Thanks, everyone for all the great comments. They've certainly given me a lot to think about! I think people are getting hung up on the specific people I picked as exemplars rather than the audience they represent, which is what this is really about.
I agree with some of the comments, while I don't necessarily agree with others. I'll respond to those points individually. But everyone made their case and everyone kept it respectful. That's terrific, and it's what I encourage around here.
Man, thank you for this! I've been ruminating over this line of thinking for years now, but could never connect all the disparate points so coherently. I went pretty deep down the Peak Oil rabbit hole in the years following the 2008 financial crash, mainly due to Greer's writing on the subject. I continued following him and Kunstler, et al, over the years and started getting very perplexed around 2016 when they all went from being apolitical "voices out of the wilderness" to outspoken Trump supporters. Thankfully I jumped off that train before it went completely off the rails. I hope you'll be glad to know your work now fills the intellectual niche in my mind that was vacated by Greer's departure from reason. We need you now more than ever!
Greer promised to write about Hitler tomorrow. Check it out.
I agree with the other comments saying your characterization of him misses the mark. JMG is critical of both Trump and the Democrats, and mostly thinks in longer terms than the election cycle. (Some of his commenters have been outspoken in their opposition to Trump and/or Vance.) He is not any kind of racist, and apparently has Japanese family connections.
While he does predict the eventual downfall of the USA / civilizational collapse, it is essential to understand that he means a *gradual* collapse. So rather than tell everybody to flee the cities or whatnot--he recommends small towns--he is more concerned with frugality, since economic conditions are bound to get worse. The fate of Ukraine and Israel (Greer is a student of military strategy) are just symptoms of the decline of their patron. Following Spengler, he foresees new civilizations eventually arising in parts of both America and Russia.
His anti-vax stance and general medical / scientific skepticism seem rooted in his son's death through medical malfeasance, although they of course resonate with the occult / neo-pagan subculture. He accepts the reality of climate change, but is agnostic about its causes.
Yes, Greer seems to have studied a lot of German philosophy (who else reads Schopenhauer anymore?), but also things like neo-Platonism. It is probably essential to remember that he belongs to numerous initiatory societies besides the Druids. The emphasis seems to be on self-improvement and community building.
I've been liking his Wagner posts. No, he doesn't glorify Wagner or Germany--on his reading, the operas symbolize the shortcomings of industrial civilization.
One of JMG's odder views (if I understand him correctly) is that he thinks smartphones are literally demonic. That is, demons (or some of them) are electrical. He does not watch videos at all, which admittedly is not the worst idea in the world.
BTW Naomi Wolf has been writing about a vision she had of Jesus. I wonder what this portends.
Let's start with those quotes I listed above: Kamala is a "DEI hire" and her campaign is a "dumpster fire." Those are the exact quotes verbatim. I'm going to be blunt here, but that is some racist fucking shit. They also happen to be the Trump/Republican talking points du jour, which tend to creep into Greer's writings a lot lately.
He also says the Harris/Walz campaign is incoherent (or agrees with that, anyway). Really? He writes this just days after Trump waxed rhapsodic on the size of Arnold Palmer's junk. Has he not heard Trump's rambling and incoherent speeches about electrocuting sharks, or whatever? Perhaps he hasn't seen this response when asked about child care costs: https://youtu.be/jbVinpyscTU?t=71
And what about Obama supposedly "making a fool of himself" and the "sulfurous" responses he got by "lecturing" to black men? I assume he's talking about Obama's speech in Detroit where he was introduced by Eminem. Was he watching the same speech I was? Because what I saw was an audience eating out the palm of his hand. Maybe it was--something else--that was bothering him about that speech? Or about Obama? Hmm, I wonder, what could it be?
Then he follows up those takes by saying the *Democrats* are going to become hardcore racists after the election. Again, *are you fucking kidding me???* Literally days after thart was posted, the Republicans held a rally at Madison Square Garden (perhaps Greer is aware of the history) which was so full of angry, vile, racist, and misogynistic remarks that even the Trump campaign had to distance itself from it. Strange how I didn't notice any criticism of that.
At this point, these takes are just embarrassing. Yet his cult of personality eats it up. If Greer actually had to justify any of these opinions to people outside of his safe space his thoughts would not hold up better than an origami sculpture in a hurricane. There's really no political bias there of any sort? Really???
I hate to imply what I'm implying, but he does seem to have a particular enmity toward women and minority politicians, as do all of these (uniformly white) peak oil writers. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Harris campaign and the Democrats, of course, and it would be foolish to deny that. But I don't see any of those here. Instead, I see the kind of reality denial and race-baiting I see everywhere on the far right these days. And while this sort of stuff is buried or implied in Greer's writings, I think you're naive or oblivious if you don't see it (or else you agree with it). And I don't think having Japanese relatives means much--the Japanese can be some of the most racist people on earth. You can be racist against some groups while not others.
It's tragic that he lost a child, and no one should have to suffer that. I'm sympathetic to that pain. But that's no reason to go on a crusade against all of "Western medicine" or to peddle antivax conspiracy theories. People have died and will continue to die because of these attitudes, especially if they become government policy. People living in underserved rural areas need *more* access to healthcare, not less, and homeopathy isn't going to cure cancer or treat kidney disease. The fact is, a lot less children and mothers die today than they did in the past thanks to the evils of Western medicine. If there truly was malpractice involved (I can't say because I don't know the details), then he should have sought redress in the courts and gotten compensated, which won't fix what happened, but nothing will.
And what about pushing the Kremlin's conspiratorial views of the Ukraine war? What about his justification of Russia's ethnic cleansing in Ukraine--something pretty common in far-right circles? What sort of media is he consuming? Where is he getting these talking points? Have you listened to any of his podcasts with James Howard Kunstler? Kunstler would have been a better example of what happened to peak oil writers, except: 1.) He's now batshit crazy and has gone completely off the rails; and 2.) I was trying to talk about people who hold occult/new age/conspiritual/antivax views and why they've gravitated to Neo-fascism, and that is not Kunstler's audience. But they pretty much agree on everything.
And I could literally find dozens, maybe hundreds of examples of this sort of thing if I wanted to, which I do not care to. I have better things to do. But I'm willing to bet that, if you read the archives (if they existed), you would notice a distinct shift from before 2008, to 2008 to 2016, and another shift after 2016. Do you really think that's not the case? To me, this shift been very obvious. His writings started out as apolitical, but have since become steeped in right-wing culture war, outrage, conspiracies, and other miscellaneous far-right talking points including "great replacement" theory.
Back in July, most of the posters were hysterical over the Olympic opening ceremony and how it signaled the decline of Western civilization, or whatever. When the bridge was struck in Baltimore, opinions ranged between it being some kind of conspiracy and claiming that Vladimir Putin could have rebuilt the bridge in 24 hours unlike "woke" America. And these kind of right-wing culture war outrages and talking points are now a fixture on his site. Are you really attempting to convince me that none of this is true? That I'm not seeing what I'm seeing?
There's a school of thought that says one reason people support Trump is because of their anxiety and hostility about the increased representation and visibility of non-whites in American culture, and then coming up with intellectual justifications for those feelings to try and convince themselves that those feelings are totally legitimate and that they're not really just bigots. That's how people work: they have emotional reactions and then come up with intellectual justifications for their feelings. In my experience, people who are utterly obsessed with "woke" are just grasping at an intellectual veneer to make it look they aren't what they really are: consumed with racial anxiety and wanting to go back to an earlier time when there was less minority and female representation in culture and the media. Greer is just more articulate about it and better at lying to himself than most people.
You know what I think? I think these are bunch of grouchy old white guys whose lives have not turned out they way they wanted (and are in denial about it) who are looking to blame and scapegoat other people for it, and that's why they became obsessed with peak oil--they thought it would bring everyone down to their socioeconomic level and punish those they deemed unworthy. That it would unwind society back to a time before people like them were left behind by the modern world. It was a quasi-religious apocalyptic movement. And when it was clear that this wasn't going to happen, they funneled their anger and rage into right-wing populism and justified it with all sorts of half-baked intellectual gymnastics. Greer is just a lot more articulate about it than crackpots like Kunstler and his ilk.
I'll let you in on a little secret. What prompted this entire post was an exchange on one of those previous open forums, which I looked for but couldn't find. Someone was arguing that Trump is nothing more than a con artist and people on the forum were suckers for falling for it (which I happen to agree with). This person was immediately dogpiled by tons of posters bragging about how they were proud and enthusiastic Trump supporters who grew their own organic vegetables, sewed their own clothes, bicycled to work, didn't use air conditioning, never flew on a plane, etc. The ratio was at least 10:1 if not higher. So I don't think you're correct about his audience, at least not anymore.
And what I thought to myself was: "Why the fuck are these people voting for Trump?" What is it about a sleazy New York City real estate tycoon and con artist whose entire career has been bragging about wealth and excess which attracts these sorts of people who are supposedly all about community and small town American values? Why are people sewing patches onto to their threadbare clothing and eating turnip soup every night voting for a guy who famously shits in a gold toilet and slaps his name on every product imaginable, including a fake university that was sued for fraud? What was the appeal here?
Because the harsh reality is, Trump thinks people like Greer and his audience are losers. Total, complete, fucking losers. They would disgust him. Can you imagine Trump growing organic vegetables or riding a bicycle anywhere? He certainly doesn't give a shit about the environment or peak oil. In fact, he attacks Harris for wanting to ban fracking (which she does not). These people seem to believe that a New York City real estate tycoon and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist are somehow the champions of the working class against the woke PMC elites, and nothing they do will amount to anything bad. They also deny the overwhelming evidence of corruption and malfeasance as some sort of "witch hunt" (while providing no evidence for that view). I'm sorry, but I think that's attitude is as dangerous as it is brain dead. It is playing Russian Roulette with American democracy.
And I wonder how--despite holding forth on history and claiming he's some kind of expert--Greer is not seeing what I'm seeing and is scared shitless. And I'm not alone: there are plenty of people by now who are also seeing a grim replay of 1930s Germany and saying the same things that I'm saying. How can he justify it? I deliberately wrote this piece before I read his latest piece on Hitler, but I don't have high expectations. It's probably the usual handwaving away of any comparisons, how fascism is just a 'snarl word', how this time it's totally different, how people are just overreacting because they're "woke" or PMC or whatever, and that it can't happen here, or some other mystical nonsense. But I'm willing to be proven wrong. Maybe he really can convince me that I'm not seeing what I'm seeing, and that I and all the other historians, journalists, writers, commentators, politicians, military, and former trump staffers are getting it wrong.
A lot of people have noticed that people in the occult and spirituality movements have shifted to the far right politically, especially since the pandemic. There's even a term for it: conspirituality. I was noticing the same trend, and since Greer's blog is one of the few places I encounter these views, I used it as an example. I think people got way too preoccupied with the specific people I chose and not the intellectual story I was trying to tell. These sort of mystical, conspiratorial views are absolutely fueling the rise of Neo-fascism worldwide, regardless of whether you agree with my choice of examples or not.
I finally got around to reading Greer's essay and it was just as stupid as I predicted. He seems to know the history all right, but fails to draw any conclusions. Only in the last two paragraphs does he finally get around to saying that the *real* Nazis are "corporate liberals." I have no idea what the heck he is referring to, do you? There is no rationale or explanation given.
He claims that "liberals" who" are "obsessed with Hitler." Um, the reason people are talking about Hitler recently is because we've got a Republican candidate who claimed that he wanted unquestioningly loyal generals like Hitler's and uses the exact same rhetoric verbatim in his speeches. Oh, and who wants to round up and incarcerate tens of millions of people. But no, it's the "liberal's" fault for Donald Trump. Good God, how can anyone be this dense?
Here are the first two comments:
"In Europe I’d expect Hitler’s reputation to be rehabilitated by Muslim and African immigrants and their leftist allies who begin to view Hitler as a anti-colonialist who valiantly fought against the evil evil evil British and French and American empires but lost."
"Yes, there seems to be almost an unconscious attraction to Trump in the way so many structure their day around hating him. People are looking for a big daddy figure perhaps because we have spent so much time as a culture in building up the virtues of women while belittling men. The opposite has a way of working itself in around the next bend."
Still want to make the claim that I'm misunderstanding Greer or his audience? If anything, after reading this nonsense, I was too easy on them.
Of course, depicting technology as a malevolent, demoniacal force is a good metaphor for conceptualizing its effects in our lives and society. Kingsnorth, however, appears to be arguing it in a quite literal fashion, presumably influenced by his religious beliefs.
I feel like you're a little hard on Greer. I've read quite a bit of his work, and really not got the impression that he should be anywhere near inclusion with the far right, Trump support, or fascism in general (neo or otherwise). Pretty much exactly the opposite, actually. Maybe you aren't suggesting this, but it just felt pretty jarring to include him in this discussion.
Fair enough. My attempt wasn't so much to talk about Greer (or Kingsnorth) himself, as to look at how many of their ideas have led people down the path of supporting Neo-fascism, and more broadly, the historical background these ideas played in the initial rise of fascism in Europe. I don't mean to imply that either Greer of Kingsnorth are fascists, which I'm sure they would vehemently deny. I think classifying them as them right-wing populists is fair, however. I have no problem categorizing Vance and Bannon as Neo-fascists.
I do wonder how they continue to rationalize and normalize a movement that is clearly authoritarian, racist and antidemocratic, even if they claim not to support it. Have they really not been paying attention?
Yeah, I really don't know. I don't follow Kingsnorth at all, but I came to Greer from a perspective of anarcho-communism. I'm staunchly anti-capitalist, anti-hierarchical, etc. His work just never really stood out to me as particularly objectionable in the ways you're suggesting in this piece. It also seems pretty obvious to me that modern society is pretty unsustainable and that a collapse is underway. Greer just seemed to be explaining the process of this, but I never got the impression that he was hoping for a collapse in order to return to some mythical golden age of traditionalism or racial purity.
I guess either I'm just not reading between the lines or that you're perhaps seeing things that aren't there, but I just keep shaking my head while reading this article thinking, "I have no idea how he drew this conclusion." Either way, thanks for responding. I'm enjoying the series.
I certainly don't think that! I'm not sure where you got that impression, and I might do some editing to make it clearer. Though I am a bit troubled by his theory that white Europeans are going to be entirely replaced by Muslims in a hundred years. I don't find these ideas helpful (or accurate), and they play directly into far-right "Great Replacement," "Clash of Civilizations" paranoia we see on the far-right. Immigration is a sensitive topic, and there much more constructive ways to talk about it. I also don't buy his mystical theories of history which I think are counterproductive. As I noted, these notions of decline and rebirth did play a role in fascism historically, and that's undeniable. There are certain "habits of thought" that I'm trying to get at here (pessimistic, conspiratorial, anti-rational, etc.) which lead to some very dark places.
I also worry that the sort of grievance and resentment which fuels these populist arguments not only lacks analytical rigor, but it feeds into the kind of hate and bifurcation of society that we've seen when we should be uniting against a common enemy, and it isn't "wokeness" or people who live in big cities and have college degrees. This attitude leads not only to an us-against-them mentality, but it seems to blind people to the warning signs of authoritarianism, which are handwaved away as mere "propaganda" by the elites against the savior. It's like a denial of reality. As I've said before, if you lose hope that your life can get better, all you want to do is tear other people down. I agree that growth is slowing down, and that energy plays a role in that. What I don't share is the pessimism that there's nothing we can do about it, and that we can't make better political choices that will improve people's lives (for me that choice is democratic socialism, which is not incompatible with religious belief). Perhaps Greer is unaware that most of the working class isn't rural or white, and that Trump voters had higher than average incomes (including the people who stormed the Capitol).
In the end, if Trump is elected and it's even half as bad as I think it's going to be (that is, if he merely does what he says he's going to do), I hope that these authors will do the right thing and stand up for freedom (although Greer's apparent admiration for Putin's Russia makes me unsure of that). I guess we'll see, but I would rather not have to find out!
I've read Kingsworth and he seems to follow Christianity for it's own sake rather than as a way of revitalizing the West. I think he sees the problems of decadence and decline of traditional culture. But he differs greatly from the far right in that he is fascinated by Christianity and uninterested by politics. A lot of his posts are about visiting holy wells in Ireland.
I agree that Kingsnorth doesn't see Christianity as some sort of political project, and that it's a personal thing for him. Although it is telling that when he does take political stances (Brexit, anti-vax), they tend to follow the right-wing party line and he employs the exact same rhetoric and terminology as the political actors themselves (condemning "wokeness," "permissiveness" "multiculturalism", etc.). Of course, he is free to do so. Full disclosure: I find Orthodoxy to a very beautiful and moving faith (most of my contact has been with the Serbian variety).
But, again, it's not about him. I'm trying to get at the intellectual undercurrents here. It's certainly the case that Dreher and most paleoconservative publications want Trump to win the election. Why? It's certainly true that there is a faction in the Republican Party that do want to govern using religious principles. If you believe Vance's rhetoric, he almost certainly wants to use Christianity to revitalize American society (I mean, just listen to what he says and what he writes), and if Trump wins he's going to be running the show (Trump will either be put out to pasture in a golf course somewhere or finally keel over due to advanced age. His brain is clearly already fading).
What I'm really trying to get at is: how is it that people who have diametrically opposing visions of society are all united in the same political movement? And what are those visions? How can they all be accommodated? And what about those who don't want any of these things? That's what I hope to explore next.
I think they are united in their hatred of wokeness and the left. The modern day left seems a bit overly obsessed about ideological purity whereas the various right wing factions are so obsessed with defeating the left that they are willing to ignore any glaring character flaws of Trump and ignore the contradictions of their own side.
Another explanation is that Trump is so vague and incoherent that people can project whatever they want onto him. Like if he promises to fight America's enemies, people can just assume that includes whatever group they hate the most.
Haha, you kind of predicted my next installment! I was going to point out that he is basically Rorschach ink blot--people project on him whatever their particular agenda is. The problem is, when you're not governing you can tell everybody whatever they want to hear. When you've actually got to govern, someone is going to lose out. That's just the reality. Who's it going to be?
I think all of these groups are going to very disappointed when the reality does not live up to their expectations and they get pushback from the people who are virulently opposed to their agenda (as we've seen with abortion). Much the same thing happened with all the factions who thought they could "control" Hitler and that he would deliver everything they wanted, even when different groups wanted mutually opposing things. That's why these sort of regimes have to resort to terror to hold onto power once people realize the jig is up.
I feel like the answer to your ending questions here is: “thousands of diverse groups are forced into a narrow two party system”. Trump only has to be 1% closer to the beliefs of those many different groups for them to vote for him over the alternative. This doesn’t mean they like him. Just prefer him a bit more for any number of reasons. Perhaps trying to avoid the impending WW3 the current administration has seemed to permit through weak leadership. Not everyone voting Trump is a rabid far-right MAGA type. I think that’s a very, very important distinction that needs to made. Diverse groups only appear to have overlap because they’re forced into a two party system and Trump seems to have solutions for more than a narrow band of society.
"Not everyone voting for Trump is a rabid far-right Maga type." That's certainly true. But so what? Most people were not Nazis in the 1930s. Thee majority of people did not vote for the Nazi party in the 1933 German election. The majority of Italians were not Fascisti when Mussolini came to power. The majority of Russians were not Bolsheviks. That's not how this works. Once an antidemocratic party seizes the levers of state, it uses them to achieve total control and ensconce one party rule and dictatorship. We've seen this all over the world, over and over gain. Spain. Portugal, Greece, Indonesia. Russia. Zaire. The Philippines, Zimbabwe, Venezuela. I could go on and on.
We have one political party that's clearly attempting to undermine the democratic process here in the United States. That attempted to invalidate the results of the previous election. That has already said that they will not accept the results of any election that does not declare them the winner. That any such result will constitute "fraud" Regardless of people's reasons, or whether they are "hardcore" or not, they are digging the grave of American democracy. After that it will be too late.
I think you are painting with a too broad brush here. Also, in general, I don't like that cheap rhetoric use of "guilt by association", like that, "(some of) the Nazis were back-to-nature mystics and liked Wagner, so if anybody today is to similar things, then beware..."
On the other hand, I admit that over the years, the amount of increasingly obnoxious right-wing commenters on Greer's blog has grown too much even for my taste, and more neutral and humane commenters who are not so ideologically obsessed seem to have largely left, and Greer appears to be more openly conforming with the opinions of the former group. That his income partly comes from those political horoscopes might also explain some of that trend? Personally, Greer's habitual, idiosyncratic writing style has long given me a sense of a bitter old man (his wife also died recently), who has a lots of hate and envy against the "PNC-elites". And some people there really view Spengler's book as an infallible prophecy.
However, what I most disagree with you is clumping Paul Kingsnorth with the group of fascist-suspects (even here you use the guilt by association: "married to an Indian immigrant, similar to JD Vance"). Certainly Kingsnorth is somewhat (but not overly) socially conservative, like Orthodox Christians usually are, but if you read any of his recent writings, he tries to keep his distance from "muscular Christianity" and other right-wing fascistoid ideas. And if you listen to his 2024 Erasmus Lecture talk, titled "Against Christian Civilization", it probably was quite provocative for many of those suits in the audience. Before he converted to Orthodox Christianity, he had been an environmental activist for a long time (and was also involved with Zapatistas), and he has retained his environmental attitudes to this day. You can see it in his replies to the climate change deniers and extreme natalists that occasionally creep to comment on his blog.
Also, if somebody was for Brexit or against forced vaccinations, in my books that still doesn't necessarily make one fascist, or even a right-winger.
I think you are painting with a too broad brush here. Also, in general, I don't like that cheap rhetoric use of "guilt by association", like that, "(some of) the Nazis were back-to-nature mystics and liked Wagner, so if anybody today is to similar things, then beware..."
On the other hand, I admit that over the years, the amount of increasingly obnoxious right-wing commenters on Greer's blog has grown too much even for my taste, and more neutral and humane commenters who are not so ideologically obsessed seem to have largely left, and Greer appears to be more openly conforming with the opinions of the former group. That his income partly comes from those political horoscopes might also explain some of that trend? Personally, Greer's habitual, idiosyncratic writing style has long given me a sense of a bitter old man (his wife also died recently), who has a lots of hate and envy against the "PNC-elites". And some people there really view Spengler's book as an infallible prophecy.
However, what I most disagree with you is clumping Paul Kingsnorth with the group of fascist-suspects (even here you use the guilt by association: "married to an Indian immigrant, similar to JD Vance"). Certainly Kingsnorth is somewhat (but not overly) socially conservative, like Orthodox Christians usually are, but if you read any of his recent writings, he tries to keep his distance from "muscular Christianity" and other right-wing fascistoid ideas. And if you listen to his 2024 Erasmus Lecture talk, titled "Against Christian Civilization", it probably was quite provocative for many of those suits in the audience. Before he converted to Orthodox Christianity, he had been an environmental activist for a long time (and was also involved with Zapatistas), and he has retained his environmental attitudes to this day. You can see it in his replies to the climate change deniers and extreme natalists that occasionally creep to comment on his blog.
Also, if somebody was for Brexit or against forced vaccinations, in my books that still doesn't necessarily make one fascist, or even a right-winger.
From personal reflection, I'd say being aware of peak oil undermines my confidence in the mainstream narrative. If neo liberalism holds nonsensical economic beliefs, then could not the dominant cultural beliefs that accompany it also be wrong? While peak oil is a fringe idea today, many people will have noticed their living standards go down which will have undermined their belief in the myth of the onwards march of progress. From there, it's much easier to go down any number of rabbit holes.
You write that, "If neo liberalism holds nonsensical economic beliefs, then could not the dominant cultural beliefs that accompany it also be wrong?" I think what you're saying is, if people think that what they're being told about economics is a lie, then what else is a lie?" That's a good point. But I would push back against the so-called inevitability of people's living standards falling. I'd have an easier time believing that narrative if Jeff Bezos didn't go to bed every night and wake up every morning a few million dollars richer. The supposed energy decline isn't slowing down wealth accumulation at the top of society, is it? Why is that?
Peak Oil did not cause 50 trillion dollars to be redistributed from the working class to the one percent. Read that number again: 50 trillion. If income had been distributed as evenly over the past five decades as it was in 1975, the median full-time worker in the U.S. would enjoy annual earnings of roughly $92,000 a year. As is, that worker makes just $50,000. Peak oil did not cause that:
Peak oil did not cause skyrocketing costs for education leading the amount of student debt to be an average of $21,000 dollars a year, greater than the GDP of most nations
Peak oil did not cause trillions of dollars to be held in offshore accounts out of the reach of the world's governments. It's not stopping the military from misplacing over a trillion dollars, even as we're constantly told that "we can't afford" the most basic things government can do to improve people's lives:
I am not on board with the idea that we should all just give up and accept lower living standards forever preached by some peak oil doomers. Such defeatism is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. If any peak oil character is trying to sell you that, I suggest they have ulterior motives. While some ideas may indeed be spurious, I do not think that democracy and the rule of law are among them.
I certainly appreciate what you tried to communicate in this article. I like your work in general. I do agree with a previous commenter: This was more than a bit too harsh on Greer, I read his work in depth as well. I do agree with you on Rod Dreher. I used to enjoy his work but no longer. Some guys go around the bend, and I think Rod is around the bend. Greer though isn’t exactly what you depict him as. That said, I’m no mystic or Druid. But he is a logical and empathetic guy who isn’t really selling anything other than a sharp intellect.
The word “fascist” has lost almost all meaning in today’s parlance, and I think it did in this article as well unfortunately. “Fascism” isn’t some massive bucket to group all of these people and ideas within. I think you’re grouping way too many diverse groups into a supposed “fascism” bucket. I do see what you were going for though.
Perhaps the issue is more with our two party system that leaves NO good options for all these groups. We all want to participate, we want our political involvement to matter, but who to vote for between only two viable options? Third parties are a joke and our system eats them alive. Should these groups of people wanting to participate simply abstain from voting?
Great effort put in this article. However, I think it just alienates these disparate groups by claiming they all support a groupthink mindset they clearly don’t. Trump might be a strongman - but it’s not the fault of working class people, hippies, crunchy cons, etc that we have two crappy options to support. In a way this DOES validate the cycle theory of civilization. What else explains how constrained we are?
You say that, "Greer isn’t exactly what you depict him as." How so? Is my summary of his views toward progress incorrect? Is my summary of his views about civilization's trajectory incorrect? Is my summary of his book about Donald Trump inaccurate? Admittedly, I have not read it, but I did read the original posts back when they came out some years ago and read numerous reviews in an attempt to accurately summarize the book's argument (and also linked to a page about it). Did I not do that adequately? If not, how so?
And I also included several quotes from his own forum verbatim. Yes, some of them are posters, but Greer himself clearly agrees with those sentiments. How is that mischaracterizing anything? Again, this post was mostly about a certain kind of person and why they are trending towards Neo-fascism, not specifically Greer himself. But I'm not sure how any of what I said is inaccurate or misleading.
You call him "logical and empathetic" which I find ironic, given that his entire world view is based on mysticism and anti-rationality. I don't find him very logical or rational at all, certainly not when it comes to vaccines, for example, and his economic views are clearly more based on libertarian conspiracy theories than any kind of expertise or understanding of how economics works. As for empathetic, his constant swipes at minorities and vulnerable groups don't seem very empathetic, and neither do his culture war grievances.
Typically, I find that people who are utterly consumed with "anti-wokeness" as Greer clearly is are just looking for some sort of intellectual justification for their bigotry. And he's clearly not very empathetic for the Ukrainians who have suffered years of Russia's brutal invasion (I met a Ukrainian whose family is in Mariupol at a conference a few weeks ago). In fact, he accepts every rationale for the war and ethnic cleansing, no matter how flimsy. He certainly doesn't seem very empathetic about any of the vulnerable groups who will undoubtedly suffer under a Trump presidency. Greer only seems empathetic towards people like himself: lower-class whites.
As for fascism being ill-defined, yes, that's certainly true, which is why I wrote a whole post about what the leading historical scholars have written about fascism, why I think a new term is needed for the twenty-first century, and what exactly my criteria are in characterizing these modern political movements as Neo-fascist. That post is here: https://hipcrime.substack.com/p/the-anatomy-of-neo-fascism-part-1
I agree with you that political parties are coalitions that create strange bedfellows. And I agree that the two-party system is a big reason why we're in the situation we're in. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that people are voting a certain way because they agree with one party just 1 percent more than the other. I think that's a profound observation.
However, I'm unsure we can place this exclusively at the feet of the two-party system. Germany was a parliamentary democracy when the fascists rose to power. So was Italy. The "illiberal state" of Hungary is a parliamentary democracy. So too, I believe, is Russia (although I'm not an expert at how Russia's government works). Currently, Georgia is a parliamentary democracy with several parties, and look what is happening there: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78ddj25kgvo
You ask, "should these groups of people wanting to participate simply abstain from voting?" Fuck yeah, absolutely they should. When it comes to not voting for someone who wanted to overturn the Constitution, send the military after Americans expressing their First Amendment rights, use the institutions of the government for retribution, close down opposition media, calls people who disagree with him an "enemy within", demands absolute loyalty, dehumanizes entire groups of people, and tried to stay in office despite losing an election, I' m sorry, but I don't think it's too much to ask people to not vote for that. If you can't bring yourself for Harris--and I can't for the life of me see why she's so objectionable even if you disagree with some of her policies--then don't vote at all, or vote down ballot.
And it's not like there aren't plenty of people who are doing just that. I don't think there has ever been this number of Republicans who have either endorsed Harris or refused to endorse Trump, including George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Mark Milley, John Kelly, Scaramucci, and most recently Arnold Schwarzenegger (and a ton of others). For example, here is former military general who was a lifelong Republican who also thinks that Trump is an existential threat to the Republic and will be voting for Harris instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEuiKIvL1sM As far as I'm concerned, if you knowingly vote for a fascist, then you are a fascist and are 100 percent culpable for what they do in office when you had other options on the table. Ignorance is no excuse.
What I was trying to get to the bottom of is this: why do so many groups who would not normally be on the far-right support a far-right party that I would characterize as Neo-fascist? That's what I was trying to find out by looking at the history of previous fascist movements, nothing less and nothing more. People got way too hung up on the particular names I chose. Perhaps that's my fault, but it's the only place I regularly encounter those views first-hand.
Thanks, everyone for all the great comments. They've certainly given me a lot to think about! I think people are getting hung up on the specific people I picked as exemplars rather than the audience they represent, which is what this is really about.
I agree with some of the comments, while I don't necessarily agree with others. I'll respond to those points individually. But everyone made their case and everyone kept it respectful. That's terrific, and it's what I encourage around here.
Man, thank you for this! I've been ruminating over this line of thinking for years now, but could never connect all the disparate points so coherently. I went pretty deep down the Peak Oil rabbit hole in the years following the 2008 financial crash, mainly due to Greer's writing on the subject. I continued following him and Kunstler, et al, over the years and started getting very perplexed around 2016 when they all went from being apolitical "voices out of the wilderness" to outspoken Trump supporters. Thankfully I jumped off that train before it went completely off the rails. I hope you'll be glad to know your work now fills the intellectual niche in my mind that was vacated by Greer's departure from reason. We need you now more than ever!
Greer promised to write about Hitler tomorrow. Check it out.
I agree with the other comments saying your characterization of him misses the mark. JMG is critical of both Trump and the Democrats, and mostly thinks in longer terms than the election cycle. (Some of his commenters have been outspoken in their opposition to Trump and/or Vance.) He is not any kind of racist, and apparently has Japanese family connections.
While he does predict the eventual downfall of the USA / civilizational collapse, it is essential to understand that he means a *gradual* collapse. So rather than tell everybody to flee the cities or whatnot--he recommends small towns--he is more concerned with frugality, since economic conditions are bound to get worse. The fate of Ukraine and Israel (Greer is a student of military strategy) are just symptoms of the decline of their patron. Following Spengler, he foresees new civilizations eventually arising in parts of both America and Russia.
His anti-vax stance and general medical / scientific skepticism seem rooted in his son's death through medical malfeasance, although they of course resonate with the occult / neo-pagan subculture. He accepts the reality of climate change, but is agnostic about its causes.
Yes, Greer seems to have studied a lot of German philosophy (who else reads Schopenhauer anymore?), but also things like neo-Platonism. It is probably essential to remember that he belongs to numerous initiatory societies besides the Druids. The emphasis seems to be on self-improvement and community building.
I've been liking his Wagner posts. No, he doesn't glorify Wagner or Germany--on his reading, the operas symbolize the shortcomings of industrial civilization.
One of JMG's odder views (if I understand him correctly) is that he thinks smartphones are literally demonic. That is, demons (or some of them) are electrical. He does not watch videos at all, which admittedly is not the worst idea in the world.
BTW Naomi Wolf has been writing about a vision she had of Jesus. I wonder what this portends.
Let's start with those quotes I listed above: Kamala is a "DEI hire" and her campaign is a "dumpster fire." Those are the exact quotes verbatim. I'm going to be blunt here, but that is some racist fucking shit. They also happen to be the Trump/Republican talking points du jour, which tend to creep into Greer's writings a lot lately.
He also says the Harris/Walz campaign is incoherent (or agrees with that, anyway). Really? He writes this just days after Trump waxed rhapsodic on the size of Arnold Palmer's junk. Has he not heard Trump's rambling and incoherent speeches about electrocuting sharks, or whatever? Perhaps he hasn't seen this response when asked about child care costs: https://youtu.be/jbVinpyscTU?t=71
And what about Obama supposedly "making a fool of himself" and the "sulfurous" responses he got by "lecturing" to black men? I assume he's talking about Obama's speech in Detroit where he was introduced by Eminem. Was he watching the same speech I was? Because what I saw was an audience eating out the palm of his hand. Maybe it was--something else--that was bothering him about that speech? Or about Obama? Hmm, I wonder, what could it be?
Then he follows up those takes by saying the *Democrats* are going to become hardcore racists after the election. Again, *are you fucking kidding me???* Literally days after thart was posted, the Republicans held a rally at Madison Square Garden (perhaps Greer is aware of the history) which was so full of angry, vile, racist, and misogynistic remarks that even the Trump campaign had to distance itself from it. Strange how I didn't notice any criticism of that.
At this point, these takes are just embarrassing. Yet his cult of personality eats it up. If Greer actually had to justify any of these opinions to people outside of his safe space his thoughts would not hold up better than an origami sculpture in a hurricane. There's really no political bias there of any sort? Really???
I hate to imply what I'm implying, but he does seem to have a particular enmity toward women and minority politicians, as do all of these (uniformly white) peak oil writers. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Harris campaign and the Democrats, of course, and it would be foolish to deny that. But I don't see any of those here. Instead, I see the kind of reality denial and race-baiting I see everywhere on the far right these days. And while this sort of stuff is buried or implied in Greer's writings, I think you're naive or oblivious if you don't see it (or else you agree with it). And I don't think having Japanese relatives means much--the Japanese can be some of the most racist people on earth. You can be racist against some groups while not others.
It's tragic that he lost a child, and no one should have to suffer that. I'm sympathetic to that pain. But that's no reason to go on a crusade against all of "Western medicine" or to peddle antivax conspiracy theories. People have died and will continue to die because of these attitudes, especially if they become government policy. People living in underserved rural areas need *more* access to healthcare, not less, and homeopathy isn't going to cure cancer or treat kidney disease. The fact is, a lot less children and mothers die today than they did in the past thanks to the evils of Western medicine. If there truly was malpractice involved (I can't say because I don't know the details), then he should have sought redress in the courts and gotten compensated, which won't fix what happened, but nothing will.
And what about pushing the Kremlin's conspiratorial views of the Ukraine war? What about his justification of Russia's ethnic cleansing in Ukraine--something pretty common in far-right circles? What sort of media is he consuming? Where is he getting these talking points? Have you listened to any of his podcasts with James Howard Kunstler? Kunstler would have been a better example of what happened to peak oil writers, except: 1.) He's now batshit crazy and has gone completely off the rails; and 2.) I was trying to talk about people who hold occult/new age/conspiritual/antivax views and why they've gravitated to Neo-fascism, and that is not Kunstler's audience. But they pretty much agree on everything.
And I could literally find dozens, maybe hundreds of examples of this sort of thing if I wanted to, which I do not care to. I have better things to do. But I'm willing to bet that, if you read the archives (if they existed), you would notice a distinct shift from before 2008, to 2008 to 2016, and another shift after 2016. Do you really think that's not the case? To me, this shift been very obvious. His writings started out as apolitical, but have since become steeped in right-wing culture war, outrage, conspiracies, and other miscellaneous far-right talking points including "great replacement" theory.
Back in July, most of the posters were hysterical over the Olympic opening ceremony and how it signaled the decline of Western civilization, or whatever. When the bridge was struck in Baltimore, opinions ranged between it being some kind of conspiracy and claiming that Vladimir Putin could have rebuilt the bridge in 24 hours unlike "woke" America. And these kind of right-wing culture war outrages and talking points are now a fixture on his site. Are you really attempting to convince me that none of this is true? That I'm not seeing what I'm seeing?
There's a school of thought that says one reason people support Trump is because of their anxiety and hostility about the increased representation and visibility of non-whites in American culture, and then coming up with intellectual justifications for those feelings to try and convince themselves that those feelings are totally legitimate and that they're not really just bigots. That's how people work: they have emotional reactions and then come up with intellectual justifications for their feelings. In my experience, people who are utterly obsessed with "woke" are just grasping at an intellectual veneer to make it look they aren't what they really are: consumed with racial anxiety and wanting to go back to an earlier time when there was less minority and female representation in culture and the media. Greer is just more articulate about it and better at lying to himself than most people.
You know what I think? I think these are bunch of grouchy old white guys whose lives have not turned out they way they wanted (and are in denial about it) who are looking to blame and scapegoat other people for it, and that's why they became obsessed with peak oil--they thought it would bring everyone down to their socioeconomic level and punish those they deemed unworthy. That it would unwind society back to a time before people like them were left behind by the modern world. It was a quasi-religious apocalyptic movement. And when it was clear that this wasn't going to happen, they funneled their anger and rage into right-wing populism and justified it with all sorts of half-baked intellectual gymnastics. Greer is just a lot more articulate about it than crackpots like Kunstler and his ilk.
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I'll let you in on a little secret. What prompted this entire post was an exchange on one of those previous open forums, which I looked for but couldn't find. Someone was arguing that Trump is nothing more than a con artist and people on the forum were suckers for falling for it (which I happen to agree with). This person was immediately dogpiled by tons of posters bragging about how they were proud and enthusiastic Trump supporters who grew their own organic vegetables, sewed their own clothes, bicycled to work, didn't use air conditioning, never flew on a plane, etc. The ratio was at least 10:1 if not higher. So I don't think you're correct about his audience, at least not anymore.
And what I thought to myself was: "Why the fuck are these people voting for Trump?" What is it about a sleazy New York City real estate tycoon and con artist whose entire career has been bragging about wealth and excess which attracts these sorts of people who are supposedly all about community and small town American values? Why are people sewing patches onto to their threadbare clothing and eating turnip soup every night voting for a guy who famously shits in a gold toilet and slaps his name on every product imaginable, including a fake university that was sued for fraud? What was the appeal here?
Because the harsh reality is, Trump thinks people like Greer and his audience are losers. Total, complete, fucking losers. They would disgust him. Can you imagine Trump growing organic vegetables or riding a bicycle anywhere? He certainly doesn't give a shit about the environment or peak oil. In fact, he attacks Harris for wanting to ban fracking (which she does not). These people seem to believe that a New York City real estate tycoon and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist are somehow the champions of the working class against the woke PMC elites, and nothing they do will amount to anything bad. They also deny the overwhelming evidence of corruption and malfeasance as some sort of "witch hunt" (while providing no evidence for that view). I'm sorry, but I think that's attitude is as dangerous as it is brain dead. It is playing Russian Roulette with American democracy.
And I wonder how--despite holding forth on history and claiming he's some kind of expert--Greer is not seeing what I'm seeing and is scared shitless. And I'm not alone: there are plenty of people by now who are also seeing a grim replay of 1930s Germany and saying the same things that I'm saying. How can he justify it? I deliberately wrote this piece before I read his latest piece on Hitler, but I don't have high expectations. It's probably the usual handwaving away of any comparisons, how fascism is just a 'snarl word', how this time it's totally different, how people are just overreacting because they're "woke" or PMC or whatever, and that it can't happen here, or some other mystical nonsense. But I'm willing to be proven wrong. Maybe he really can convince me that I'm not seeing what I'm seeing, and that I and all the other historians, journalists, writers, commentators, politicians, military, and former trump staffers are getting it wrong.
A lot of people have noticed that people in the occult and spirituality movements have shifted to the far right politically, especially since the pandemic. There's even a term for it: conspirituality. I was noticing the same trend, and since Greer's blog is one of the few places I encounter these views, I used it as an example. I think people got way too preoccupied with the specific people I chose and not the intellectual story I was trying to tell. These sort of mystical, conspiratorial views are absolutely fueling the rise of Neo-fascism worldwide, regardless of whether you agree with my choice of examples or not.
I finally got around to reading Greer's essay and it was just as stupid as I predicted. He seems to know the history all right, but fails to draw any conclusions. Only in the last two paragraphs does he finally get around to saying that the *real* Nazis are "corporate liberals." I have no idea what the heck he is referring to, do you? There is no rationale or explanation given.
He claims that "liberals" who" are "obsessed with Hitler." Um, the reason people are talking about Hitler recently is because we've got a Republican candidate who claimed that he wanted unquestioningly loyal generals like Hitler's and uses the exact same rhetoric verbatim in his speeches. Oh, and who wants to round up and incarcerate tens of millions of people. But no, it's the "liberal's" fault for Donald Trump. Good God, how can anyone be this dense?
Here are the first two comments:
"In Europe I’d expect Hitler’s reputation to be rehabilitated by Muslim and African immigrants and their leftist allies who begin to view Hitler as a anti-colonialist who valiantly fought against the evil evil evil British and French and American empires but lost."
"Yes, there seems to be almost an unconscious attraction to Trump in the way so many structure their day around hating him. People are looking for a big daddy figure perhaps because we have spent so much time as a culture in building up the virtues of women while belittling men. The opposite has a way of working itself in around the next bend."
Still want to make the claim that I'm misunderstanding Greer or his audience? If anything, after reading this nonsense, I was too easy on them.
P.S. The idea that technology is a literal demon actually comes from an essay by Paul Kingsnorth entitled The Basilisk. It's interesting reading:
https://emergencemagazine.org/fiction/the-basilisk/
Of course, depicting technology as a malevolent, demoniacal force is a good metaphor for conceptualizing its effects in our lives and society. Kingsnorth, however, appears to be arguing it in a quite literal fashion, presumably influenced by his religious beliefs.
I feel like you're a little hard on Greer. I've read quite a bit of his work, and really not got the impression that he should be anywhere near inclusion with the far right, Trump support, or fascism in general (neo or otherwise). Pretty much exactly the opposite, actually. Maybe you aren't suggesting this, but it just felt pretty jarring to include him in this discussion.
Fair enough. My attempt wasn't so much to talk about Greer (or Kingsnorth) himself, as to look at how many of their ideas have led people down the path of supporting Neo-fascism, and more broadly, the historical background these ideas played in the initial rise of fascism in Europe. I don't mean to imply that either Greer of Kingsnorth are fascists, which I'm sure they would vehemently deny. I think classifying them as them right-wing populists is fair, however. I have no problem categorizing Vance and Bannon as Neo-fascists.
I do wonder how they continue to rationalize and normalize a movement that is clearly authoritarian, racist and antidemocratic, even if they claim not to support it. Have they really not been paying attention?
Yeah, I really don't know. I don't follow Kingsnorth at all, but I came to Greer from a perspective of anarcho-communism. I'm staunchly anti-capitalist, anti-hierarchical, etc. His work just never really stood out to me as particularly objectionable in the ways you're suggesting in this piece. It also seems pretty obvious to me that modern society is pretty unsustainable and that a collapse is underway. Greer just seemed to be explaining the process of this, but I never got the impression that he was hoping for a collapse in order to return to some mythical golden age of traditionalism or racial purity.
I guess either I'm just not reading between the lines or that you're perhaps seeing things that aren't there, but I just keep shaking my head while reading this article thinking, "I have no idea how he drew this conclusion." Either way, thanks for responding. I'm enjoying the series.
I certainly don't think that! I'm not sure where you got that impression, and I might do some editing to make it clearer. Though I am a bit troubled by his theory that white Europeans are going to be entirely replaced by Muslims in a hundred years. I don't find these ideas helpful (or accurate), and they play directly into far-right "Great Replacement," "Clash of Civilizations" paranoia we see on the far-right. Immigration is a sensitive topic, and there much more constructive ways to talk about it. I also don't buy his mystical theories of history which I think are counterproductive. As I noted, these notions of decline and rebirth did play a role in fascism historically, and that's undeniable. There are certain "habits of thought" that I'm trying to get at here (pessimistic, conspiratorial, anti-rational, etc.) which lead to some very dark places.
I also worry that the sort of grievance and resentment which fuels these populist arguments not only lacks analytical rigor, but it feeds into the kind of hate and bifurcation of society that we've seen when we should be uniting against a common enemy, and it isn't "wokeness" or people who live in big cities and have college degrees. This attitude leads not only to an us-against-them mentality, but it seems to blind people to the warning signs of authoritarianism, which are handwaved away as mere "propaganda" by the elites against the savior. It's like a denial of reality. As I've said before, if you lose hope that your life can get better, all you want to do is tear other people down. I agree that growth is slowing down, and that energy plays a role in that. What I don't share is the pessimism that there's nothing we can do about it, and that we can't make better political choices that will improve people's lives (for me that choice is democratic socialism, which is not incompatible with religious belief). Perhaps Greer is unaware that most of the working class isn't rural or white, and that Trump voters had higher than average incomes (including the people who stormed the Capitol).
In the end, if Trump is elected and it's even half as bad as I think it's going to be (that is, if he merely does what he says he's going to do), I hope that these authors will do the right thing and stand up for freedom (although Greer's apparent admiration for Putin's Russia makes me unsure of that). I guess we'll see, but I would rather not have to find out!
I've read Kingsworth and he seems to follow Christianity for it's own sake rather than as a way of revitalizing the West. I think he sees the problems of decadence and decline of traditional culture. But he differs greatly from the far right in that he is fascinated by Christianity and uninterested by politics. A lot of his posts are about visiting holy wells in Ireland.
I agree that Kingsnorth doesn't see Christianity as some sort of political project, and that it's a personal thing for him. Although it is telling that when he does take political stances (Brexit, anti-vax), they tend to follow the right-wing party line and he employs the exact same rhetoric and terminology as the political actors themselves (condemning "wokeness," "permissiveness" "multiculturalism", etc.). Of course, he is free to do so. Full disclosure: I find Orthodoxy to a very beautiful and moving faith (most of my contact has been with the Serbian variety).
But, again, it's not about him. I'm trying to get at the intellectual undercurrents here. It's certainly the case that Dreher and most paleoconservative publications want Trump to win the election. Why? It's certainly true that there is a faction in the Republican Party that do want to govern using religious principles. If you believe Vance's rhetoric, he almost certainly wants to use Christianity to revitalize American society (I mean, just listen to what he says and what he writes), and if Trump wins he's going to be running the show (Trump will either be put out to pasture in a golf course somewhere or finally keel over due to advanced age. His brain is clearly already fading).
What I'm really trying to get at is: how is it that people who have diametrically opposing visions of society are all united in the same political movement? And what are those visions? How can they all be accommodated? And what about those who don't want any of these things? That's what I hope to explore next.
I think they are united in their hatred of wokeness and the left. The modern day left seems a bit overly obsessed about ideological purity whereas the various right wing factions are so obsessed with defeating the left that they are willing to ignore any glaring character flaws of Trump and ignore the contradictions of their own side.
Another explanation is that Trump is so vague and incoherent that people can project whatever they want onto him. Like if he promises to fight America's enemies, people can just assume that includes whatever group they hate the most.
Looking forwards to the next installment.
Haha, you kind of predicted my next installment! I was going to point out that he is basically Rorschach ink blot--people project on him whatever their particular agenda is. The problem is, when you're not governing you can tell everybody whatever they want to hear. When you've actually got to govern, someone is going to lose out. That's just the reality. Who's it going to be?
I think all of these groups are going to very disappointed when the reality does not live up to their expectations and they get pushback from the people who are virulently opposed to their agenda (as we've seen with abortion). Much the same thing happened with all the factions who thought they could "control" Hitler and that he would deliver everything they wanted, even when different groups wanted mutually opposing things. That's why these sort of regimes have to resort to terror to hold onto power once people realize the jig is up.
I feel like the answer to your ending questions here is: “thousands of diverse groups are forced into a narrow two party system”. Trump only has to be 1% closer to the beliefs of those many different groups for them to vote for him over the alternative. This doesn’t mean they like him. Just prefer him a bit more for any number of reasons. Perhaps trying to avoid the impending WW3 the current administration has seemed to permit through weak leadership. Not everyone voting Trump is a rabid far-right MAGA type. I think that’s a very, very important distinction that needs to made. Diverse groups only appear to have overlap because they’re forced into a two party system and Trump seems to have solutions for more than a narrow band of society.
"Not everyone voting for Trump is a rabid far-right Maga type." That's certainly true. But so what? Most people were not Nazis in the 1930s. Thee majority of people did not vote for the Nazi party in the 1933 German election. The majority of Italians were not Fascisti when Mussolini came to power. The majority of Russians were not Bolsheviks. That's not how this works. Once an antidemocratic party seizes the levers of state, it uses them to achieve total control and ensconce one party rule and dictatorship. We've seen this all over the world, over and over gain. Spain. Portugal, Greece, Indonesia. Russia. Zaire. The Philippines, Zimbabwe, Venezuela. I could go on and on.
We have one political party that's clearly attempting to undermine the democratic process here in the United States. That attempted to invalidate the results of the previous election. That has already said that they will not accept the results of any election that does not declare them the winner. That any such result will constitute "fraud" Regardless of people's reasons, or whether they are "hardcore" or not, they are digging the grave of American democracy. After that it will be too late.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/republicans-donald-trump-polls-us-election-lawsuits
I think you are painting with a too broad brush here. Also, in general, I don't like that cheap rhetoric use of "guilt by association", like that, "(some of) the Nazis were back-to-nature mystics and liked Wagner, so if anybody today is to similar things, then beware..."
On the other hand, I admit that over the years, the amount of increasingly obnoxious right-wing commenters on Greer's blog has grown too much even for my taste, and more neutral and humane commenters who are not so ideologically obsessed seem to have largely left, and Greer appears to be more openly conforming with the opinions of the former group. That his income partly comes from those political horoscopes might also explain some of that trend? Personally, Greer's habitual, idiosyncratic writing style has long given me a sense of a bitter old man (his wife also died recently), who has a lots of hate and envy against the "PNC-elites". And some people there really view Spengler's book as an infallible prophecy.
However, what I most disagree with you is clumping Paul Kingsnorth with the group of fascist-suspects (even here you use the guilt by association: "married to an Indian immigrant, similar to JD Vance"). Certainly Kingsnorth is somewhat (but not overly) socially conservative, like Orthodox Christians usually are, but if you read any of his recent writings, he tries to keep his distance from "muscular Christianity" and other right-wing fascistoid ideas. And if you listen to his 2024 Erasmus Lecture talk, titled "Against Christian Civilization", it probably was quite provocative for many of those suits in the audience. Before he converted to Orthodox Christianity, he had been an environmental activist for a long time (and was also involved with Zapatistas), and he has retained his environmental attitudes to this day. You can see it in his replies to the climate change deniers and extreme natalists that occasionally creep to comment on his blog.
Also, if somebody was for Brexit or against forced vaccinations, in my books that still doesn't necessarily make one fascist, or even a right-winger.
I think you are painting with a too broad brush here. Also, in general, I don't like that cheap rhetoric use of "guilt by association", like that, "(some of) the Nazis were back-to-nature mystics and liked Wagner, so if anybody today is to similar things, then beware..."
On the other hand, I admit that over the years, the amount of increasingly obnoxious right-wing commenters on Greer's blog has grown too much even for my taste, and more neutral and humane commenters who are not so ideologically obsessed seem to have largely left, and Greer appears to be more openly conforming with the opinions of the former group. That his income partly comes from those political horoscopes might also explain some of that trend? Personally, Greer's habitual, idiosyncratic writing style has long given me a sense of a bitter old man (his wife also died recently), who has a lots of hate and envy against the "PNC-elites". And some people there really view Spengler's book as an infallible prophecy.
However, what I most disagree with you is clumping Paul Kingsnorth with the group of fascist-suspects (even here you use the guilt by association: "married to an Indian immigrant, similar to JD Vance"). Certainly Kingsnorth is somewhat (but not overly) socially conservative, like Orthodox Christians usually are, but if you read any of his recent writings, he tries to keep his distance from "muscular Christianity" and other right-wing fascistoid ideas. And if you listen to his 2024 Erasmus Lecture talk, titled "Against Christian Civilization", it probably was quite provocative for many of those suits in the audience. Before he converted to Orthodox Christianity, he had been an environmental activist for a long time (and was also involved with Zapatistas), and he has retained his environmental attitudes to this day. You can see it in his replies to the climate change deniers and extreme natalists that occasionally creep to comment on his blog.
Also, if somebody was for Brexit or against forced vaccinations, in my books that still doesn't necessarily make one fascist, or even a right-winger.
(Sorry for double-comment. You may delete the other)
From personal reflection, I'd say being aware of peak oil undermines my confidence in the mainstream narrative. If neo liberalism holds nonsensical economic beliefs, then could not the dominant cultural beliefs that accompany it also be wrong? While peak oil is a fringe idea today, many people will have noticed their living standards go down which will have undermined their belief in the myth of the onwards march of progress. From there, it's much easier to go down any number of rabbit holes.
You write that, "If neo liberalism holds nonsensical economic beliefs, then could not the dominant cultural beliefs that accompany it also be wrong?" I think what you're saying is, if people think that what they're being told about economics is a lie, then what else is a lie?" That's a good point. But I would push back against the so-called inevitability of people's living standards falling. I'd have an easier time believing that narrative if Jeff Bezos didn't go to bed every night and wake up every morning a few million dollars richer. The supposed energy decline isn't slowing down wealth accumulation at the top of society, is it? Why is that?
Peak Oil did not cause 50 trillion dollars to be redistributed from the working class to the one percent. Read that number again: 50 trillion. If income had been distributed as evenly over the past five decades as it was in 1975, the median full-time worker in the U.S. would enjoy annual earnings of roughly $92,000 a year. As is, that worker makes just $50,000. Peak oil did not cause that:
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
https://ncrc.org/intelligencer-inequality-robs-2-5-trillion-from-u-s-workers-each-year/
Peak oil did not cause labor's share of income to fall from roughly two-thirds to just over half since 2001:
https://kottke.org/24/10/whats-the-labor-share-of-national-income
Peak oil did not cause skyrocketing costs for education leading the amount of student debt to be an average of $21,000 dollars a year, greater than the GDP of most nations
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/politics/us-student-loan-debt-timeline/index.html
Peak oil did not cause unionization rates to fall from roughly one in three American workers in the 1950s to one in ten:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/02/28/1159663461/you-may-have-heard-of-the-union-boom-the-numbers-tell-a-different-story
Peak oil did not cause trillions of dollars to be held in offshore accounts out of the reach of the world's governments. It's not stopping the military from misplacing over a trillion dollars, even as we're constantly told that "we can't afford" the most basic things government can do to improve people's lives:
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/11/with-trillions-at-play-pentagon-fails-audit-for-sixth-year-in-a-row/
I am not on board with the idea that we should all just give up and accept lower living standards forever preached by some peak oil doomers. Such defeatism is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. If any peak oil character is trying to sell you that, I suggest they have ulterior motives. While some ideas may indeed be spurious, I do not think that democracy and the rule of law are among them.
I certainly appreciate what you tried to communicate in this article. I like your work in general. I do agree with a previous commenter: This was more than a bit too harsh on Greer, I read his work in depth as well. I do agree with you on Rod Dreher. I used to enjoy his work but no longer. Some guys go around the bend, and I think Rod is around the bend. Greer though isn’t exactly what you depict him as. That said, I’m no mystic or Druid. But he is a logical and empathetic guy who isn’t really selling anything other than a sharp intellect.
The word “fascist” has lost almost all meaning in today’s parlance, and I think it did in this article as well unfortunately. “Fascism” isn’t some massive bucket to group all of these people and ideas within. I think you’re grouping way too many diverse groups into a supposed “fascism” bucket. I do see what you were going for though.
Perhaps the issue is more with our two party system that leaves NO good options for all these groups. We all want to participate, we want our political involvement to matter, but who to vote for between only two viable options? Third parties are a joke and our system eats them alive. Should these groups of people wanting to participate simply abstain from voting?
Great effort put in this article. However, I think it just alienates these disparate groups by claiming they all support a groupthink mindset they clearly don’t. Trump might be a strongman - but it’s not the fault of working class people, hippies, crunchy cons, etc that we have two crappy options to support. In a way this DOES validate the cycle theory of civilization. What else explains how constrained we are?
You say that, "Greer isn’t exactly what you depict him as." How so? Is my summary of his views toward progress incorrect? Is my summary of his views about civilization's trajectory incorrect? Is my summary of his book about Donald Trump inaccurate? Admittedly, I have not read it, but I did read the original posts back when they came out some years ago and read numerous reviews in an attempt to accurately summarize the book's argument (and also linked to a page about it). Did I not do that adequately? If not, how so?
And I also included several quotes from his own forum verbatim. Yes, some of them are posters, but Greer himself clearly agrees with those sentiments. How is that mischaracterizing anything? Again, this post was mostly about a certain kind of person and why they are trending towards Neo-fascism, not specifically Greer himself. But I'm not sure how any of what I said is inaccurate or misleading.
You call him "logical and empathetic" which I find ironic, given that his entire world view is based on mysticism and anti-rationality. I don't find him very logical or rational at all, certainly not when it comes to vaccines, for example, and his economic views are clearly more based on libertarian conspiracy theories than any kind of expertise or understanding of how economics works. As for empathetic, his constant swipes at minorities and vulnerable groups don't seem very empathetic, and neither do his culture war grievances.
Typically, I find that people who are utterly consumed with "anti-wokeness" as Greer clearly is are just looking for some sort of intellectual justification for their bigotry. And he's clearly not very empathetic for the Ukrainians who have suffered years of Russia's brutal invasion (I met a Ukrainian whose family is in Mariupol at a conference a few weeks ago). In fact, he accepts every rationale for the war and ethnic cleansing, no matter how flimsy. He certainly doesn't seem very empathetic about any of the vulnerable groups who will undoubtedly suffer under a Trump presidency. Greer only seems empathetic towards people like himself: lower-class whites.
As for fascism being ill-defined, yes, that's certainly true, which is why I wrote a whole post about what the leading historical scholars have written about fascism, why I think a new term is needed for the twenty-first century, and what exactly my criteria are in characterizing these modern political movements as Neo-fascist. That post is here: https://hipcrime.substack.com/p/the-anatomy-of-neo-fascism-part-1
I wrote a follow-up post describing exactly why I think MAGA is a Neo-fascist movement. That post is here: https://hipcrime.substack.com/p/the-anatomy-of-neo-fascism-part-2
I agree with you that political parties are coalitions that create strange bedfellows. And I agree that the two-party system is a big reason why we're in the situation we're in. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that people are voting a certain way because they agree with one party just 1 percent more than the other. I think that's a profound observation.
However, I'm unsure we can place this exclusively at the feet of the two-party system. Germany was a parliamentary democracy when the fascists rose to power. So was Italy. The "illiberal state" of Hungary is a parliamentary democracy. So too, I believe, is Russia (although I'm not an expert at how Russia's government works). Currently, Georgia is a parliamentary democracy with several parties, and look what is happening there: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78ddj25kgvo
You ask, "should these groups of people wanting to participate simply abstain from voting?" Fuck yeah, absolutely they should. When it comes to not voting for someone who wanted to overturn the Constitution, send the military after Americans expressing their First Amendment rights, use the institutions of the government for retribution, close down opposition media, calls people who disagree with him an "enemy within", demands absolute loyalty, dehumanizes entire groups of people, and tried to stay in office despite losing an election, I' m sorry, but I don't think it's too much to ask people to not vote for that. If you can't bring yourself for Harris--and I can't for the life of me see why she's so objectionable even if you disagree with some of her policies--then don't vote at all, or vote down ballot.
And it's not like there aren't plenty of people who are doing just that. I don't think there has ever been this number of Republicans who have either endorsed Harris or refused to endorse Trump, including George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Mark Milley, John Kelly, Scaramucci, and most recently Arnold Schwarzenegger (and a ton of others). For example, here is former military general who was a lifelong Republican who also thinks that Trump is an existential threat to the Republic and will be voting for Harris instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEuiKIvL1sM As far as I'm concerned, if you knowingly vote for a fascist, then you are a fascist and are 100 percent culpable for what they do in office when you had other options on the table. Ignorance is no excuse.
What I was trying to get to the bottom of is this: why do so many groups who would not normally be on the far-right support a far-right party that I would characterize as Neo-fascist? That's what I was trying to find out by looking at the history of previous fascist movements, nothing less and nothing more. People got way too hung up on the particular names I chose. Perhaps that's my fault, but it's the only place I regularly encounter those views first-hand.