Summary: The Left has been winning since the 1970s. Now their war on us enters the pursuit phase of battle, the last phase. Their success results from a powerful but unmentioned alliance. The next battles will help determine America’s course for the 21st century.
Leftists celebrating their generations of victories.
This is the pursuit phase of battle
The Left has won so big and for so long. In three generations they have reshaped our society in ways that would have gotten anyone declared insane who predicted this in 1970. Marriage is radically different, and open to gays. Transgendered rights requires guys on girls’ teams and in their bathrooms. A candidate for high office is hounded by one woman’s unsupported account of a minor event at a high school party decades ago. Borders closed by FDR are thrown open, with gifts to migrants. Children are taught in elementary school how to use condoms and invent their own genders, then they are sent to Drag Queen Story hour. You can continue the list as well as I.
Now the Left begins the pursuit phase of battle – chasing down and destroying the fleeing broken remnants of their foes. They understand Rule One of street fighting: when your foe is down, kick him. Finish him off. They can taste victory. Here is an example of political power skillfully applied …
Question from a reader
“What do you think of SB-868, signed into law by Virginia Governor Northam on April 11?”
The decades since the 1964 legislation has made “discrimination” a vague and broad terms.
SB-868 adds “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the Virginia Human Rights Act’s already long list of prohibited discriminations in public accommodations, employment, credit, and housing. SB-179, also signed on April 11, adds “gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation” to the categories of victims of hate crime offenses, resulting in a higher criminal penalty for the offense.
SB-868 further weaponizes the civil courts in the Leftist crusade to change our society, with well-funded activists or the State able to unleash potentially crippling lawsuits against individuals, small businesses, churches, and charities. The law allows brutal fines: up to $50K for first offence and up to $100K for each subsequent offense, unlimited compensatory damage awards (including emotional distress), up to $350K in punitive damages, and (best of all) a loser pays provision (the loser pays both sides attorneys). There are no loser pay provisions available to the peons, creating a giant barrier preventing them from suing even for outrageous violations of our rights (even in victory, the costs can exceed the award).
Facing powerful activists or the even more powerful State, even the largest of groups often choose to surrender. Here is an article about the likely results by Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation.
This expansion and weaponization of discrimination claims has led a few to question the wisdom of the great civil rights bills of the 1960s, saying that their critics were correct – and they represented a serious change in the Constitutional structure. Such as the brilliant Christopher Caldwell in The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties
Their key tactical decision
Hitler and the Nazi Party did not invent everything in the 20th century, only almost everything. Hitler’s political innovations were many, but among the most effective was taking a socialist and revolutionary party and allying it with the rich. Much as America’s Left did during the 1980s. They closeted their dreams of economic revolution and focused on social change. This drastically reduced the opposition from the 1%. Most of the 1% supported (including their corporations) became neutral or even supporters (perhaps sincerely, perhaps as DaneGeld). The Clintons were one of the key figures leading this shift.
A tacit alliance with one foe to defeat others is one of those tactics often considered to scurrilous to admit – but usually ignored by their tribal followers – and usually wins.
But few of these marriages are made in Heaven. Often there is a final battle before the victory banquet. The rise of Sanders on the Left suggests that many on the Left have remembered that the Left’s platform has an economic component in addition to calling for a social revolution. So far the 1% have successfully suppressed this uprising among the ranks. Matt Taibbi points to the appointment by Nancy Pelosi of Donna Shalala to the Bailout Oversight Panel, a big-name Clinton apparatchik, shows that the 1% – Left alliance remains strong.
I will bet that this alliance will fracture, one of the many sources of discord I see in America’s future.
What about a civil war as …
…the trod-upon majority rebel at being used a lab rats in the Left’s social science experiments (e.g., here and here)? That’s an important question, which I will discuss soon. My answer is that this is not going to happen as most expect, but it might happen in a very different way.
For more information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about a unit of young women who flew biplanes in WWII and lived in a barn: Ballad of the Unknown Pilot.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about ways to reform America, about the Left-wing, about political violence, and especially these…
- Important: The middle in American politics has died. Now extremists rule.
- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.
- Glimpses of the political revolution just starting.
- About the slow-mo revolution by the Left.
- The age of revolution has begun in America.
- Bernie the Maoist.
Books about Bernie’s Revolution
“All that is old is new again.’
These books only describe the mild first steps in Sanders’ program. Don’t scare the proles!
Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In
Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution
How Bernie Won: Inside the Revolution That’s Taking Back Our Country –
and Where We Go from Here
Hi Larry and all FM readers,
Readers: if you didn’t dereference the link to Larry’s classic post on why Godwin’s law works, allow me to recommend going back and reading it. Brilliant insight and well written. Read it twice. Or more.
I don’t know what the future holds (well, death and taxes, natch), but I think this is not going to be a crisis that will go unexploited. From talking with friends, family, and associates they mostly seem to be all aboard for fascism (they would never call it that, but cf. op cit), as long as it’s “progressive”. And they get their cut.
Best regards,
Bill
I don’t know what they think they’ve won. Their lives are more precarious in this economy than ever.
LT,
“Their lives are more precarious in this economy than ever.”
I don’t understand what that means. Can you explain it a bit?
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The Nazi’s base came from two primary sources: an urban cadre of petit-bourgeois (shop owners and the like) and a rural cadre of landowners and tenant farmers. Both groups were acutely anti-union and reactionary. Your description of the Nazis is bafflingly ignorant. Maybe try actually reading the books you put on your site rather than just looking at the pretty covers.
Honeybone,
Support of the Nazi’s by elements of Germany’s elites is well documented in pretty much every account of their history.
I suggest you start with James Pool’s 1978 classic book “Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power, 1919-1933.”
https://www.amazon.com/Who-financed-Hitler-funding-1919-1933/dp/0803790392/
There are many articles about this different aspects of this, such as …
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis
About the BBC series: https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/hitler-millionaire-backers-how-german-elite-facilitated-rise-nazis-third-reich/
It’s an oft-told tale.
Yeah no one disagrees that fascism is a movement of preserving elite power in times of deep crisis. The point is that in places like Germany, the fascist movement was an alliance between elites and reactionary elements in the petit-bourgeois and rural proletariat. Not some amalgam of revolutionary socialists and the capitalist elite. Please just read one book before spouting this kind of nonsense.
Honeybone,
The modern virulent version of fascism that Hitler created took much from the National Socialist Party’s socialist roots. To mention just a few, feminism, national health care, and concern for the lower classes. Details here.
None of this excites the rich. It created enemies, as did many other aspects of Nazi policy. But Hitler found a way to overcome the former, and use that success to deal with the latter.
It’s this combination that leads to the inane argument of “they were Right” – “they were Left.”
For more about this, I recommend the great Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s book Three New Deals.
ALSO – please be civil. Life is too short to deal with rude people. There will be no further warnings.
The party didn’t have socialist roots though. From its foundation it was explicitly anti-Marxist. By the early 1920s when the party could command organized street violence through the Brownshirts, the target was frequently communist and SPD (socialists) gatherings. As the saying goes, “first they came for the communists…”
Fascism is appealing to elites in times of crisis when there is an organized left threatening revolution. German elites may not have liked some of the Nazi platform but certainly saw it as preferential to a communist revolution. To elites it was a question of retaining their power and wealth at considerable cost vs. total oblivion – an easy choice from their perspective.
Honeybone,
I’m sorry that you disagree with history, but I’ve lost interest in citing historical works to educate you. While you make unsupported bold statements in reply.
“The party didn’t have socialist roots though. ”
False.
“From its foundation it was explicitly anti-Marxist.”
Groups on the Left often fight – often violently – with each other. Ditto on the Right. It’s biology. It’s why there were many species in the genus Homo, but only we survive. Those on the other side are fun foes. Ideological cousins are dangerous because they share the same ecological niche – and usually only one can survive. See what happened to the socialists after the Russian Revolution.
Anyway – this discussion has long overstayed its utility. You are obsessing about one sentence in a thousand word post. Thanks for the discussion, but we’re done.
Honeybone,
“The party didn’t have socialist roots though.”
See the bio of Gottfried Feder (Wikipedia, Brittanica) and long the Nazi Party’s chief economist. It was one of his speeches that drew Hitler into the Party. Very anti-capitalist, lots of socialist views.
See The 25-Points, core doctrine of the Nazi Party announced by Hitler in 1920 (Feder was one of the authors). Lots of socialism in it, along with other elements that gave the Nazi’s their distinctive flavor.
As a price paid for the support of Germany’s 1%, Feder was sidelined after 1933.
“ALSO – please be civil. Life is too short to deal with rude people. There will be no further warnings.” Best reply that I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks Larry.
Raymond,
It’s in the Comment Policy.
I should enforce it much more strictly, as well-run websites do.
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Larry is right about the Nazis and socialist roots, also about the alliance between the wealthy and them. He could usefully have added one point of real similarity or caution: the establishment really thought they could control Hitler and the Nazis, and that this would result from appointing Hitler Cha
The thing that needs more thought is the comparison between Weimar then and the US now. I understand why people are drawn to the comparison, but I don’t think there is much in it, or that the progress of Weimar is any useful guide to the future in the US. The differences are much more marked than the similarities.
I don’t know what will happen. Prediction is not my strong point, neither culture, markets, technology, politics. But I am pretty sure that looking at Weimar is looking in the wrong place. There may be other good historical parallels, not sure.
If there were a great inflation coupled with military defeat (say in the Pacific). that would make it a lot closer.
Henrik,
As always henrik points out that books have been written about these things – and these are comments, not dissertations.
The subject was Hitler’s calculations, not those of the other thousand of interest groups in pre-war Germany.
I have been thinking some more.
What he needed (and found to hand) to use as he did were:
— confessional political environment
— relaxation of social restraints in some areas but not all
— a real threat from a Communist left
— a split between the Communist and Social Democratic left
— a lost war with accusations of treachery
— politically homeless conservative rural protestants
— a recent democracy installed by revolution, lacking history and credibility
— proportional representation
— provisions in the constitution enabling rule by decree
Could we see anything like this becoming available in the US and available for exploitation by a similarly charismatic leader?
Well, maybe. Not very probable perhaps, but it could look like this:
— War in the Pacific is lost. Carriers sunk. Democrat sighs humiliating peace treaty
— Catastrophic bout of inflation consequent on it
— Move away from electoral college in anger at its failure to reflect the popular vote, and breakup of the two party system to something more proportional
— Consequent emergence of far-right splinter parties with initial populist programs
— Wartime powers persisting into peace to allow rule by decree
— Some kind of Islamist atrocity, giving a focus for religious rage
— Democrats split into extreme socialist party and social democratic wing
— The cultural left is perceived as a threat by conservative Christians, the socialist left as a real threat by the wealthy property owning classes.
— A general and spreading view that only authoritarian rule will get this straightened out.
Then at the auspicious moment of mass unemployment and Weimar type inflation, the leader of one of the splinter parties drops all the welfare and confiscatory economics that has got it national support, and allies with the conservative right of the Republican rump. These people think by inviting him into government they will tame him, they need the mass support he has, and they get him in all right, only to discover that they cannot control him or his party. He proceeds to make America great again…
Well, just a shot at it.
henrik,
As somebody (Mark Twain) said, history does not repeat – it rhymes. I think you’re looking at this too literally. I’ve written scores about posts about the potential for a fascist-like movement to arise. None of those things are on my list. My guesses as to the causes are all more likely, mostly happening right now.
It’s the usual thing. People look for repeats, and so ignore new problems evolving before them.
henrik,
See them here:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/tag/fascism/
I found this very illuminating. Detailed account of exactly how it happened.
Benjamin Carter Hett – The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic.
Henrik,
What did you learn from this book that gives you insights about today’s America?