FASCISM?

  

 The weekend’s Guardian (Saturday 19^th September) contains a review by Daniel Trilling of a book by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor called “End Times Fascism.”   According to Trilling the purpose of the book is to warn us of a convergence of three  interests which are in effect encouraging the climate crisis rather than working to prevent it.  

The book focusses chiefly on the United States and identifies the  three interest as the “Religious Fanatics” ( the Christian Right who look forward to the Rapture and the end of the World, when the righteous will be "caught up to meet the Lord in the air,") the “Tech  Barons,” expecting to exploit AI and the “Political Entrepreneurs” who are anxious to “turn their nations into bunkered garrison states . . . in an increasingly aggressive scramble for natural resources.”

These three groups together are working towards what the book defines as  “End Times Fascism.”

If climate change is the biggest danger to our way of life (or even human life itself) then the second most serious danger we face is surely to Liberal Democracy, which I believe to be threatened by the same or similar forces.

Google defines fascism as  “a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology that places the perceived interest of the nation or race above individual rights.”

It  describes Fascism’s features as:

1 Dictatorial Leadership

2 Extreme Nationalism

3 Suppression of Opposition

4 Militarism and Regimentalism;

. . . and finally

5 Rejection of Liberal Democracy: Opposes pluralism, individual liberties, equality, communism, and socialism.

The first four features are very much in evidence in British Politics today, fuelled and encouraged by wealthy sources, some of them foreign.

If our political class is alert to the danger there is as yet not much sign of it. 

The Conservatives, probably in cohorts with Reform and Respect, seem likely to go along with it. Labour alone lacks the backbone to fight it (no cap on donations to parties, restriction on the right to protest, further drilling in the North Sea still on the cards, BBC fighting desperately for funding.)

 The principal raison d’être of the Greens is to halt and even reverse climate change, the principle raison d’être of the Liberal Democrats is to preserve, improve and extend Liberal Democracy. 

Both are desperately needed, in alliance with “one nation Tories, (of which there are, apparently , a number recently converted and attending the Liberal Democrat conference,) in government with Labour to preserve and improve and spread our way of life.