Why it’s a Myth That Fascism’s About Demographic Change and Cultural Anxiety How Neoliberals Have Taught You to Play Right Into Fascists’ Hands — Without Knowing It

Umair Haque

There’s a particularly funny, foolish, and gruesomely self-destructive myth making the rounds these days. It originates from the place all of today’s foolish myths of political economy do: America. The myth goes like this: “fascism is rising because white people are becoming a minority!! They’re scared — it’s cultural anxiety!!” Neoliberals, who tell this myth, have spawned a whole new phraseology for it: apparently, American whites are afraid of “cultural displacement.”

Now, to use this myth is to play right into the hands of the bad guys — the fascists. To see how, let’s examine this myth. Is it really true?

Do you know when America’s projected to be minority white? Given the myth, you might think by 2020, or maybe 2025 at the latest. In fact, it’s not set to happen until 2045. That’s a generation away, my friends. Do you worry about 2045? Do you think about it daily? The myth falls apart at the slightest touch.

Then there’s the mechanism. Do people suddenly develop a sixth sense of impending racial doom? Is there some kind of telegraphic awareness that spreads throughout people of a skin color? Do they suddenly have shared panic attacks? Of course not. It’s not as if white people are telepathically discussing census results. Nor is it as if most white people are walking around obsessively brooding on the the number “2045.” I’d bet if we asked most white people “what do you think will happen in 2045?”, their answers would be anything but “becoming a minority” — everything from “the planet melts down” to “I finally pay off my student debt?”

And what kind of “culture” is it precisely that American whites are going to lose? Hotdogs and ribs? Baseball? Fox News? Trips to Home Depot? Country music? Religion? Small-town bakeries? I don’t mean that in a derisive way — I mean that all kinds of people partake in all those things. Even I have a pair of cowboy boots and an LL Bean shirt or five and grew up going to shows at the 9:30 Club and the Limelight. Was I “displacing” someone — or was I becoming American? I can’t think of a single thing that white American “culture” really is exclusively, in the way that, say, Venetian carnivals and Parisian fashion are— a thing that only really belongs to a particular social group. American culture, unlike European culture, is a genuine melding. From jazz to literature to art to dance, none of it fully belongs to any one group — and never has. Who popularized rock’n’roll? Elvis or Chuck Berry? What makes American culture uniquely its own is precisely that, unlike in Europe, no one group can claim it exclusively.

So not only is the myth funnily absurd at a social level, it’s absurd at a psychological and a cultural level, too. I think it’s an insult to white people, frankly, to say that they’re so fearful and narrow, but I digress. Now, let me discuss the problems this myth serves, and then I’ll come back to the reality it hides.

When neoliberals propound the myth of cultural anxiety, they end up doing something astonishingly damaging and foolish. They fan the flames of fascism. In three specific ways. If it’s true that white people are suddenly becoming a minority, then of course the idea of “white genocide” and persecution and so on are reinforced as a kind of paranoid fantasy. If it’s true that demographic change is causing fascism — then the only way to stop fascism is to reverse demographic change. Build those walls! But wait! That’s exactly what the fascists want, too. If it’s true that white people are losing their culture — well, then I guess jazz, nightclubs, novels, literature, and plays all must have only ever been written by, ready by, performed by, and attended by whites, too. Wait — that’s exactly what the fascists, want, also!

So “cultural displacement” must mean that either other people have no culture — or that you have a culture that’s so different, so fragile, so precious, it falls apart the moment anyone touches it. It can’t be shared — it’s zero-sum. But am I “displacing” you when I sit next to you at a movie theater? On an airplane? At a job? If I am, then don’t all those things really belong to you? Wait — all of those positions are precisely what fascists also believe, aren’t they?

Yet the reverse isn’t true. You don’t hear neoliberals talking about the “cultural displacement anxieties” of all those poor people that get driven out of gentrified neighborhood after neighborhood, do you? Or the “cultural displacement anxieties” of the kids in the camps. Or even the “cultural displacement anxieties” of of the rest of us, white, black, brown, whatever, of being displaced by the fascists, just normal people who think fascism’s probably a hell of a lot worse than a society of equals, whatever color, creed, or religion they are. Gee, I wonder why that is? Maybe neoliberals, not exactly renowned for their taste or humanity, don’t really know what culture is, to begin with.

To say that I “displace” you culturally, and therefore, you are anxious, is exactly the zero-sum logic of fascism. Which is also the logic of paranoia, victimization, and persecution. But nobody is out to persecute, victimize, or get the “culturally anxious” in the sense that their paranoias suggest. Nobody’s coming to take away your corndogs and late-night football games, and impose Sharia law (except maybe Mike Pence). Yet we’re told that if people believe it, then it must be true — no matter how foolish such a belief is. Without investigating, really, why people might believe such paranoid, bizarre things, to begin with. “Cultural anxiety” is really another way of saying: the persecution and victimization complexes of fascists are real. But if they are, then fascism has every reason to exist, doesn’t it?

Do you see how liberalism plays right into fascism’s hands when it propounds this foolish myth? How it legitimates, normalizes, and justifies fascism? So here we see a kind of fatal convergence — neoliberalism and fascism dovetailing to precisely the same ruinous folly. “Whites are in danger!”, cry the fascists. “Whites are becoming a minority — their culture is in danger”, cry the neoliberals. “Yeah! Our culture will never be theirs!”, cry the fascists.

But if your culture cannot include people who are different from you, then what place does it have in a democratic society? If it’s zero-sum, then it must be inherently discriminatory, to begin with — and that goes for all cultures. And in that sense, it’s less a culture, a civilizing tool, and more a mechanism to preserve superiority — it must, by definition, be racist, bigoted, or prejudiced. Go ahead and think it through. Conversely, if you are claiming all the products of a democratic society as “your culture”, then isn’t the very same thing true? Both are essentially ideological forms of proto-fascism.

(So no matter how you cut it, if we legitimate ideas of demography and “displacement”, we’ll end up supporting fascists, always — because that’s their ideology, too. “Hey! They’re afraid of losing their small town to people who are different from them!” Wait — if I listen to country music and wear cowboy boots and have small-town values, only I’m brown — am I still “different”? There’s no way around it, my friends. You can’t have it both ways — be a democracy of equals, but also a caste society.)

LOL. How funny. How tragic.

Luckily for thinking people, none of this is reality. Fascism has never — not once in human history — been driven by demographic change, a majority becoming a minority. Germans were under no demographic threat in the 1930s. Poles and Austrians are under no demographic threat. Nor are Italians. Whatever refugees and immigrants have arrived on these shores, they’re hardly to about to establish states where sipping coffee and wine, among other staples of European cultural life, are suddenly outlawed. And yet, neofascist politics are rising in all these places, aren’t they? Either it must be a huge coincidence — or the reason must be something very different than demographic change and “cultural displacement.” What reason might that be?

Neoliberals, to a person, refuse to accept that the economy isn’t doing so well. “The economy’s booming!”, they cry, looking at growth rates. ButAmerican growth is predatory now. The rich take more than 100% of the economy’s gains. So while “growth” is certainly happening, it’s now coming at the expense of the (former) middle class, the poor, the young, and the elderly. All those social groups are beginning to suffer in ruinous ways — the old, who’ll never retire, the young, who’s life expectancy is falling, the middle class, which has become the new poor, and so on.

Neoliberalism is the world’s most catastrophic failure since Soviet-era Leninist socialism. It has driven America from a place of if not European prosperity, then at least a nation a reasonably prosperous middle class, some degree of mobility, and democracy, to a place that is collapsing into authoritarianism, by way of precarity, despair, and singularly gruesome ruin — school shootings, opioid epidemics, crowdfunded healthcare.

Neoliberals propound the myth that this is a special moment of white cultural anxiety driven by intense demographic change to hide their own ruinous failures to create anything resembling a working economy. Yet the simple fact is that this not an especially anxious or different or special moment of demographic change for Americans. The only true demographic change in America that diverges from long term trends isn’t immigration — it’s a skyrocketing suicide rate. Hence, the reason that fascism is rising is the one thing neoliberals will never admit — their very own failure.

The global economy that neoliberalism made is a repeat of the 1930s — only in a perhaps even more dangerous way. Then, “imbalances” piled up between nations — some nations owed others too much debt, which they couldn’t repay. This time, imbalances have piled up all over again, not between nations, but between social classes. Wages and incomes are stagnant, across the rich world. Inequality is skyrocketing. Even China faces issues of middle class slowdown now. The global economy is coming undone. Precisely because predatory capitalism created a new class of ultra rich, who are so wealthy that, like Jeff Bezos, they outdo the kings of yore. Whose fortunes could pay off the national debts of entire countries, not to mention social groups. That has left an imploded middle — a hole, where prosperity should be.

When that imploded middle collides with long-standing exclusionary sentiments, fuelled by demagogues, the fatal cocktail of the 1930s repeats itself. “They are to blame for your poverty!”, bellows the demagogue, pointing at immigrants, refugees, minorities, and so forth. Just like in Germany, there was no real demographic threat — but there was historic anti-Semitism, which was like gasoline to stagnation’s match.

In America, this has been particularly easy — because there is a large segment of the white population which has never really been fully civilized, in the sense of genuinely accepting and celebrating others as their equals, versus merely reluctantly obeying the law. In many places, whites have held onto the inherent sense of superiority that was granted to them until 1971 — when segregation ended. But that wasn’t so long ago. And so it hasn’t taken very much at all for these same old racial attitudes to resurface — because they barely had time to be socialized and civilized away in the first place. Hence, at the merest hint of a new poverty, of a fall in relative status, income, and wealth, the very groups which never really gave up on their inherent superiority were easily seduced by nationalist supremacy.

So fascism, as always, presents us with a subtle picture. Stagnation, which is like a match on the fuel of old tensions between racial or ethnic groups, setting fire to whole societies, seemingly overnight. But for that very reason, the truth is that fascism is never, ever really about the racial or ethnic tensions it pretends to be about. Fascism is always about political economy — generally, a collapsing society and an imploded middle class, first and foremost. To think otherwise, to suppose that the delusions, paranoias, persecution complexes, and anxieties of fascists are real, is to legitimize it, to justify it, to strengthen it — to play right into its hands.

Unfortunately, that’s what neoliberals are doing today — though they might not know it. I don’t think they’re bad people necessarily. But they’ve always been modernity’s fools. Reverently admiring capitalism. Telling the world that vice and cruelty and greed were virtue. Proclaiming an end to history — while repeating it. And if you needed a final confirmation of all that, then let it be this.

Umair
 August 2018

Why Do Americans Revere the Rich? Is Getting Rich Worth Devoting Your Life To?

Umair Haque

It’s often said these days, that if you think America has problems, of capitalism, of decline, of blindness and folly and self-inflicted ruin, that you must hate the rich. No, I don’t hate the rich. I think that I pity them.

Here’s a little secret. I grew up among the super rich. Not the American super rich — pfff, that’s the minor league. I mean the genuinely global mega-rich. People so bizarrely, gruesomely rich they’d have towering Italian palazzos shipped over tile by tile, painstakingly rebuilt by hand, put behind gleaming gates, surrounded by opulent gardens, and guarded by little armies. I don’t say that to boast, becauseit didn’t happen by my design — but only through a quirk of fate. My grandfather and father, politicians both, were courted by them, who grew that wealthy by siphoning off the wealth of the countries my forefathers were trying to protect.

And so as I grew up, many of their kids became my friends. We’d play, innocently, as kids do, unbothered by the fact that I was just a relative pauper, and they were ulta rich. But as we grew up, I observed something strange. Which seemed to happen so predictably, I started to put a countdown timer on it. These kids hated themselves — deeply and badly. Their parents treated them like little objects, trophies, prizes. The families were like corporations, not human tribes, full of warmth and laughter. Mom and dad couldn’t bear each other. Nobody had a job — but everyone was busy, every day, forever, battling everyone else over that pile of money. Nobody seemed to have any inner sense of meaning, worth, or purpose.

That can true of everyone, of rich and poor — but this was different. Predictable, chronic, systemic, implosive, soul-destroying. I could set my watch to it. Families would blow up. Kids would turn into despairing addicts. Marriages would blow up after months. Grandkids would be disowned. Sibling would be pitted against sibling. Entire families, and lives, would come apart at the seams. In the middle of all this — throbbing, pulsing wounds of grief, rage, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and emptiness. And still, despite all that, that they’d cling to their money like a security blanket, even as it cost them everything that should have mattered more. It was the only thing they seemed to know, understand, or appreciate.

Getting seriously rich, I soon learned, had a very, very steep price. All the things which really mattered in life: human bonds, a sense of meaning, a higher purpose, and even a sense of inherent self-worth. Which is why I never bothered to worry about it. Now, I don’t mean to give you a preachers’ homily. But I do want to point out that in this life, from what I’ve seen, you can’t have it all. You have wealth, or you can have worthiness — but can you have both? To answer that is also to answer the question: should we hate, vilify, or scorn the rich?

Now, it’s obvious to say that a poor person probably isn’t going to be very happy. Let’s dispense therefore with the idea that I’m saying “wealth bad so poverty good!” Grow up, Tucker. Far from it. I’m suggesting that maybe there’s an optimal point of wealth for human beings to have — and beyond that, the moral, social, and emotional costs of riches far outweigh the benefits, which are nonexistent to begin with, because you can’t spend that much anyways, nor can you take it with you. But we don’t think about this in America, do we? We lionize wealth — it symbolizes all our deepest value: selfishness, greed, individualism, superiority. And yet that can only be because we are fragile, feeling little and inferior, deep inside. I’ll come back to all that.

You need science, probably. Very well. As people get richer, they lose their empathy, wisdom, compassion, and so forth. Whatever positive attribute it is that you want to study, it seems that the more wealth you amass, the less of it you will have. But we shouldn’t need science to tell us this. Aeschylus told us this story millennia ago — and so did Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Sartre.

One of the truest differences between Europe and America is also an almost invisible one. In America, the rich are lionized, adulated, and worshipped. There’s something like a bizarro aristocracy of the oligarchs, and Americans curtsy and bow politely, like servile things, before a rich person. Before Donald Trump was President, a nation admired him — weirdly — as a kind of modern-day hero. Americans, weirdly, unique among nations, equate wealth with all the great virtues: intelligence, courage, sophistication, wisdom, creativity, compassion. If you’re rich, you must be as smart as Stephen Hawking, as spiritually advanced as the Dalai Lama, and as wise as Aristotle. They have really bought into the myth that a wealthy person is a betterperson. Is that true?

But in Europe, to be rich carries with it a faint whiff of distaste, of derision, of scorn. Americans think they prize humility — but it’s European prime ministers who cycle to work. Which is better for a society? Let me answer that backwards.

Imagine I gave you ten million dollars. If you were smart, you’d buy a little villa in France, retire, never check the internet again, and tend to your puppies, grandkids, and garden. But — and here’s the problem and the key — this never seems to happen. I’ve known many, many rich people. And the moment that they have ten million, something odd seems to happen. It needs to turn into a hundred. And the moment it turns into a hundred, it needs to turn into a billion.

In other words, as we get rich, a great and fatal moral perversion seems to occur. virtue seems to become vice. Something snaps deep down in the human soul. Greed, avarice, covetousness, pride, cruelty — all of these seem to replace humility, gentleness, kindness, wisdom, and truth. You don’t have to look very far to see it. Why is Jeff Bezos shooting rockets into space instead of funding college for every kid in America? Why are the American mega-rich building something like a theofascist kleptocracy instead of funding school and healthcare for every child on the planet? Why did Manafort spend his money on, LOL, expensive clothes?

“Why should the rich help anyone else?!”, you cry. The answer is very simple. What we really are after through riches — through anything at all — is moral sentiments. Happiness is the experience of one’s own moral goodness. Meaning is the experience that one is a moral significance to others. Fulfillment is the realization of one’s moral possibilities. Do you see how that works? Can money buy you these things?

You need a sense that your life has really counted. “This person has given me something! They educated me, they taught me, they encouraged me, they lifted me up when I had fallen!” Now you have a sense of meaning. But it has come only through moral significance — that you have really cultivated a life that is not your own, and thus, what you have done has mattered.

You need a sense of happiness. When are you happy? It’s very simple — when you feel that you are a good person. Then you literally “feel good.” But when you don’t feel that you’re a good person, then you “feel bad”, don’t you? You grow depressed, angry, you brood, you recriminate. “I’m bad! I’m no good! Nothing I do ever seems to make a difference!!” You don’t feel good — but feeling good isn’t about winning stuff, it’s about the experience of your own moral goodness.

Now we can answer the question, can’t we? Indeed, the mega-rich should be doing things with their lives that carry great and enduring moral weight. But they are not. That’s because getting rich has cost them something priceless: their moral consciences. Hence, happiness, meaning, and fulfillment seem to elude them. That’s why the ten million has to turn into a hundred, and then a billion. It’s why you never see someone living out the fantasy of retiring to that villa in France when they’ve made a few million.

What happens instead? Because they’ve lost their moral bearings, virtue has become vice. Avarice, greed, cruelty, selfishness. All these things are soon turned on the very people that they love. Wives are discarded, husbands thrown away. Kids are treated like either little princes or paupers. And worst of all, no inherent sense of self-worth, has ever developed, because the illusion has been created that money can gave it to you.

A person with a sense of inherent self worth knows this much. Money cannot give you what only morality can. You cannot buy happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. You must earn them, with actions which carry human weight. Those which lift up lives. The reward for the actor is the experience of moral goodness, moral significance, and moral growth, which we call happiness, meaning, and fulfillment.

But if you have been living all along under the delusion that the hole in your soul, that inherent lack of self-worth, self-coherence, selfhood, can be filled up with money and objects — and you make ten million — that ten will have to grow, grow, grow — and still you will never be filled up inside. You need to feel big because you feel little. But the little part of you needs only to grow into something beautiful and true, all the more so because it is delicate — not something all-powerful and possessing.

Remember Americans and Europeans? Americans have internalized the values of capitalism — greed, selfishness, and so on. But they are not rich, and they will never be rich. These values serve only as kind of false self, where a true one should be. So they’re left in a haze: is greed good? Or is it bad? Is using people OK? Or is it wrong? Capitalism has cheated them of a sense of intrinsic self-worth —which also means you can answer the questions above. They thin that you’re not a worthy person unless you’re wealthy. But they don’t really know that the opposite isn’t true. You can be as wealthy as Croesus, and still never think of yourself as worthy.

Europe is more successful precisely because by scorning the rich, it has made getting rich something not to proud of, to be a little ashamed of. It is not a substitute for living a genuinely worthy life, whether one of action, of letters, of ideas, or of discovery. It is barely a life at all, many Europeans would probably tell you, to get rich. Hence, wealth itself is something which is met with derision and scorn. Very different norms emerged — Americans idolize riches, and Europeans disdain them.

But that norm made Europe a much healthier and happier place, too. It meant that Europeans invested in each other, with great public goods, instead of devoted their lives to the futile goal of individual riches. It made Europe a place with less distance between the rich and the middle, so that distrust never grew as sharply as in America. And it made Europe a more humane and fulfilling place, too — because the capitalist values of greed, cruelty, domination, and selfishness were never accepted as decent and sensible things to devote a life to.

So. I don’t hate the rich. But I don’t worship them, like Americans do, either. “What book is Bill Gates recommending?! LOL, are you a fool, my son? A rich man who is only a rich man is no smarter than a poor man — in the ways that count, he is all the more a fool. Because he doesn’t seem to know that wealth has its own price — one’s moral conscience. No one escapes the price they must pay time and death, and great wealth, which is only ever an expression of greed and egotism, is a futile search for grandiosity and omnipotence where life, in all its fragility and delicacy should be. It corrodes the character of the bearer, and leaves a hole where a self might have been. A poor man might be a wretch — but a rich man who has never become anything more is a moral fool.

I pity the rich — because I’ve seen happy people, and I’ve seen rich people, but I’ve never seen both. But the same is true for societies, too. Rich societies who don’t set norms and values to laugh at, belittle, devalue, and scorn the very pursuit of wealth, so they can aspire to higher and better things, soon become just like those rich families I grew up among. Places destroyed from the inside, by their egotism and appetites.

And should you doubt me, take a good, long, hard look at America — the richest nation history ever saw, by a very long way. But also something like the most inhumane, unhappy, lonely, desperate, meaningless, empty, atomized, and nihilistic. And yet also the most greedy, proud, avaricious, selfish, usurious, gluttonous, and wrathful. Do you see the link that I do? Wealth costs you, my friends. It costs you your better self. And America is history’s truest example yet.

Umair
August 2018

(Why) Capitalism Degenerates Into Fascism

Umair Haque

You’d be kidding yourself — like American pundits are — if you haven’t observed by now that America’s having something like a classic proto-fascist meltdown. Demagoguery, eemonization, scapegoating, camps, “animals!,” “vermin!,”and parallel institutions — check, check, check.
So. Here’s a tiny question. Does capitalism have a tendency to degenerate into fascism? After all, it must be a mighty coincidence indeed that America’s the most capitalist society in human history — even calling an ambulance will cost you a few thousand dollars (yes really, people of the world) — and it’s also the first one since the 1930s to melt down like this.

I’m going to put it like this. Capitalism degenerates into fascism when the precarious ally with the powerful to dominate the powerless. Those who feel entitled to, but deprived of, power — instead of reforming a society so that everyone has more, and truer powers, rights, freedoms — lick the boots of the powerful, in order to dominate and subjugate the powerless. I’ll explain all that — and it might be tough reading, so feel free to skip around, mull things over, and of course you are most welcome to disagree with me.

The way that the story of capitalism declining into fascism used to be told is that essentially, that capital, always starved for more profit, which is always in relative decline, therefore needs more and more force to subdue labour with. Until at last, people are in camps (more or less enslaved) while their de facto owners plunder the homes which once belonged to them. But this story — the old one — while it has a ring of truth, also seems to leave much out. I think by now we can glean deeper truths, perhaps, too. So I will tell you a new story, or a new variant on the old one, maybe — and you judge if it carries any water.

Consider the rise of the alt right. It’s a proto-fascist movement by any other name. Dehumanization, scapegoating, violence, the submergence of the individual within the group-check, check, check. But why? Why would a bunch of dorks and nerds, basically — videogamers and incels and comic-book collectors, basically — suddenly become something like vicious little fascists? Do you see how weird it is, when you really think about it?

Think about the incels for a second. They’re funny, and they’re pathetic — but they’re also protofascists. They’d like nothing more than a society where women, who are inherently “whores” and “bitches”, are under the thumb of a kind of brotherhood of men — who allocate the bodies of those women in such a way as to satisfy the “greater good”, at least according to the men’s sexual appetites, one woman for every man. In that way, the women, too are “purified” — they’re honorable, because they’re not acting against the interests of the collective of men. Do you see how weirdly fascist this all is?

Now. The question is why these guys — these nerds and dorks — would delve down the rabbit hole and recreate fascism without even knowing it. Don’t you find that striking? Somehow, there’s a weird set of socio-economic pressures that seem to have shattered their minds apart. What are those pressures?

The answer is that they are losers. They don’t have the things they expected — not just sex, of course, but what sex is a means to for them: the power, status, rank, respect that comes from being part of a tribe of men who control women’s bodies. So they are losers of a special kind — losers who expected to be winners. Who felt entitled — to women of course, but more truly, I think, what they think sex represents to other men just like them — power and status. Losers who expected some level of status, power, rank, and respect to simply accompany them throughout their lives. And yet, somehow, they don’t seem to have enough of it.

The key word is “enough”. It’s not that they have none — they’re not losers in the absolute sense. They have plenty of power and status. After all, incels and alt-rightists are dorks and nerds of a specific kind: white ones, usually. Below them sit millions of young black and latino men — not to mention women — who don’t share the privileges that the white ones appear to take for granted. So they’re losers of a very special kind — losers who expected to be greater winners than they are.

But why would that be the case? Why would they feel entitled to more power, status, rank, and respect than they have — and why would the amount they have, which is still quite a bit, socially speaking, not be enough? The answer must lie in their expectations. Those expectations can only come from history. So the answer must be something like: they saw their grandfathers and fathers live lives in which these things seemed to materialize almost effortlessly. Women, relationships, sex — and the power and so on which other men accorded them as a result.

Now we are getting somewhere. We have found that the sudden, violent turn of young white men, towards fascism, is driven by a kind of relative collapse in social rank, status, and power. It is in that sense they are losers — they are not living the lives they expected to live. But why not? Has the number of women in society suddenly decreased? Are there more men? Of course not. The answer must lie somewhere beyond demographics.

The answer, which has never occurred to these young men, these losers, is that society itself is growing short of power. Not just for them — but for everyone. And that is because power is being concentrated at the top. It’s being taken away from everyone — women, minorities, the young, the old, the poor — and flowing towards a tiny group, at the very top: that is what growing inequality really means. These young men don’t see any of that, though. They think they are the only victims in a society being robbed and cheated of the power to obtain what they expected to have (even if it was foolish to want it in the first place). And so they lash out viciously, trying to preserve what power they can for themselves. But do you see the bargain they are making? They are the precarious allying with the powerful to dominate the powerless.

And all that is how capitalism degenerates into fascism. It’s hard to see — my parable isn’t quite clear yet — so let’s zoom out. It’s not the absolutely powerless, the dirt poor who are the fascists — at least the ardent, bellowing true believers. It is the imploded middle class. The ones who expected to be powerful — but aren’t. If we think about American proto-fascism, it’s the people who expected to be living the American Dream — but aren’t — who are the Trumpists, not the dirt poor inner cities.

But that American Dream always had a dark side, too. Who was gay in it? Were black people living in those suburban neighborhoods? What ethnicity was the maid, the carwasher, and the gas station attendant? Do you see how even being in a secure middle class means being at the top of a little social heirarchy? How being “middle class” means that you have, above all, a certain kind of power, which is what “stability” must also mean, in a certain sense?

So what happens if you lose all that? The powerless one never expected to be on top of anyone. But what about the guy in the middle, who did? What happens when he or she finds themselves without as much power as they expected to have? Then, my friends, you probably turn to those who promise to give you that power by force. At the precise moment you probably should be asking: “wait — am I the only one who’s gowing powerless? Is power over other people what I should be after, anyways? Is that kind of power what’s causing this meltdown in the first place?”

A middle class, you see, is one of the great inventions of modernity. It never really existed before, at least in a relatively stable sense, until the birth of modern democracies. Modern democracies, of course, were accompanied by capitalism. But capitalism, in turn, creates winners and losers, which threatens to destabilize the whole project of a modern society, by undoing that middle class, unless it’s reined in.

When capitalism creates too many losers, and not enough winners — when it becomes predatory, in other words, and a tiny number “win” by making everyone else “lose”, as is the case in America today — then the spark for fascism is lit. Some losers expect to be losers — they always have been. But some are new losers. And it’s those new losers, the precarious, who make a strange and stupid choice. Instead of bringing down the winners, they lick the winners’ boots — as long as the winners promise to give them the power to sit atop the people they expected to dominate again. It might not make sense morally, and it might be ethically foolish — but it’s perfectly rational when you think about it.

That’s what the incels and the dorks and nerds of the alt-right are really doing, after all. They felt entitled to a certain amount of power, status, and rank. They didn’t get it. But they also didn’t see that no one did — everyone’s lot in life is declining in a stagnant economy, and that means that society should probably be reformed so everyone’s life improves. And so instead of changing the system for the benefit of all, they chose to lick the boots of a set of domineering bullies, who promised them just the power to dominate those they’d expected to. Bang! The recreation of the essential bargain of fascism, all over again, in weird little internet communities. How strange. How sad. How absurd.

That’s a lot, and it’s very, very abstract, so let me try to simplify the lesson. Capitalism creates winners and losers. When the winners are many and the losers are few — a broad middle class, lording it over an entrenched poor, serving a tiny number of rich — then the system is stable. No, of course, even that is not “fair” — it is just stable. But when capitalism becomes predatory, then the losers begin to outnumber the winners. The once stable middle class, which expected a middling level of dominance, collapses. They aren’t as powerful as they expected to be. And rather than reform the system so that everyone is powerful and prosperous again, they choose, instead, to ally with the tiny number of predatory winners — granting them dominance, as long as they themselves are granted the privilege to dominate, by force, all the people they expected to. Minorities, gays, immigrants, refugees — if they are just regular middle class people. Women — if they are incels. And so on.

I think the answer is very clear by now. Capitalism does indeed have a tendency to degenerate into fascism. The winners take more and more for themselves — but that makes everything more precarious, more precarious, by creating more and more losers, until ultimately, the system folds in on itself. But in a perverse way — the more powerful of the losers lick the boots of the winners, in order to gain to what they were always promised, to subjugate the weakest among them. And in that way, nobody really asks the question: what might happen if we all had not just power over each other, but power in, through, and with one another — to live decent and beautiful and sane lives?

Do you see how subtle and strange it is, the way capitalism folds in on itself, ultimately? Not with a bang — but with something more like an explosion that crescendoes back into an implosion.

That is a great lesson America’s collapse is teaching the world. The question is if the world is learning it.

Umair
July 2018

POVERTY AND THE END OF POWER

“What is the essence of leadership if not to better the lot of the populace?   What is the essence of power if not to be used in furtherance of the welfare of the people? What is the essence of authority over the people if not to cater for their wellbeing? Why do we surrender our rights to the commonwealth if not that it can guarantee our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, freedom from want and poverty?

The decay and poverty in the country are as a result of failure in governance. It all boils down to the wrong application of power. This is what we call “The End of Power”; when power fails to be used to improve the condition of and create a situation for the betterment of the people. Of what use then is the power we surrender to our leaders? Where is that social contract? There is no doubt, that contract is in the breach and we have returned to the state of nature. Realizing that, the politicos are now back; we are now in the season of promises, a period of heightening of our expectations, the era of oath taking and atonement and the time for false assurances and mouth-watering undertakings of stomach-care proportions.

According to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) “since there is no summum bonum or Greatest Good, the natural state of man is not to be found in a political community that pursues the greatest good. But to be outside of a political community is to be in an anarchic condition. Given human nature, the variability of human desires, and need for scarce resources to fulfil those desires, the state of nature, as Hobbes calls this anarchic condition, must be a war of all against all. . . . In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” -Thomas Hobbes.  This is the state we find ourselves today.

The desire to avoid the state of nature forms the polestar of political reasoning. This suggests that one ought to be willing to renounce one's right to all things where others are willing to do the same, to quit the state of nature, and to erect a commonwealth with the authority to command them in all things. This is part of the fulcrum on which stands our constant needs to elect leaders and representatives who will cater for our mutual political and social needs.

Our ubiquitous leaders are here again. But, if we are wise, this is the time to ask questions that have been agitating our minds in the last 19 years. What became of all the promises made during the last five elections since the return to civil rule in 1999: Promises concerning electricity, housing, food security, employment opportunities,  healthcare for all, education for our children, security for our persons and our homes, economic development of our country and many more questions that are begging for answers.

Perhaps the most urgent question that needs to be answered is that of the persistence and growth of poverty in the land. The misfortune called poverty is not an act of God and the solution cannot be found in the mosques or the churches (the Middle-Eastern religions). Neither is the solution in Ifa or other traditional religions. But its festering is a result of glaring leadership failure. “Maybe there is a need to remind ourselves  of what Quran 42 verse 30 says:  “Whatever misfortune befalls you [people], it is because of what your own hands had done . . . “

Therefore, the agony, evils, misfortunes, pains, economic instability, stagnation and backwardness being experienced in the country today are as a result of failed leadership. Our misfortunes and sufferings are definitely not from God, but from ourselves.

Poverty is the oldest and the most resistant virus that brings about a devastating disease in the third world called under development. Its rate of killing cannot be compared to any disease from the genesis of mankind. The United Nations Human Development Report, defined poverty as a complex phenomenon that generally refers to inadequacy of resources and deprivation of choices that would enable people to enjoy decent living conditions. Poverty is a pandemic disease that affects a greater number of people in the society.

A recent report by The World Poverty Clock shows Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the most extreme poor people in the world. ... The 86.9 million Nigerians now living in extreme poverty represent nearly 50% of its estimated 180 million population.

Professor Muhammad Yūnus defines it as the denial of human rights relating to the fulfilment of basic human needs.  “However, poverty is not a concept but a condition; a state of being; a condition of human wretchedness, despondency, deprivation and want. A state of lacking in the basic necessities of life such as food, clean water, shelter( even of a crude type), basic health care, basic education and a state of abject impoverishment. Poverty is not only a disease but a state of spiritual rejection. As a condition of deprivation, poverty is a state of economic marginalization and denial of fundamental human rights of fulfilment of basic needs and freedom. Poverty is a political and economic crime that sentences the individual into a social and spiritual prison, making that person cursed as in Joshua 9:23 “Now therefore you are cursed , and some of you shall never be anything but servants , hewers of wood and drawers of water . . “.  

People in a state of poverty are politically voiceless; they are emasculated financially and have no business in the political domain; they are constantly preoccupied with eking a living from the dustbin of society. And they are at the mercy of ‘rulers’ who are supposed to protect their interest and ameliorate their living conditions. It’s as if they were born to suffer. 

The million Naira question, therefore, is: Given the country’s enormous resources, why is such a huge portion of the populace living in poverty and squalor?

This vast incidence of poverty in the midst of plenty has severally been linked to the endemic corruption in the country. But is it only corruption? There are many other causes that all relate to the incidence of poor governance. They include, but not exclusively, low economic growth performance.    Another is the incessant unrest and attacks by the insurgency which has created a gaping hole in the society. This also boils down to weak governance. Lack of access to education and healthcare: And many other issues that constitutes debilitating factors to the welfare of the people.

That our people remain poor is therefore a great betrayal of trust on the part of those that have been governing us. Quran 4:58 says, “God does command you to render back your trust to those to whom they are due; and when you judge between man and man, be just…’’

According to Mallam Falalu Bello in a recent interview, he posited rightly that Nigerians have become pauperised by the various administrations in the last 19 years. ”The index of poverty, from whichever source you have, is telling us a story. An index tells us that 92 per cent of people in Zamfara are living below the poverty line, 80 per cent in Jigawa and 82 per cent in Katsina. It tells you and me that these governments in the last 16 plus three years (19) have not helped Nigerians. People are poorer, and if people are poorer, what is the governance all about? What should Nigerians do?  Who is enjoying in Nigeria today – whether you come from Imo, Kano, Jigawa or Sokoto?” What a pitty!

In the next few months we will not rest nor sleep as we will be treated to all the shenanigans of political theatrics and manoeuvres. God help us if we fail again to ask them the necessary questions. Once again our future and that of our children and our children’s children lies in our hands. We cannot afford to fail.

Heaven, they say, helps only those that help themselves.

Barka Juma’at and happy weekend

Babatunde Jose
+2348033110822

For Air Nigeria as national carrier

                            By Bayo Ogunmupe

    For Air Nigeria, the airline mooted as our new national carrier to set off on its feet, Nigeria's federal government will be paying N3.168 billion or $8.8 million as startup capital. This was contained in the Outline Business Case document recently presented to the Federal Executive Council. It was presented by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC). Since then, airline operators have been expressing concerns over government funding of the airline which will result in interference in its operations as a private company.

    We gathered the injection of N3.2 billion is a part payment of government's five percent equity share in the company, whose take off fund is N108 billion. Sources at the Federal Ministry of Transportation said $300 million is the minimum expected from its public and private investors, of which $15 million is federal government's contribution. Sources explain that the government wishes to start the project in order to attract credible investors. Air Nigeria's predecessor, Nigeria Airways was liquidated in 2004. With Nigeria's immense oil wealth at the time, Nigeria Airways failed woefully, rolling up billion of naira in multiple debts.

    From its ashes rose many private airlines, majority of which closed shop as soon as they were launched. In the 1980s, Nigeria Airways had more than 30 aircraft, of different ranges. It covered major Nigerian, African and world cities. It flew its Boeing 727 and 737 jets to Kano where it positioned the Fokker F27 that would redistribute passengers to Sokoto, Kaduna and Jos twice daily. While there were direct flights to Yola and Maiduguri from Lagos once daily. A 50 seater F27 flight connects Lagos to Ibadan and Benin daily. For Eastern Nigeria, it serviced Enugu, Port Harcourt and Calabar with F28 crafts at least twice daily.

    On its international menu, Nigeria Airways had a retinue of crafts for the West Coast of Africa, New York, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rome, Jedda, Nairobi among others. Unlike private airlines, Nigeria Airways had most of its maintenance done locally then. An engineer with the defunct airline, Ayuba Kyari recalled that the Lagos hangar conducted checks on Boeing 737 airlines and Airbus A310. In keeping with his election promise, President Buhari caused the name and logo of the moot carrier to be unveiled the Farnborough Air Show in London last July ahead of December 24, 2018 takeoff.

    In 2016, Federal Government launched the Aviation roadmap, an ambitious plan to revive the Nigeria Airways. Spearheading the campaign is the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, a captain and technocrat. The new airline is subject to the approval of the government via the public private partnership. Unlike the federally owned Nigeria Airways, Air Nigeria will be 95 percent privately owned. Government is only providing start up capital in the form of an upfront grant or viability funding.

    In order for the airline to take off in earnest, government is providing $55 million as grant to pay commitment fees to enable it obtain an aircraft on lease for initial operations. The grant will also provide deposit for new aircraft whose delivery will begin in 2021. Minister Sirika also added that the core investor will only be known after the public private partnership procurement is completed. The company's shares will be sold via an Initial Public Offer (IPO) with federal government holding five percent equity held in trust for nigerians.

    The list of shareholders will be available to the Security and Exchange Commission and the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Finally, Air Nigeria will be sold to the public subject to the relevant rules for public companies. However, nowadays, government ownership of airlines is unfashionable, because of the high capital, high risk and the meagre turnover in airline business today. Although, public private partnership (PPP) prides itself on trust and the sanctity of agreements among parties, going by controversies surrounding PPP in Nigeria, it will be difficult for investors to trust the government. A case in point is the failure of the PPP arrangement between Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL) and the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) on the build, operate and transfer (BOT) agreement on the Murtala Airport2. The terminal has been the subject of litigation between the duo since its completion.

    While FAAN concessioned the terminal to BASL for 15 years; BASL petitioned for a 36 year extension and obtained it from President Umaru Yar Adua. But FAAN insisted the initial 15 year agreement was sacrosanct. Amidst that imbroglio, FAAN awarded Lagos General Aviation Terminal to a rival company in contravention of the original agreement with BASL. When BASL went to court, it won up to the Court of Appeal which FAAN didn't appeal. Sadly there was another subsisting judgment of N132 billion in favour of BASL obtained in 2012 over FAAN's illegal operation of Lagos terminal.

    Up till the moment FAAN has not obeyed the courts. Subsequently, aviation stakeholders doubt Sirika's sincerity and the sincerityof any subsequent government honouring concession agreements. Another stumbling block is the inability of government to settle the entitlements of the workers of the defunct Nigeria Airways. President Obasanjo liquidated the Nigeria Airways without  paying compensation to its workers. While the law establishing the failed airline had not been repealed, the severance packages of more than 6000 workers remained unpaid contrary to labour laws.

    Indeed, assets of Nigeria Airways spread all over the world had been sold and the hangar at the Murtala Muhammed Airport is still littered with equipment that are not being put to use. Which is why aviation stakeholders insist government should first settle ex workers before a new carrier is embarked upon. The chairman of Airline Operatoes of Nigeria, Nogie Meggison noted that the problem of aviation isn't that of capacity, but that of infrastructure deficit and the tough operational environment. Meggison averred that those problems should be tackled first.

    The high mortality rate of airlines should be cause for worry. According to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, no fewer than 150 airlines were  registered by 2000. Less than ten are now operating while the others have been impounded over debt through its assets recovery vehicle: the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria. And experts on aviation advice that government should tackle infrastructure before embarking on a new national carrier. They claim maintenance as soul of aviation should be done locally instead of going overseas every 18 months gulping more $3 million per session.

    Furthermore, Meggison identified matters requiring government intervention to include a review of five percent Ticket Sales Charge to a flat rate in line with global best practices. He also called for a harmonization of over 35 charges which add to the huge burden of airlines. All of these problems go to show that the effort to revive the national carrier is more political than for prosperity reasons. Another aviation consultant, Taiwo Adenekan, was of the view that government should make a Fly Nigeria Law. Take Julius Berger for instance, they have millions of contracts in this country. They have flying budget for their workers. What percentage of such budget goes to our national carrier? Government should use law to protect Nigeria Air in terms of patronage and the spirit of nationalism.

    Therefore government should tackle infrastructure and aviation law before dreaming of a national airline.Government must pay $12 million owed Nigeria Airways for unpaid services before closure. Government must settle ex workers and repeal Airways Act before building a new national carrier.