Beware of fascism

The word ‘fascism’ has suffered a hyperinflation and consequent loss of meaning. In the eyes of some, for example, it’s an umbrella covering such rather different personages as Adolf Hitler and Margaret Thatcher.

Since Lady Thatcher was really a Whig, and the same word describes her and Hitler, one may infer that Hitler was a Whig too, if not exactly of the Rockingham variety. Meaning that no term can be as broad as that and still denote something concrete.

Hence one has to specify exactly what one means by fascism. So here’s my definition: it’s a systematic attempt by mob or state (typically first by one, then by the other) to make people submit to a pernicious ideological ethos that deliberately perverts morality, culture and common sense in pursuit of power.

The political slogans brandished by a fascist mob, or whether it’s described as right-wing or left-wing, are to me immaterial. It’s the core that matters, not the veneer.

Normally associated with fascism are goose-stepping militarisation, suppression of all liberties, hysterical rallies, concentration camps, genocide – but they only become prevalent after fascism has conquered.

They are, to use the terminology favoured by the Marxist variety of fascism, only the ‘superstructure’. The ‘basis’ is a tectonic shift of ethos, so gradual that each subsequent stage barely registers, appearing as it is to be a logical progression from an already accepted fait accompli.

Before the people are subjugated violently, they are subjugated culturally and often unwittingly. They are not only not taught to think, but are actively indoctrinated not to think.

The mob (otherwise known as ‘public opinion’), supported by government cajolement or diktat, is telling people what to think and not to think; what to feel and not to feel; what to say and not to say. And people obey on pain of ostracism or worse.

By the time the real nastiness arrives in the shape of an unapologetically oppressive regime, everyone has grown too enfeebled and complacent to resist. Only two options remain: to jump on the fascist bandwagon or to be crushed by it.

We are in Britain today going through that priming stage, with the old certitudes roundly mocked, displaced and often criminalised. The process has an accelerator built in; it speeds up as it goes along. Things that a few years ago were unthinkable, are now not just acceptable but solely acceptable; yesterday’s perversion becomes today’s norm; yesterday’s lunacy, today’s normality.

Merely listing the evidence supporting this melancholy observation would take more space than this format allows. Therefore, I can only offer a few starters for a thousand, and an assurance that these examples are typical.

Under mob pressure, Jordan Peterson, a popular social psychologist, has had his offer of Cambridge fellowship rescinded because “his work and views are not representative of the student body”.  

A general remark: professors are there to inform the views of the student body, not to represent them. Specifically, Prof. Peterson is guilty of refusing to accept the fascist ethos of political correctness.

He won’t mangle the English language with mob-dictated grammar, meaning he dares use the masculine personal pronouns. He brands as “cultural Marxism” the notion of a permanent war between the oppressors and the oppressed permeating every aspect of life. He describes the concept of white privilege as “a Marxist lie”. Worst of all, he uses the word ‘Marxism’ pejoratively rather than admiringly.

Prof. Peterson doesn’t just drop such gems and leave it at that. He presents cogent arguments, which in any other than a fascist culture could only be countered with other arguments. But fascists don’t argue: they scream, froth at the mouth, bully, threaten and dictate.

In that spirit, the philosopher Roger Scruton was sacked as housing advisor to the government for saying, among other ‘controversial’ things, that homosexuality isn’t normal. Sir Roger should have been more up on his terminology: normal is what agrees with the neo-fascist ethos; abnormal is anything that contradicts it.

Hence a perversion practised, according to the largest survey I’ve seen, by just over one per cent of the population is normal if the mob says it is – and heterosexuality is morally neutral at best, a survival of the oppressive past at worst.

Interestingly, unlike the brown variety of fascism, the red version always normalises homosexuality (along with abortion, cohabitation and ‘sexual freedom’) as a WMD in its war on tradition.

Thus the first modern country to legalise homosexuality was Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1934, a place and period not otherwise known for a laissez-faire attitude to life. Only when the Soviet red darkened towards brown were the anti-homosexuality laws introduced – and enforced.

Do those who sacked Sir Roger think homosexuality is normal? They don’t. They don’t think, full stop. Thought doesn’t come into this: they simply fear the backlash from the neo-fascist mob and take preemptive action just in case.

Especially since Sir Roger got deeper in hot water by insisting that ‘Islamophobia’ is a political term used by those who wish to stifle serious debate. What do those mandarins and other fruits think it is, a rigorous medical condition? Agreeing with the underlying politics is an act of submission to the neo-fascist mob; denying that the term is political, an abject surrender.

Moving from the academic field to the football pitch, the midfielder Adam Johnson has just been released from prison, having served three years of his six-year term.

Now, six years is a hefty sentence in our punishment-shy jurisprudence. Burglars, car thieves and muggers get nothing like that on first offence, and seldom on the subsequent ones. So what heinous crime did Mr Johnson commit?

He had sex with a star-struck 15-year-old girl, and the age of consent in the UK is 16. Apparently, it wasn’t even what the porn industry calls ‘full-pen’ sex, just some unspecified sexual activity, probably of the oral kind.

Now have you noticed how, when UK laws differ from continental ones, they tend to be harsher? It’s only in that way that Britain insists on upholding her sovereignty.

For example, I’ve just driven across France, where the motorway speed limit is 11 mph higher than in Britain. Add a civilised 10 miles to that limit, and you can actually get where you’re going.

In this matter too, the age of consent in France is 15 and in Germany, where the permissive Weimar spirit evidently lives on, it’s 14. Thus, had Mr Johnson played away from home in those countries, he would have broken no law.

Still, the law is the law and, by getting fellated in Britain, Mr Johnson did break it. However, it’s useful to remember the ancient distinction between malum prohibitum and malum in se.

In secular morality the footballer’s transgression falls into the first category: something wrong only because it’s prohibited, not because it’s inherently wicked.

One way or the other, Mr Johnson was punished and, as the old phrase goes, paid his – in my view exorbitant – debt to society. Case closed?

Not at all, according to the mob. Mr Johnson didn’t just break the law; he aided and abetted the perennial oppression and exploitation of women, which is just the sort of thing Prof. Peterson calls a ‘Marxist lie’.

Once a paedophile, always a paedophile, screamed the mob, as if the groupie was five, not 15. Mr Johnson isn’t a paedophile; he’s a sex offender. It’s that difference between malum prohibitum and malum in se again.

Anyway, I thought prison rehabilitates criminals, doesn’t it? Surely it’s a social service rather than a punitive institution, or at least that’s what the mob insists it is?

Well, that depends on the nature of the crime. When it’s committed against an individual or his property (murder, assault, robbery, burglary, theft), then yes, it’s society’s fault, not the criminal’s. But when it’s committed against the ethos, in this case that of women’s victimisation by men, predominantly by white Christians, then no rehabilitation is possible.

Hence no football team will hire Mr Johnson (who’s still a good player) – for the same reason that Cambridge uninvited Peterson and the UK government sacked Scruton. A braying neo-fascist mob is too powerful to be denied.

I don’t know whether the British public is primed (corrupted) sufficiently to welcome the fascist government of the Marxist variety that may well take over within months. I only hope that some people still know creeping fascism when they see it.