The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism

In this article below Chris Hedges talks about the rise of American fascism. He has written books before on Christian fundamentalism and the rise of fascism but in this new article he describes how a proto-fascism has been developing around Donald Trump. He also describes how middle class intellectuals and neoliberal college professors had thought that it was okay to forget about ordinary Americans by saying that everything should be left to the market.

And this is what the libertarians believe, that the magic market that will create a heaven on Earth while throwing those into the pits of hell anyone who failed. Like how the balloon in the 1960's British TV series, The Prisoner, suffocated those that had fallen out of the line. The meritocracy means people get what they deserve.

I even came across an article today by economists who were saying that the government should not give benefits to poor people because they will spend the money on things will make them worse off in the end, like drugs, alcohol, fast food, or gambling etc. So as Neoliberalism drives more and more people into poverty and turning their lives into misery, but then just make them even poorer still and their lives even more harder. Anyway, these economists had just made assumptions and had disregarded the vast majority of poor people that work really hard and avoid excesses.

The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism

College-educated elites, on behalf of corporations, carried out the savage neoliberal assault on the working poor. Now they are being made to pay. Their duplicity—embodied in politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—succeeded for decades. These elites, many from East Coast Ivy League schools, spoke the language of values—civility, inclusivity, a condemnation of overt racism and bigotry, a concern for the middle class—while thrusting a knife into the back of the underclass for their corporate masters. This game has ended.

There are tens of millions of Americans, especially lower-class whites, rightfully enraged at what has been done to them, their families and their communities. They have risen up to reject the neoliberal policies and political correctness imposed on them by college-educated elites from both political parties: Lower-class whites are embracing an American fascism.

These Americans want a kind of freedom—a freedom to hate. They want the freedom to use words like “nigger,” “kike,” “spic,” “chink,” “raghead” and “fag.” They want the freedom to idealize violence and the gun culture. They want the freedom to have enemies, to physically assault Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals and anyone who dares criticize their cryptofascism. They want the freedom to celebrate historical movements and figures that the college-educated elites condemn, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederacy. They want the freedom to ridicule and dismiss intellectuals, ideas, science and culture. They want the freedom to silence those who have been telling them how to behave. And they want the freedom to revel in hypermasculinity, racism, sexism and white patriarchy. These are the core sentiments of fascism. These sentiments are engendered by the collapse of the liberal state.

From near the end of the article:

There is only one way left to blunt the yearning for fascism coalescing around Trump. It is to build, as fast as possible, movements or parties that declare war on corporate power, engage in sustained acts of civil disobedience and seek to reintegrate the disenfranchised—the “losers”—back into the economy and political life of the country. This movement will never come out of the Democratic Party. If Clinton prevails in the general election Trump may disappear, but the fascist sentiments will expand. Another Trump, perhaps more vile, will be vomited up from the bowels of the decayed political system. We are fighting for our political life.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_revenge_of_the_lower_classes_and_the_rise_of_american_fascism_20160302

Paradise for some: The Prisoner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ffr1U7KMY