Clowns to the Left of Me...

Thinking straight, outside of the circus tent

Photo by Giuseppe Mondì on Unsplash

As any fule kno, an equation containing a multiplication function of zero will, all other functions notwithstanding, deliver the result of zero.

Similarly, any topic multiplied by politics will unfailingly deliver a result that is 100% political. Try it:

Education x politics = Politics

Medicine x politics = Politics

Energy x politics = Politcs

all expressed as f x(p) = P.

I don’t particularly like being drawn into political discussions, but the fact is that it is simply not possible to discuss any topic today without automatically finding oneself on the brunt of some political stereotyping or indeed inferences being made about the whole person from some tiny slither of their perspective, probably tenuously held at best and derived from a mixture of personal experience, a value framework of principles and current state of knowledge.

This is of more than passing interest to me as the last few days have been brim full of examples in which the ludicrousness of our public discourse, warped through what might untechnically be called the filter of official narrative, is being laid bare for anyone with a whit of common sense to comprehend. Let’s take the word Fascist, shall we?

Epithets can be just as subject to hyperinflation as money, with the same result: they become worthless and unfit for purpose. Or school grades in which in some countries (UK, I am looking at you) merely scraping past the 50% mark is enough to reward you with an A, which used to mean something and now means nothing. So when you hear someone being described as “fascist” all you know is that that person has dared to voice an opinion or represent a position that has not quite caught up with the sanctioned narrative train hurtling at terrifying speed towards the ultra-left, collectivist margin, a group that includes more or less everybody except the intellectual class (who probably believe it) and the mandarins ruling the fiefdoms of bureaucratic agencies (who probably don’t) plus the Silicon Valley master manipulators (whose malthusian self-delusional nihilism suggests that they really do believe it, God help us.)

Here is a definitely non-exhaustive list of “positions” that now qualify you as a fascist if you value them or at the very least prepared to listen to arguments supporting them

Christianity
Family
Patrotism (National identity)
Parenting
Motherhood
Fatherhood
Gender (of course)
Other sources of energy other than Solar, Wind or Pixie Dust
Climate change being anything other than entirely our fault
A fondness for meat
Cars
Liberty
Prosperity
Privacy
Education (as opposed to “schooling”)
Informed Consent with regard to medical choices
Thinking
Freedom of Speech
Constitutional Rights pertaining to the individual
In fact, the whole concept of the Individual

Georgia Meloni, the new democratically elected, undeniably charismatic leader of the newly minted Italian Government, about whose politics and political background I knew nothing until last weekend and now know slightly more than nothing, is according to all the headlines of all newspapers and news-media sites a dangerous Far Right Wing and Fascist whose election raises the spectre of Mussolini and therefore by implication the imposition of nationalist military dictatorship on the poor Italian population threatening the very core of European culture. The video clip from a speech of hers which contained her supportive position on a number of menu items from the above list and which went viral this week was taken down by YouTube having garnered north of 20 millions views this week (see Laura Dodsworth’s excellent piece on this with a precis transcript) or watch it on Twitter here:

Fr Calvin Robinson @calvinrobinson

Italy’s new Prime Minister, Giorgia Melo’s speech is inspiring. 🙏 She just wants to be able to call herself a woman, a mother, a Christian, an Italian. Ironically, identity politics destroys our identities. “Everything that defines us is now an enemy.”

The Characteristics of Fascism

I cannot say that this didn’t resonate with me and so I am now resigned to the fact that I must ipso facto be a Right Wing Fascist. If I am going to be labelled one, I would at least like to know what it actually means in it’s original form rather than the “any position which doesn’t exactly match mine and therefore make me feel really uncomfortable” meaning now concocted by an increasingly hysterical progressive left.

In his 1944 book “As We Go Marching” (which I picked up in a flea market some 15 years ago) John T. Flynn analysed the contours of Benito Mussolini’s political map and tried to understand the essence of fascism and the fascist movement. Spoiler alert: I am unable to agree with one single one of the eight foundational characteristics of Flynn’s definition, which is now causing me great anxiety as I am failing my Fasiscm 101 onboarding test across the whole front.) This is how he describes the operational characteristics of that political movement:

“As we survey the whole scene of Italy, we may now name all the essential ingredients of fascism. It is a form of social organisation
1. In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powers - totalitarianism;
2. In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator - the leadership principle;
3. In which government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to function under an immense bureaucracy;
4. In which the economic society is organized on the syndicalist model, that is by producing groups formed into craft and professional categories under the supervision of the state;
5. In which the government and the syndicalist organisations operate the capitalist society based on the planned, autarchical principle;
6. In which the government holds itself responsible to provide the nation with adequate purchasing power by public spending and borrowing;
7. In which militarism is used as a conscious mechanism of government;
8. In which imperialism is included as a policy inevitably flowing from militarism as well as other elements of fascism.
Wherever you find a nation using all of these devices you will know that this is a fascist nation. In proportion as any nation uses most of them you may assume it is tending in the direction of fascism.

Because the brutalities committed by fascist gangs, the suppressions of writers and statesmen, the aggressions of the fascist governments against neighbours make up the raw materials of news, the public is familiar chiefly with dictator element in fascism and is only very dimly aware of its other factors.”
~ John T. Flynn ‘As We go Marching’ (1944) [emphasis mine]

I don’t want to put any ideas in your head, but it is difficult not to see that the EU’s unelected President, who presides over an unaccountable (literally) agglomeration of nation-states that in fact and spirit fulfil a fair number of the above criteria and has been lobbying for its own consolidated military capability for years, is using barely concealed threats against a democratically elected government in a way that suggests a, shall we say, robust confidence in the “leadership principle”.

Liz Churchill ™ 🇨🇦 @liz_churchill1_

New World Order’s EU’s Prison Warden, Ursula von der Leyen, explains they have ‘tools’ if Italy elects a Conservative.

You can’t make this up.

For your edification and my exculpation and also in an attempt to illustrate once and for all the absurdity of the “left-right” labelling program, here are the seven foundational principles of Libertarianism, under which a very broad church of individuals with a similarly broad interpretation of the implications of those principles can be subsumed, with the entire canon of which I wholeheartedly resonate.

The Principles of Libertarianism

1. Right to Self-Ownership: Your life is YOURS. Your body is YOURS.

2. Non-Aggression Principle: Never initiate aggression or violation of other people's rights

3. Sanctity of Private Property:

4. Free Exchange:

5. Decentralisation: Organisation of society and distribution of resources decided at the lowest necessary level

6. Individualism: Recognises the highest value attenuates to the individual and that each individual is unique and endowed with inalienable rights. Also, that only individuals make choices and can be motivated (not ‘groups’);

7. Voluntarism: Free choice to co-operate with others, maximising value for individuals choosing to co-operate.

Nobody who resonates with any one of the aforementioned Libertarian principles is going to feel anything but revulsion for the organising characteristics of the fascist model, but hey-ho, we are in a Humpty-Dumpty world now

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

―Lewis Carroll,Through the Looking Glass

(taken from Pitchfork Papers “Sticks & Stones”, 29th July 2022).

To pick another word from the list above, energy, for instance, our Humpty-Dumpty world got a whole lot more complicated when those two gas lines, Nordstream 1 and 2 were almost simultaneously placed hors de combat by what can only be an act of deliberate sabotage. The speculations have been gyrating faster than a whirling dervish after a mushroom trip in constructing a plausible whodunnit narrative, but I defer to the always prescient analytical Doomberg Team in their outstanding analysis this week in print and in several excellent podcast interviews, notably with Palisades Gold Radio and Grant Williams’ “Week in Doom”, who states that “somebody has done it and they know that they have done it and somebody else know that they haven’t done it.” What we do know is that the aggrieved counterparty in this trade now has an invitation to retaliate, making a nasty situation a whole lot nastier as well as complicated for the climate communists, who are running out of places to hide as their “anti fascist” green policies (in name only) reveal them to be what we Right Wing Fascists have always known them to be, a billionaires’ grift program and predatory “war” requiring squillions of extra funds in the public coffers and an invisible terror to cow the children…

In his conversation with Tom Brodrovics, Doomberg’s chief writer and spokesman provides a deeply incisive formula for thinking about the unavoidable trade-offs in the energy production challenge (around minute 40:00 in the conversation. I reproduce it at length here, as I believe it to be the single most important thought I have yet heard articulated in the endlessly weary climate and energy production debate:

“In the green utopia as you describe it, there are no trade-offs. Literally, electricity is immaculately produced and batteries just magically appear and it’s a cake that bakes itself and the ingredients are free. But that is not reality.

There is no perfect solution. Only trade-offs. The amount of primary energy we produce dictates the integrated standard of living of humanity. If we produce less primary energy, the standard of living goes down, in aggregate. And so the question is, does the integral standard of living of humanity matter to you? Is that a trade-off? Can we make do with less in your view? OK, well who gets to decide that and who has to make do with less? […}

If we have decided collectively - and it might even be the best decision - that we want to organise our economy around the following equation:

The amount of standard of living divided by our carbon emissions

Then that is a great optimization function. You can’t just look at carbon emissions without also looking at the numerator. So that ratio might be something you would want to optimize and there are intelligent ways to do that, that require very little technological invention and they include

• a massive renaissance of nuclear power

• a systemic replacement of coal with natural gas {…}

• and to continue to invest in the alternative energy sector so that if we get a major breakthrough we can quickly implement it…

At their core these people [the environmentalists] do not want a highre numerator, they just want a lower denominator, which means a lot more dead people - let’s just call it what it is: anti-human malthusianism.”

~ Doomberg in conversation with Tom Brodrovics, Palisade Gold Radio (28th Sep. 22)

It would appear that this largely self-inflicted energy crisis is a forcing function that has the potential to bring the entire elitist narrative crashing down around its ears as nation after nation replaces its Davos-centric climate communists and collectivis regimes with Right Wing Fascists who promise to stop doing stuff that is inimical to life, prosperity and sanity. Pretty it is not going to be, but it might be effective. If it isn’t I am adding this song to my Gulag Roadtrip Playlist, to sing in the wagon on our way to Siberia…(additional song recommendations welcome)