Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. And unfortunately, most Americans know little of their own country’s and nothing of the world’s. Ergo, they don’t recognize that “Antifa” and the “far right’s” current clash is a re-run from early 20th century Europe. Nor do they realize that both groups are defrauding us just as the original “anti-Fascists,” a.k.a., communists, and the “far right,” a.k.a, fascists or Nazis, defrauded Europeans then.
Anyone studying WWII and the years preceding it must marvel at the false dichotomy besieging Europe. With the continent’s heritage of strong, virtually totalitarian government, Europeans were ripe for the scam communists and fascists pulled on them: that these two authoritarian nightmares were the only possibilities for ordering society and that if murderous, blood-drenched Communism didn’t prevail, murderous, blood-drenched Fascism must.
No one argued for neither. No one suggested or even seems to have known about freedom (shame on Americans: they had so betrayed their own tradition of political liberty that starving, stunted souls never considered them a model). The “underground” in communist Europe, working to free its slaves from Stalin’s bondage so they could assume Hitler’s, were fascists; the “underground” in fascist Europe, working to free its slaves from Hitler’s manacles so they could don Stalin’s, were communists. There were no friends of freedom, no lovers of liberty, to dispense with the chains once and for all.
European populations seemed mesmerized, caught between two savage systems. Just as today’s conservatives terrify progressives, Fascism terrified those who sided with Communism — and rightly so. When the Nazis conquered another country, they rounded up, tortured and slaughtered communists. Ditto for the reverse. Fascists panicked at Communism, again for good reason. Not only had Russia murdered millions of its own subjects, but Communism professed everyone else’s subjugation as its goal.
Only a few small, technical differences separate Communism and Fascism in theory; they resemble one another far more than they differ, especially in practice and results. Fascism emphasizes nationality while striving for worldwide domination; Communism aims to abolish borders while similarly striving. Fascism permits the pretense of private property while actually controlling it through extensive regulations. Communist governments disdain this subterfuge to own everything outright.
But when it comes to each philosophy’s view of the State and of the serfs over whom it reigns —worshiping government and its physical compulsion, empowering it over every peon in its territory and all aspects of those peons’ lives, making politicians and bureaucrats the arbiters of good and evil, elevating their judgement over that of a man’s conscience — Fascism and Communism are identical. Even Italy’s premier fascist, Benito Mussolini, tacitly equated the two when he predicted that the 20th century would “be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism … this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State.”
(Nor will the State “wither away” at some point in Communism’s future. It cannot, because Communism — and Fascism as well — run contrary to human nature. No one ever places the amorphous “people” and their good above his own family’s welfare; no one works “selflessly” for the community ahead of his own interests. Compelling this sort of sick behavior requires the brute force of government — and an immensely powerful one, too.)
Now this same fallacy, this same ridiculously tragic “choice,” gulls Americans. The Right, a.k.a. Republicans or Conservatives, increasingly embraces the militarism, racial lunacy and nationalism that the Nazis espoused. These folks venerate cops and the U.S. military, regardless of the crimes each commits. They dismiss victims of police abuse as “uncooperative” and “deserving it.” They damn Constitutional objections to the U.S.’s bossing, bombing and invading of other countries as treasonous. They insist that America will become prosperous and virtuous only when its rulers crack down on “minorities” and bar immigrants, particularly those with abundant melanin. The only alternative they see to these horrific “principles” is Progressivism’s nonsense, so they rigorously defend their blighted bunker.
Meanwhile, the Left, a.k.a., Democrats, socialists and Progressives, advances Communism’s agenda. An overweening State that first and foremost controls the economy while impoverishing everyone — but equally, oh, yes, equally; that crushes all dissent; that destroys privacy and individuality in favor of political factions, often organized by race; that controls all of life, no matter how private; that sneeringly dismisses Christianity and even simple decency while persecuting believers. These folks, too, believe that if they don’t triumph, Conservatives’ militarism will; against so great a foe, anything from deception to lethal violence is kosher.
Praise God, there’s a third and very blessed option. Yet mighty few Americans stand up and cry “Freedom!!!!” Why not?
Tragically, despite — or because of — their interference in WWII, Americans never regained their appreciation for liberty. Instead, we’ve embraced Fascism and Communism — in a word, totalitarianism. We plummet ever deeper into that cataclysm, with the atrocities of the past weeks a mere replay of those from Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Italy, Spain, et al in the 1920s and ‘30s.
But our record of political liberty, with its respect for the individual and private property, gives us much better odds than oppressed-for-centuries Europeans enjoyed at triumphing over Communism (or Progressivism as embodied in the Democratic Party) and Fascism (today’s Conservatism or, more broadly, the Republican Party). Yet doing so requires utter rejection of the false dichotomy these two liars present. The choice is not between the government’s ordering us to welcome sodomites into our businesses and associations or legislation protecting us from perverts… rather, we should ask why the State meddles in such personal affairs and forcibly restrict it to its Constitutional limits. The issue is not which weapons politicians permit us to own but when we’ll rid ourselves of such tyrants. Nor should we fret about how “fairly” bureaucrats administer Americans’ medical insurance but instead defy these pinheads’ unConstitutional power over patients.
Democrats and Republicans seemingly crow, as Mussolini did in 1928, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
And Liberty responds, “Wanna bet?”
— Becky Akers