Tag Archives: Authoritarianism

A Pandemic of Authoritarianism, as the Red Grains Cascade, by Alasdair Crooke

Posted on September 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

There is a huge difference between declaring yourself a ruler and actually being able to control those you rule. From Alasdair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

What we see is an attempt to impose an idealised technical managerialism onto a complex, rather than pursue real solutions to problems.

Change happens quickly and often unpredictably. Yet the unpredictable part seemingly is all about physics. Imagine, dropping one grain of sand after another onto a table. A pile soon develops. Eventually, just one grain starts an avalanche. Most of the time, it’s a small one. But sometimes the pile just slides and disintegrates entirely.

Well, in 1987, three physicists began to play the sand pile game in their lab, seeking an answer to what it is that triggers the typical avalanche? After a huge number of tests, they found there is no typical number of grains that does it.

To find out why such unpredictability should show up in their sand pile game, the physicists next coloured it according to its steepness. Where it was relatively flat and stable, they coloured it green; where steep and, in avalanche terms, ‘ready to go’, they coloured it red.

They found that at the outset, the pile looked mostly green, but that, as the pile grew, the green became infiltrated with ever more red. With more grains, the scattering of red danger fingers grew until a dense skeleton of red instability ran through the pile. Here then was a clue to its peculiar behaviour: a grain falling on a red spot can, by domino-like action, cause sliding at other nearby red spots.

Afghanistan was intended to be a showcase for western technical managerialism – an empirical petri-dish in which to prove the historical inevitability of technocracy. Its doctrine held that free markets somehow obviated the need for politics; that big data and ‘expert’ managerialism in markets (in markets extended to ‘everything’, that is), were the crux to re-setting the world in a better way (i.e. the Build Back Better meme). It was, in a word, postulated on data predictability.

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You Counter Trumpism By Ending The Conditions Which Created It, Not With Authoritarian Policies, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on January 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

Caitlin Johnstone is the rare liberal who recognizes that Trump’s supporters have serious grievances that transcend Trump. From Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

The US political/media class have been pushing hard for more authoritarian policies to stave off the threat of “domestic terrorism” in the wake of the Capitol riot. President Biden, who was already working on rolling out new domestic terror policies well before January sixth, confirmed after the riot that he is making these new measures a priority. Political internet censorship is becoming increasingly normalized, anti-protest bills are being passed, and now we’re seeing liberals encouraged to form “digital armies” to spy on Trump supporters to report them to the authorities.

And an amazingly large percentage of the US population seems to have no problem with any of this, even in sectors of the political spectrum that should really know better by now.

“What else can we do?” they reason. “What other solution could there possibly be to the threat of dangerous fascists and conspiracy theorists continuing to gain power and influence?”

Well there’s a whole lot that can be done, and none of it includes consenting to sweeping new Patriot Act-like authoritarian measures or encouraging monopolistic Silicon Valley plutocrats to censor worldwide political speech. There’s just a whole lot of mass-scale narrative manipulation going on to keep it from being obvious to everyone.

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How Covid paved the Road to Serfdom, by Rob Sutton

Posted on January 14, 2021 | 1 comment

Central planning of any stripe leads to authoritarianism and eventually, totalitarianism. From Rob Sutton at thecritic.co.uk:

Hayek suggested a society which sacrificed liberty for security would gradually submit itself to authoritarian control

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom maintains a near unrivalled influence on the political imagination of conservative and classical liberal thinkers. Published in 1943, at the height of the Keynesian consensus, it elaborated a worldview considered intolerable within academic economics. 

The central thesis of The Road to Serfdom is that descent into tyranny is the ultimate and inevitable trajectory of a society in which the sovereignty of the individual is subverted in the accumulation of economic power by the state. Central planning leads invariably to authoritarianism. Hayek is not timid in making these claims.  

Studying the seemingly disparate political systems which dominated Europe in the run-up to the Second World War (communism, fascism, socialism), Hayek concluded that they each had a common endpoint – the development of a totalitarian state. Despite their contrasting social and economic goals, each necessitated the central consolidation of power and the explicit planning of an economy to achieve those goals.

As such, their distinct political flavours were largely irrelevant to their ultimate destination. Position along the political axis was less important than most commentators predicted. The binary Hayek was interested in, rather than left wing versus right wing, was whether the state uses its authority to promote individual freedom or to restrict it.

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The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump, by Glenn Greenwald

Posted on December 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

They’ve been calling Trump an authoritarian fascist for four years, but they’ll authoritarian fascists are the Joe Biden crowd. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom.
(L-R): Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY,TOBIAS SCHWARZ,ANGELA WEISS,MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.

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The Race Worthy of Hate, by Eric Peters

Posted on June 22, 2020 | 1 comment

Collectivism is a political philosophy (or religion), not a race, but it’s certainly “worthy of hate.” From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

One of the many depressing aspects of the falling apart of the country is the reorganization of it along constructed racial lines.

The blacks are out of control! Or rather, are presented as such. Whites oppress! All of them, all the time. Since time began!

It is the Jews who are behind it all!

But who is really behind it all? Let’s pull back the curtain and see what we can find.

The Gauleiter of Virginia – Ralph Northam, aka “Coonman” – isn’t Jewish. Neither is the Gauleiter of New York or California.

Their “race” – their religion – is authoritarian collectivism.

And that is our enemy.

Not Barack Obama’s skin. His “faith.” Which he shares with his predecessor, whose white skin and non-Jewishness didn’t immunize him against authoritarian collectivism.

This is the foundational disease and it comes in every color of the rainbow. To avoid becoming sickened by it, we must not let it infect us.

Or rather, not allow it to undermine us. And empower those preaching it.

If we collectivize others then we have no basis for objecting to being collectivized ourselves.

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Authoritarians Using Coronavirus Fear to Destroy America, by Ron Paul

Posted on May 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

The coronavirus response had nothing to do with health. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

A Fresno, California waffle restaurant dared to open its doors for business this weekend to the delight of a long line of customers, who waited up to two hours for the “privilege” of willingly spending their money in a business happy to serve them breakfast on Mother’s Day. This freedom of voluntary transaction is the core of what we used to call our free society. But in an America paralyzed by fear – ramped up by a mainstream media that churns out propaganda at a level unparalleled in history – no one is allowed to enjoy themselves.

Thankfully everyone carries a smartphone these days and can record and upload the frequent violations of our Constitutional liberties. In the case of the waffle restaurant, thanks to a cell phone video we saw the police show up in force and try to push through the crowd waiting outside. An elderly man who was next in line to enter was indignant, complaining that he had been waiting two hours to eat at the restaurant and was not about to step aside while the police shut down the place. The police proceeded to violently handcuff and arrest the man, dragging him off while his wife followed sadly behind him to the police car.

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Lincoln and Trump: Two of a Kind? by James Bovard

Posted on July 5, 2019 | Leave a comment

Although Lincoln has a nice memorial in Washington, he was a thoroughgoing authoritarian, even more so than Donald Trump. From James Bovard at mises.org;

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President Trump has outraged legions of political opponents with his plan to give a Fourth of July speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A Washington Post columnist frets that Trump’s speech will leave a “stain” that “won’t ever completely wash away.” But before any more teeth-gnashing occurs, we should recognize the surprising parallels between Trump and President Lincoln.

Trump sparked an uproar in 2017 by tweeting derisively about the “so-called judge” who blocked his order severely restricting immigration from seven nations. Twitter was not around in the 1860s so Lincoln never took online swipes at the judiciary. However, when Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled in 1861 that Lincoln had no right to suspend habeas corpus along a railroad corridor, Lincoln ignored his decision. The following year, Lincoln greatly expanded the suspension, resulting in the arrest and military trials of people who had done nothing more than insult the president. Up to 15,000 northerners became political prisoners as a result of Lincoln’s orders.

Trump mortifies the press corps and millions of non-ink-stained wretches when he denounces that the media is “the enemy of the American people.” Lincoln refrained from such rude comments during his four years in the White House. However, on May 18, 1864, Lincoln issued an executive order for “arrest and imprisonment of irresponsible newspaper reporters and editors” after the New York World and Journal of Commerce published an incorrect report on a pending expansion of conscription. Lincoln forcibly shut down 300 newspapers in the North that were insufficiently supportive of military policies and hundreds of editors, publishers, and reporters were tossed into prison without charges.

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The Authoritarian Impulse: Getting What We Really Don’t Want, by Fred Reed

Posted on April 6, 2017 | 1 comment

Fred Reed’s warning may well turn out to be prescient. From Reed on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

As a society crumbles, as bitter divisions grow and disorder spreads and nothing seems to work, anger comes and people begin to want a man who will say “Enough!” and slap down the malefactors–by any means necessary. A man who will make the trains run on time. A man who will make it safe to walk in the parks.

This is the authoritarian impulse. As corruption grows, as a coagulated government fails to function, the temptation comes. It is coming.

Recently I read that in Brazil some thirty men gang-raped a young woman, left her emotionally devastated, bleeding, with a ruptured bladder, and laughed as they did it before posting the video online. My first thought was, that they should be rounded up, shot without ceremony, and dropped into a public sewer. I meant this without a trace of hyperbole.

Two questions:

First, what proportion of the general public would agree with me in private? Second, what proportion would say so publicly? That is, say to hell with legal procedure, clotted bureaucracy, years of appeals, plea bargains, the insanity defense, and how they were troubled youth.

The ratio of the first to the second I will call Fred’s Fraction in a lunge for sociological immortality. It is an indicator of a country’s explosive potential, of how much anger exists and how tightly the lid is held on. When a great many are very sick of misbehavior, and government prevents both discussion and remedy, people begin to want someone in power who will forcibly end the detested behavior.

As we read day after day after day of beheadings of priests in Europe, of trucks driven into crowds, restaurants blown up, staffs of newspapers killed, always to the cry of “Allahu Akbar,” how many people begin to think–Send the army to round them up, put them on a ship, and beach it on the African coast? How many dare say it publicly?

To continue reading: The Authoritarian Impulse: Getting What We Really Don’t Want

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The Age of Authoritarianism: Government of the Politicians, by the Military, for the Corporations, by John Whitehead

Posted on February 23, 2016 | 1 comment

From John W. Whitehead on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

America is at a crossroads.

History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age—the age of authoritarianism. Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

Let me take you on a brief guided tour, but prepare yourself. The landscape is particularly disheartening to anyone who remembers what America used to be.

The Executive Branch: President Obama, like many of his predecessors, has routinely disregarded the Constitution when it has suited his purposes, operating largely above the law and behind a veil of secrecy, executive orders and specious legal justifications. Rest assured that no matter who wins this next presidential election, very little will change. The policies of the American police state will continue.

The Legislative Branch: Congress may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America. Abuses of office run the gamut from elected representatives neglecting their constituencies to engaging in self-serving practices, including the misuse of eminent domain, earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracting in return for personal gain and campaign contributions, having inappropriate ties to lobbyist groups and incorrectly or incompletely disclosing financial information.

The Judicial Branch: The Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the United States Supreme Court have become the guardians of the American police state in which we now live.

Shadow Government: America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she assumes office. He or she will also inherit a shadow government, one that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country. Referred to as the Deep State, this shadow government is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now.

To continue reading: The Age of Authoritarianism: Government of the Politicians, by the Military, for the Corporations

 

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Take Your Pick of the “Isms” by Eric Peters

Posted on February 10, 2016 | 3 comments

From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Is this con really going to sell… again?

The neo-con intellectual Francis Fukuyama claimed the “end of history” after the fall of the Soviet Union. The ascendance – in perpetuity – of authoritarian democracy (there can be no other kind) as the new order of the ages.

But based on last night’s political happenings, it appears we’re going back a few chapters for a remedial lesson in other forms of authoritarianism.

Leave-me-be-ism is off the table. Very few takers.

Once again, the populace is presented with – take your pick – strutting, bullying fascism (in the form of America’s business-suited Duce, Donald Trump) or the rumple-suited friendly-sounding socialism of America’s take on Leon Trotsky, Bernie Sanders.

Such a nice old man! He cares about us!

Or (cue the Duce) he will lead us!

Heads or tails, authoritarianism always wins.

Trump promises – and will deliver – order. As his prototype, the Duce did. He will make sure the trains run on time. And many other such things. Thyssen and Krupp… GE and ExxonMobil. We are going to have a time!

Sanders, meanwhile, promises an easy ride and Free Stuff – and will deliver that. By taking more of your stuff. By having other people ride your back. Bernie will hold the reigns.

All for the common good, of course.

It’s what both of them claim – as their historical antecedents always claimed. Give me power and you will not recognize the place ten years from now!

Certainly.

People continue to fall for this. Over and over again. It is astonishing. And depressing.

Doesn’t anyone read anymore?

To continue reading: Take Your Pick of the “Isms”

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