The fascists have already won

[sabotabby]

I wasn't here last night. I should have been, except that I'd have keeled over since after the week I've had, I didn't trust that I could actually stand up let alone dodge pepper spray. Much respect and love to the 12 comrades arrested and everyone doing courtroom support.

Macleans, of all the news sources in the world, gets it absolutely right, though their tone is more measured than I would use. The debate between David Frum and Steve Bannon is not a debate between liberal democracy and fascism, but the two wings of the modern far-right, a genocidal neoconservatism and a more thuggish brand of fascism.

This said, I disagree that the Munk Debates should have tried to find someone capable of destroying Bannon's arguments for the cause of liberal democracy. By allowing him to appear in public—by the mere fact that Bannon is allowed to cross the border into our country and collect a fat cheque for a public speaking engagement rather than spending his time hanging upside-down from a lamppost whilst schoolchildren play a game of football with his decomposing head—Bannon has already won. The fascists win when you invite them to the stage. That's their only goal; to be allowed to speak.

I have seen pictures of the audience as they went in. Surely some of them were in support, and a few brave others planned to disrupt (I don't know if they did) but the majority weren't Fred-Perry-wearing junior Brownshirts. No, they were the creme-de-la-creme of Canadian society, white, well-spoken, aging elites who probably clapped politely when the "debate" started 45 minutes late. What kind of person pays $40-100 to line the pockets of two of the worst people to slither from the swamp of fascist ideology? Did they stand in front of a full-length mirror, adjusting their ties, choosing the perfect broach? Did they congratulate themselves on their open-mindedness, their edginess, at their ability to listen to "both sides"?

Frum is the author of ISIS, responsible for turning the Middle East into a rising tide of blood. Bannon engineered the campaign and policies that have led to concentration camps for toddlers. In a just world, they would both have been shot by now. I'm not much more kindly inclined to anyone willing to indulge them in their grotesque games.

Comments

[notasupervillain]

They have the right to speak but they need to be subbed in civilized society. I can't agree with the shooting thing - I think no platforming is a pretty decent solution. I wouldn't say no to a trial for war crimes.

I wish just once the both sides crowd would have on a third wave versus a second wave feminist. Both sides seems heavily weighted to one side.

[sabotabby]

What do you mean by subbing?

[notasupervillain]

I was thinking shunning, typed snubbing, autocorrected to subbing.

[sabotabby]

Ah. I'm not sure it would work, given that there are 3000+ people, each paying a minimum of $40 and probably more, dying to hear him speak.

[notasupervillain]

Yes, we need to do something about those people. I'm not sure how you change hearts and minds, but someone has to know?

[sabotabby]

I don't know. I have tried. But if you can't see a terrified Guatemalan toddler or a starving Yemeni girl as a human being, what hope is there?

The problem, I think, is that Bannon is right in one critical sense: Liberal democracy can't stand up to the threat of fascism. The economic and ideological bolsters that allowed it to in the 40s were historical quirks and don't exist anymore. Capital has realized that you don't need democracy to have thriving capitalism. While I don't necessarily think the endgame is gas chambers, I see two logical models for capitalism: the Chinese one and the Russian one. Both have shown that you can have a basically stable society with wealth flowing to the people who matter without having to bother with consulting the masses to any degree.

This said, I don't think there's nothing to be done. What if the sound engineers had refused to work? The ticket sellers? What if everyone assigned to clean the theatre refused to do so out of protest? Yes, they'd have likely been docked pay or fired, but a really organized collective action with a well-prepared media statement could draw enough light on their plight to avoid that outcome. It'd have been more effective than the protests themselves (which are totally justified and necessary, don't get me wrong) because short of physically blocking the doors, the protesters had limited moves, and paying for a dozen people's legal costs, plus taking those dozen people out of commission while they're dealing with the charges, is a pretty big resource drain.

[notasupervillain]

Life would be so much easier if I didn't have empathy. Or at least if I could limit it to upper class white people. They're the real victims here.

Agree and disagree at the same time. True, liberal democracy isn't holding up well against the onslaught of social media and a lack of increasing wealth and environmental change. But neither is anything else. The Chinese and Russian systems are barely thirty years old, if you count them starting in 1990, which is probably not giving enough credit to have they've changed since then. Fascism fell in Spain, eventually. It fell in Argentina. We really have no model for what works anymore.

Yes yes yes a thousand times yes. We all have power to say no. Every once in a while when I get despondent I read an essay called The Power of the Powerless to remind myself that small actions can make change. I'll make a post about it - it's a dry read, but I find it so inspirational.

[franklanguage]

I quite like the line [in the Macleans article]: It will be like watching a sporting event where you hope both sides lose.

[notasupervillain]

Alien versus predator: whoever wins... We lose.

[sabotabby]

They should have billed it as that and I'd respect them slightly more.

[notasupervillain]

I vote Bannon as alien, Frum as predator.