweeb politically. I recall seeing his photo for the first time and thinking “THAT’S the guy with all the awesome lines? How?!” Gonna read A&M Act 1 for sure. Hope I get time for the others some day.

  10. Here’s a little of Alain de Benoist on “left versus right”:

    “…the specialists of political science never managed to agree on a notion that could serve as the common denominator for the entire Right (or the entire Left). Multiple propositions have been advanced (liberty or equality, conservatism or progressivism, order or change, perfectibility or imperfectibility of human nature, etc.), but whatever the criteria, there are always exceptions.

    “In the historical scheme, we have the habit of dating the Left-Right cleavage to the French Revolution, but in reality – in France at least – these terms only spread into the public discourse in the last years of the nineteenth century. It would never have come to the mind of Karl Marx, Georges Sorel, or Proudhon to define themselves as ‘men of the Left’! The alliance of the worker’s movement with the progressive Left did not occur earlier than the Dreyfus Affair. Moreover, far from being assigned a fixed residence, a number of ideas have not stopped strolling across the political countryside: liberalism passed from the Left to the Right, colonialism was first defended by the Left before being on the Right, ecologism passed from the Right to the Left, and so on.”

    “There is on one side those who profit from globalisation, whether they are on the Right or Left, and on the other, those who are victims, whether they are on the Right or the Left (the ‘peripheral’ France).

    “That’s what has been well understood, to various degrees, by populist movements. Populism, of which we persist in not understanding its true nature, consists of articulating social demands that express themselves from ‘below’ to create a counter-hegemony to the hegemony ‘on top’. The middle and popular classes can thus stand up as representatives of the entire social fabric, on the model of what happened in 1789 when the Third Estate proclaimed itself, on the basis of the ‘notebooks of grievances’, as the true trustee of national legitimacy.”
    https://altright.com/2016/05/01/right-and-left-meaningless-words/

  11. It is a bit amusing, as you pointed out, that in the old days literal communists were capable of debating real literal fascists without getting apoplectic, whereas now leftists just start foaming and playing “Pin the Label” on whoever they don’t like in sight. Think about this, to see how much America has changed for the worst in just a few short generations: Men who had literally fought Germans in a brutal war understood that George Lincoln Rockwell and his other American Nazi cohorts had a right to assemble, distribute literature, etc.(though of course the organized Jewish community tried to attack him whenever they could). I think the “Raum” difference between the USA and Central Europe is just too wide for something like fascism to gain traction here. If things break down in America, I don’t think there will be one strongman to unify things; I think the old highlander/borderer genes are going to kick in and there will be frontier justice and order, with power localized, a bit like James Kunstler’s “World Made by Hand” books, with the minorities in the cities starving to death and whites cooperating on larger farming estates. We have too many Irish and Scottish descendants here (especially in the South) to go authoritarian if things break down.

    • Irish and Scots seem to be very keen on authoritarianism in their own countries. If you judge tribes by how they’ve behaved in the last couple of decades ,rather than how they’re meant to have behaved historically, thing start to make a lot more sense.Celts really seem to like the Leviathan.

  12. Great episode Z. A musing: On the topic of “the American progressives were fascists,” it seems to me that is a (possibly honest) interpretation of the historical record. At the end of WWI, as you described in the podcast, European civilization was in rubble. the fascists attempted to rebuild with the remaining pieces whereas the communists wanted to rebuild from scratch. Hence fascism was right/conservative and communism was (as it always is) WAY left. In America, however, (as well as the rest of the Anglosphere) the institutions of the civilization were intact, so when the progressives began to tinker with and adopt concepts from fascism these ideas were necessarily associated with the American left. As you said, Europe was essentially all socialist, so fascism was “right socialism” and communism was (as it ALWAYS is) “left socialism”. The right in America at the time was not socialist, or at least not very socialist, so fascism because fascist concepts were adopted by progressives, fascism has been tagged by some here as “left socialism” and communism as “WAY left socialism.” I think this argument has some limited merit, but in its native environment fascism was indeed on the right.

  13. Great discussion. What about Salazar and Portugal? No words on this front. Salazar was a fascist who led what I understand to have been a fairly stable and modern Portugal until the 70s. I think this sort of underscores another theme that zman discussed before. Within wide boundaries, ethnically homogenous Europeans states can prosper within wide bounds of political and economic systems. Portugal is a small peripheral country, which like the Scandinavian countries or perhaps Uruguay, does not attract the attention of international powers. (International powers being Marxist revolutionaries during these periods.) It would be more or less the same place under a wide range of systems.

    I like that definition of fascism, as an attempt to restore by force the old aristocratic order in form in the wake of its collapse. Franco’s Spain and I think Salazar both had strong connections with the Catholic Church, whereas the republicans desecrated churches and killed priests. This restores the old king/church alliance of the ancien regime.

    • Another example is Sinagpore, that can be (loosely) interpreted as the greatest exemplar of the main currents of fascism: corporatism, militarism, class collaboration, nationalism, futurism in design, and even eugenics(!) That there are nominal elections means little in what is an efficient, incorruptible police state. Look at the PAP logo, and try to deny its BUF inspiration. And in the ultimate shaming of the left, only under an authoritarian state has diversity been made to work, of course noting that the PAP has maintained the Chinese supermajority.

      • Its also a “no children” state with a 1.16 per couple fertility rate despite heavy immigration from highly natal countries and government intervention in ways that would cause a lot of non NrX Right wingers to have an apoplexy attack if they studied in depth

        I thinking we on the Right spend too much time on political minutia and not enough on how do we get people in mostly urban societies to have children.

        Religion doesn’t work in any manageable time frame we can’t seem to distribute enough wealth to make up for the cost of urban living and lack of homogeneity makes it worse so now what ?

        It does no good whatever to have a population that basically has no hope in the future and no buy in.

        Now sure long term, its self correcting but how long do we want that to go on if we can do anything about it

        The rest of the questions beyond those two immigration and fertility seem far less important.

        • Society in our current age has made having children into an undue burden – instead of a benefit. At least for white people with half of a brain in their head.

          The exact details could be argued endlessly – but that’s the problem in a nutshell.

          And ……….. “distribute enough wealth”. ??

          So what – you’re argument is that we don’t have enough welfare? This seems like yet another comment that goes into my “the right is full of too many leftists” circular storage bin.

          Wealth is MADE – it’s not “distributed”.

          • Mr. Zuckerberg did not “make” hundreds of billions of dollars. There is something called “rent seeking”.

            The problem with the Right is that too many refuse to admit that their bootstrapping advice is the lost item of a bygone era in which the US had no economic competitors. We need both protectionism from Chinese rapacity, and protectionism from billionaire rapacity.

          • You’re point is what again?

            ” In public choice theory and in economics, rent-seeking involves seeking to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth”

            I stand by what I said : TRUE wealth is made – it’s not distributed. This is an all too typical conversation I’ve had dozens of times with leftists who yell and scream about “distributing wealth” – but when you ask them where wealth comes from – and how it’s made – they start yelling and screaming and waving their arms around and start changing the topic.

            Correct – Zuckerberg didn’t “make” hundreds of billions of dollars – Facebook pulled in $40 billion in revenue from advertisements – and has a market cap of something like $401 billion.

            That $401 billion doesn’t mean a goddam thing. It’s simply based on the trading value of their stock. It could disappear tomorrow. The revenue is the only thing that is “real”

            It’s not “bootstrapping advice ” to point out that real wealth is created by the input of human labor. That’s not an opinion – that’s FACT.

            Lefties are constantly trying to argue their way around this cruel fact of life because their phucking lazy and will try every trick in the book except doing actual work to get what they want out of this world. So as soon as I see somebody utter the words ” distribute wealth” – I know exactly who I’m dealing with.

            Once again you just got filed in the circular storage bin where I keep all the examples of people who populate this comment section who are can’t seem to get leftist though patterns wiped out of their heads.

          • Sometimes I think we need an outright wealth cap tied to minimum wage. Anyone making more than I don’t know 25x minimum pays 99% taxes on everything else and benefits count as income too.

            A flatter wealth curve means less opting out of policy choices by the elite

            There are risks to that but given we have hardly been innovating I think we can live with less growth and innovation but a flatter distribution, like we had back in Peak America 53’s and 73 or so

            That said getting the cultural left out of power and repatriation comes before anything else. We can survive rapacious greed heads with closed borders and once we are far more homogeneous we can always have a settling against the Neo Liberals as needed since we clearly can’t share a polity

          • Wealth isn’t made without demand for labor at decent wages. And while anyone with a basic grasp of economics knows the labor theory is nonsense, without good wages you have no wealth

            Given US wages as percentage GDP have dropped by 55% or so since 1973 for the vast majority of workers this tells me we are half as rich as we would be otherwise

            More importantly fertility rates have been below replacement for nearly 50 years in the US with a single year slightly above (2007) and the system has been propped up with immigration . That too is ending, Hispanics are now below replacement

            There is no social pressure you can use that will get quality people to have children against their perceived self interest either. You as in anyone not in that family gets no say whatsoever on what that interest is. Because of fractured communities, there is no social capital and of course the numbskulls on the Right preaching ultra individualism aren’t helping either.

            The old Right wing trope “less regulation more prosperity” isn’t going to help in a global system and reducing US wages to compete with China or hell Africa is not going to make Americans have more kids

            Since even basic game theory will that very few people will voluntarily raise wages to enough of a level in the current situations what do you suggest?

            Neo Liberal economics, Austrian Economics sans a Hayek Approved Basic Income Guarantee , Unregulated Capitalism will all fail

            This leaves very few choices other than below replacement fertility till collapse or ethnic replacement . economic nationalism/populism , socialism of some kind or maybe distributism

            Choose your own venom but if you want a future with an urban population, pay up

          • Again – leftist arguments based on a complete lack of understanding – or a WILLFULLY wrong portrayal of what wealth is.

            Wealth is CREATED by work input . That means if you dump me out in the middle of the woods with a bucket full of tools and I cut down trees , roll rocks into place – and build a home to live in – I have created wealth. The “demand for labor at decent wages” is completely irrelevant to that fact.

            A home that is now able to house my family – can shield them from nature – and allow us to separate ourselves from it’s impact. A roof over our heads also allows us to preserve other things we create – so they are not subject as harshly to natural entropy.

            Wealth creation is extremely simple to understand – but the infusion of “theories” and assorted levels of leftist inspired bullshit have muddied the waters so much that nobody can even understand the basics any more.

            That home I create – can now be passed on to my heirs – so that they now have a place to live a sheltered life- in that way wealth is passed down thru generations, and that allows those generations to build on the work of those that came previous to them.

            Communists would tell me that I didn’t build that house – and come up with a myriad of excuses to justify taking it (wealth redistribution) . A capitalist would at least understand that my human capital allowed me to build that house – and therefore it is capital that belongs to me and I can leverage it as I wish.

            “Society” doesn’t matter – what matters is who does the damn work. Most of the arguments in the current age are just different variations of how to steal from the productive.

            This shit is very simple to understand – until confused people start buying into bullshit theories and “intellectual” arguments.

          • A small family in the woods is not a modern society or a society at all.

            Just in case you haven’t noticed we live in cities now with 80% of the US population qualifying as urban

            Dropping Mr Pioneer off in any city in any part of history and he dies

            That said no one here is suggesting the abolition of all private property , total state control over industry or any of the other shibboleths beloved of libertarian types

            What is being said is that modernity has a high cost and if you want that modernity, you are going to have to pay that cost . You can pay the State or private industry but you’ll still pay

            It makes more sense given the tech we have to use the State

            Anyway its mostly the State that keeps it running at all . Its not perfect but it does a better job in a lot of areas and as good a job in others as the private sector

            Can it grow corrupt? Overreach ? Sclerotic? Outright malign ? Yep

            Its still not going anywhere .

            as for the value of the individual . You have it nearly opposite. The value of an individual is only in contest to his society , that is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

            without that community, an individual or a family is basically nothing

            You matter mostly though not entirely because you are an American or everywhere you are from

          • Urbanization and technology not social choices by society made children a cost.

            In an age where people work mostly for someone else and in an office children as labor is superfluous

            Only 3% of people are farmers and that work is heavily automated as well so no go there.

            As of 2014 no more than 1 in 10 are self employed and this counts many kinds of contract jobs, gig work and the like where juniors labor is useless.

            Also we don’t need our kids to spend hours cleaning the house or frankly have much for them to do and almost none of what they do is of economic benefit to anyone

            As for youth jobs, we’ll fast food prefers to hire adult these days or use a kiosk or other automation and newspapers don’t really exist.

            Child labor other than exploitation is of no economic value in the developed world.;

            This means that children are a social choice and have economic and opportunity costs galore thus people will have less of them

            Now if the culture shifts so that people want children and everyone is doing it, you’ll get a baby boomlet

            There are four things that have to happen.

            First the culture needs to become hopeful and mentally well

            Second wages have to go up

            Third, it has to become far homogeneous as this builds social capital to allow social pressure to increase the fertility rate

            Fourth, people have to start having kids since people typically have kids when propel like them around them are doing it

            Nothing in the Neo Liberal /Austrian School/Reaganomics agendas leads in this direction any more than Cultural Marxism does

            Getting there will essential require restricting freedoms that harm others and economic controls in some areas. Its ugly but I can’t see another way to do it .

          • Fair enough that some help should be given by the state to families who work too long and earn too little to raise children without becoming enslaved to debt and consumerism. However, raising wages by itself will do nothing but encourage the current consumer patterns, which are wasteful and antifamily. Other changes I’d institute instead:
            -family leave (even if not too paid), some of the stuff Orban and Putin are trying (limited results, but it’s something),
            -an optional but open to anyone healthcare option managed by state authority rather than fed (thus ending all other present bureaucare systems!),
            -an end to the Fed and return to the glorious 60s Bretton-Woods (no one will dare devalue now, back then Europeans funded their welfare on the backs of strong dollars and weak little eurocurrencies to prop up their industries),
            -plus a massive tax cut to corporations (because we are not producing much outside of a few resources like oil or corn owned by small amounts of population, and all we are having for the rest is service industries and distribution of mostly imported products as well as a tech/art/media/thought/finance/govcorp elite – thus, we need to bring capital, make use of our strong currency and [relatively] high security and stability, instead of trying to fund everything through mortgages and credit cards and boomer savings, or massive tax hikes that you yourself mention too unpopular to ever happen)
            -corresponding with a hike against rentseekers (just 5-10 points on Wall Street’s beloved capital gains, not much; on the other hand, property taxes vary by geography, thus have to leave it at least partly a state matter, but always encouraging less debt and less apartments cages and squalor; true, the Georgists talked a lot about a land tax, but that works better in places with less room and private ownership like England – and even then, prices are sky high, thought it’s the regulatory burden that also matters)
            -and another small hike against top brackets (to be debatable, as remittance tax and fixing border and immigration issues might negate the need for European style taxation that would also scare family formation; but Bannon’s 45% top bracket pitch wasn’t bad, even reminded you of the 45th president heh…)
            -and as mentioned, remittance tax, protection of certain industries, heightened border control, stopping the immigration wave, etc.
            -perhaps even more investment in security and law and order measures, and a strong backing of the 2nd amendment – the Swiss show the way, though then again they are more homogeneous and control gun sales better (not to mention, institutionalization needs a comeback)
            – all this coupled with as much isolationism as possible on the foreign end of things – I know, an important part of the US, specially elites, live off foreign entanglements… but we must try… no need to worry about Kashoggi if Saudis give oil for (really) cheap, but let’s not give them the means to murder the Yemenis, and otherwise only deal with terrorists that come here and let Israel deal with Iran (I’m sure it can be dealt with by now, just like NK could be dealt with by now)

            All this laundry list and more, at any rate, is worthless if Americans still won’t change their decadent non-family nonculture. Perhaps draconian measures such as:
            -reversing Roe v Wade or no-fault divorce, or
            -regulate prostitution and porn so they’re legal but not widely available (right now too much porn and too many unregulated escorts, not to mention sugarbabies of all kinds), and
            -perhaps maybe even assigning many women and some few men (based on aptitude tests – come on, just an extra section to the SAT) to permanent caretaking of the home and children, so they have more time to breed and instill normal gender roles and realistic values*…

            Or, half-jokingly, perhaps the eventual incorporation of Latin America will create a nice huge market… then again, demographics and IQ would still be issues, albeit reduced by tech but still there… Hispanics are huge debtors to the Chinese too…

            Who knows, maybe instead of all these “revolutionary” proposals, we will all eventually modify ourselves biologically to fit into the machine, and will be happy then…

            *(and maybe even the sole breadwinner’s wages can rise too-notice that the stagnation in wages happened after the feminist revolution-no wonder, since women flood more and more job markets and colleges, while also asking men with more money than them to take them out, put a ring on it, and buy them ever more things for the house on credit-therefore maybe doubly increasing the effects of downward pressure on wages, as debt slavery reduces savings of actual wealth all around from the higher IQ cohort [white and now Asian males]… all this while the Chinese laugh in their dollar-funded hypertrains and fascistically toast to the Party)…

          • Couple of fixes:
            -When I mentioned ending the Fed, I know that would take us to pre-Wilson gold (or silver if you prefer) standard and not to 50s-60s Bretton Woods. However, the latter may be at least a mid step, if not a compromise.
            -The wage thing could also be dealt with by keeping wages low but with enough benefits/safety net, either:
            -provided directly as subsidies by gov (side effect-increased budgets and bureaucracy, therefore oligarchy ensues),
            -by enforced union membership (side effect-leaders can be bought or on the other hand make exaggerate demands)
            -or by the gov making a national labor front (which seems like a compromise of sorts, provided the govt can keep it balanced; Zman mentions Nazis in practice becoming capitalist allies, but this wasn’t fully the case, the DAF offering more benefits than some modern welfare systems; granted, the wage and price controls on production on which Nazi autarchy and rearmament worked eventually grew inflationary; Hjalmar Schaacht [sp?] was more responsible for the initally more successful Four Year Plan; then the Nazi idiotic fuhrerprinzip and the war economy made the state larger [google GoeringWorks] greyer, and ready to crash in the blaze of war)

      • “corporatism, militarism, class collaboration, nationalism, futurism in design, and even eugenics(!)” Just a quick question. Are we on the Dissident Right supposed to be against eugenics?

        • The Deus Volt wing is, NrX is fine with it as far as I can tell and the rest are mixed.

          I’m personally in favor of it and like NrX think its inevitable

    • I personally don’t believe Salazar, or Franco, or Engelbert Dollfuss should be classified as fascists. They were authoritarian Catholic traditionalists, explicitly drawing of Catholic social teachings. Joseph de Maistre and Juan Donoso Cortes would also have to be classified as fascists (yes, they’ve been called proto-fascists). From there, why not call Medieval Christendom fascist? I certainly don’t think Catholic corporatist theorists like François-René de La Tour du Pin, Catholic Distributists like Hilaire Belloc, Catholic Guild Socialists like Arthur J. Penty, etc. should be qualified as fascist either. The issue of Charles Maurras (who loathed Germany by the way, especially the German Romantic tradition) and his pro-Catholic (it was very largely comprised of devout Catholics) Action Française, and Catholic Vichy France, are a little more gray. Yes, I’m deliberately name dropping in hopes of bringing the wider European right to more peoples’ attention.

      • Salazar, Franco and Dollfuss were Catholic Integralists. As Catholic Integralists they were violently opposed to the “Left” but could never go all the way with the Fascists. Their “method” was the same in many ways as the Fascists but their Catholicism stopped them from accepting the Modernist assumptions which underlies both Fascism and Socialism/Communism.

        Eric VonKL, in my opinion, correctly defined Fascism as of the Left. But unfortunately this terminology has confused rather than cleared thought.
        Fascism, Communism and modern Liberalism need to be recognised as Left, Right and Centre Modernisms. Roger Griffin has some excellent books on the subject of Fascism and Modernism.

        Eric VonKL gets dismissed very early on but he’s the one who has grasped the essence of the problem. His view is shared by Chambers and Solzhenitsyn. These guys understood that both Fascism and Communism were the fruit of the Radical Enlightenment and that while they differed in “managerial” styles they both led to the same end.

        This is a great talk by Z-Man but misses the bigger picture.

        • One problem with Kuehnelt-Leddihn is that his conception of the Right means there has been no Right for well over a hundred years. All political and meta-political debate has been on the Left for over a century. This of course means all of us reading this are on the Left. Even if that is true, it makes the Left-Right construction entirely worthless. It’s a passive-aggressive way of attacking the premise in order to avoid the argument.

          The other problem with Kuehnelt-Leddihn, in my opinion, is he just assumes inherited rule is the only legitimate form of rule. That is the crux of his argument for placing the Nazis on the Left. That’s important to note. He focused on the Nazis, pretending they are the exemplar of fascism. That’s a glaring error, in my view.

          All of this misses the bigger picture, which is that history is not an unbroken chain events and counter events. The wave quality of history allows us to see trends that repeat through the ages, but the particle quality requires us to accept that history is episodic. The interwar years were the result of events that cannot be repeated.

          • “One problem with Kuehnelt-Leddihn is that his conception of the Right means there has been no Right for well over a hundred years. ”

            Bingo!

            That was Chambers’s point exactly. It was also why he was so despondent in his writings.

            As you correctly pointed out by the early part of the 20th everyone intellectual was socialist. The issue at stake was not how to revive the Old World but what version of the New World were we going to choose. Fascism, Communism or American New Deal Liberalism. Chamber’s understood that they were all different versions of the same thing and all would ultimately lead to the destruction of the West. What we’ve been arguing about is how to best implement Modernism. Free market or centrally managed. Open society or ethnically closed? We’re still having the same argument.

            Chambers recognised that we were on the Titanic while everyone else was arguing about which side to put the deck chairs on, and how to arrange them.

            The only other guys to recognise this were religious men like Christopher Dawson and T.S. Elliot. However these guys were crippled by a failure to recognise the technological and demographic factors had so profoundly changed society that a return to “olden thymes” was impossible and yet that is what they were advocating. EvKL was cut of the same cloth. They were right about what was wrong with the world but totally wrong with regard to therapy.

            Chambers however was different. He recognised that any Right of the future–if such a thing were possible–would not be the “ye olde” Right of Russel Kirk (and EvKL) and would have to transcend simple acquisitiveness of the Chicago/Austrian school but would have to be “deeper” and have the appropriate social policies which took into account the realities of Modern life. That’s why Chambers told Buckley that he wasn’t a conservative but a “man of the Right”.

            If you ever get the chance , read Chamber’s “Cold Friday”. It’s deep, really deep. It’s almost mystic. Chambers grapples with the big issues of why the Right failed in the 20th C. He was one of the few who “got it”. Then if you have the time, read Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen’s, Diary of a Man in Despair and you’ll understand why the Fascists are not of Chamber’s Right.

            By the way, kudos to you for this excellent post.

          • I will. Thanks for the great comments.

            I’m thinking there is a few more podcasts in this material. Maybe even a book.

        • Are the fascists modern in that they’re generally a-religious? Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Germanic Paganism, etc. were heavily appealed to, though of course they weren’t proposing directly resuscitating belief in the pagan gods. It’s notable that Himmler demanded deism, if I remember correctly, from SS men. Julius Evola, Perennial Traditionalist, viewed Fascism, NS, and Falangism as a step in the right direction, toward Tradition. His focus on the kshatriya side of Tradition, and his critical views of Christianity (he softened on traditional Catholicism as he aged, but correctly saw, well before Vatican II, the Church’s rapid degeneration from Pope Pius IX and the medieval inheritance) would make him differ from a Christian like EvKL.

          I’m inclined to view the fascist movements, like the authoritarian Catholic Integralists, as a mixture of old and new, only the old is pre-Christian (leaving aside the issue of pure New Testament Christianity versus Christianity mixed with/buried beneath Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Germanization, etc., etc.).

          I lost my (deep) faith in traditional Catholicism, and ultimately couldn’t accede to Eastern Orthodoxy, pure Neoplatonism, or Perennial Tradition, so I now find myself in the world of the German Conservative Revolution, Nietzsche, et al. I’ll say one thing, it’s very nice to be freed from those infamous New Testament passages, and to be open to a Nietzschean like Jonathan Bowden for whom “the universe, nature, whatever you call it, I believe it’s fury not love.”

          • Roger Griffin deals with this at length. Think of Fascism as being akin to steampunk. The modernism being the “punk” the aesthetics being the “steam” Fascism is simply a different way of dressing up Modernism. (And by Modernism I mean the rationalistic rejection of the Christian conception of reality.) There’s still even place for “religious practice/Mysticism” in this schema as long as it is a rejection of the Christian God.

            Comte, for instance, set up a “Religion of Humanity” while expressively rejecting Christianity. The French revolutionaries wanted to see up cultic practices to liberty and reason if I remember correctly. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have a Modernism with Thor worship thrown in. ( The thing about the chosen deity is that it always permits you to do what you want to do.)

            The thing about the smarter modernists is that they realised that man is not satisfied by rationality alone, and they gave a sop to religion as long as it supported the underlying modernism. Wanna gas some Jews, well then find a Thor that permits you do it and worship him.

            You see the same thing with Liberal Protestantism, it produces Gods that always agree with the Liberal Protestants own thoughts on things, while pushing the underlying narrative of Modernism. The God of Gay Marriage ain’t the God of the Bible, he’s the God of Man.

            The traditional Christian God, on the other hand, put limits on what you could and could not do. That of course, is incredibly frustrating–and not to mention politically incorrect–to a modernising zealot of either Left or Right wing persuasion and therefore he has to opposed.

            I do agree with you, however, that modern Christianity has been pozzed. We don’t crusade anymore.

          • After clicking your link above, I realized that I’ve read your blog in the past. I forget what led me to it (I was traveling through NRx I believe), but a year ago, perhaps, I read through many of your posts, going back through the history of your blog. You’re an extremely intelligent and learned man, and I respect your position, but I just don’t see what this radically anti-modern/traditional, yet still very new and reformed variant of Christianity would amount to. I don’t know how one can accomplish this, given the constraints of the binding acts of the magisterium in Catholic tradition, and given the extreme reverence toward the totality of Church tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy (which I commend them on). In addition, to my mind, a Christian society of any worth is either going to be imposed from above by a vanguard (“totalitarianism” and all that), or it’s not going to happen. Let’s be honest, the spread and maintenance of Christendom involved a great deal force.

            I don’t think modern Christianity is simply “pozzed”, it has predominantly developed into an existential enemy. I’m happy to leave those who can reconcile Christianity and effective pro-West positions to themselves, but it worries me that even among SSPX and sedevacantist traditional Catholics (and I mean the sane, intelligent, learned elements of these wings), honest and forthright assessment of race is rare, and objections of biology reductionism (which amounts to a pure blank-slate position) and “this is another wicked spawn of evolutionary theory”, are not uncommon.

          • “The traditional Christian God, on the other hand, put limits on what you could and could not do.”

            There is wild disagreement among Christians on what precisely these “limits” amount to, even among Roman Catholics. I don’t see any method of resolving the issue outside of logic, since gnostic claims of knowing Truth have been used for virtually every position under the sun, and since I don’t see incontestable miracles coming to the rescue. I’ve come to believe that the most logically coherent strain of Christianity (especially post-Vatican II), is Eastern Orthodoxy.

            If Christianity binds me to allow the West to die, binds me to allow my loved ones and offspring to be cast into a nightmarish Third World ghetto existence, would you agree that the healthy, sane man will reject Christianity altogether?

          • I agree the modern Christianity has problems, Europeans have been fighting about them for years but an analysis of them is for a different time and place. However, the important thing to realise is the the Christian conception of man, and reality, were foundational principles of the West and no man can be for the West if he rejects them.

  14. One aspect that people tend to forget or ignore is how much the rise of fascism was due to communism and the Red Terror. The Russian revolution(s) followed by numerous atrocities, the civil war, the invasion of Poland, the Spartacist uprising, various assassinations, etc.: all of that was deeply (and rightfully) frightening. And like communism, fascism was another “modern” response to what were seen as the flaws of traditional systems.

    But of course the left wants to ignore all of that. They want people to think that a bunch of Germans suddenly decided to go over to the side of evil for no real reasons.

    • The Left wants everyone to also think that a bunch of people simply decided to go over to the side of evil and vote Trump. Everything is situational with the Left, including history and historical context. When simply inventing your reality out of thin air is a thing, then it all makes perfect logical sense for them. “Reality based” and all.

    • Fascism originated and had its greatest success in Catholic Southern European countries. Germany is the only Protestant country that went fascist by consent rather than collaboration. Greece was quasi-fascist during the Colonels dictatorship. And fascism lived on the longest in the Middle East under the names “Nasser, Kemal and Ba’athism”.

    • That was certainly one major aspect, but there were other major aspects as well, which I find much more interesting. Much of the driving force of the interwar right were former WW1 soldiers. These men, having left behind bourgeois individualism and norms of peace, security, comfort, and consumerism, and experienced an unabashedly violent, mannerbund existence in the “socialistic” military, believed they had experienced a higher, more authentic existence, and sought to recreate it in the world at large, via annihilating all liberalism (classical included) and building a society of fundamentally old values, under new forms. These men captured the hearts and minds of countless younger men who had not experienced the war, and all united in assault on modernity.

      One related, interesting example is the German National Bolshevist movement, who were pure nationalists, they believed in thoroughly subduing everything, including the entirety of the economy, to the national interest, and explicitly appealed to ancient Sparta and the Prussian tradition. Their belief, or hope, was that the old Russia of Dostoevsky (German Conservative Revolutionary theorist Arthur Moeller van den Bruck was a central influence on them. He was the major translator of Dostoevsky into German, and was centrally influenced by his writings on politics, society, economics and the like in his journals) would rise through and overtake the cosmopolitan materialism of orthodox Marxism. Russian emigre Eurasian theorists of the 1920’s and 1930’s thought this would happen as well. The German National Bolshevists wanted an alliance between old yet new (Prussian) Germany and (similarly Prussian) Russia, against the materialistic, atomized, class-divided, economically unjust/exploitative West.

    • Agree. Fascism was a response to Communism. A “third way” that avoided Socialism AND Capitalism. It was obvious in 1919, that Monarchists and Capitalists (the dumb bourgeois) couldn’t defeat Communism – they were obsolete in Europe. So Mussolini came up with fascism and Hitler copy catted it, added some antisemitism and gave Germany NatSoc. Without the Bolshevik Revolution – no Nazi Germany and no Fascist Italy.

  15. Excellent podcast, Zman. I know you may not want to hear this but I believe you touched on a perspective that Jordan Peterson shares. It’s using the terms “openness” standing in opposition to “conscientiousness” when viewing the (yes, arbitrary) right-left spectrum in terms of human behavior.

  16. I’m only about ten minutes into this latest Podcast. However, I’ll go ahead and state that one of my favorite things about Zman is how he mocks mainstream conservatives for embracing too many of our culture’s politically correct pieties. Nobody should fall for nonsense such as “Leftists are the real racists” because “racism” itself is not even objectively definable. Nor should anyone automatically assume that anything labeled “racist” is necessarily pernicious. Standard-issue right-wingers have adopted way too much of the moral code of their rivals. The mainstream Right is therefore a paper tiger compared to the Left. Only something considerably bolder and more innovative than mainstream conservatism will triumph through these struggles.

    • It’s not the best Coen brothers film, but the subplot with Hollywood Communists is pure gold for anyone here who’s familiar with the period.

        • “Does the depiction of Christ Jesus cut the mustard?” LOL, but still, I can’t abide the Frankfurt School being humanized. There is a good chance we are not going to get out of this. That only leaves the Chinese as a mass of high-IQ people (though they are sick, evil bastards), as Richard Lynn has predicted, or perhaps humanity as we know it will cease to exist via gene-editing and the like. The Frankfurt School are Demonic. Justice demands that they be hated at the very highest, deepest level.

          Have the Coen brothers caught any flack along the lines of “does this mean the House Un-American Activities Committee was right?” How many f*cking melodramatic movies has Hollywood produced about the beleaguered victims of the “Red Scare”? The “Red Scare” was, literally, 1/1,000,000 of our ongoing “Racist Scare”.

  17. Yes – You hit the basic misunderstanding here. I think there are two different political spectrum lines.

    In Europe people think of a line with Hitler and Mussolini on the far right and Lenin on the far left. It’s stupid because as you said, there is no space on it for Libertarians or even regular economic conservatives. Things like race, religion, traditions, and order are part of formula on where you fall on the spectrum.

    In the U.S., most of us think of the line as least government to most. On one end is the Libertarians, then the actual small-government conservatives – with socialists then commies on the other end. Obviously on this spectrum most fascists would fall somewhere around the socialists.

    • The key is to understanding that the political system works in terms of “multiple axes”, or what the small brain calls “4D chess”. The average voter is barely able to grasp “fiscal conservative but social liberal”, which even socialists like Ocasio-Cortez could conceivably identify with.

      In Western Europe, the stain of the fascists is a permanent weight on the right-wing parties, as their ancestors were collaborators. Even in the never occupied UK, the Daily Mail was briefly sympathetic to the BUF, and the left will never let them forget it. In the rest of Europe, the impact of decades of Communist rule washes over this guilt trip.

    • It’s like people are trying to play 4D chess in two dimensions!

      Several years ago I started referring to the inevitable collapse and civil war as “the coming unpleasantness” which I think I saw Kunstler use in print sometime later.

      I just hope we get the right kind of authoritarian strong man to lead us out of the abyss.

  18. I still think the Nazis are exactly what the name on the box says – National Socialists.

    Mussolini was kicked out of the Italian Socialist Party for his stance on foreign policies – not his economics. Does his socialistic economic policy make him a leftist? Or does the nationalistic policies make him right wing? Sure.

    • That’s really the problem. The Left has convinced everyone that everything boils down to two economic theories.

      • There is an economic divergence between various levels of redistribution, but also another divergence between mercantilism/free trade. In historical context, mercantilism is the “right wing” position. Of course, that begs the question as to whether or not Xi Jinping is a fascist. But fascism by its nature is revolutionary, which is why you get oddly named parties like the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) which governed like a secularist version of Franco.

        • It is my position that any effort to construct a universal political spectrum is a failure of imagination. It’s an effort to either defend or attack the present, by making false comparison to the past, or simply ignorance of history. If you want to employ a dialectical method for examining the past, then do so within the context of the past. Otherwise it devolved into arguments about whether Lincoln would have been a democrat or a republican today.

          • “Waving the bloody shirt” has a long efficacy of working, not just from the Radicals where it originated. The timeline from “bloody shirt” to “rum, romanism and rebellion” is inexact, but of high importance.

      • Not just the Left, Z-Man, but also the Merchant Right. Metaphysics, not economic theory, is where it’s at. Eric VonKL may have had a thing for the aristocratic systems of societal management but the guts of his argument was the what united the Fascists and the Socialists was a rejection of the Christian conception of man.

    • Trying to compress things down to a socialism vs not socialism dichotomy is not that useful at this time, when virtually every country on earth (certainly including the United States) has a mixed economy combining elements of public and private ownership, free enterprise and regulation.

      If you want to use the term socialist in an over-broad way, like American Conservatarians do, then yes, Nationalism IS philosophically “socialist”, in the sense that it believes the economic interests of the individual may have to, in some cases, be a lower priority than the economic interests of the nation as a whole. (But at the same time, demands for excessive government and redistribution would also be rejected, if they undermined the interests of the nation as a whole.)

      For example, a Nationalist wouldn’t necessarily let a few international elites who run large social media corporations interfere with elections / politics by selectively censoring pro-nation points of view while boosting anti-nation points of view… even if they were making money and boosting the economy by doing so.

      But basically only American Conservatarians believe that the soul of “the right” is to prioritize absolute economic freedom for Mark Zuckerberg over all other considerations.

      And it hasn’t exactly worked out well for them.

      • “Bolt Vanderhuge”, “Hack Blowfist”, “Fridge Largemeat”, “Big McLarge Huge”, “Buff Drinklots”, “Stomp Beefknob”, “Flint Ironstag”, “Blast Hardcheese” and “Punt Speedchunk”.

        Space Mutiny was the first MST3K episode I saw. A top five episode of all time for sure. The Netflix reboot was an abomination.

  19. If I say that I have basically given up on politics because I don’t believe there is any way we are going to vote ourselves out of the coming, oh, lets say upheavals, am I being a defeatist or a pragmatist? Little of both?

    • You’re a realist. Even Trump has proven a disappointment in a lot of ways. The typical Republicans who run for office are only minutely superior to your standard Democrats. Often there is no substantive difference between the two. Here’s how I look at it: it appears that Democrats want to destroy the country today, whereas Republicans would rather hold off a year or two before destroying it. Perhaps it would be better to just get it over with,

    • Just being pragmatic. Trump has shown that voting doesn’t work. He’s morphed into a Cuck and can’t see his base is eroding big time.

      The GOP as a whole is a corrupt body composed of people who are owned by businessmen who support policies that are killing the country. Others are just 80’s style Democrats.

      And there is no way to fix this by voting. I can only hope Pelosi and her gang manages to blow it all up.

        • He’s not. The Mule may be out there, but the system will not allow him into the halls of power after Trump;.

          We must not wait for a savior, it is foolish, it makes us passive and weak. We either become the resistance, disruptors and shitlords to the insane white elite, the man hating white feminists, etc. Or it doesn’t get done.

          I don’t care about the various hues of fascism, I don’t care about Buckely and his group of snob whites who hated the average white in this country.

          What I care about is that we’re facing a bunch of fanatics who want to curb-stomp us into a bloody pulp if given half the chance. We either start resisting them or in a few years become target practice for them.

          • Waiting for the savior though is what a good part of the “right” seems to be most amenable to.

            I’ve been arguing it out with people who call themselves conservative for a couple of decades now – that if you REALLY believed in what you claim to believe in when you wave that flag around – you wouldn’t be also arguing for any sort of savior. You’d actually be doing something about it.

            A few years back – when most of the right was all up in arms about going to war in the Mideast – and took any opposition to that support to mean that you’re “some sort of commie or something!!” – I took the opportunity on Veteran’s Day to suggest to an ex-Army vet (served in Europe during the Serbia adventures) – that if he was so adamant about his support of our current day excursions into the Mideast – then he should go to pretty much any town in this area – find the old cemetery just outside the town center…. search for a Revolutionary War veteran’s grave – and take a big hearty shit on it.

            Needless to say he didn’t appreciate that suggestion – at all.

            But that’s pretty much what these types are arguing for. They’re arguing for taking what our forefathers fought for and for taking the country they established – and taking a big freaking dump on it.

            As Zman has pointed out – “conservatives” don’t seem to conserve a freaking thing. And worse yet when they do take action – it’s most usually in the wrong freaking direction. Taking action usually = benefits the left.

            In my experience the average right winger is far too cucked -and mentally lazy to ever even consider what you’re proposing. I’m not saying it doesn’t work – IT DOES. I’ve been screwing with people like you suggest for at least 20 years now – and it DEFINITELY works. But I don’t find that maybe 1 in 100 other “conservatives” will even consider becoming a member of the resistance – or have the chops to carry it out successfully.

          • This is because there is no agreed upon Conservative agenda even an abstract one.

            Leave me alone is not an ideology, Ain’t no one buying Christendom 2, minarachy disguised as Constitutionalism lasted till roughly 1790 or so with Marbury vs Madison and we don’t live in that kind of society anyway

            Until the Right in general can agree upon a a set of principles they won’t fight as they have no allies .

            A personal example here, as much as I loathe the left I won’t help the Deus Volt crowd take power since I can’t trust them not to kill or imprison me once they have tasted blood and have power

            What you want is a Hallmark Channel world with rednecks

            To get this we have to embrace mass repatriation , 50 million or so, a forceful end to the lefts projects,n and have a nationalist anti oligarchical economy can win.

            This may not happen, the money cucks that infect the Right and the Libertarians are a huge problem but if they can be dealt with? Things can change and this should happen faster as the Boomer’s die off , NABALT of course but old people a a rarely radical enough .

            Get that goal out there and you can win. Otherwise the Left even with its shifting goals will win since modernity breeds Leftism and for all its flaws its far more coherent and even people focused than the Right is

          • We are, in effect, the Jews facing the Nazis. They are organized and have a common goal to obliterate us, using us as the excuse for what is wrong with everything, as they continue their establishment of their thousand year…whatever. We believe in what we believe in, but we are spread out and mostly leaderless, depending on the institutions of the culture for our own well being. Those same institutions that are being pulled out from under us like a worn out rug.

            So what we must do is take a lesson from the European Jews. Learn from their mistakes, and do things differently. Do not extend the normalcy bias too long. Or don’t let the frog start boiling, however you want to look at it. Flight, fight, or cower quietly in cubbyholes? The Mule would finesse the problem, but I agree that there is likely no Mule.

          • #1. Yes …. ref “… the system will not let him in the halls of power after Trump.” It’s like the scene from the movie The Hunt for Red October, where the Soviet torpedoes have just been destroyed without detonating by contact with their target — the defecting Soviet admiral (Sean Connery) remarks of the pursuing Soviet attack boat captain that: Captain Tupolev (sp) will not make that mistake again; right now he is removing the safeties …. and this is what the LEFT and their infected elite followers in the governing class are doing right now. Their mission is to ensure the error of actual citizen input does not occur again.

            (NOTE: Not sure the movie quote is exact. DVD packed away so I can’t check at 4:00 AM. But I think I’m close.).

          • #2. I think this really is a key comment (Rod1963’s). No criticism implied of the Z-Man’s post or overall project. I admire his abilities, intelligence and daily brilliance. This is an essential function and he has done more than most to de-mystify, educate and set the discussion. But we in the minion ranks have to accept at some level that we know enough — that these people and their program are an existential threat, by design, stated intent and demonstrated actions. At the operational level we don’t have an effective project, as many have noted — Republican party still, anyone? Ha!!! We don’t need more to act. It’s as if in 1941 we had kept watching the Japanese march through SE Asia, but kept looking for confirmation of their intent, and that it was bad.

            Another thought …. people from time to time mention that the system will likely de-platform is Z-man. But, they haven’t. I wonder if our betters might allow sites like this to stand so they can see who hovers near ….. 😮

      • Candidate Trump was great. Sadly his daughter married into a family renowned for their $upport of Hillary. Unless Javanka goes back to NYC (but they wont, because this is their job now) we’ll never get MAGA.

        • I thought Trump was the man until he groveled before AIPAC before he got the nomination. The night befor Hillary did the same.

      • Trump was always a cuck. His opening speech channeled Coulter, but his policy proposal was Touchback Deportation.

        I supported him because everyone else was worse, but he isn’t just now becoming a squish.

    • Completely cutting one’s self off from our government’s politics seems, to me, to amount to a “worse is better” position. To me, that is far too optimistic. People need to be instructed, led, and emboldened, for a critical mass of “woke” whites to develop. That means preserving the First and Second Amendments. We need a fundamental overthrow in a critical mass of whites, a la a Nietzsche or a Heidegger. This is not going to happen without very intelligent people instructing/leading/inspiring us, and they need access to us, as easy access as possible, for this to happen.

      • Yes. And this force we face — this human madness “em-bodied” in our elites and their footsoldiers — has as one of the major tasks in their war plan a massive, multi functional effort (sub task or subordinate objective) to identify any who demonstrate that creativity, charisma and power, block any potential means for idea dissemination, destroy them and punish those who listen and follow. It is war by other, relentlessly applied means.

        The task we face is sobering. They are so good at softening the apparent threat, or distracting us with lots of sex, legal pot and access to funding … for those who obey.

  20. It is my observation that most people that use the term “fascism” are doing so without any sense of the historical context in which it first appeared. I doubt 1 in 100 people hurling fascism around as a pejorative know who Mussolini was, much less Oswald Mosley.

    It generally is as simplistic as “I heard a teacher say fascism was bad. Orange man also bad. Therefore orange man fascist.”. Unfortunately the people that most need to listen to this podcast are the least likely people to listen to it.

    • When I read about the Frankfurt School, what comes across to me is people building a new identity for themselves, which has turned into a secular religion now. Instead of it being a positive identity, it is an entirely negative one. I forget the name, but one member of the Frankfurt School came close to breaking with them over their obsession with antisemitism and fascism. What we call Cultural Marxism became an elaborate model to explain why Jews did not fight back against the Nazis. In other words, an electorate ruse to shift their focus from central defects within the diaspora onto a convenient bogeyman.

      As a result, fascism is the all-purpose golem.

      • My favorite Frankfurt School work is Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. It’s supposed to be a psychological portrait of the typical Nazi. Instead, it’s a perfect psychological self-portrait of a Frankfurt School Marxist. You’d think a trained psychologist would be able to recognize “projection” when he’s writing 300 pages of it, but there it is. Like I always say, if they could spot the obvious, they wouldn’t be Leftists.

      • I was born into a family that was a product of the Frankfurt School even though none of them could tell you what that was. Up until a couple years ago I didn’t either.
        It’s just another glitch in the matrix or rabbit hole that leads here.
        Even as a child I was suspicious of the nazi bogeyman that I was supposed to be afraid of.
        Sure, they were no saints, but look at your average American Donk these days… history doesn’t repeat, but it certainly rhymes…

        • My understanding of the nazis came from Hogan’s Heroes. Sure they are a little dense and easy to put one over on, but evil? no.

    • It’s interesting how the holocaust and the cold war really shaped our education on socialism, communism, and fascism. While we learned about the Axis powers in a very surface level way, Mussolini and Putin were hardly given the same kind of breadth and depth that Nazi Germany was afforded.

      Basically, my only takeaway was Mussolini was fascist. But that hardly says anything. As you say, chain of bad: Hitler bad, Mussolini allied with Hitler, Mussolini fascist, fascist bad.

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