Speaking of the anti-liberal “left” wing of the conservative, right wing, Republican fascist movement, I saw an interesting bumper sticker at what I would describe as a hippie / counterculture gift store the other day. I thought it instructive. Let’s discuss that this week.
The bumper sticker contained an imaginary quote attributed to the “ghost of Lincoln” that read “...government of the people ... shall perish from the Earth.” It had more, which I’ll get to in a moment, but weird, right? Why would the ghost of Lincoln be mouthing anti-democracy sentiments? One clue is Lincoln belonged to the Republican Party of that era, very different from the one that exists today after the Great Realignment of the 1950s and 60s, and a common bit of fascist rhetoric is to propose Repubs remain the Party of Lincoln and the USA, not of Jefferson Davis and the CSA. To make it work, in this case, the ghost of Lincoln has apparently learned his lesson and now opposes democracy, hopes to find a way to make it “perish from the Earth,” thus linking the old pro-democracy Repub Party with the new anti-democracy fascist Repub Party. Lincoln turned Nazi.
But why would the ghost of Lincoln have turned on democracy and become a fascist? To explicitly support conservative, right wing authoritarian government? No, that’s where the middle bit of the quote comes in, providing rhetoric typical of American crypto-fascism / fake anarchism. The middle part of the quote explains Lincoln’s ghost now understands “government of the people” is linked to government “by the politicians, for the powerful.” So the ghost discovered democracy is fatally flawed by the presence of elected politicians and the influence of establishment elite power. Is the ghost proposing fascist leaders are not politicians, or anyway do not share the same weaknesses as politicians in democracy? Is it saying establishment elites have no influence under fascism? No, the message is confined to the trashing of democracy, fascism is never explicitly mentioned. It’s an example of what I call crypto or hidden fascism involving trashing democracy without a thought to potential issues with alternatives, indeed often without even explicitly mentioning alternatives, but sometimes proposing anarchism or some other system superior to democracy. Do they mean violent, lawless, warlord anarchism of the sort failed states fall into, wallow in for a time, then eventually crawl out from again? Sometimes, yes, but in the guise of a risible utopia in which everyone gets along, interpersonal conflicts of preferences vanish, greed disappears, etc. That’s what I typically call “utopian anarchism,” a creed I suppose few adults can contemplate with a straight face. At other times they have in mind more what I call “fake anarchism,” which is just some laws and policies they happen to prefer but established and enforced without democracy. Who makes such laws? Who resolves the interpersonal conflicts of preferences as over scarce resources? Who weighs costs and benefits? Who enforces the laws against malcontents? If it’s not utopian anarchism then any non-democratic system may work: fascism, theocratism, monarchism, whatever.
Fake anarchism is entirely consistent with fascism, if one proposes fascists’ hearts are in the right place and will faithfully implement whatever values and policies one endorses oneself, including the rather unlikely goal of keeping the economic power of establishment elites at bay. The era from the late 1970s until today has been a long process of conservative, right wing rhetoricians co-opting the left, pro-democracy, anti-establishment counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s and turning it to their own anti-democracy, conservative, right wing, plutocratic fascist ends. Liberals / progressives / democratic leftists should understand the power of the conservative, right wing, Republican anti-democracy movement is not just from explicit Nazis and Neo-Confederates, it’s also from their allies and tools: nominally “left” anti-democracy crypto-fascists and anarchists.
