People should be helped to see the various political struggles in their own nation (and in others around the world) in a unified, coherent way. They should be helped to see how (almost) every issue (arising in the political sphere) fits into the general rubric of fascistic vs. democratic values.
The many specific political battles, in other words, are manifestations of one larger, deeper battle.
Whether it is
- fomenting intergroup hostilities versus a spirit of inclusion;
- the rule of the few over the many versus the democratic spirit of equality;
- taking money from those with less to give to those with more versus a concern for the well-being of all;
- conflict versus cooperation;
- the use of law to serve power versus using law to serve justice;
- trashing our planet for short-term corporate profits versus preserving it for the good of all;
- cruelty vs. kindness and compassion;
- the subordination of the good of the nation to the ego needs of the ruler versus government for the people;
- the domination of discourse by the rulers' propagandists versus the free flow of information and ideas;
- the pursuit of power as the overriding value versus a respect for the demands of justice;
all of them are manifestations of the same fundamental choice --between two fundamentally opposed spirits-- with which human civilization is now (again) being confronted.
For too long, those basic values of freedom and of human decency have been taken for granted, and thus have lost their power.
Part of the vulnerability of Western democracies to the rise of the fascistic spirit -- and this certainly includes the United States -- is a result of an attenuation of the passion for the deep values that underlay the emergence of decent democratic societies in the first place.
A global movement should work to rekindle those passions, employing all the tools (writings, speeches, rallies, advertisements, etc.) generally useful to social movements: mobilizing the motivated, motivating the tepid, and calling as many as possible of those now aligned with the spirit of fascism to the better angels of their nature.
Two fundamentally different visions of the human world are now competing. One of them is now ascendant. It is time for the other, better vision to present itself more powerfully in order to advance those human possibilities that are eminently worth fighting for.
More to come about why a global movement can constitute a vital part of an overall anti-fascist political battle, and about how this proposed global movement might work to inspire the people to stand up for civilization's best values.
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NOTES:
* Trump has shown that he recognizes this kinship in his widely noted bromance with Putin. But he's also shown it in other ways: in his endorsement -- at least as claimed by the Philippine leader -- of Duterte's handling of the drug problem (with several thousand extra-judicial killings); in Trump's making his first meeting with a British official with ..., the leader of the Brexit movement (and requesting that he be made the U.K.'s ambassador to the U.S.); with his unprecedented meddling in the foreign policy of the man who is still president, in order to support the worst tendencies of Netanyahu's government in Israel (the accelerated expansion of Israeli settlements in the territories that would become Palestianian in any two-state solution).]
** For example:
Israel is still a vibrant democracy in a way that Putin's Russia is not. One has a free press and independent courts, while in the other these have been brought under the control of an authoritarian regime. But if this force continues to rise, who can say where things may end up?
So also in America, unlike in Russia, we have a free press. But with Trump's assault on the media -- even before taking power -- we are already on unfamiliar territory. How far down that path might we go?
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