Visceral Epistemology: the Politics of Hate and Equivocation
Fascism is an authoritarian ideology on the conservative axis of the political spectrum. Fascism is rooted in control; not self-control, but external dominance. Dominance decorated with nationalism. Threats to domination, therefore, are interpreted as threats to nationalism and vice versa. There can be no compromise in politics from the fascist perspective: Compromise is a weakness. Compromise undermines the adoration of the nation. This emotional attachment to nationalism also limits critical self-reflection. Self-restraint is a weakness. To the fascist mindset, success is glory and failure is a noble sacrifice. Fascist politics is visceral and rooted in the conflict with the Other. In Jungian terms, fascism is rooted in uncoordinated instinctual desires of the id. Truth, then, is a feeling. Hidden in the shadows of human unconsciousness, feelings interpret external realities. Perceptions feel true or feel untrue. Perceptions become personal realities and conflicting information is dangerous. It is a threat to control and the perceived reality that feels good. Conflicting information, as well as the people and organizations that disseminate conflicting information, are dangerous. They are the enemy. The external manifestation of the unleashed id can be an unhinged mob as easily as it can be repressive calls for law and order. In the fascist mind, it is not a contradiction, but a pivoting necessity to preserve dominance and the perceived truth. To be strong is to be right.
Communism is a liberal rejection of power structures, political and economic. But nature abhors a vacuum. Marx’s prediction of a workers’ utopia ignored id as much fascism embraces the id. The dominant individualism of Western political and religious thought fed the id into twisting Marx’s utopia into liberal authoritarianism, a desire for power disguised as egalitarianism. Thus, European communism and European fascism became two-sides of the same coin of control; the two sides of the drachma of dominance. Conversely, it is perhaps the collectivism historically present in Eastern Thought, specifically Confucianism, that explains communism’s more comparative successes in the Pacific Rim, particularly China and Vietnam (the failure of North Korean communism is due to its non integration into the global economy, not its political authoritarianism). However, East Asian communism is more rooted in the super ego’s need for rules and order. The mirage of order in European fascism is manifest in East Asian communism.
Democracy is neither the left-wing surrender to absolute collectivism or the right-wing obsession with personal power. Democracy is a negotiation and a balance between the individual wants and the common good. Democracy is a commitment to a managed conflict, fought in the ballot boxes, and argued in the halls of power. Democracy is not the Machiavellian grasp for power by fascist individualism or communist collectivists. The receding sense of democracy in the United States is fed by the perception of extremist ideological polarities. However, the calls for equity in the United States are not predicated on collectivist kowtowing but correcting a tilt of extreme individualism that has been rooted in systematic economic injustice. The use of protest to assert the economic and political redistribution of power is not a parallel activity to the use of state violence and insurrection to retain individual and tribal power. The equivocation of the two is a further reflection of the fascist mindset that perceives personal power as an entitlement and empowered Others as a threat. Equivocating is the delusional avoidance of self-reflection and responsibility predicated on the personal preservation of power and the perception of truth as attainment, not a process.
