The Fascist Model For The Great Reset

Joel Kotkin has a very worthwhile article today in which he explains just how dominant the fascist model is and has been in the modern world. It's well known that the "New Deal" Progs were fascinated by Mussolini's Fascist "Corporate State". That fascination, in fact, continues to the present and is mirrored around the world--although the homegrown versions of the corporate state often rely on local culture rather than Mussolini's model. 

In a sense, the fascist model of the state simply reflects the age old aspiration of the state to a monopoly of power and authority--the aspiration to be the sole representative of cosmic order and therefore of political legitimacy. This is readily apparent, for example, in the Chinese form of the corporate state, which builds on the millennia old model of the Emperor as the agent of Divine Order. We see this same aspiration in Western prog politics, with the difference that the emperor is replaced by the Great Leader (Roosevelt, Kennedy, Obama, Mao - The Great Helmsman). Even the sloganistic monikers of a New Deal, a New Frontier, a Fundamental Transformation, a Great Reset reflects this archaic longing for a corporate unity of society, an all embracing womb to tomb unity which brooks no dissent. 

In fact, this was everywhere the model. It was the model that murdered Socrates, that persecuted the Israelite prophets. It was the model of the Roman state that couldn't tolerate the rise of Christian faith. This same impulse is, and has been, ascendant in the West. It is the impulse behind Fascism and Socialism, and under whatever name it is used by the ruling elites to advance their notions of human nature. It seeks to coopt, if possible, all social institutions--this is, for example, the real meaning of the Second Vatican Council: the desire among the no-longer believing clergy to achieve a favored social status within the emerging Prog order--be it socialist or corporate. The difference between current forms of the corporate state and past forms is that the Great Rest--and local variations--are animated by a Neo-gnostic aspiration to transform and shape human nature itself using pseudo-scientific eugenic means as well as the magical incantations of their dehumanizing ideologies.

So, read these excerpts with all that in mind and follow the link for the rest:

How the Democrats fell for Mussolini

America's elite has adopted the fascist dream of a corporate oligarchyw the Democrats fell for Mussolini

There’s a tendency today to see Benito Mussolini as a pathetic sideshow [to Hitler]. Yet in many ways, Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant in much of the world, albeit in an unexpected form: in the worldview of those progressives who typically see “proto-fascism” lurking on the Right.

Mussolini, a one-time radical socialist, viewed himself as a “revolutionary” transforming society by turning the state into “the moving centre of economic life”. ...

Indeed, Mussolini’s idea of a an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. In the West, for example, the “Great Reset,” introduced by the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, proposes an expanded welfare state and an economy that transcends the market for the greater goal of serving racial and gender “equity”, as well as saving the planet.

Here we see the ideological difference. Mussolini's corporate state was, despite the appeals to ancient Roman grandeur, fundamentally pragmatic--"he made the trains run on time." In today's Prog vision of a Great Reset the reset is not a transformation of a corrupt and inefficient state but of human nature itself. So that, as Steve Sailer puts it, the trans run on time. Rather than a truly pragmatic goal of better management, the Great Reset envisions a Neo-gnostic deification of Man--or at least of the ruling class. Mussolini's appeal to ancient Roman grandeur was designed to galvanize a basically pragmatic transformation. The new Globalist masters seek to galvanize our would be elite classes by an appeal to Neo-gnostic and anti-reality ideology: universal equity. "You'll own nothing but you'll be happy", says Klaus Schwab. Equity will reign. From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. Some things, self deluding, hubristic fantasies, never really change.

 

Wherever it appears, whether in the early 20th century or today, fascism — in its corporate sense — relies on concentrated economic power to achieve its essential and ideological goals. In 1922, for instance, large corporations and landowners helped finance Mussolini’s Black Shirts for their March on Rome. ...

Elsewhere, the German cartels and Japanese zaibatsu both kowtowed to and benefited from fascist state support and contracts. Even today, China, in many aspects the model fascist state of our times, follows Il Duce’s model of cementing the corporate elite into the power structure. ...

Capitalist countries have historically resisted such concentrations of power, but this process seems inexorable after a pandemic which devastated small businesses yet saw the ultra-rich grow richer and the largest firms record eye-watering profits. A handful of giant tech corporations now account for nearly 40% of the value of the Standard and Poor Index, a level of concentration unprecedented in modern history.

And yet even now the Dems deplore the rich--their rich--growing richer, pulling the wool over their simple minded base. A base educated--or indoctrinated--in elite colleges. All this even as Prog politicians--the Clintons, Bidens, Pelosis, and many more--lead the rush to the public trough.

 

Companies like Amazon are our zaibatsu, ...

This parallels the alarming transformation of the US Democratic Party, the putative “party of the people”, now increasingly a subsidiary of the corporate elite. Among financial firms, communications companies and lawyers, Biden outraised Trump by five-to-one or more. Today’s oligarchs are particularly keen on the progressive non-profit sector, which provides important support for their political and social advocacy — a means for them to make politically correct statements about climate change, gender and race, while still obtaining enormous profit margins and unprecedented wealth.

But, really, when since Roosevelt--or, going further back in history, since Wilson--have Dems truly been a "party of the people" in any but a PR sense? Any more than the Bolshevik party was "of the people." The Prog agenda has always been elitist and has always sought to coopt the elites.

 

But whereas the old fascism sought greater prosperity, its new form, at least in the West, supports only an expanded welfare state that keeps the beleaguered middle and working classes both quiescent and stripped of aspiration. Worthies such as former Bank of Canada and Bank of England chief Mark Carney even embrace “de-growth,” a conscious slowing of the economy and embrace of declining living standards.

Indeed, the widely hailed Club of Rome report in 1972 — “The Limits to Growth” — was financed not by green activists but by the Agnelli family from Fiat, once a linchpin of Mussolini’s original corporate state. ...

Fast forward to today’s new economic order, and it’s clear that not all economic animals are equal. ...

And these woke oligarchs, like their fascist counterparts before them, see little use for democracy. Eric Heymann, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank, suggests that to reach the climate goals of Davos, corporations will have to embrace “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship”. ...

Unsurprisingly, the biggest losers will inevitably be the poor. ... the Jacques Delors Institute estimated that some thirty million Europeans [--living under a form of eco-dictatorship--] were not able to adequately heat their homes during the most recent winter.

Unfortunately, after that promising start, Kotkin (like Codevilla) concludes with a pathetic solution, steeped in antipathy for Trump. Recall that Codevilla's solution to the aggressive impulses of the Prog transformers of humanity is to find a "Great Leader" who would persuade the Progs to give up their elite pretensions to total power in favor of allowing the deplorables to eke out a modest livelihood in squalid enclaves around the country. Kotkins solution is to galvanize opposition to the corporate state with a Great Crusade in favor of ... a restoration of competition? Really? That's the goal the masses are supposed to "put up a fight" for? That will get them to give up "destructive nativism" (i.e., Trump)?

But building a coalition against the new fascism requires avoiding destructive nativism and instead focusing on how to restore competition and protect consumers from the overweening power, and vast wealth of the corporate elites.

Will a citizenry, dependent on transfer payments and increasingly voiceless, still put up a fight? To slow fascism’s spread, either from China or from within, requires a re-awakening of the spirit of resistance to authority that has long marked human progress and now seems far too rare.

Imagine conservatives marching through the streets--or even just displaying bumber stickers--behind the banner of "Resist Authority!" Right, that'll do the trick.