"Mussolini Dems" Embrace Fascist Dream Of A Corporate Oligarcy

[Riddick]

Edited & Excerpted From Joel Kotkin's article:

There’s a tendency today to see Benito Mussolini as a pathetic sideshow, an incompetent blusterer who went from Adolf Hitler’s idol to his lapdog. Yet in many ways, Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant in much of the world, albeit in an unexpected form: in the worldview of those progressives who typically see "proto-fascism" lurking on the Right.

Indeed, Mussolini’s idea of an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. In the West, for example, the “Great Reset” proposes an expanded welfare state and an economy that transcends the market for the greater goal of serving racial and gender “equity”, as well as saving the planet.

Even today, China, in many aspects the model fascist state of our times, follows Il Duce’s model of cementing the corporate elite into the power structure. Capitalist countries have historically resisted such concentrations of power, but this process seems inexorable after a pandemic which devastated small businesses yet saw the ultra-rich grow richer and the largest firms record eye-watering profits.

This parallels with the alarming transformation of the US Democratic Party, the putative "party of the people", now increasingly a subsidiary of the corporate elite. Today’s oligarchs are particularly keen on the progressive non-profit sector, which provides important support for their political and social advocacy — a means for them to make politically correct statements about climate change, gender and race, while still obtaining enormous profit margins and unprecedented wealth.

But while old fascism sought greater prosperity, its new form, at least in the West, supports only an expanded welfare state that keeps beleaguered middle & working classes both quiescent and stripped of aspiration. Worthies such as former Bank of Canada and Bank of England chief Mark Carney even embrace “de-growth,” a conscious slowing of the economy and embrace of declining living standards.

And, like their fascist counterparts before them, woke oligarchs see little use for democracy. To reach climate goals, Deutsche Bank senior executive Eric Heymann suggests corporations will have to embrace “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship”. After all, it would be difficult to get elected officials to approve limits on such mundane popular pleasures as affordable air travel, cars, freeways and suburbs with single-family houses, unless they were imposed by judicial or executive fiat.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest losers will inevitably be the poor. Wherever the conventional green policies central to the “Great Reset” have been imposed — California, Britain, Canada, Australia, Greece, Germany, France — the result has been to create high levels of “energy poverty”; the Jacques Delors Institute estimated some thirty million Europeans were not able to adequately heat their homes during the most recent winter.

But then there are many hypocrisies at the heart of today’s incarnation of Mussolini-style fascism. Our new elites, for example, see no contradiction in supporting claims of “systemic racism” and “social justice” at home, while cooperating with Chinese authorities who abuse basic human rights in Hong Kong or to impose forced labour in Xinjiang.

Communist Party cadres at least offer more than a moralizing agenda; at a time when the middle class is shrinking in the West, China’s middle class increased enormously from 1980 to 2000, although its growth appears to have slowed in recent years. In contrast, the tired capitalism of our corporate elite — who seem to have given up on broad-based economic growth — seems increasingly detached from the interests and aspirations of their own citizens’ needs.

As of today, the consolidation of oligarchic power is supported by massive lobbying operations and dispersals of cash. Yet despite their riches and technical know-how, the oligarchic elites face widespread and growing skepticism towards both the traditional and social media outlets under their control. Similarly, it’s also unlikely many in the middle class will embrace their program of race indoctrination, or accept a marked decline in living standards.

Will a citizenry, dependent on transfer payments and increasingly voiceless, still put up a fight? To slow fascism’s spread, either from China or from within, requires a re-awakening of the spirit of resistance to authority that has long marked human progress and now seems far too rare.

[Doka]

It appears that the only saving grace might be Good old "Resistance" or the good old fashioned "Terrible Two''s" as in No! Don't Tell Me What To Do! We are in a weired spot, of "The Followers", as in "Lie down, let us take every thing from you,( homes, cars) Including your self-esteem. Not really what you'd call a normal human condition, for good "Mental Health".