Shaking my head in disbelief: they called me ‘an apologist for fascism’
Last night in a Facebook discussion they called me “an apologist for fascism.” This is my reply.
The person who started the discussion shared a Politico article titled “VP Libertarian candidate Weld: I’m ‘vouching for Mrs. Clinton’,” with the question “ Really, why haven’t all libertarians stood up against fascism?” and the comment “This election has really separated the few honest defenders of ‘liberty’ from the pot-smoking alt-right.”
My reply: I guess libertarians, including “the few honest defenders of ‘liberty’,” are just fed the fuck up of being demonized and insulted by “liberals” all the time. Otherwise, I guess most libertarians would stand for Clinton, since Trump is hardly a libertarian.
I call myself a left libertarian. In more words, while I’m a libertarian at heart, my brain can be persuaded that, in today’s world, society should take care of its weakest members, a good government has an important role to play, interference in personal choices is a sometime necessary evil, and progressive taxation is the only practical way to ensure a necessary redistribution of wealth. I am also a supporter of basic income guarantee.
On social issues, I stand very firmly on the side of personal rights and support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of speech, equal opportunity, drug legalization, gay marriage and all that. A decent life for everyone.
I believe this is not fascism. I am not a Trump supporter either. Read again: “Otherwise, I guess most libertarians would stand for Clinton, since Trump is hardly a libertarian.”
In a recent article I wrote: “As a foreigner who will be affected (like everyone else on the planet) by America’s choice on November 8, and as a friend of America, I hope Clinton wins.” In another article I wrote: “I hope Trump will lose, but come close enough to winning to highlight the fact that also Trump voters have legitimate concerns.” Not your typical statements of support for Trump, I believe.
In the Facebook discussion I accused the smug liberal elites of pushing otherwise reasonable people toward Trump, and said: I guess we have a different sense of how to prevent the brown shirts from gaining power. In case you haven’t noticed, the brown shirts are gaining power in Europe now, and that is largely due to the excesses of their counterparts.
Then a person (one I like and respect), said:
“Giulio, do you not feel even the *tiniest* bit embarrassed about being an apologist for fascism?”
I promised to reply in depth, and this is my reply.
I don’t support Trump, and I have never said I do.
But I do empathize with Trump’s voters: those the smug “liberal” elites like to call “rednecks” or even “white trash.” Those Clinton — their likely next President — calls “deplorables” without ever apologizing or showing the least human empathy for their — often perfectly legitimate — concerns.
You just can’t systematically disown, insult and ridicule a large part of the population and expect they don’t strike back.
The hard-working, conservative Christian folks in the countryside are tired of being considered as second-class citizens. They see the lifestyle and values of their fathers ridiculed. They know — they are not entirely stupid you know — that their jobs will continue to disappear due to the combined influence of automation and the practice of outsourcing manufacturing to cheap foreign contractors. They know that the bankers and the bureaucrats, working together behind the scenes, will continue to steal their money. In his recent speech at the National Press Club, Peter Thiel said:
“[We]’ve lost tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs to foreign trade. The heartland has been devastated. [Money] flows into financial assets; it distorts our economy in favor of more banking and more financialization; and it gives the well-connected people who benefit a reason to defend the status quo. But not everyone benefits, and Trump voters know it. Trump voters are also tired of war.”
According to The Hill contributor Noelle Nikpour, “The GOP’s future is bright — and it looks like tech titan Peter Thiel.” Thiel 2020?
If — as an interesting ThinkProgress article titled “Look to Europe to understand why Ivanka Trump is more dangerous than her father” notes, citing New America Foundation senior fellow Lee Drutman — “we are likely to have a politics dominated by race and identity for the near-term future,” and if all other identity groups treat white straight men like shit, then it’s no surprise that the white straight men fall into white male straight identity politics — the only door left open to them — and vote for Trump.
The ThinkProgress article makes a good point: “Donald Trump is just the warm up act,” and the American Right will become more and more “respectable” like the new European Right of Marine Le Pen, who has shed the extreme positions of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in favor of more moderate (or just better argued) positions. With respectability comes popularity, and in fact the Right is gaining ground all over Europe.
Aside: Speaking of Europe, I count myself among the “Euroskeptics.” Not because I am against the European ideal, but because I consider the current EU as a very poor implementation of the European ideal. Instead of the Europe of the citizens, we got the EU of the bankers and the bureaucrats.
Like it or not, it’s a fact that the Brexit supporters won the UK referendum. Now, it appears that the bankers and the bureaucrats are moving to void the people’s decision, Spiked Online reports (I predicted that long ago). I totally agree with Brendan O’Neill: “The use of the law to stymie Brexit is a naked, elitist assault on democracy.” Democracy means that the citizens decide: if you accept the decision of the citizens only when you like it, and reject it when you don’t like it, then you are against democracy.
Same for the recent Hungarian migrant quota referendum. Contrary to what has been reported by much of the foreign press, the question asked to the Hungarian voters wasn’t “Do you want to allow migrant refugees to resettle in Hungary?” It was an entirely different question: “Do you want to allow the European Union to mandate the resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens to Hungary without the approval of the National Assembly?”
To that question, more than 98 percent (yes, more than 98 percent) of those who voted answered NO. The often heard idiocy that the referendum isn’t valid because less than half of the voters participated — as it is usually the case in a referendum — is totally misleading: the majority of more than 98 percent NO votes is so overwhelming that, even if 75 percent of the voters had participated (which never happens) and every one of the extra participants had voted YES, the result would still be a very large majority for NO.
The Hungarian citizens have spoken loud and clear, and ruled that important national issues aren’t to be decided by non-elected EU bureaucrats in Brussels, but by the sovereign Hungarian people and their representatives elected in democratic political elections.
Last but not least, I think tolerance, freedom of thought, and freedom of speech, are among the foundations of a healthy society, among the greatest conquests of modern liberal civilization, and much too important to mess with.
Unfortunately, these days many US “liberals” are disowning these fundamental liberal values. The thought police — the Politically Correct (PC) Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) — keep harassing all those who dissent with shaming and mobbing practices that are running amok, often with the silent approval of the “liberal” Left. In my opinion, this is a very dangerous slippery slope to a very, very bad place.
OK, that’s it. Of course I realize that the person who called me “an apologist for fascism” isn’t likely to change his mind after reading this. If anything, he is likely to make it shorter and just call me a fascist.
Update: I wanted to send him this post but I am unable to find him on Facebook. Either a software glitch, or he has already unfriended and blocked me.
I guess I can live with that.
It’s more difficult to live with the realization that the libertarian and liberal worldviews could be, contrary to what I always thought, incompatible.
Picture from cliparts.co.
