Tag: Fascism

The French Bourgeoisie: A Cut-Up Caper with a Side of Fascism

The French bourgeoisie, oh those respectable frock-coated fiends. Power was their aphrodisiac, and they weren’t picky about the bedfellows it brought. Here’s a glimpse into their sordid little boudoir of political maneuvering:

1. The July Monarchy: 1830 to 1848. A constitutional monarchy? Now that was a cut-up they could dig. A king with a leash, a system that kept the rabble at bay – pure bourgeois bliss! 

The French bougeoisie, those slick cats with coin in their pockets, found themselves waltzing with a constitutional king. Sure, it wasn’t the wildest jig, but at least it kept the riff-raff at bay. But revolutions, like unwanted houseguests, have a way of overstaying their welcome.

The Boulangist Bacchanal:

The Bourgeoisie, plump pigeons, cooed for stability. A constitutional charade, a game of mirrors reflecting their own wealth. But beneath the silk waistcoats, a gnawing fear – the guillotine’s grim echo.

Late 19th century. Republics? Pah! When push came to shove, the bourgeoisie craved a strongman, a leader with a handlebar mustache and a booming voice – someone to exterminate the creeping specter of socialism.

 Enter Boulanger, the nationalist hunk, a fleeting fix for their anxieties a Hussar with a handlebar moustache and a whiff of revolution. Nationalistic fervor, a heady perfume. The scent of revanche, of reclaiming lost glory, tickled the bourgeois nostrils that could tame a hurricane. Nationalism, that was the ticket! A strongman to keep the worker bees buzzing in their rightful place.A flirtation, a tango with the extreme right, a rebellion against the dull thrum of the Republic.

3. The Dreyfus Affair: Suddenly, the air grew thick with the stench of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, wrongly accused. The bougeoisie, a house divided. Some, blinded by prejudice, sided with the mob, baying for blood. Others, a conscience flickering in the shadows, dared to speak for justice. 

A virus that infected even the supposed bastions of reason. The Dreyfus Affair, a festering wound that exposed the bourgeoisie fractured over prejudice. Some, blinded by bigotry, sided with the lie. Others, a more lucid bunch, championed justice for the wrongly accused.

The Affair, a Rorschach test. Cracks appeared in the bourgeois facade. The Bourgeoisie, a fractured mirror, reflecting a nation at war with itself.

4. Action Française: 

Monarchy? Again? The bougeoisie, ever the fashionistas, dusted off their royalist threads. Action Française, a club for the nostalgic set, pined for the days of powdered wigs and absolute power. The Third Republic? Pah! A bourgeois wet dream gone sour beckoned the weary businessmen back to the divine right of kings. Monarchy, a comforting delusion, a return to a world of order, where the bourgeois could play courtiers in a gilded cage once more.

5. Vichy France: A Vichyssoise of Opportunism: : 1940 to 1944. The Nazis? 

The Nazis waltzed into France, and some in the bougeoisie, pragmatists to a fault, decided to cut a rug with the devil himself. Collaboration? It was business, as they say, a twisted tango with jackboots and swastikas. Now that was a whole new level of depravity. But hey, if the Nazis meant keeping the cockroaches (read: socialists and communists) at bay, then why not collaborate? A Faustian bargain, a descent into the abyss, all for the sake of preserving their precious status quo.

The Nazis, a brutal storm. Collaboration, a bitter pill to swallow. But some in the Bourgeoisie swallowed it whole, a desperate bid for survival. Better to be a fat cat in a Vichy government than a mangy alley dweller under the swastika, they reasoned. Moral bankruptcy, a festering wound beneath the pinstripes.

The Algiers Putsch: A Putrid Punch: Algeria, a thorn in the French side. The bougeoisie, with their pieds-noirs (black feet) chums in Algeria, got spooked by whispers of independence. So, the generals, those polyester-clad cowboys, tried a little coup d’état. A messy affair, all blood and bullets. The bougeoisie, once waltzing with kings, now found themselves in a gangster flick gone horribly wrong.

The stench of desperation hung heavy in the air. Algeria, a jewel slipping from their grasp. When push came to shove, the Parisian right and Algerian settlers, those bastions of bourgeois comfort, joined forces with some rogue generals in a desperate attempt to hold onto their illusions of empire. A death rattle, a pathetic display of power that ultimately sputtered out.

So there you have it, the French bourgeoisie – a tangled mess of self-interest, nationalism, and a sprinkle of fascism. A cut-up collage of power plays and moral compromises, all in the pursuit of that ever-elusive sense of control.

The Centrist Charade

Dig beneath the surface of history, man, and you’ll find the stench of power clinging to everything. Marxist cats, always sniffing for class struggle, point their fingers at the center as the ultimate enabler – the guys greasing the skids for the real heavies. This ain’t a one-act play, though; this pattern stretches back centuries, a tangled web woven by supposed moderates who end up reinforcing the very structures they claim to tweak.

The 19th Century: Nationalism’s Sideshow and the Monarchy’s Minions

Take the 19th century, a time when nationalism was the hottest jazz and kings still wore fancy hats. Centrists waltzed in,all reason and moderation, claiming the middle ground between the bomb-throwing radicals and the crusty old guard. But this “rationality” was a smoke screen, obscuring the true power dynamic. They shielded the crowns and flags from real critiques, the ones that questioned the whole damn rigged game. By painting the revolutionaries as a bunch of hopped-up loonies, these centrists gave the status quo a democratic sheen, keeping the fat cats fat and the workers toiling away.

Fascism’s Funky Fresh Beat: The Center Gets Cold Feet

Fast forward to the 1920s, where fascism reared its ugly head. The center, ever the flip-flopper, couldn’t decide if it wanted to punch fascists in the face or hold hands and skip rope. They underestimated the whole brownshirt brigade,dismissing them as a passing fad or some fringe cult. But when the Red Scare came knocking, the center saw the Commies as the bigger threat – the devil you know, right? So, they cozied up to the fascists, figures they could control, or so they thought. This little alliance wasn’t just a handshake; the center actively greased the skids for fascist regimes, all in the name of “preserving order.” The result? A fascist free-for-all, complete with jackboots and goose-stepping.

The Far-Right’s Disco Ball: The Center Cuts a Rug

Fast forward to our own groovy time, and the same old story plays on repeat. The center, supposedly all about democracy and whatnot, finds itself defending the far-right’s latest disco hits. Remember that French minister who wouldn’t diss the National Front? Classic case of the center bending over backwards for the bad guys. In the name of “pragmatism” (whatever that means), they end up adopting the far-right’s xenophobic tunes, making their whole hateful ideology seem normal. This accommodation is like putting lipstick on a pig – sure, it might look different, but it’s still the same oinking beast underneath.

The Big Finale: Dismantling the Centrist Charade

So, what’s the takeaway, man? Marxist theory shines a light on the center as the ultimate stooge, the guy who keeps the capitalist machine humming along. They play both sides, neutralizing real challenges from the left and right, all to ensure the status quo remains quo-ish. It’s a historical pattern that demands a closer look. We gotta critically examine this whole centrist charade and its role in propping up oppressive systems. If we want real change, forget about moderation and break out the Molotov cocktails of praxis. The only way to dismantle the house of cards is to give it a good, hard shove.

Fascism in America

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A Delirium Tremens of Manifest Destiny (in the vein of Burroughs, Deleuze & Lacan)

The American Dream curdles into a nightmare of self-inflicted wounds. This ain’t no Eurotrash fascism, this is homegrown psychosis. Racism, a cancer burrowing deep, birthed on stolen soil, a symphony of genocide conducted by the pale hand. Militarism, a chrome-plated phallus thrusting for empire, a ravenous beast with an insatiable hunger for blood and oil. Prisons, concrete wombs birthing generations of the ostracized, the melanin-rich, the different – a grotesque control freak’s wet dream writ large in steel and bars.

No need for fancy foreign labels, no need for the comfort of a distant “other.” This is our pathology, festering beneath the shiny veneer of freedom. We are the architects of this madhouse, the wardens and the inmates locked in a grotesque, self-perpetuating tango. This history isn’t some bogeyman from across the sea. It’s the repressed that erupts, the id unleashed in a riot of violence and control.

Look closer, America. See the reflection staring back – the distorted image of a nation built on fractured ideals. The Real, the unacknowledged truth, bleeds through the cracks in the facade. We cannot distance ourselves with borrowed terms. This is the American Id, laid bare and screaming. Can we wake from this collective fever dream, or are we doomed to repeat the cycle of violence, forever trapped in the prison we’ve built for ourselves?

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We swim in a fetid sea of American dreams, a hallucinatory Disneyland where the Frontier myth masks the carrion stink of genocide. This isn’t some fascist import, no, it’s homegrown, baby, a twisted weave in the fabric of the Self. These bars, these electrified fences, these reservations – they’re not aberrations, they’re the logical conclusion of the American Dream’s shadow. Minorities, you say? Just another binary, another way to fragment the Real. The incarceration isn’t just theirs, it’s ours too, a psychic prison built on the foundation of stolen land and broken treaties. We project our own repressed violence, our insatiable hunger for control, onto the Other, the darker reflection in the funhouse mirror of American identity.

This isn’t some foreign label, “fascism,” a comforting term that lets us distance ourselves. No, it’s a virus woven into the American code, a cancerous growth fueled by the death drive. The cowboy boots and apple pie – a grotesque pantomime that masks the raw, pulsating id beneath. We are the architects of this nightmare, not some bogeyman from across the sea. The militaristic madness, the insatiable hunger for conquest – these are the warped desires of a nation perpetually at war with itself, a war projected outwards onto the global stage.

Look not for the fascist Other, for he resides within. The bars of the prison are the bars of our own perception, the limitations we impose on ourselves and those we deem different. Only by delving into this psychic sewer, by confronting the shadow cast by the American Dream, can we hope to break free from this cycle of violence, this self-inflicted nightmare.

A Delirium Tremens of American Carnage (in the style of Burroughs, Deleuze & Lacan)

The American Dream curdles into a nightmare, a grotesque carnival of self-inflicted wounds. Forget fascism, some foreign import. This, this ravenous hunger for annihilation, for caging the “Other,” it slithers out from the very heartland. A cancerous growth, nurtured by generations steeped in the white noise of supremacy.

Burroughs: A shotgun blast to the face of history. Genocide, a twisted cowboy hoedown on the bleeding plains. Armies, chrome phalluses thrust across the globe, spewing napalm and Agent Orange, a toxic baptism for the “inferior.” Prisons bulge with the melanin-rich, a grotesque human cattle drive orchestrated by wardens with dollar-sign eyes. This ain’t no movie, man. This is the American meat grinder, baby, churning out generations of the hollow-eyed and the broken.

Deleuze: A rhizome of violence, burrowing deep into the American psyche. Racism, a cancerous web of power, constricting, suffocating. Incarceration, a factory churning out despair, producing a docile, compliant underclass. No grand narrative here, just a chaotic sprawl of power dynamics, the stench of blood and fear clinging to the national fabric. We are all implicated, caught in the tangled web, even as we scream for a way out.

Lacan: The Real, the unnameable horror, stares back from the mirror of American history. The symbolic order, a flimsy facade built on whitewashed lies, cracks under the pressure. The Imaginary, the self-image of the noble American, crumbles as the repressed violence erupts. No need for a foreign label – “fascism” – to mask the truth. This is the return of the repressed, the monstrous id unleashed, a land haunted by the ghosts of its own brutality.

This, this is the true American carnage. And to deny it, to seek solace in imported labels, is to remain forever trapped in the house of horrors we ourselves have built. We must confront the spectral violence within, tear down the flimsy walls, and rebuild from the smoldering ashes.

Weimar Somocistas

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They dream in flickering black and white newsreels, these squares with crew cuts slicked back with Brylcreem. Weimar? A hazy postcard of flappers and jazz, a decadent playground for the swells. Blind to the shadows at the edges, the thuggish brownshirts goose-stepping down cobblestones, a guttural roar rising from the radio static. Somoza in a pinstripe suit, a Stetson tilted low, a cigar clamped between his teeth – that’s the strongman they crave, the one who’ll “clean things up.”

They wouldn’t recognize the jackboots on their own front steps, the stench of fear a cheap cologne. Delusion a virus, replicating in the petri dish of their skulls. Good guys? Pull the other leg, chum. They’d be goose-stepping in time with the worst of them, faces contorted in a rictus grin, blithely saluting the swastika rising like a malignant tumor on the horizon.

Sleepwalkin’ into a nightmare in their star-spangled blinders, convinced they’re heroes in a John Wayne flick. Brainwashed by AM radio static and reruns of Leave it to Beaver, they wouldn’t recognize a jackboot on their lily-white asses until it was crushing their discount cigarettes.

That would make all the good ol’ boys just a buncha Weimar squares, huffin’ on fascism like it was Lucky Strikes, blind as bats in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. They think they’d be fightin’ the good fight, wearin’ their white hats and singin’ that barbershop harmony, all the while goose-stepping right into der Fuhrer’s meat grinder. Don’t get me wrong, they’d be the first to string up a pinko, but put a swastika on it and suddenly it’s apple pie and Chevrolet. Delusion, man, pure uncut delusion. They’re livin’ in a dreamland paved with Coca-Cola bottles and barbed wire, where cowboys are the master race and the only good Indian’s a lobotomized one on display at the state fair.