Unity. The New Fascism

Joe Biden is now calling for an end to our previous division and a new era of unity. This does not seem to be in the cards. He and his party hated Mr. Trump, called him an illegitimate president and made constant attempts to remove him from power during his administration from start to finish (and beyond). The millions who agreed with his policies were held in contempt, and were accused of giving their support through ignorance, malevolence, or greed. And now Mr. Biden is rushing headlong to put in place a full-blown liberal agenda regardless of their desires.

Joe Biden is not calling for a unity in which there is serious consideration of the other party's ideas or a seeking of compromise positions. No indeed. It is a unity in which his party's ideas are the correct ones and that all are to be united for their furtherance. For this type of unity all dissent is to be squelched and those who have differing ideas are to be reeducated.

This scenario puts me in mind of the leader of the Italian people during the 1930's, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini was a socialist at heart, a devotee of Karl Marx, but broke from the party when he favored Italy's involvement in the subsequent world war. He suffered a brutal end at the hands of his people. Nevertheless, during his heyday, his governing concepts made him the darling of progressives around the world who admired his political stance. His idea was that the Italians were too individualistic and needed a strong central government, with him and his party as the leader. All facets of their society, businesses large and small, the media, the entertainers, and all the citizens were to work together for the good of the whole. He undertook a host of reform projects, and famously made the Italian trains run on time. Although seductive in theory the problem with his philosophy of central control was that such an arrangement could not tolerate dissent. Opposing voices in the media were shut down. Dissident politicians from other parties were removed and replaced. The police and military were realigned. Young thugs were recruited to enforce his movement among the public.

He used as a symbol of his movement the ancient Roman idea of bundling sticks together with thongs to use as axe handles or blunt instruments. His idea was that the individual sticks could be easily broken but bundled together they had great strength. The Romans called these devices "fasces", so he named his new progressive idea "fascismo". In English "fascism".

 

 

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