I sometimes use the f-word as shorthand, but I don’t mean directly to associate the ideology of the times we’re moving into with that adopted by Mussolini, Hitler and others, which contributed to the vast destruction and holocausts in Europe and beyond last century.
In recent conversations with family and friends, I’ve tried to avoid getting drawn into how a self-defining group of humans in various corners of nation states of particular northern continents believe that their personal safety and “rights” are under threat from another group of humans with different coloured skins and who may worship different idols (religious or not), with specific rules for their adherents’ about what kinds of behaviours, dress, interactions and physical abuses (of humans and non-human beings) are deemed acceptable.
To me the battle that’s whipped up between “Islam” and “the West” (for example) is a distraction from the larger war, as it’s between people with very limited access to the things they need to survive and thrive in their communities, and those with just about enough to keep them in fear of the “other” taking these things away.
For Islam and the West try substituting Black and White, Trans and Cis, queer and straight, female and male, “economic migrants” and “ex-pats”, and I hope this is clear.
The vast majority of us are powerless in the wars of control over capital and resources, waged by national governments under the direction of mega-wealthy individuals and globalised corporations. Their aims include turning us against each other for their own financial gain (“competition”), and maintaining the soul- and planet-destroying neoliberal “democracies” that we light-skinned people of the global North invented, developed and continue to impose on those who live in the territories that we claim is ours, and whose people (not to mention all the other species) we keep in subordination with our advanced technologies and corporate control over global communication networks, including most of what we call the press and mass media.
We’re led by the algorithmically-selected media we consume to blame and hate each other for our differences. Meanwhile, the love and care we naturally feel for our fellow beings (when we don’t believe they’re a threat), together with our innate desire to build sustainable communities out of shared resources, are gouged out of us by the system we live within.
To me this gouging of our humanity makes me think of how money-poor darker-skinned children and adults in the majority world dig up the critical minerals that we in the “developed” North need for our rampant energy consumption, and also how massive, indiscriminate bombs and other destructive technologies made and deployed by “civilised” imperialist regimes gouge out human populations, pre-extant cultures and whole living ecosystems from parts of the world that are – seen as – strategic to global corporate interests.
The places currently off-limits to the global capitalist vultures are those where Western-led media and (NATO) military power hold little or no sway. A person who appears to be a severely emotionally damaged man has taken over the US presidency, with similarly-traumatised “tech bros” now in positions of extreme power. It’s clear that a key part of their programme is to accelerate US colonialist extraction, feeding their desire for power, personal wealth and dominance over “lesser” beings, in a bid to meet their (real) needs for love, recognition and community. As this programme is doomed to fail, partly due to ensuing environmental catastrophes, the next few years are going to be interesting.
As a cis, het, white English-speaking man I may remain safe with most of my basic needs met, as our empire of fake dreams implodes in an orgy of destruction. However, if you don’t share my personal characteristics you might not do very well, along with the majority of beings on this planet. Fascism 2.0 is similar to the first version, but with better tech as autonomous drones, resource-hogging artificial intelligence and a super-powered propaganda machine, manifested by the walled gardens of our corporatised internet, enable authoritarian governments everywhere to manufacture consent for their escalating atrocities.
The universal needs that separate us emotion-feeling human animals from the tech bro’s machines, such as love, friendship, compassion and community, are what we’ll have to put all of our efforts into to be able to remain alive and sane in the unfolding landscape.
Further reading
You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism
Betrayed by Green Capitalism, Here’s How We Can Build a Livable Future
We need to connect
How To Be Both Happy And Well-Informed
