America has a startlingly strong fascist streak.
You can see it in all the talk of politicians being a “uniter”.
That’s not actually a good thing.
“Unity” is not a virtue of itself.
I mean, sure, it’s fine if you have it; all the corporate hippies trying for consensus in every long, boring meeting you’ve been forced to attend were also trying for unity. Unity as consensus is fine.
But it’s not a legitimate political goal.
“Unity” in politics is just code for “everyone line up behind me”.
(To be fair, that’s often what corporate types mean by “consensus” too …)
And that’s not a good thing.
Because treating unity as a goal is, in fact, the underlying spirit of fascism.
That word gets thrown around a lot in American politics, but here it’s actually appropriate.
Fascism is the elevation of political unity as a virtue in itself.
It’s what the symbol, the fasces, means. The bundle of reeds has for thousands of years symbolized strength in unity.
And that is fundamentaly antithetical to democracy.
So seriously, stop it with all the “uniter” who’s going to “heal the country” stuff.
I don’t want a “united” country; I want a country where every person is equal, that respects the right of every person to live their own life and to have their own say in society.
And “unity” won’t make that happen.
One thought on “Unity: The Spirit Of Fascism”