Every now and then, I like to ponder the nature of fascism and its relationship to socialism. I haven’t done my due diligence in this regard but more so have just pulled what insights I can from my knowledge of the theory, the history, and current events pared down to essentials to the best of my ability. Last night I stumbled over the idea that fascism, like Nietzscheanism, is a brand of “noble villainy” in which some person or group has the “courage” to accept that life requires predation. But unlike Nietzscheanism, fascism has a socialist element that either a) provides a clever predator with a storehouse of useful idiots to consume, or b) absolves the self-doubting predator of wrongdoing by arming him with the validation of countless others.
Of course, for the unwashed masses, the picture often looks a lot more like good old fashioned socialism. There’s always this piecemeal-ness about political movements that opens up their opponents to being accused of the “slippery slope” fallacy when they’re really just identifying the essentials of an ideology, which is how some context-less ideal like socialism becomes fascism on the ground, one step into the mud at a time. And that’s exactly what _this _looks like to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMzReK3cNhY
I can’t help but draw a parallel to the story Piekoff tells about the Academy Awards streaker appearing to him as an isolated absurdity but to Rand as a nihilistic “canary in the coal mine”. And I can’t help but believe that the people involved in these protests have about all the mental sophistication and impulsivity of the streaker. As weird as this whole scene is, it’s pretty clearly both xenophobic and anti-rich, which is the secret formula for fascism that most people today are so inexcusably blind to. But you may also notice to that some of the graffiti says “CARTERISTAS WELCOME”, which translates to “pickpocketers welcome”. The nihilism behind this is the same as the that which birthed the looters and rioters spurred on by BLM and to Western support for Hamas.
For those of you who follows Stephen Hicks’s work, you know that he credits postmodernists with recognizing that the logical endpoint of their philosophy is tribalism, and this story is a case in point. I often get caught up in comparing communism to fascism by the fact that communism is explicitly internationalistic, but I realize now that this is just a floating ideal within a floating ideal and that socialism and globalism are totally incompatible. Capitalism is far more well-equipped to take hold in disparate corners of the world. There is a virality about wealth-creation that socialists deem imperialistic. On the smallest scale, you can see this sort of thing in the “buy local” movements that appear in the form of bumper stickers all over the affluent world.
But it’s exactly the silliness of this anti-tourism movement that terrifies me. No one will know or care about this movement until protesters get the balls to put their morals where their fists are. The only element separating this protest from the Night of Broken Glass is time. And I feel ridiculous saying that, but as we know, absurdity is not a strong disincentive. It might clarify things to view this movement as an instance of “Baby’s First Political Tantrum” or a one-week free trial of Nazism.
Of course, this could be a flash in the pan. I’m young, and I’m sure things like this have always happened. But the fact that it’s possible at all is flabbergasting. The fact that these people don’t feel like right-wingers when they suggest tourism caps or taxes is just evidence of their being very, very philosophically consistent in their economic tribalism. From a BBC story on the same topic:
“Malaga is one of several Spanish cities which are planning on introducing restrictions on the granting of licenses for short-term accommodations. But Barcelona is going even further, and in 2028 it plans to revoke the licenses of all of its ten thousand or so tourist apartments. But as Spain’s popularity as a tourist destination shows no sign of fading, many are asking whether the country’s success if still a good thing.”
No, how could success possibly be a good thing?
What do you guys think? Am I overreacting?
