Green Velvet Fascism? little moma state?

Since some at Covenant Zone are always struggling to come up with a more precise nomenclature for our social and political betters, I thought the following story was noteworthy. It's often remarked that today's Green political religion is some kind of fascism in its desire to control peoples' behaviours. But what happens when the Greens themselves come to admit this? Do they make a real effort to accommodate greenism to human freedom?

globeandmail.com: Vancouver plan to prod citizens into behaving more green

Vancouver has come out with a 44-point plan to make you a better person and save the planet.

In an effort to make Vancouver "the greenest city" in a crowded field of municipal competitors, the plan will give you more encouragement to ride your bicycle with more routes and a public bike-share system. You'll be prodded to install low-flush toilets and insulation when you renovate or sell your home. Your garbage pickup will be reduced by half and you'll be nudged to start recycling your food scraps into green waste bins.

City council advocates of the plan swear they're not going to scold people to be green.

Penalties are pointless right now, "given that the opportunity hasn't existed for people to make good choices," Vision Vancouver Councillor Andrea Reimer said. "Generally speaking, this is like raising a child. You don't take a child outside and then start screaming at them for doing everything wrong."

I don't think I've ever seen a nannie statist be so frank about it... how does that change the statist?

Mayor Gregor Robertson concurred. "We're seeing examples of incentives working in other cities. So to add more initiatives that are punitive didn't make sense."

So instead of having monitors check your garbage to make sure you're recycling (the way San Francisco does) or banning certain kinds of packaging (the way Toronto does) or forcing you to install low-flush toilets when you're selling your house (like Berkeley does), the plan is all about creating opportunities, the politicians said.

Even the enforcement suggested in the Greenest City action plan - requiring that people make energy-efficient improvements if they sell or renovate their buildings extensively - will be done gently, the mayor said.

"Given that there's a significant cost, we'll look at an appropriate level of requirement," Mr. Robertson said. I think we can make that one work without being heavy-handed."

He also said the city would consider creative financing tools, such as breaks on property taxes and utility bills, to help people finance retrofits and upgrades.

Such approaches are more likely to succeed, environmental specialists said, because changing people's environmental behaviour takes a lot more than just telling them they have to be better or punishing them if they're not.

"There's quite a bit of evidence that the general carrot approach is better than the general stick approach," said Robert Gifford, a University of Victoria professor in the relatively new field of environmental-behaviour psychology, which has documented the lines of reasoning that people use to justify not altering their bad environmental ways.

Those reasons, which Mr. Gifford called the "12 dragons" of resistance, range from "how can just me riding my bike change anything" to "no one else I know is doing this" to "I don't think climate change is that big a deal." But one of the triggers to resisting is also a mistrust of authorities who appear to be acting like nannies.

Their thinking, Mr. Gifford noted, is "I don't like it when experts tell me what to do."

Or what to believe, mate... dragons? come on, Prof. "altering bad ways".

So the trick is to get people to buy into changing their behaviour by appealing to the flip side of all their resistance. So if one of their reasons for not changing is that they don't like being told what to do, a more positive approach led by someone like Mr. Robertson might work better.

"They might say, 'Oh, he's a cool guy who makes organic juice. I'll listen to what he has to say.' "

Sorry to say it, Dag, but your type obviously isn't on the behaviouralist's radar screen.

Anyway, alas, some will never have full faith in "show, don't tell":

Bans and penalties are sometimes useful because, while giving people opportunities is an important beginning, it's not always enough.

"At some point, you have to enforce some penalty," Ms. Reimer said. "But that's not the first step."

Honey, carrot or stick?

Stocking the Common Scold*.

Puerile culture. What better way to describe our Modernity gone stupid and infuriating?

How about malignantly puerile? Does it sum up a culture of spoiled children on a rampage of hostility to all and sundry for the sake of imposing ones vanities and stupid egotism on the world of fellow adults from the simple urge to bellow self-importantly? A culture of scolds. A culture of moronic complainers. A culture of idiot critics who have no ideas but complaint and complaint and complaint, and the unrestrained execize of scolding for the sake of vanity. Stupid people complaining constantly about anything that comes to mind, because they can, and because it feels good. Because it feels good, it must be good. So good in fact it must be based in law. Have a petty and stupid complaint? Then you'll find someone who will make that complaint a base for a law to regulate someone's or everyone's behaviour, and their speech, their very thoughts. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Bitch? Isn't that against the law to write? Could be so. So sue me.

Everyone seems to want to bitch and nag and scold. We have a culture of childish scolds who cannot stop complaining because there is always something new to complain about. How could they stop? There is this or that to bitch about, and someone who needs nagging about. And the nagging feels good. The more one does it, the more powerful and righteous one feels. Why stop? Why not get in on it with everyone else? Bitch, bitch, bitch.

The scold is always in the right, for otherwise, why would the scold be scolding? You never can win. You will always be wrong. The scold will forever find new faults. And because it feels so good, there will be no self-willed end.

Those who know me know that I am an easy-going-laid-back-west-

coast-kind-guy. It's just who I am, dude. But I have my limits. My limit is the scold. My impulse, which I stoically restrain, is to shout obscenities and perhaps punch a nose or so.

But I'm cool, man. till I ain't cause I'm so sick of this crap that I could puke; till I'm so sick of the bitching and the complaining and the endless scolding that I want to tie these nagging fools to chairs and half-drown them in the nearest pond. But, hey, I chill. Like ice.

A. Millar, "The UK: Smothered into Submission," Brussels Journal. 3 Feb 2009.

If the communist and fascist revolutions embodied the abusive, psychotic father, New Labour's revolution is that of the overprotective, single mother, robbing her children of independence of thought, and monitoring their every action. The real world, after all, is a nasty, dangerous place, and everyone must be protected from it for as long as possible – preferably forever.

Big Mother – as we might call her – is terrified that any of her children should so much as graze their knee, and forbids "bad words." "Islamist terrorist"? No, that's just another "thug" committing more "anti-Islamic activity."

Did that three year-old say "yuk" to unfamiliar spicy food? Well that's one big indication that he'll end up like Adolf Hitler – note that down as a racist incident nursery assistant!

And, speaking of food, what if one of the little ones has a nasty reaction to something they eat? Don't worry: Cadbury has recently included a warning on the label of its Dairy Milk Chocolate bar that the product contains milk. Another UK company is selling eggs, with the warning "contains eggs" printed right on the box. And the Asda supermarket chain is now selling milk with "warning: contains milk!" printed on the clear plastic container.

Not sure what "sell-by date" means? It's a tricky one. Luckily six UK councils will be paying people to go into our homes, whether we like it or not, to explain it to us. They'll also be inspecting our fridges while they're there – just in case.

That may seem like smothering to you. But, there's an up side to 'Big Mother': she encourages creativity. And two thirds of teachers acknowledge allowing text speak instead that old-fascist English – and that's just "gr8!"

Sex is something to be celebrated – so why wait? Children under thirteen are already being given condoms by some schools in the city of Manchester. And watch out for those sex education lessons for five year-olds coming to schools all around the country.

And, one college for 14 to 19 year-olds recently hired poll dancers come in and show off their 'talent' – as part of their health and 'fitness' week. It's racy, and inappropriate, but Big Mother did love the Sixties with its wild dancing and free love. So get with the program.

Perhaps the only really bad thing about Big Mother is that doesn't really like other mothers, heterosexual marriages, or families – or grown-ups.

Of all government bodies, the "Social Services" is the most dreaded. (Though whoever created that authority had the foresight to make its initials SS.) While they have failed to take children into care that have been systematically tortured over months or years, they have nevertheless zealously taken others away from good homes, where no abuse has occurred. When a mother took her baby to hospital with a tiny bruise on his ear recently, Social Services came and threatened to have her arrested if she took her child home. According to The Daily Mail, a grandfather was imprisoned for two years because he spoke to his grandson. The boy had been placed in care, and had contacted his grandfather, saying he was being abused.

Now, it has emerged that Social Services has refused to allow two children, taken from their mother (recovering from heroin addiction), to be adopted by their grandparents. The authorities have refused despite fact that this is what the mother wants, and has pleaded for it. Despite the fact that she has said that they would make wonderful parents. At 46 and 59 the authorities consider them too old. She has diabetes (not a problem in this day and age), and he has angina (also manageable), so they're also too sick, according to Social Services.

The family has fought the authorities for two years, and have endured emotional hell during that time. But, broken, they have now conceded to allow the children to be adopted by another couple. At the very least, this heartbroken family believed, the children should grow up with a mother and father. As the mother said goodbye to her children, her son, emotionally distraught, told her, "But Mummy, I want to come and stay with you and Granny and Grandad."

Social Services have made the decision: Two married homosexual men – that the mother and grandparents have never even met – will be the children's new family.

And because in their desperation the grandparents went to The Daily Mail, the authorities have threatened them, saying that they will never see the children again.

You would complain to your local MP. But Big Mother believes that we, her children, should be seen, but never heard.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3781

I chill like ice till I'm ready to scream. But I probably won't scream because it would offend someone. They'd then complain. They'd bitch and nag and file a suit or demonstrate on the streets and demand money from the government to compensate them for the mental anguish I've caused. They might riot. They might blow up planes full of civilians and say it was George Bush who made their lives so terrible they had to do it. They'd bitch, bitch, bitch. They'd nag. They'd scold. Am I sick of this to the point of puking? No, not me. I'm fine with all this. No complaints.

*"In the common law of crime in England and Wales, a common scold was a species of public nuisance—a troublesome and angry woman who broke the public peace by habitually arguing and quarrelling with her neighbours." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_scold

Neither illustrtion is of the stocks, but I'm not pedantic. Anything close is good enough. Don't bitch about it.

Velvet Fascism (9): Infantalization and Rule by Experts

The link immediately below concerns "experts" intervening in the lives of children to save them from bad parents, and goes on to discuss the nature of these so-called experts who possibly do more harm than good, sticking up for each other in the case of objections to their Gnostic brilliance. Below that is a piece from Toronto, Canada about the state planting trees so children will be protected from skin cancer. Both pieces are examples of what I term "Velvet Fascism." Both articles are examples of totalitarianism and infantalization. Thanks to RS and Truepeers for putting me on to these stories.

Mediocracy: Inversions & deceptions in an 'egalitarian' society. 19 July 2008

The eighth circle of Hell

Remember: experts are not neutral. They have their own agenda. If they are employed by the state, as most doctors effectively are, they will reflect the interests of the state, and/or those of their own profession. An organisation with power will act to expand that power. Assertions about doing things for people's 'own good' should be treated with as much scepticism as the claims of dictators that they are acting 'for the people'. As O'Brien says in Orwell's 1984, "Power is not a means, it is an end".
http://inversions-and-deceptions.blogspot.com/2008/07/eighth-circle-of-hell.html


MARGARET WENTE, "Watch out! Here comes the sun." Globe and Mail. 22 July 2008

Toronto's citizens will be relieved to learn that the city's elected leaders are determined to stamp out a grave threat to children's health and safety. Can you guess what it is? No, not pedophiles. Not lawn spray (they've already banned that) or Coke in school vending machines (on the way out). All of those can harm your child, but now officials are on to something much, much bigger.

The sun! That's right. Sunlight is bad. Too much of it can kill. Parents can't be trusted to limit their children's sun exposure to the appropriate amounts. So the City of Toronto will do it for them. Not even the most powerful bureaucrats can regulate the sun -- yet -- but they can, and will, regulate the shade.

As you read this, city workers are fanning out to playgrounds and other public spaces to conduct what are known as "shade audits." These audits will measure the angle of the sun at different times of day, as well as the amount of direct and reflected sunlight, the quantity and usability of shade from trees and other structures, and how many children are likely to be in attendance. Then they will determine where our little ones are likely to be most at risk from dangerous UV rays that cause deadly skin cancer. I can guarantee it's not my part of town, where conscientious parents cover their children with so much protective goop and gear that it's a wonder they don't get rickets.

But why take a chance? As councillor Gord Perks argues, "It makes no sense to me that people would object to fighting an epidemic of skin cancers among children." Also, not all children get to live in the leafier parts of town. As another city councillor reminds us, we have a special duty to protect the less fortunate children who live in high-rises, because they are forced to play in hazardous sun-drenched public parks.

Personally, I think we should be happy the little tykes are outside at all. If you ask me, what we really need is a public-health campaign to pry them away from their video games. But public-health officials are so busy whipping up imaginary dangers it's a wonder parents ever let their kids out the door. Heat alert! Heat alert! Any day the mercury hits 32.1, they declare a heat alert. Where did these people grow up? Iqaluit?

The city's sprawling Shade Policy Committee (which includes environmental planners, foresters, meteorologists, dermatologists, architects, parks personnel, oncologists and a healthy lifestyles nurse) is a bureaucrat's delight. It is the logical offshoot of a mindset that believes ordinary people are completely incapable of exercising common sense, combined with the belief that the right policies, devised by wise public officials like themselves, can save the world. These policies have been years in the making, and have generated mountains of pilot projects and reports. So who am I to gripe? Personally, I adore the shade, and I think we ought to have more of it. But I wonder if we really need this many experts to figure out where to plant a tree.

Sometimes I suspect that in between pandemics, the main job of public-health officials is to dream up new menaces to make themselves indispensable. These are the same folks who warned last week that too much cellphone use could give your kids brain cancer (and, after all, nobody can ever prove it won't). They're always there to remind us that in summer it gets hot, in winter it gets cold and in spring it gets smoggy.

Whatever did we do before we had qualified experts to tell us how to cope? How did we survive before the healthy lifestyle nurses came along to nag that junk food is bad for us and exercise is good? Oh, yeah. We had Mom. But what does she know? If you leave it up to her, the kids will probably get skin cancer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080722.wcowente22/BNStory/specialComment/?query=

This is more than just silliness. The danger is that in this world-view we come to see the meaning of life as that given to us by those who are better qualified to live our lives for us and our children than we are. We lose our right to make our own meaning of life. We lose our freedom-- and our meaning in that loss. This fad of idealizing the Gnostic Philosopher Kings is a danger we too often bow to uncritically in the usual social manner of most good citizens. We half-listen to the words, hear the sounds, pick up on the vibe, and we go along with things we are often too busy to concern ourselves with in our busy lives.

Experts know about our safety? Well, who are we to object and decide to do something stupid and unhealthy? Why should we stand by and let others do such things? Yes, we are infantalized, and increasingly so by Velvet Fascism. But it's for the good of all. Freedom? That's for stupid people.

Count me really stupid.

The Double Edge of the Velvet Fascist Sword

The author of the following excerpt is afraid to have his name associated with his article at American Thinker. The author fears this association, if known, would harm his career. One must accept that he's very likely correct.

[L]et's do a review of liberal social engineering programs from inception to execution....

• A group of individuals anoints themselves as better-informed than the rest of us. They base this largely on the fact that they listen to the same programs on NPR and consistently vote Democrat.
• The self-defined elite group comes to an agreement that the rest of us are not as enlightened as they. This is expressed in many ways, usually involving code words such as "clinging", "mean-spirited", or "greedy". If you hear these words being applied to you or your associates, this is a clear indication that you are not one of the elites.
• The elites begin to develop a sense of responsibility for their lessers. This is often expressed in statements like, "It's just makes me so sad to see them like that. I wish there were something we could do to..."
• The elites form a plan. The plan generally involves making everyone else behave like them. As enthusiasm rises, what were once "differences" become "problems" and finally metamorphose into a "crisis". When the word "crisis" appears, this usually signals the end of planning phase. The Plan predictably contains the following elements: coercion, moral superiority, lack of debate and voting, and a succession of "experts" who testify on its behalf.
• The plan is imposed. If the legislative branch refuses, the judiciary is prevailed upon to conjure up a constitutional justification.
• The plan begins to fail. This step is usually followed by demands for more resources to "properly implement the plan", (see the War on Poverty), and angry accusations at non-elite groups for their mean spirited, clingy refusal to change.
• The plan fails.
• The elites meet to form a new, better plan.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/wellness_ueber_alles.html

The author could be writing about any of any number of things, any of them things we might be against, smoking or junk food or driving without seat-belts or riding bikes without helmets or jogging or watching television, or, .... There's a case, and perhaps a strong case, to be made that other people's bad behaviour affects the pubic and should be stopped. Those who watch television, for example, harm us all by their lethargy and the drag that puts on our community-spiritedness. Maybe they should be forced into gymnastic programmes. Maybe, if they are recalcitrant, they should be put in camps, and if incorrigible, they should be killed. It comes down to what we think of others. Are they free and independent agents or are they farm animals? And if we stop short of executing those who trespass against the neo-norm, perhaps we won't kill them but simply make their lives conform by twisting the culture to the point there is no room for anything but orthopraxy, for right behavioir regardless of the will of the destructive. It becomes a moral imperative to save not just those who would destroy themselves but all of us and even the Earth itself. If we have that imperative, then we would be evil not to act on it, not to mention imprudent.

If pollution adds to the catastrophe of global warming, and if the polluter won't stop of his own volition, then, to save the world and ourselves, we must make him stop. The polluter's private behavior is not a private issue when it "impacts" on the public in serious and even catastrophic ways. If the state will not intervene to prevent harm to the publicity, then it must be for the private interest to intervene for the sake of our very lives, the state having turned against us in pursuit of furthering its payments to its masters, our enemies, our destroyers, those who would and will and do kill us all and the Earth itself. It is imperative and prudent that we halt the harm, the destruction of the self-interested who cause us this general harm, even if the majority do not see it. Having knowledge others lack gives one a further moral obligation to act on behalf of those who do not know or know and do not care to act, who do not dare to act.

How can we verify our truth claims? We might, for a start, rely on our expertise. We might further rely on past practice of those who deny the verity of our awareness, those proven to have acted against the best interests of the majority in the past by toeing the corporate line, for example, in the face of known harm to the publicity. Look, for example, to politicians awarding oil companies generous and extra-legal benefit at the expense of the public. We can know empirically that the majority of people in a democracy do not understand the particular details of the issues of anything, it being beyond the means of anyone to know all things; and thus, one must rely on the expertise of those who specialize. As well as the uninformed opinion of the masses, one must accept both their self-interested opposition to the good in many case, e.g. those who would promote further global warming due to employment in global warming industries; and there is the problem of systemic false consciousness, that which leads the masses into stupidities of harm, against their own interests on behalf of those who harm them. Look, for example, at the Americans who wage war against the Muslim world, doing so for the benefit only of the oil companies and the illegitimate neo-Nazi state of Israel. Can a moral person allow this to continue? Such far exceeds the harm of one man watching television. Such requires immediate action on the part of the one who understands the true nature of the regime and the state of Humanness that create this condition. Then, action on the part of the expert is morally imperative. To know and not to act is to be complicit and immoral and harmful to oneself, to the publicity, and to the Earth itself. Such a crime, given the gravity of it, should be punished; and one cannot allow oneself to knowingly do harm and to deserve punishment if one is-- at least-- prudent. Thus, democracy is a sham at best, a world-destroying harm in effect, when the issue is so dear.

If one has knowledge of impending catastrophe that others do not have or that others have and refuse to act on, it becomes a moral imperative to act alone to save oneself, a first priority, and to save Humanity as well. Not to act is self-destructive, and worse, it is evil. Democracy, yes, but not to the point it allows for or creates conditions of harm to the minority. Then democracy is tyranny of the majority. Democracy under that condition is illegitimate. It is unlawful and need not be obeyed; it must, in fact, be opposed by all right-thinking agents. If a corporation continues to pollute and to destroy the ozone layer over Antarctica, then said corporation must be stopped-- if the world, Mother Earth, is to survive. Things perhaps harmful to the individual must be done for the sake of the greater good. There is nothing radical in this. We understand the necessity of sacrifice for the greater good. Nor is this idealistic: it is prudent to sacrifice oneself for the greater good so that one has a chance to live through the furthering of Human existence, not a thing limited to the individual, whose existence is meaningless without the context of Humanity. If one can see from ones intellectual vantage point the coming of the train, one might well use force to move the cattle off the tracks. And if one is harmed in the process, all to the good that the community might continue to survive with the herd intact. Not to act, to put oneself at the centre of ones existence without regard for the community, is ipso facto to cause the death of the community, becoming a murderer oneself. With awareness comes responsibility.

Some things are evil a priori; therefore no argument is needed to support the idea. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia are evil a priori. Those who act in accord with any or all of the above evils are either/and evil or incoherent. They need not be refuted by any who understand the language and its meaning. Still, they exist and they act in ways evil. Since they cannot be reasoned with, empirically known by their incomprehension of the a priori, they must be dealt with by coercion, or force if need be. Islamophobes, for example, present the world with a dire and urgent crisis by their behaviour: They incite retaliation from 1.9 billion Muslims who turn in their desperation to using their own bodies as weapons against the Islamophobic oppression of Modernity. Any Islamophobe who creates this kind of violent and warranted blow-back on the part of the oppressed should, in fact, must be stopped. Those who understand this must act to prevent Islamophobia if we as a species are to survive. One might object that such is some Gnostic pronouncement, but those of us who understand the language understand it is a priori truth that Islamophobia is evil. Only a deluded or evil person cannot see this. If so, then he must be stopped from continuing by any means necessary. It is prudent, it is a moral imperative, and if it requires self-sacrifice, then it is to the good of all universally, a universality without which we have no identity anyway. There is nothing Gnostic in grasping the obvious. The author above disparages the "elite" but in effect is writing from a position of privilege: notice the "career" he feels he must protect. He.like so many others, knows the truth and has consciously decided to do nothing in order that he can live his privacies in some comfort even at the expense of future generations, mocking those who care about the Earth and its people. Those who know must act. That knowledge is obvious to any right-thinking person who has gone beyond the norms of the hegemony of capitalism. Those who haven't, those who have and refuse to acknowledge their complicity, must be stopped. The depth of the catastrophe and the urgency and the sheer scale of the catastrophe demands private action. It is thus that I am continually asking, "What is to be Done?" We who know know that something is wrong; we know actually what is wrong; and dare I say it; we know what must be done.

Yes, one might still argue that this is a case of Gnostic hubris and an apocalyptic eschatology. Can we wait to find out that we might have been wrong? Do we dare do nothing in the face of this catastrophe? And again, if not, What is to be Done?

Also posted at no dhimmitude.

Liberal Fascism

I just listened to a podcast from a couple of weeks ago, Helen and Glen (the instapundit) Reynolds interviewing Jonah Goldberg, author of the new book, Liberal Fascism.

The title and cover of Liberal Fascism, featuring a smiley face with a Hitler moustache, are a little provocative. We often denounce the Left on this blog, but we also admit in our more private moments that the Left, which one might define as the critique of bourgeois norms, will always be with us (notwithstanding that the Left are now the bourgeois mainstream), that it will always have a role to play. This is to suggest that the problems with the Left today can be transcended in a renewed leftism that becomes again a productive part of the Western tradition, and not its most serious, variously deconstructing, nihilistic, Gnostic, enemy.

It sounds as if Goldberg's book provides a serious argument, grounded in intellectual history, for arguing that the contemporary American Left's preferred policies look very much like the Nazi party's socialist program, just without the Nazi's rabid antisemitism and racism; this is not to forget that today's left often practises (not always ignorantly) forms of antisemitism and paternalistic racism. Here is a review of the book by Charles Johnson (not the LGF guy), a book which apparently has the leftist blogosphere going nuts. There were reviews up at Amazon.com trashing the book before it even was released. How was that possible asks Charles Johnson? Well, because if you are a member of the Gnostic elect, you don't have to read dull-headed conservatives to know that you are in every way superior to them.

In the podcast, Goldberg agues that many on the American left are in a hurry to prove Francis Fukuyama right that we have reached the end of history. For the American left-liberal mainstream, "The end of history is a giant college campus [where room, board and education is provided for all], or, increasingly, Europe." Nostalgia for college life, and a resistance to accept hard worldly realities (of scarcities and necessary conflicts) beyond the ivory tower, motivates the Democratic machine, argues Goldberg. I appreciated Goldberg's admonition that we take the time to actually read Hillary Clinton, the most likely next leader of the "free" world: "Take Hillary Clinton seriously; read her book - her vision of the village [that it takes to raise a child] is profoundly totalitarian... smash the sanctity of the family... if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem... we have to get past partisan differences".

Such slogans are the essence of totalitarianism, the dream of Unity, according to Jonah Goldberg. And people keep falling for them, because the dream sounds so nice in its unreality. Have you noticed the slogan for this year's Beijing Olympics? “One World One Dream”. Scary, eh? There's no doubt in my mind that all humans are descendants of a common origin. But history and freedom, human survival, depends on an ongoing expansion of different dreams out of this single origin.

We cannot really transcend conflicts if we don't recognize and engage conflicts for what they are - real differences. And to transcend a conflict, you need parties to share in a variously promising, but under-defined, sign in which different kinds of dreamers can hope to find something. The successful new sign becomes a compact which promises to work for all parties signing the peace treaty. A peace treaty is not a slogan about Unity and World Peace but a way of insuring greater freedom and differences for all. In other words, we defer violence by renewing conflict in more complex, "peaceful" but still competitive, terms.

In the podcast, there is a discussion of the feminization of the left, which Goldberg argues is the greatest difference between today's left fascism and the Nazi variety. Jonah notes that "an unwanted hug is still an oppressive thing..." But, Hillary is not the only Democract using Gnostic-fascism symbolism.

As Goldberg notes, Barack Obama is also very big on this cult of Unity. Checking out the above-linked review, I found this quotation on the Charles Johnson's blog, from Prof. John J. Pitney:

There is nothing Satanic about Obama’s tactics. He and his team are just playing tough, old-fashioned politics. What’s offensive is his insistence that he’s above it all. His supporters are swooning over a halo that isn’t there.

The idea that we should want a political leader who will overcome differences, create unity instead of productive debate in humble recognition of the necessity of conflict, is the essence of totalitarianism.

Well, I'm sure there is still more room for books on what our Dag, penning his own work, calls "Velvet Fascism". The Gnostic dream world in which the left believes that every conservative is a closet or open fascist, just chomping at the bit to gas some group, as soon as the left loses power over them, needs to be revealed for what it is: the projection of a battle between "left" socialists and "right" socialists within the totalitarian mind itself. It has little to do with the ways of appreciating a free society that characterizes many North American conservatives.

See also Daniel Pipes
H/T Four Mass'keteers