Fundamental Misunderstanding
Dave Niewert continues his excellent series on neo-fascism this morning, with a post on the nature of the "eliminationist" rhetoric of the far Right (warning: really long!). I hate to keep harping on this, but Dave is so right on about so much that it's worth singing his praises repeatedly. Also, I have other work to do today and am unlikely to have a big post until later or tomorrow, so go read Orcinus with, ahem, added emphasis.
I appeneded the following comment to Dave's post:
There's a socio-economic component to all this as well. The siege mentality is incaulcated in circumstances where economic uncertainty is greatest, where powerless people look for explanations for their inability to get ahead or achieve the sort of prosperity and status they believe they are entitled to. One tends to see fundamentalism as an escape from the complexity of reality; perhaps it is best understood as a very rational coping mechanism for people who realistically don't have much of a chance to advance socially or economically. The desire to punish those who are comfortable enough, for whatever reason, to extend tolerance to others is the flip-side of Leftist revolutionism for the goal of economic redistribution, based on the same emotional core of envy, helplessness and repression. To socialists, a just society is one where all are equally poor; to a fundamentalist, a just society is one where all are equally miserable.
If this is true, it perhaps implies that the solution to the crisis of democracy brought about by the rise of these people is economic, social and pyschological more than political. Basically, corrupt their children, teach them to expand their universe of possibilities, and give them the means and opportunity to achieve more than the limited range of experience afforded by a fundamentalist view of the world. This is, of course, precisely what the Right fears that progressives intend for them. In that way, at least, we seem to understand each other.
Feel free to continue the conversation there or here.
PS - As Verdanda is the overwhelming choice of the non-Ivan readership (because you must all be girly-men or girly-girls), I will give it a try for the next week or so and see how it looks.
10:20:45 AM 
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