Comment Rescue – 25% Returns & Fascism on the Menu

As I see it, the situation (in France) is the same as it is here — 38 to 44 percent of the voters are right-wing, and they’ve abandoned the moderate right because it wasn’t getting them what they want, which is to toss out all the immigrants, with special concentration on the Muslims. It is very much parallel to the attitude toward Latin Americans from our 38-44%, which has undergone the same radicalization. It is a mark of desperation. They perceive this as an existential confrontation.

What you have to understand about the media is that it doesn’t report on what everybody already knows. As you noted, there are lots of leftists in France, but they’re scattered among various parties. The story being slighted is the collapse of the Socialist Party; it’s not as dire as the collapse of Labour in England or the Democrats here because there are other leftist alternatives they can, and did, switch to. The top vote-getter in the presidential election was Mélenchon, who is neither Socialist nor Communist nor Green but supported policies that would appeal to members of all three.

Democracy and late-stage capitalism do not fit together all that well. A world in which capital chases a 25% return rate while the ever-richer dismantle government is one in which, by necessity, the majority of the people get squeezed.

So as existing parties fail to deliver relief, people look for new ones that might get the job done. Fascism always ends up on the menu because when justice is gone, there’s always force. And in my reading of history there is no way to defeat fascists without resorting to force.

When the shake up comes, fascism always has a bit of a running start because a longing for violence is baked into the fascist worldview.