Man people have noted the similarities, as far as practical application, between 20th century fascism and modern managerialism. The starting place for the comparison is the marriage of corporate power and state power. Instead of harnessing the two in the name of socialism and nationalism, the two sides exist within the managerial state in the furtherance of technological and financial capitalism. The system is also decorated with the language of Western liberalism.
The important difference, of course, is that fascism was in response to the chaos of communist terror and liberal collapse. Managerialism, in contrast, is an American phenomenon that evolved in response to the limits of the political structure in the context of expansion and industrialization. The Constitution was written for a pre-industrial people. After the Civil War it was modified several times, but that just turned the fine balance into a set of irreconcilable contradictions.
What managerialism attempts to do in practice is apply extra-governmental solutions to problems either created by government or beyond the limits of government. The expert class in the other institutions create solutions to these problems. Often these solutions create new problems, which require other experts to solve. Of course, these solutions always require the permanent expansion of institutional power. Managerialism is a self-licking ice cream cone.
The most prominent example of this is the military-industrial complex, which is the clearest example of managerialism. The state is tasked with defense of society, which is why nations have militaries. These are the people trained specifically for the task of war and national defense. During the Second World War, the military relied heavily on private industry and this marriage has endured ever since. Together they seek new enemies to justify new expansion of the system.
During the Cold War, the politicians could always be relied upon to find an enemy for the military-industrial complex to use as a rallying point. When relations with the Soviets were civil, then it was some proxy war in the third world. For forty years there was always a reason to expand the military-industrial complex. Then the Cold War ended and the system needed new villains. A quarter century crusade against Islam has just wrapped up and the hunt for a new villain is underway.
Domestically, this public-private partnership is not so clean. Instead, the relationship is accidental and indirect. For example, the bum problem that has plagued every city in America since the 1980’s was not deliberate. The people who got the asylum system shut down did so for narrow reasons. The bum problem was totally unexpected, because they assumed the state would find a new solution. Instead, “homelessness” became a lucrative private enterprise with no solution.
We are about to see something similar with the new soft-on-crime policies promoted by left-wing politicians. Their motivations are ideological, not practical, but the practical consequences are creating a serious problem. American cities are being overrun by petty crimes like shoplifting and smash and grabs. Since these crimes are not prosecuted, the criminals have become brazen. These scenes are becoming a feature of social media and the local news.
Since this problem has been created by the state, there can be no state solution, so it is left to the private side to fashion a cure. Retailers are now calling on the internet retailers to crack down on the traffic in stolen goods. The thieves apparently put their goods on sites like eBay and Amazon. Here we have the public-private partnership coming up with a solution they created. The state actors get their ideological points and the private actors get to expand their control.
The public-private tyranny Americans are now experiencing is reflected in the mainstream political order. The modern Left, despite its pretensions, exists to create social problems for the managerial elite to solve. Conservatives, on the other hand, are the cheer squad for the private actors tasked with finding solutions. Note that both sides have abandoned economics and focus only on creating cultural mayhem (Left) and proffering technological solutions (Right).
This weird political dynamic is most obvious in libertarianism. In the middle of the last century, libertarians were indifferent to social issues. Their singular focus was on economics, specifically market economics. Today, libertarians like Nick Gillespie spend their days promoting free weed and thinking about what it would be like to wear something pretty under the leather jacket. What started out as an economic movement is now a carnival of weirdos promoting the managerial state.
This is the aspect of managerialism that has gone unnoticed. The whole point of rule by expert is to strip away politics in order to efficiently address the practical problems of human society. Just as libertarianism and conservatism have abandoned practical issues in favor of bizarre social fads, the managerial state is no longer interested in filling potholes and painting classroom walls. Instead, it obsesses over imaginary demons of its own creation.
This shift from practical issues to abstract issues coincides with a growing incompetence and inefficiency in the system. This is where you see a comparison between both fascism and communism. Both of those systems started with great efficiency and energy, but that quickly dissipated. Fascism, of course, was smashed in the war, but communism descended in a tragic comedy of bureaucratic bungling and political corruption, as we see with managerialism.
Just as historical comparisons have narrow limits, ideological comparisons fall apart when taken too far. Managerialism is not fascism and it is not communism, even though it shares practical attributes with both. Like both, however, it evolved for a time and place, one that no longer exists. Much of the chaos we see today is due to a frantic search for something to replace communism as the necessary foil. The system is destroying itself in the hunt for a reason to exist.
What all of this suggests is that we not only need a new narrative of the last century, but a new understanding of managerialism. We are still working with the concepts produced by Burnham and then the paleoconservatives. These are concepts produced when communism was still a real thing and managerialism was seen as the energetic response to it. Instead, managerialism needs to be viewed as one manifestation of something that also produced fascism and communism.
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Russia has opened an investigation against Nike for using exclusively non-white models to advertise their product in Russia.
https://twitter.com/Ruposters/status/1493151196428783616
Based!
Managerialism suffers from a lack of charismatic leaders. Quick who among the managerial class inspires loyalty and devotion? Tim Cook of Apple? Mark Zuckerberg? Jacinda Ardern? Justin Trudeau? Macron? Charisma and leadership matter. Particularly in times of hardship and crisis where bloodless, remove, “respek mah authoritah!” shoutings from the equivalent of South Park’s Cartman do not move people to sacrifice. Anyone can be in the Captain’s Chair in a warship in peacetime under calm seas. Almost no one can be there during wartime with shells raining down on the ship. Over and over again, when bloodless managers of one type… Read more »
Managerialism uses control of information to exercise control over people. It’s similar to the Catholic Church in that regard. And like the Catholic Church it has very few charismatic leaders.
Speaking of libertarians, P.J. O’Rourke “won’t be down for breakfast.”
What we have is technocracy. The final state of utilitarian politics is the greatest benefit for the least number at the highest cost.
Info-fascism….
Info-fascism….
“This shift from practical issues to abstract issues coincides with a growing incompetence and inefficiency in the system. This is where you see a comparison between both fascism and communism. Both of those systems started with great efficiency and energy, but that quickly dissipated. Fascism, of course, was smashed in the war, but …” But indeed. Once again people talking about “fascism” as if Franco and Salazar never existed, or disappeared after Pearl Harbor. Both led peaceful, prosperous nations for decades, until each died in the 70s. Spain, at least (fuzzy on Portugal) even had a peaceful transition to constitutional… Read more »
There were some decent attempts south of the border too, though none of the systems could outlast the man who implemented them.
They always struck me as being modeled on antiquity.
Portugal’s exit from Salazar’s rule was bloodless as a military coup was staged during the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution
IIRC, Portuguese forces engaged in a fairly successful struggle with Marxist guerillas in the future Mozambique. It was less well known than the struggles in Rhodesia and Angola, but there is at least one worthwhile article floating around.
Salazar had passed away by the time of the Carnation Revolution, the only revolution to which I was an eye-witness. It was impressive! I lived in Spain at the tail end of Franco´s regime, but was visiting Portugal when the revolution took place. Those countries were relatively poor, but wonderful places in many ways. Today? I emigrated from Spain 18 years ago, well before what’s happened since.
“Managerialism is a self-licking ice cream cone.”
I’m dating myself here, but this brought to mind a wise owl licking a tootsie roll pop 3 times to determine how many licks it took before he impatiently bit into it.
How many licks does western civilization take before it finally collapses? We wait with bated breath
One, two…..three
Three according to the owl.
I would say Managerialism is both an absolute triumph, and likely absolute failure. State systems face the same constraints throughout time: organizing and deploying manpower against available resources: agricultural, weapons, military, commodities, etc. and maintaining internal stability among both elites and the lower classes while fending off foreign attempts at conquest and subjugation. This does not change because people have Iphones and Nikes around the Globe. Managerialism is a triumph so far as it has united elites nearly universally in the West, along hate hate hate for Dirt People Whites and worship of magical black people as sacred holy redeemers… Read more »
Agreed. Putting aside the MIC’s obvious greed and self-serving manipulations, much of the frenzied motivation to put down “rogue” foreign governments is the Managerial State’s inability to simultaneously concentrate on domestic oppression. The recent humiliations in Afghanistan and Russia (yes, that was a total humiliation for The Sick Man of the West) have the upside to slowing and perhaps stopping the Managerial State’s strangulation of the heritage people within its borders.
They cannot do both, so let’s hope they keep trying.
The homeless are able to “generate” $250k a year because the managers control the money printer and actually buy into MMT.
The real world effect is to simply accelerate the devaluation of the USD, which is one of the main techno-commie goals on the way to the installation of a global, carbon-controlled currency that can be used to manage each AI-nudged meatbot on highly granular, individualized basis.
“Instead, managerialism needs to be viewed as one manifestation of something that also produced fascism and communism.” This “something” is called popularization of “higher” education. The left has always been the party of the “educated”. The working classes were an alibi to get power (today the alibi is the coalition of the fringes). More people go to universities. This means that midwits go to universities, where they don’t belong. As a result, the requirements to get a degree get lower and lower. You end up with a mass of credentialed midwits who they think they are very intelligent, because they… Read more »
Higher education became a necessary distraction for liberated women once they abandoned their biological duty.
Here’s an example of rule by experts in 1885. This example is an duplicate of Canada today, where the police are shaking citizen’s hands as they sing the national anthem.
Smallpox wasn’t cured by vaccinations demanded by the medical industry and mandated by government:
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/the-smallpox-pandemic-response-was?r=3ali5
So, modern representation becomes a question of who gets to command first, and who can tell them to stop.
(Many thanks to B125 and G-Filthie for excellent reporting. Please see Canadian blog Small Dead Animals for more on-the-ground.)
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/
Same re B125 and Glen. Thanks for the in-country reports.
I came across that same smallpox article yesterday. Perhaps the truth about smallpox isn’t as presented in this article, but it’s almost certain that the established narrative is also little more than Swiss cheese.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been lied to, I’d have a lot of nickels.
What I’d like in these type articles are *citations* for the historical data presented. The story is nice, but without such pointing to original source, the whole essay is one large “gratuitous” assumption. Those blog’s I most like to read are those by knowledge people who are willing to identify themselves and cite their references. There are no shortage of doctors/scientists who cite published studies which support their critiques—and the best of the best simply explain and analyze such studies for the layman. Anonymous writings are not necessary and I find them suspicious. Certainly, I can never refer other to… Read more »
Make that “gratuitous assertion”—not “assumption”.
Dear Compsci,
The article in question is a summary of the smallpox chapters of the book “Dissolving Illusions” by Suzanne Humphries. Her book is exhaustively researched, complete with citations.
I’ll be going back to Ottawa soon (assuming the thugs don’t end up shooting all the protestors before the weekend). I’ll let you guys know how it is.
Going to protests is one of the few recreational activities I can take part in as part of the unvaxxed underclass. Turns out that removing the bread and circuses leaves a whole lot of angry people with nothing to lose. Many of the people protesting say they will keep coming because they literally have nothing else to do.
B125: Don’t ‘stay safe.’ Do stay strong (and suitably prepared for your challenging climate). Looking forward to more of your ‘primary source’ reports.
Have you run into Viva Frei yet?
Capital is the ownership claim on an income stream, risk adjusted and present value discounted. The trend we are within is that ownership and control are being centralized. The corner market replaced by the Walmart and especially the Amazon. The local bank replaced by a branch of Goldman Isaac. Giga Wealth funds Blackrock, Vanguard, and oligarchs are drivers, government rides shotgun. Ever fewer oligarchs control ever more of the economy. Owner operators are squashed out; the middle class denuded. They don’t want you to have any means to evade the rules they impose. If the oligarchs didn’t want smash and… Read more »
And don’t forget the fed backstopping the big banks and corporations. (Remember, the backed the corporate bond market in March 2020.)
That goes to back before “Too Big to Fail.” We’ve witnessed the largest engineered wealth transfer to the “Haves” at the expense of the “Have Nots” in history. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN40188
Definitely trying to close the loop so we are not exactly in a free open marketplace but something like Disneyland where everything is owned by the same people and we are essentially locked inside the park. Yes, free to roam around, but you’re still inside the fences like cattle. You see that a lot in suburban places where everything is pretty much a franchise with few mom and pops One thing nice about Los Angeles, among its many downsides, is that it is dense and populated enough where mom and pops can thrive and survive and fill in the gaps… Read more »
Falcone: I think there needs to be a distinction between the historic concept of the American “mom and pop” stores, and today’s ethnic markets. The Amish farm produce stand or the small town general store I will happily engage with and purchase from; the illegal Mestizo market or reeking Chinatown shop not so much.
. . . Even the large, gleaming supermarkets in Singapore had that same distinctive smell – not as strong or quite as unpleasant, but still very noticeable to my Western olfactory glands.
You make a good point, wrt ethnic markets and restaurants. Yes, they probably do comprise the majority of local mom and pops, but then you have Melrose Avenue or La Brea or La Cienega or even Sunset and Ventura where there are thousands of local shops and stores catering to “whites” for lack of a better term. Restaurants, home furnishing, clothing, etc. And downtown we have the Fashion District where any aspiring clothing designer can choose from thousands of imported garments to craft whatever they want. That business is booming btw. And not all the garments are from China or… Read more »
That’s just being tribal which is the best thing to do.
Philosophically they are still “mom and pop” stores which is good same as roof Korans but as they aren’t my people I avoid shopping from them.
That’s Koreans not Korans but you get my point.
The only sensible goal for a partisan is to have total control. They are small in number in comparison to us and they don’t have complete control. Yet. So as they string the perimeter wire they have to keep up illusions. One can map physical territory and metaphorical territory back and worth. There are many similarities one can find with the Palestinians. Notice how they pali terriories are being cut up. Once surrounded, the peculiar people cut up the territories into smaller and smaller chunks that were isolated. And cut off so they can more easily subjugate and eliminate each… Read more »
Masters and overseers. Sounds like slavery to me! If you’ve ever wondered why young whites talk and act like blacks, well, there’s your answer.
[…] ZMan does a deep dive. […]
To come at it in yet another way, those who rise to the top and make the decisions that affect the masses are rarely the best and the brightest. The chemistry of interpersonal relations and the ever changing context of the times are imponderables that often make the difference. Example: consider an office pool in which everyone tosses ten bucks into the basket along with a prediction, say a week long time window,:of when will it be okay to say “all life matters” again? Or “when will the mask/vax obsession end?” It’s a crapshoot. Today is yesterday’s unanticipated consequence. We… Read more »
In Canada the managerial state is now moving in to teach those uppity redneck truckers their true helot place. Vile threats, unlawful under civilized jurisprudence, to steal people’s money, livelihoods not to mention self-respect, are being issued left and right by Globohomo’s local commandants. Of course, this total control is the result for all eventually, if the wicked weirdos win.
If Free Canada folds under the strains, it will be endless tyranny or a sea of blood. They want our complete freedoms handed over and nothing less will do. What do we say?
The truckers showed how fragile the managerial state is, and how dependent they are on financial attacks and moral browbeating. Both the financial attacks and browbeating they are outsourcing to third parties, they the government is too incompetent to do both, as one can see by Trudeau throwing out the racist word like a man making a magical incantation.
At some point, even the pozzed private actors are going to look around and ask themselves why they should take orders from these clowns.
I agree Trudeau seems somewhat desperate. This is probably also why they’re overreacting by invoking the emergency powers act. They’re sweating, it would be a tragedy to fold now. Of course easier to say than do. But we’re all descending into totalitarian imprisonment.
Following on from your WEF stuff. Canada is a veritable WEF nest. This is not exhaustive, its just a bit tedious to go through them all.
http://www.weforum.org/people/chrystia-freeland
http://www.weforum.org/people/justin-trudeau
http://www.weforum.org/people/stephen-harper
http://www.weforum.org/people/jagmeet-singh
http://www.weforum.org/people/andrew-scheer
http://www.weforum.org/people/melanie-joly
http://www.weforum.org/people/navdeep-bains
http://www.weforum.org/people/marc-kielburger
http://www.weforum.org/people/william-francis-morneau
http://www.weforum.org/people/mark-wiseman
http://www.weforum.org/people/james-moore
http://www.weforum.org/people/michael-sabia
http://www.weforum.org/people/kevin-lynch
http://www.weforum.org/people/carmen-sorger
http://www.weforum.org/people/catherine-mckenna
http://www.weforum.org/people/brad-wall
http://www.weforum.org/people/peter-van-loan/
http://www.weforum.org/people/rona-ambrose
http://www.weforum.org/people/bharat-masrani
Notice Harper, Trudeau, Singh, Scheer all heads of the different parties. Then NGOs, charities, Blackrock etc. The list goes on.
I wonder if the fact all the party heads are part of the same org has ever been mentioned in the main press in any detail?
I can answer my own question.
Vote harder.
I wonder if Canada, and Australia and Austria, have been serving as test beds for how far you can push the helots. They are smaller (not small) countries than what would probably be the main targets of WEF plans, the US in North America and Germany (and France) in Europe. And culturally and linguistically, conspicously close the two ‘fat cows’ (US and Ger). But I’m also assuming WEF is busy infiltrating Germany, America and all other Western countries. Buttigieg is one example. These people are anything but innocent and realize it. Which will probably make their responses wilder in the… Read more »
Moran-
I believe that is exactly what SPECTRE….I mean the WEF is doing with the countries you mentioned. Shocking the rats in the cage, as Chris Martenson put it the other day.
I bet that if we sat down and went through the WEF site we could put together lists similar to trumpton’s for each of the countries you mentioned.
Agreed. In addition to the systemic weakness, the trucker protests have revealed how stupid Globohomo has become. In the not-too-distant past–pre-Covid, pre-2020 riots, really–the propaganda organs could have whipped the Canadian public into a frenzy in opposition to the truckers. There has been some of that but it has been relatively minor.
I really doubt it is Peak Globohomo, but it might be closer than we think.
What “leader” pisses on the guys who bring food to the city?
On the one hand, Trudeau KNOWS that he needs these guys, knows that they have to work as a team, but still knowing that can’t let his snobbery not get the better of him. He HAS to show that he is in a higher social class. Like they don’t already know that? Like they even give a shit? A complete child.
If they are in fact on the ropes, we should brace for desperate measures from them. Assuming a moral lobotomy, would you give up control of the West’s riches without a fight? We should brace for brace for financial, professional, media and, especially if those fail, possibly violent persecution from them now.
I’m a little surprised the Deep State hasn’t rolled out their BLM and Antifa auxiliaries yet.
I think they could potentially get away with that because most normies continue to exist under the delusion that mid-2020 was an organic protest movement, rather than a deeply cynical, organized, and paid for insurrection that was part of a larger Deep State coup.
Then again, maybe more people are awake than I realize.
As to BLM/Antifa riots, I do think people have come to realize they are state-sponsored terrorism. If they happen again, there will be at least one and perhaps many mass casualty counter-attacks. Globohomo isn’t ready for that, at least yet.
It wound down real quick after Kyle took a few out.
Mass anti-Vietnam war protests ended after Kent State. Like flicking a switch.
See Kyle.
Good point. Maybe because truckers and farmers hit back?? But a near future possibility for sure.
I thought “white supremacy,” was the answer to the question, “Who will the new enemy be?” It runs into the problem of there not being enough (or hardly any) white supremacists, and that they’re not a military threat besides. You can make money with contracts for spying hardware, and drones, but you can’t trick someone with an IQ north of Hank “Guam’s Gonna Capsize” Johnson that you need aircraft carriers to take out a David Duke. Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, and General Dynamics can’t pretend they need new missile-guidance systems to take out Bill who’s got a RAHOWA newsletter he prints… Read more »
Yep, Whitey is going to be the next big, bad bogeyman – and you don’t even have to be a “White supremacist” – skin color will do just fine. See J6 folks or Canadian truckers for prime, early examples. Hopefully, we’re getting close to a serious inflection point. Maybe the American trucker convoy will be the straw the breaks the camel’s back. Oh, and the soft on crime schtick only applies to jogger crime. I can guarantee if I walk out of the hardware store w/o paying for my three dollar can of spray paint, the full force of the… Read more »
usNthem: After weeks of Daily Mail headlines about the massive shoplifting going on in LA in NY by all the usual suspects, the other day they finally featured and headlined yet another example now accompanied by close-up photos. A White woman of course. And while civnat conservatard websites focus on all those imaginary black, brown, and yellow patriotic Canadian truckers, Trudeau specifies the real problem is rayciss notsee Whites. Oh, and they’ve found/planted some scary black guns on some of them, too. It’s all of a piece. I was thinking about the cops in Canada going around and carefully photographing… Read more »
3g4me-
It seems to me that TPTB realized that the dark side of consumer convenience is complete control, and they are running with it.
The best you can do with online shopping is attempting to buy directly from the manufacturer. That can be interesting because their shipping departments are not nearly as optimized as Amazon or UPS.
The only thing to do with those who are still asleep is assume you are already living in a zombie movie. Some may awake on their own in time. Till then it’s best to leave them alone.
Wild Geese: Spot on re convenience equals control. I do buy from individual companies when possible, but shamefully admit I take more advantage of Amazon’s dangerous convenience than I ought to.
I’m not proselytizing anyone (haven’t even met son’s in-laws yet). I do essentially regard everyone as a zombie (barring strong concrete evidence to the contrary, I assume everyone I meet is fully online, believes what they’re told, is fully vaxxed, and an npc).
I’m more practical. I bought a gun and 20 bullets. This will get me and mine through the coming collapse because I’m a psychopath. That is all.
Take a walk. Nature doesn’t give a fuck about the jeworldorder.
A couple of generations ago there was a concept called High Modernism that described both later stage capitalism and communism (at least the soviet variety). It centered around the idea that science and technology with government direction could build utopia, perfect societies and end poverty, hunger and every other negative aspect of life. It fell out of favor in the 70s, being repudiated by diverse movements including environmentalism, nimbyism, hippies etc. But it never really went away, instead the focus was shifted from mega engineering projects to digital technology and using that as the means to re-engineering society and humanity.… Read more »
And creating our new God in the process – truly Deus ex Machina!
Why, at Ludicrous speed, of course.
Only 30 days to flatten the protest!
end poverty, hunger and every other negative aspect of life
—
Just sayin’, that pretty much happened.
This comment feels immature, but the “cultural” shenanigans of the Managerial Class suggest that I call it the Womanagerial Class. Is this just another example of how ignoring biological differences helps end societies? I’ll have tto ask my HR Department!
To be honest, sometimes the most simple, childlike responses are pretty much bang on target.
For a long while now, and markedly more so through the Shamdemic, our governments have been howling, over-exaggerating, back-biting and blaming like the most sex-starved, over-credentialed shrew ever to walk the Earth.
They’ll meddle and meddle some more; because reasons.
The Hysterical Age.
I can see the Hand at work, though. As the males become softer, more androgynous, the female clamor rises, trying to get the males to fight so the selection process can begin.
We have managed to find our new villain and it is Vladimir Putin. It was not that difficult since Russia is the largest country in the world.
Here is some hilarious obviously paid for content on Putin and Ukraine in NATO from National Review. Some engineer named Robert Zubrin brings up Hitler, but of course he isn’t comparing Putin to Hitler. Even their own comments are ripping into him. I wonder if they put it in the NR Plus section in hopes fewer people will read it.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/nato-needs-ukraine/#slide-1
I think the problem is actually worse than described in this post. Yes, the systemic rot of managerialism is a big problem that will eventually force a collapse, but an even bigger problem is that there is no effective civil remedy. Politicians are just actors whose only function is to perpetuate the charade that voting matters. And a majority of voters are either on the government dole as parasites or have no skin in the game and can be easily bribed for a pittance. So the viscous cycle spins faster as we circle the toilet bowl. And the only non-civil… Read more »
“Politicians are just actors whose only function is to perpetuate the charade that voting matters.”
Ezzackly. “The vote” is ALL they know and talk about, as if voting is some kind of magic that builds water treatment sites and improves reading scores.
It’s like listening to E! Entertainment Tonight or reading Sports Illustrated. All they know is their narrow industry.
These politicians are addicted to the vote Without they start getting the Jones and antsy I think in their hearts and minds, seeing those vote tallies roll in on election night is similar to what I felt when I would hit the jackpot in old Vegas and my plastic cup would keep filling up with quarters. Then I had to keep playing to get that feeling back. Add in the fact that, like with actors, they crave public approval. The applause completes them, fills that hole in their heart. I think we have a hard time relating to it because… Read more »
Out of my depth, but I’ll take a stab at it. In the middle ages, the state had near-absolute power in theory, but a limited ability to project that power. Religion was the old media— transmitting values and culture. The combination of distance and the church as a moral force checked state power. Technology changed that. The printing press enlightened the people. Democracy, liberalism, laissez-faire, etc., rose concurrently. Meanwhile, the war machine became democratized and deadlier. All of this lifted up private interests to the point where they were on par with the state. The force-multiplying effects of technology were… Read more »
I think you are spot on. This is why I joke when people talk about 2nd amendment based revolts. Okay – you got an AK… good for you. If you revolted, the gub would blast you from 30000 feet with a drone (hey – those videogames are good for training drone pilots) and then the media would call you a white supremist (the ole’ Lavoy Finicum, if memory serves). You would be forgotten by the time your bloody mist settled on the grass. Technology’s infiltration of our mind, and the ability to monitor that data, has created an unprecedented moment… Read more »
Hmm, I’ll take a stab… The state exists to both serve and exploit the population under its power. Different forms of rule (fascism, communism, managerialism) have various methods of doing this and take on balances of who gets taken from and who gets given to. Fascism is probably more preferable because it acknowledges the reality that the rich are powerful and capital is important for industry, but it also maintains kinship among the people and protects workers. A harmony is hopefully struck between the elite and the masses and those running the state get to enjoy a secure position of… Read more »
Fascism WAS religious at least in the academic side of it, the intellectuals expounding on it, etc. if you read the fascist theorists you will see as much. fascism, at least in Italy and also probably in Germany among the southern Catholic areas, was something like the last gasp of traditionalists in the Catholic Church to fight off communism and keep God alive and in society. Meanwhile acknowledging that life had changed in terms of industry etc. it was a way to marry the old and new. More importantly, or perhaps crucially, it had to have a charismatic leader on… Read more »
Fascism wasn’t anti-Christian at all.
Half the German Army and near all of the Spanish and Italian armies were Catholic.
The idea that they were incinerating Catholics is ludicrous.
(Of course, Elie Wiesel admitted he made the 5 million up. I’d sure like to find that mass grave somewhere too. He was just yanking the Poles’ chain.)
(Oh, and He himself said he was not anti-Christian. His was a secular government, like the Americans.)
In order to assume fascism would work any better you would have to demonstrate some sort of self-correction mechanism in that system that would prevent the same elite parasitism issue present in communism or managerialism. After Hitler pissed away an entire army in Stalingrad he blamed the soldiers for not fighting hard enough, and by the end of the war his attitude was that the German people had failed him. It really doesn’t sound any different from our current elites who think of us as disposable cattle and useless eaters.
One feature all of them share (managerialism, communism, and fascism) is that they have to provide jobs to family members of important people and/or favored classes such as blacks. This can always only snowball as time crawls along, at least for a few generations. Another thing they all share is that their initial impetus was in rebuilding and/or expansion. I remember many Americans always putting down France or Italy for example for being socialists, but what they never understood was that this was a rebuilding effort. These places were devastated in a war so the promise was made, you help… Read more »
Some have deemed the marriage of fascism and modern managerialism “expertocracy,” but the most appropriate term for it is TECHNOCRACY. It will be totalist. “Into the pods you go! You will eat ze bugs!” All that jazz. Imagination may prove the only limit on the humiliations to which the technocrats will subject their fellow humans. Should be fun.
The technocracy is clearly on display in the 60 pages of Xirl Science writing masquerading as my engineering college’s alumni mag.
I am continually struck by the limited range of research topics.
It’s the AI singularity, self-driving EVs (now including bulk cargo carriers!), the renewable energy hoax, and transhumanism, all the way down.
Women in science always stuck me as ridiculous They couldn’t even stand to see the sight of a cricket getting its leg torn off as children but they were going to become great scientists? Going to take nature head on without fear? Probe the intricacies of nature with no preconceived notions of what to expect? Like sailing into the unknown? Yeah, sure Plus women have far less natural curiosity and minds that tend toward the pedestrian, so it’s perfectly in keeping that the range of topics they put forward is going to strike men as stale garbage. They really need… Read more »
Literal Faceborg:
https://youtu.be/LcmAlpIp3oM
“For example, the bum problem that has plagued every city in America since the 1980’s was not deliberate.”
It may not have been deliberate at the start, but the refusal to do something about the problem for the last 40 years has been deliberate. We have a problem with vagrants for the same reason there is a problem with illegal immigration: some powerful people have decided that’s how they want things to be.
When it comes to the mass deinstitutionalization that created this whole mess, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” has a lot to answer for…
“One Flew…” was great read for its time. We were all young then and full of psychedelic “vigor”. 😉 I can remember reading this novel in a single night—too gripped by it to put it down. Of course, I wanted Kirk Douglas to play the lead role in the movie (so did his son, Michael).
But I grew up. Many I see about me did not.
I thought this commentator had an interesting take on the fusion of communism and fascism in China:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ne_pas_couvrir/status/1493443488893050880
The points about how fascism was used to solve the production issues almost sound like they wrote the old joke about what Chairman Mao would be told by the Party if he rose from the dead today.
The managerial elite of the Fistagon like Milley exist to fight (but not win, as victory used to be defined) interminable, low risk, low casualty “interventions”, “conflicts”, “insurgencies”, “separatists”, “extremists” or “terrorists”, not actual wars, with aircraft and high technology in Third World backwaters.
How that would work against Russia is something the political managerial elite will never consider until they get a real war with Ivan to teach them a hard lesson.
As Russian forces withdraw from the borders of Ukraine, and Biden (or whoever writes his stuff) proclaims “victory”, remember Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.
I imagine the actions of the Ukrainians (and the Poles, and especially the Germans) will be more congenial to Putin than they were before the show of force on Ukraine’s borders.
Russia has learned, and we have not, that demonstrations of force do not require the deaths of thousands of young men. Good for them.
Let Biden claim victory. Moscow knows who won, and so does Berlin.
Looks like I correctly predicted that the Russians wouldn’t move yet. Why would they when they have three more years of misrule by Old Joe and his merry band of ass clowns to flush American power down the toilet and make the job easier?
You think the mighty AINO military will be in any better shape to take on Ivan in his back yard three years from now? Vladimir Putin asked himself that question too.
Even though the United States will claim to have stood strong, Russia thus far has experienced a smashing success without firing a shot. NATO is more fractured than ever, the United States looks like a fool and liar (shocker) among certain allies, and the Ukraine knows it probably needs to negotiate because it has been used as a pawn and would be again. A decent guess is France and Germany cut a deal with Putin and the eastern Ukraine will achieve some sort of Northern Ireland quasi-autonomous status after a decent interval, Ukranian NATO membership will never get mentioned again… Read more »
One of the key features of complex societies is that most of the foundational work—across all disciplines—has been done by the giants on whose shoulders we stand. Moreover, that foundation was laid at nominal cost. Edison’s filament was basically the result of a handful of men. With 80% of the innovations and discoveries accomplished, that 20% comes at a staggering cost, and more and more specialization. Hence the rise of the managerial ‘elite.’ Yet, with the proliferation and insane funding of the technocrats, the needle barely moved, and, in fact, complexity is shown to be a rabbit’s hole with no… Read more »
This is just delicious:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/uc-berkeley-may-be-forced-by-court-to-cut-3000-freshman-seats-to-halt-growth/ar-AATQPqm
“The university’s projected reduction in freshmen and transfer students came in response to a ruling last August by an Alameda County Superior Court judge who ordered an enrollment freeze and upheld a Berkeley neighborhood group’s lawsuit that challenged the environmental impact of the university’s expansion plan. Many neighbors are upset by the impact of enrollment growth on traffic, noise, housing prices and the natural environment.”
I clicked on the link and had a giggle when the accompanying photo showed not a single hwyte student.
Sorry but the only solution is to abandon cities. It is no coincidence that modern problem arose as people abandoned the countryside in significant numbers. And this movement predates the industrial revolution as we see with the Levelers of the English Civil War.
All these movements, communism, fascism, managerialism, have arisen in response to that initial burning of social capital.
I’m not sure fascism could have survived the death of its leaders and probably would have gone down the same path to managerialism. From what I can tell, fascism and managerialism had similar goals of using the organizational and political power of the state to solve large scale problems plaguing the then modern society.
It is hard to imagine Hitler surviving at the top of the system without the war. I’m not even sure Nazism would last without war. Latin fascism was much more coherent and practical. Nazism lacked a governing principle, beyond the cult of personality around Hitler.
As has often been commented upon, had Mussolini stayed neutral, or better yet double-crossed Hitler and joined the Allies, he would have died in bed, a respected elder statesman. Whether Fascism would have lasted as a system after his death is much more questionable. Franco, probably the most competent of all the fascist between-wars leaders, couldn’t get it to last in Spain.
Fascism is the problem that liberalism is meant to solve. That is, the enlighten despot is the ideal form of rule, but how can you guarantee the next despot is competent and enlightened?
When looking for a system to produce a series of “enlightened” despots, I tend to look at the CCP. True, they are an experiment in progress, and their demographics are way better than ours, but they have after Mao and “Mrs Mao” produced several despots in a row that have propelled the country to the top of the world economic ladder in two generations. Not sure however that making Xi eligible to lead for life was a good move.
Salazar and Franco were the longest-serving European leaders of the modern era, if memory serves, including the dictators of communist countries in Russia and the East Bloc and most if not all of the monarchs. Franco got it “to last” about 40 years and Salazar even more.
On the flipside of the China coin, would any of those Chinese leaders of the past 40 or 50 years have done nearly as well if they had not had the benefit of the entire West showering them with cash and prizes on a scale that rivaled the US’ post-WW2 economic boom?
Z-Man, how can you know about Hitler/Nazis when you yourself if exposed to the mainstream would be called a Nazi? They call everbody to the right of Stalin a Nazi! Even baby-faced Rittenhouse! And if you say you’re not a nazi, then that begs the questions: were the Nazis really “nazis” in the sense of being the cartoonish metaphysically evil gassers of all that is good and innocent? I myself don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I realize all we have to go on is what the media/schools have told us about history. And if we look at how the… Read more »
Your point is an excellent one. This is one of the great questions when trying to learn from history. I generally lean towards believing that most death camps were probably cruel labor camps that turned into starvation prisons as the war escalated. I do not doubt that much cruelty was done there, and the possibility of a coordinated killing, but if you actually look at the passages that justify a view of the Nazi’s as engaging in genocide, they never use full passages. The ‘academics’ will quote a line, insert several sentences of commentary to bridge to another quoted line.… Read more »
Eloi- Germans are always the victims when people like you “describe” history. How unfortunate for them that they somehow attract corpses around their military formations or documents in their thousands appear filled with plans of starving to death millions of Ukrainians , Poles and Russians.What a pathetic people they must be to always be on the receiving end of these injustices. Notice how primary evidence that shows German complicity is “taken out of context” but vague assurances of British interference are confidently made without presentation of any evidence. I’ll grant you that American business was a key aid to the… Read more »
Isn’t the abandonment of cities exactly what we have seen during the past two years of Beer Flu restrictions and the Floydian insurrection?
This is in direct contravention of the stated globalist goal to cram us into Smart Cities so we can sleep in the pod, eat bugs, and have our waste water watched for Beer Flu particles by the Smart Sewers.
People voted with their feet to resoundingly reject this part of the globalist plan.
Not sure we can “abandon” the cites. Certainly we can’t all move to small, single family farms again, and I can’t see even enough land mass and supporting infrastructure for mass “suburbia”.
A brilliant synopsis summed up in a few words: a self licking ice cream cone.
Bravo ZMan.
One aspect of managerialism is the insane level of utopianism involved. Any sane society knows there are tradeoffs, and no problem can be completely solved on a society-wide scale. Nature never operated like a sterile corporate workspace, and always finds a workaround to at least partially foil the best thought out plan. This is what we saw with the zero-covid hysteria, inequity in criminality, mental illness, etc. A sane society knows that there’s collateral damage, where people end up in seedy areas in a state of near anarchy, and they accepted it as long as it did not seep into… Read more »
Yep. The ignorance of and about human nature produced especially by leftist utopians is astounding. They are a one-size-fits-all group of morons. From everybody must get vaxxed to everybody must drive EV’s they have zero tolerance for individualism.
You touch on something that does not get nearly enough attention. That is the gap between the actual competence of these elites and their perceptions of themselves and their fellow elites. The managerial elite is increasingly incompetnant, while increasingly confident in themselves. I’ve been following Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor. He is a great example of this phenomenon. He is brimming with confidence in himself and his fellow “experts” despite no knowing much about anything that would be useful in his job.
Mayor Pete! This fool is now in charge of infrastructure.
I don’t know how they do it. If someone tried appointing me to that job, I’d be like “why? What the hell do I know about infrastructure? Can’t you hire someone who at least has some experience as a civil engineer?” The guy studied history and literature at university. I would feel like such an ass.
What’s the old saw, “I’d not want to join a club that would have me as a member.” 😉
This group dwells in sort of a bubble, we are at a level where we “know” what we “don’t know”, and of course hesitate to attempt more than we are capable of accomplishing. A “know thy self” phenomenon.
The real world is full of Leftist hacks. Call them ideologues, Dutton midwits, Dunning-Kruger examples, whatever. It’s pretty much the same.
He can engineer the sausage/ass ratio. Gerbils per millimeter, etc. He’ll be fine.
Respectfully, I would counter that this phenomenon is well-documented (Dunning-Kruger etc.) and frequently discussed at your typical management retreat in the private sector.
I think the difference is that there is no “feedback loop” in the public sector (since elections change nothing). That is, there are no consequences for failure (look at all these incompetent Generals and politicians). People in the public sector “fail upwards”.
Private businesses that fail to examine and refine their decision-making processes generally go bankrupt. The Government, in contrast, marches on…….
But they have to be competent! They have credentials! Granted to them by others with credentials!
It’s the circle of…
Jake Sullivan and his fellow ilk being as Dutton termed “midwits”? Smart enough to be fluent and talk a good game, but not smart enough to understand and deliver?
There is no way a smart and competent man could, one, buy into the we are equal bullshit which you have to believe or at least act like you do if you work in a major government bureaucracy. And there is no way a smart man could hang around blacks all day and all the morons in a bureaucracy and come out with all his marbles intact. Zero chance. Example. It would be impossible for a smart man and highly competent and accomplished military person to be in the same room as Lloyd Austin and not want to tell him… Read more »
I suspect a minority of the types who survive the idiocy are highly intelligent sociopaths. Sullivan may be a sociopath but he’s a rare stupid one and that doesn’t count.
One other option: ZFG. I suspect there are a lot of fairly smart guys who simply don’t give a shit if it pays well enough.
May be depressing and frustrating, but that’s what the money is for.
Incompetence is an easy answer, but it does not explain why the effects of this alleged incompetence go only one way. Not even the flawed perception they have that they are competent explains it. At some point, I think you have to go back to some form of evil, at least as defined by the desire to dominate others. Could you someday go over why it matters that managerialism was a response to political “shortcomings” while fascism was a response to communism? I’ve gone over Gottfried’s works dozens of times and have never understood the distinction either of you are… Read more »
Others have brought it up, but the system still relies heavily on volutnary cooperation. Perhaps that is why the approaches are different. And perhaps tactics will change as the voluntary compliance diminishes (cf. Canada).
Right. But same with the fascism. Heck, Solzhenitsyn said it was true of Stalinism.
If it sounds like a duck and looks like a duck why does it matter where it came from?
Yes, their incompetence is astounding. I wouldn’t even have that much of a problem with them if they were ruthlessly efficient (like the good ol’ fascists of yesteryear were supposed to be).
But after waiting for two hours for a local ‘Bureaucracy’ to fix something petty, and having been told rudely that ‘It wasn’t THEIR job to fix it’, and going back out into the street where feces, garbage and homeless abound, one is struck by how utterly incompetent and worthless they are, and how completely their cosmopolitan utopia has failed.
Zorro: Their cosmopolitan utopia was designed to fail, in the sense that any traditional values (truth, beauty, morality) were deliberately shut out as relics of White patriarchy. The American elite all live in sterile NY apartments or LA mansions, and shun traditional architecture (consider the beauty of some of the Victorian civic buildings) as rayciss. The ugliness and filth and chaos are part and parcel of not merely their incompetence but also their distorted perception of reality and, at the heart of it, their hatred for historic White Western civilization and who and what built it. . . . For… Read more »
Good comment, particularly your point about the architecture. The Soviets and other communist nations sometimes deliberately (and, yes, unintentionally) used bland and sterile architecture to make an ideological point, which I suspect you know, about equalitarianism or whatever.
The NYC and Hollywood “elite” are such conformist airheads, though, that it is likely their ugly “anti-racist” architecture and general zeitgeist are motivated more by peer pressure than any actual belief. The ideologues of old sometimes actually believed their BS.
The utopianism means that there isn’t just a belief that every problem has a solution, but that every problem has a *perfect* solution. I got a masters degree in a humanities field about 18 years ago – my employer paid for it – after getting an engineering bachelors, and what struck me was the near complete inability of the other students to appreciate the basic concept of trade-offs. This mindset, coupled with a complete lack of understanding of anything technical, also coupled with their profound sense of self-importance, led to some mind-boggling stupid ideas, such as the guy who seriously… Read more »
Absolutely. General population lack of knowledge and critical reasoning will be our demise. It pervades our current society top down. Look at all the Elon Musk groupies. Musk muses (over a joint?) about our need to colonize Mars in the next decade or so and his minions sing his praises loudly and sign up for the first “ticket”. No where does anyone ask about how one survives such a lengthy trip in the cosmic ray hazard of space, or even Mars. How we economically push such huge payloads required out of earth’s gravity. The fuel/engine requirements of such a ship.… Read more »
A necessary first step prior to trying Mars colonization would be to seal ten people in a small aluminum box underground for years and see how long it takes to turn out like in Event Horizon.