I call it post-modern fascism

Sep 30, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The election results in Germany should be of extreme concern for the non-white people on Planet Earth and for the safety of the world itself. What is taking place in the UK, USA, Germany and other parts of the post-modern world is sickening. In the US, the most powerful economy and military power in the world, there is a president with openly distasteful views on race, rights, poor people, women, etc. That was impossible to imagine after the US became a superpower after WW2.
I read an absorbing column by John Whitesides in Reuters captioned; “Beyond the daily drama and Twitter battles, Trump begins to alter American life.” This is an analysis that does not offer hope for the future. The writer believes that given so much that Trump had done negatively so far, he will definitely weaken the greatness of American democracy and that the US that we know now will not be the same in the future.
The equivalent to the rise of Trump in the US is the ascent of the extreme far-right in the US – a party known as Alternative For Germany (AfD). The AfD is poised to eat away at the fantastic liberal constitutionalism that was embedded in Germany since the Second World War. What took place in Germany last week was extremely shocking. This party became the third largest parliamentary bloc, beating out all liberal and left-wing organizations except the Social Democrats which had its worst elections in sixty years.
The Alternative For Germany is not in power but with its large parliamentary presence it will force Chancellor Merkel to dilute Germany’s democracy as AfD pushes it extreme right-wing agenda. This is a party that is anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, pro-Nazi and called Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, a monument of shame. To understand how frightening that statement is one has to comprehend the evil of the Holocaust.
There is generally a consensus among historians and sociologists and psychologists and other social intellectuals that slavery is civilization’s most evil act and next to it was the Holocaust. It would create instant violence around the world among descendants of slaves to refer to a monument depicting the tragedy of slavery as a foolish thing. Anyone uttering such idiocy should run for cover. The Holocaust Memorial is a revered piece of territory in Germany, and the AfD thinks it is nonsense. It means this party is going to create cultural havoc in Germany.
With the success of the far-right in Germany comes a very complex question. How could that happen in a post-modern, superrich country where state services are either free or carry a minimal charge and where people live an extremely comfortable life. Obviously, one can anticipate an answer that says it could happen elsewhere but not the US. And it has occurred in the US. I will contend that fascism was more likely to happen in the US than Germany. Here is my reason.
People have a stereotypical belief of the US; it is a bottomless receptacle of immeasurable wealth. The American dream caught hold of the world after WW2. That belief has no foundation in economics. There are parts of the US that are post-modern, and there are huge parts that are poor, people do not have lots of money and they have ordinary existence below many of the citizens in Europe.
In 2016, those sections of the US that lived lives similar to what we know in the Third World saw their income worsening and they turned to Trump. Trump in turn put the blame on non-white immigration and liberal economics.
Germany is a different story altogether. Germany in 2017 does not have those extensive areas of poverty that we see in almost all of the fifty states in the US federation. Fascist politicians can easily manipulate working class anger in the US. Trump and many influential US Republican politicians have done that. People are not angry at their poverty in Germany because there isn’t poverty. So what explains the rise of a fascist party in Germany? It has to do with race. That is the answer, too, for Brexit in the UK.
Major White countries have produced politicians that are calling for a stop to non-white immigration because they want to preserve the majority status of their white population. Le Pen in France thinks like that. She could have won the presidential election a few months ago. What is frightening was that she was the second most popular candidate. The world is moving dangerously towards cul-de-sacs where the racial battle lines are being drawn in the US and Europe. It will become really frightening.

One thought on “I call it post-modern fascism”

Yogi September 30, 2017 at 6:58 am

Please tell Kissoon to stay away from American politics as he has no clue. All the lies he hears about President Trump are coming from those liberals who cannot accept that they lost the election.