Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Neoliberalism Out, Neofascism In?
Cornel West says America is in for a makeover, Trump style.
White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.
This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.
Yes one must equate neo-fascism with protectionism. There is no freedom without free trade!
ReplyDelete(Before 1988, Canada was still under the jackboot of Nazi occupation after having lost the war. Praise Brian Mulroney our great liberator and founding father of Canadian democracy!)
(And remember kiddies: people who oppose corporate outsourcing schemes are not simply fascists; they are racist, homophobic, misogynist fascists. You need a lot of hatred and intolerance to counter this level of hatred and intolerance!)
Actually, Anon, if you knew anything about history you would know that neo-fascism has little to do with trade. You're trying to hang a specious argument on a hook that's simply not there. Thanks for playing.
ReplyDeletei think the above anon is criticizing (and i whole-heartedly agree) the constant slipping-in of 'protectionism' with all the other hateful things that trump is an exemplar of, such as misogyny, racism, hate-filled populism, etc. as if protectionism is as bad as what it is grouped with.
ReplyDeletei've been noticing the same thing all over the place, including from sources you wouldn't think would repeat that ridiculousness. it's a glaringly obvious way of buttressing the established free-trade regime by reinforcing the negative view of the alternative.
by all means, there's plenty to criticize, but that's not one of them...
RE
ReplyDeleteAt a meeting a few months after Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party, one of her colleagues, or so the story goes, was explaining what he saw as the core beliefs of conservatism. She snapped
Come come now.
I Googled the phrase and came up with a never ending repeat of the same comment.
Or "so the story goes" smacks of our new past time FALSE NEWS.
TB