Fascism was never defeated; it just went underground for a time and changed its branding. It has been able to resurge powerfully in large part because of the routing of the old internationalist and collectivist “red left”.
That defeat was enabled in part by left sectarianism (itself actively fomented by the right), and in part by the politically-exsanguinated, “white left’s” collusion with, or failure to resist the rightward shift that enabled and accelerated the spread of global corporate capitalism.
The ideological and strategic move away from the wider left by sections of the women’s rights movement, and the subsequent rise of corporate-friendly feminism played a key role in the early Neo-liberal era, as did other progressive movements that pursued sectional interests.
The C21st white left includes many liberally-minded beneficiaries of the Neo-liberal resurgence. Many of them are drawn to identity issues and associated praxis. They support causes that not only pose no real threat to the capitalist status quo, but in many respects serve to strengthen it.
While those liberally-minded people shelter behind
Marx said capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, or now possibly the destruction of the entire planet.
The digital age that has enabled the spectacular growth of global corporate finance capitalism has strengthened some of the key ideological "chains of the mind", and weakened others. Capitalism's digital weaponry can be used against it.
The expansion of the immense destructive power of western conventional military forces, and the creation of heavily armed para-military police forces, along with systems of mass surveillance and control, are no accident.
They are a form of insurance.
The acceleration of the profit-centred pillaging of the planet has sharpened the contradictions. The controllers of corporate capitalism know that the looming apocalypse of accelerating climate change, soil and water degradation, mass species extinctions, chemical and particulate pollution will tip into social chaos unless they stop now and put the profit machine into rapid reverse.
They will not do that.
Their preferred solution, like the Israeli right in Palestine is demonstrating, is to be ready and prepared to commit mass slaughter – by acts of commission and omission, ie blowing people to pieces from a safe distance, or creating the conditions in which they die from starvation and disease.
To be able to do that, they need enough people in their domestic populations to be so full of hate and resentment of whoever is the current scapegoat, they will accept the slaughter of millions of other human beings.
Some will just tolerate the slaughter; some will celebrate it, and a minority of hate-blinded or sociopathic people will participate in it.
We can all agree with the principles of intersectionality, the problem is that without a unifying political theory and a strong, unified vanguard movement, the associated praxis is always likely to descend into a fight about whose sectional interests take precedence.
This makes sectional politics a gift to the political, bureaucratic and technocratic enablers of corporate capitalism for whom it’s divide in order that their masters can continue to rule.
It is a fact that in the absence of genuine internationalism, extreme nationalism and its ugly offspring, ethno-nationalism, is more likely to escalate.
In the absence of genuine collectivism, pathological forms of individualism will proliferate.
When Thatcher said there is no such thing as "society", there are only individuals and families, she was verbalising one of the ruling class's most critically important ideological manoeuvres – the apparent primacy of the individual and her/his rights in a world in which such rights for the vast majority are a trompe l'oeil.
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