ENOUGH NONSENSE! THE LEFT DOES NOT COLLABORATE WITH FASCISTS
BY ERIC DRAITSER
Aside from the absurdity of the red-brown alliance strategy, there is an even larger, and perhaps more troubling, question to ask: Is Johnstone directly promoting a fascist agenda while operating under left cover? Is she a useful idiot of forces she either doesn’t understand or doesn’t know exist?
To answer this question, let us turn to the very nature of historical fascism.
The German Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch famously wrote:By feeding upon the failures and omissions of the so-called ‘system politicians,’ [fascism] enrolled in the long run the support of the nation and in both the economic and political fields solved a number of concrete problems that had been neglected or frustrated by the unsocialist attitudes of the socialists and undemocratic behavior of the democrats.
Indeed, it is in the very nature of fascism to present itself as a viable option when the “system politicians” have lost credibility and legitimacy. That’s precisely how it went down in Germany, and Italy and Spain, with each having its own unique trajectory due to specific conditions in each country.
Fascists always rush in to occupy the political space vacated by failed liberalism. And, for that reason, fascist antipathy is always most pronounced when it comes to communists, anarchists, and other leftists who seek to do the same.
And, today, it’s self-evident that we have a failed liberalism (neoliberalism) wherein the system politicians have lost legitimacy and are increasingly hated. Even Johnstone, not exactly a political theoretician of tremendous capacity, understands this point. And it is precisely at such a moment, when the liberal and conservative bourgeois order is increasingly unstable and untenable, that fascism becomes a clear and present danger.
And what’s Johnstone’s prescription? COLLABORATE WITH THEM! She even laments that leftists aren’t willing to collaborate enough with the fascists. Oh, yeeeah…sorry about that Caity. I’d be happy to share with you some wonderful materials on the proud history of anti-fascist organizing on the Left. It might be useful for you.
But today, we also have a new variant of fascism that has emerged, one that goes well beyond the typical corporate-imperialist consensus of the Empire.
Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian fascist political operator-cum-philosopher, has emerged as an influential figure for both the alt-right and, embarrassingly, some on the Left, though they’ll never admit it, even to themselves. Dugin is widely regarded as very influential in Russian policy circles – his Foundations of Geopolitics remains a required text for Russian military officers – despite attempts by some in Russian media circles to downplay his influence and present him as a marginal figure.
One of Dugin’s most important works is The Fourth Political Theory (4PT), a pseudo-intellectual manifesto of fascist politics that eschews 20th Century political labels in favor of a “new synthesis” for a new century. Consider it the fascist remix tape where Dugin just recycles the same tropes of every fascist movement while dressing them up in convoluted jargon and esoterica.
The essence of 4PT is just a repackaged variant of third positionism from an openly fascist perspective. It calls for direct alignment and alliance of forces on the far left and far right to attack the center. Even the homepage for the book states “Beyond left and right but against the center.” Sound familiar?
Dugin writes:If the third political theory [fascism] criticised capitalism from the Right, and the second [communism] from the Left, then the new stage no longer features this political topography: it is impossible to determine where the Right and the Left are located in relation to postliberalism. There are only two positions: compliance (the centre) and dissent (the periphery). Both positions are global. The Fourth Political Theory is the amalgamation of a common project and arises from a common impulse to everything that was discarded, toppled, and humiliated during the course of constructing ‘the society of the spectacle’ (constructing postmodernity).
It is rather explicit what Dugin is arguing: his 21st Century 4PT politics is rooted in the idea of a necessary collaboration between a bygone left (communists, socialists, etc.) and a bygone right (fascists). Put another way, Dugin here is rebranding fascism as something distinctly new, separated from the tarnished historical legacy of Nazism and Italian fascism, something most necessary in our “post-modern” world. Of course, it should be noted that when Dugin says “post-modern” he means multiculturalism, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and generally everything that has become fundamental to the Left over the last 50 years.
Dugin’s brand of fascist politics is peddled globally under the heading of “Eurasianism” and is propagated by a wide array of Russian media outlets and fascist online platforms (i.e. Katehon, Fort Russ, New Resistance, Arktos, etc.). And it’s in the world of social media and the blogosphere where these LittleEichman.coms really make their mark, penetrating left discourse in the cyber realm in the way that fascist entryists penetrated left political organizations.
Indeed, this is precisely the Duginist strategy, to penetrate the left via anti-imperialism and marry it to the far right, with the two united in a common pro-Russian outlook. That’s Dugin’s agenda, and people like Johnstone become very useful to that end. Just looking at the number of alleged progressives who rightly reject US corporate media narratives unless they’re backed by hard evidence, while at the same time believing reports from Russian media and Kremlin press releases as holy writ tells me that that strategy is somewhat effective.
The danger in even bringing up these facts is that one has to be careful not to fall into the trap of buttressing or legitimizing the Democratic Party liberal talking points about Russia and Putin. How does one remain honest about the impact of these far right trends while also remaining entirely opposed to the fomenting of conflict with Russia? Not so easy.
[cue the “Russophobia” accusations from said nitwits]
But of course, for Johnstone no Democratic Party conspiracy theory is beneath her (Pizzagate, Seth Rich, etc.) while any anti-Russia conspiracy theories are to be dismissed out of hand. It’s almost as if she a priori chooses which conspiracies to peddle and which to dismiss. It’s almost as if she clings to conspiracies that have zero evidence like Pizzagate while ignoring the Russia-Trump story which, despite attempts by Democratic Party noodleheads to paint it as the greatest controversy since Caligula fellated his horse, is still worthy of examination as damaging facts have emerged about those ties.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Johnstone was just parroting talking points from others in a bid to build her popularity by sticking closely to one side’s talking points. Jesus Christ, I hope that’s all it is.
http://wahidazal.blogspot.com/2017/07/e ... s-not.html
