The Unvaxinated = the Taliban

[Dill]

(09-02-2021, 04:29 AM)hollodero Wrote:  I think it has to remain fair to make certain comparisons with the rise of past authoritarian regimes and the deeds and especially the rhetorics of today's politicians from the right. In some cases, these comparisons are hard to avoid. 

Indeed it does. And indeed they are hard to avoid--though one must know what to compare. It is not beheadings and death camps.

Since I appear to be the primary advocate for comparative scholarship on authoritarian regimes here, I think it incumbent upon me to specify some terms of comaprison, keeping in mind that the goal is to recognize and neutralize authoritarian tendencies. That means we are discussing people who haven't yet committed "atrocities," so that is not the basis of comparison.

My resource base here is limited to European politics since 1848. So the authoritarian politics I am speaking of is the kind which arose in response primarily to liberalism, but in cases of right wing authoritarianism, also in response to socialism/internationalism. 

Right or left, such regimes are always ILLIBERAL. They take the form of a culture war against LIBERALISM, including those aspects of the free market which create a wealth gap, subordinate the nation to exploitation by foreign capital, and (in the case of right wing authoritarianisms) open borders to trade and the influx of foreign labor. 

RW versions view a national body as divided between "authentic" citizens, mostly rural, and "inauthentic," mostly found in cities, often immigrants, or long time citizens but ethnic minorities, characterized as impurities in the national body, and parasites living off the labor of authentic citizens via liberal social programs. They have a GRIEVANCE because those globalist elites currently in power have been representing international rather than national interests. This makes them (the RW examples) hypernationalist and focused on reducing the effects of internationalism, such as disruption of traditional hierarchies, social boundaries (including gender), and cultural norms.

From this perspective, stricter control of national boundaries (opened by the globalists) and expulsion of foreign impurities becomes a national imperative. 

Democracy may empower minorities and otherwise prevent direct address of national problems, so control of the state becomes a priority. Democractic governance may create obstacles, if the inauthentic are also empowered to vote and are protected by laws which make them "equal" before the law. Separation of church and state may disadvantage authentic citizens' culture and priviledge inauthentic--embodied, for example, in feminism and abortion rights--so greater integration of church and state becomes desirable. 

A charismatic "strong" leader offers a solution, someone of unquestioned authenticity (for the disaffected) who can be trusted to bypass politics-as-usual in the interest of authentic citizens. This often means a fetishization of the leaders "instincts" as something to be trusted over law, data, and "experts" who always get it wrong. The leader's political party then comes to define membership in terms of support for, and trust in, the leader, rather than democratically generated principles or platform.  Such a leader might seem an inveterate liar to outsiders--marking them as "inauthentic"--but his authenticity is not about truth in the details, but in the overall thrust of his agenda. It is a "felt" truth of shared instinct, which can lead to dismissal of reason and public debate as mere globalist subterfuge. 

It becomes a goal of the party leader to contest other sources of authority--primarily the independent press--but also universities and churches and other independent sources/standards of truth and ethical behavior, and to represent these as interlocked, working together with the "globalists" who are invariably international, like "the Jews" or the Bilderberg Group or the Council on Foreign Relations or the EU. 

Another red flag--authoritarian capture of media: when specific news papers, radio and television stations, and more recently social media outlets, propagandize on behalf of the leader, demonize his enemies, and police/enforce party support for the leader. In consequence, the public sphere is inundated with challenges to the abovementioned authorities in order to undermine them, to at the very least render them "equivalentl" in mendacity to the leader and party officials ("both sides do it"). The goal is a political environment in which instinct and identity trump reasoned debate; data, policies and political behavior cannot be sorted by reason, since all "equivalent." So instinct makes the choice. 

Still another--capture of the judiciary. 

The right leaning authoritarianisms tend to be anti-Enlightenment, and can be illuminated with psychological concepts like the authoritarian personality, attracted to "strong" leaders and prefering force to diplomacy at home and abroad.
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These tendencies or political inclinations exist in virtually ALL indusrialized 1st world democracies now, including non-Western Japan. It is wrong to assume that subscription to any ONE or TWO or even THREE of the points above makes one a "fascist" or other dangerous authoritarian E.g., a Catholic nun who opposes abortion, or an old time Jeffersonian who thinks rural life is the backbone of the nation, or the housewife who complains her school taxes go to educating non-citizens. But when one sees a new AMALGAM of such tendencies begin to replace traditional goals and standards in a powerful political party commanding tens of millions of votes--especailly crystallizing around fealty to an "instinctive" and "strong" leader--then we ought to view that development with alarm and begin to "name and compare."