So, Just Who Are the Fascists?

Emmanuel Macron won the French presidential election handily to the great relief of the worldwide neoliberal community, the same community that hysterically bemoans Russian interference and purported fake news as the reason its beloved choice for president of the United States lost.

Interesting given the massive and open foreign interference by the United States and most of Western Europe in this French election and the clever dissemination of fake news about itself by the Macron campaign, which it then criticized with the collaboration of the media as evidence of Russian interference. Kind of reminds me of the Ukrainian elections where, after a coup, the “Western” choice for president won. The Macron campaign has now merrily admitted that the fake news in the release of purportedly purloined email documents immediately preceding the election was planted, … by the Macron campaign itself, to discredit the unauthorized release of any accurate information the French electorate might have perceived as negative.

Bravo!!! How very clever. “Tricksy fellows” (as Gollum might have put it), applause, applause, applause by all lovers of Western-style democracy.

Given that the Macron campaign purportedly received electoral advice and assistance from Obama – Clinton political operatives it may also reveal a good deal about the reality of fake news and purported foreign interference in the United States presidential election of 2016, and about what can be expected in the future.

Interestingly, in stark contrast to the response by the losers in the United States campaign, Ms. La Pen has graciously conceded her defeat and her followers are not staging massive demonstrations or attempting to delegitimize the election, tactics usually associated with antidemocratic politics (except now by the United States mainstream media with respect to current United States politics). Tactics usually associated with fascism.

But then, just who are the fascists?

The truth is that neither politicians nor purported civic activists give a damn about democracy or truth in electoral campaigns, only the results and the attainment and maintenance of power matter and any tactics are fair, as is blatant dishonesty and hypocrisy, if the cause is just. As we all know (don’t we), the ends justify the means. Any ends at all.

Where neoliberals are concerned, there is no left, just different shades of right. And it just may be our social nature to care little about truth or fairness in politics, finding fault only when our own candidates lose, although that now seems to be more true of that political segment that claims to be liberal but which based on its political record, demonstrates something very different, for example, the United States Democratic Party. United States Republicans are quite a bit more politically honest albeit admittedly right wing neoconservative neoliberals whose policies may well prove disastrous, especially when they conflict with science. What wonderful choices the United States electorate, like the French electorate, is left with. “Ain’t democracy just great?”

One would think that would leave a vacuum on the political left but it is so fragmented and so inept in its own defense that the electorate that would so much benefit from its ascendancy permits itself to be deluded otherwise. Progressives everywhere seem to be mere putty in the hands of the neoliberal political pragmatists who refer to themselves as centrists (e.g., Macron, the Clintons, etc.), who only seem to lose to other neoliberals and neoconservatives.

Anyway, introspection is more than just appropriate.

Something for real progressives to consider.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2017; all rights reserved