Toby on Tuesday

 

'Liberal Fascism'

 

 

 

It was H.G. Wells (1866-1946), known as “the father of science fiction”, who first coined the term “Liberal Fascism”.   The author of “The Time Machine” (1895), “The Invisible Man” (1897) and “The War of the Worlds” (1898) had by the start of the 20th century been swept up on the tide of scientific and political fantasy that is still all-too recognisable today.   In 1900 he claimed that a World State was inevitable, a planned society that existed to advance science and end all national borders.   And the same spirit that inspired so much 20th century European political thought, both communist and fascist, brought him to argue in a 1932 speech to Oxford University Young Liberals that “progressive leaders must become Liberal Fascists or enlightened Nazis who would compete in their enthusiasm and self-sacrifice”... He wanted to “assist in a kind of phoenix rebirth of liberalism as an enlightened Nazism”.   Although European Nazism was finally defeated in 1945, the proponents of Liberal Fascism survive along with their ideas in both Europe and America.   Indeed it was to America that the New York author Jonah Goldberg addressed his 2008 polemic “Liberal Fascism:  The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.”   And in the past two generations, Liberal Fascism has prevailed, seeking to colonise thought and language and exclude those who disagreed with its ideology from the public arena.   It likewise colonised much of the media, in particular the BBC, and all political parties, including the Labour Party of Tony Blair, Nick Clegg’s LibDems and the Conservative Party of David Cameron and George Osborne, the “heirs to Blair”.

 

Now with Brexit there is a chance to expose clearly the failures of this prevailing culture of Liberal Fascism, which has so enriched its proponents and so impoverished those who do not form part of its narrative.   The key to it is internationalism, the end of nation state democracy and the end of national borders.   Multilateral and international institutions are, with global corporations, essential to its success, but it has no answer to how to deal with these institutions when they fail.   Evidence and experience are swept aside in order to uphold the ideology.   And the point is that these institutions only work when all involved live by the same set of rules.   Yet this rarely occurs and, in a rule-based society like Britain, we so often find ourselves at the receiving end of others using the institution wholly for their own ends.   Two examples from the EU, both involving Germany, the principal beneficiary of that organisation, are especially telling.   Britain had joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990 to demonstrate its pro-European credentials but, when in 1992 the Bank of England asked for the support of Germany’s Bundesbank to prevent a run on Sterling, the request was declined.  It was plain that no such thing as European solidarity existed.   Equally, when Chancellor Merkel invited over a million migrants into the EU, a major demographic decision for the whole Continent, she both failed to consult her EU “partners” and openly broke the terms of the EU’s Dublin Convention.   The whole experience of multinational organisations, adored as they are by the BBC, Channel 4 and much of the press, is that their proponents are impervious to the simple evidence and those who question them are treated as, in the words of Hillary Clinton, “a basket of deplorables” or, to quote David Cameron, “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.”

 

And of course a prime example of where all this translates into the prosperity and well-being of our citizens is in the United Nations target of members spending 0.7% of Gross National Income on Overseas Aid.   In order to show his “progressive” credentials, David Cameron enshrined this in law.   Britain is now the only country to have shouldered this burden at a time when our public services are under relentless pressure.   Under Margaret Thatcher, Aid spending ran at around 0.27% of GNI.   Now it is costing the UK taxpayer some £12 billion a year and rising rapidly, a burden akin to that of our EU membership.   The evidence is that so much Aid spending has always been, and continues to be, misappropriated.   Yet to question the policy, to argue that 0.27% of GNI spent well is infinitely preferable to 0.7% spent badly, is to be consigned among Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” and David Cameron’s “closet racists”.   This attempt to control the thought and language of politics is the vital core element in Liberal Fascism and those who doubt its wisdom are excluded.    Experience and evidence are ignored to uphold the ideology.   So while the fight for a clean Brexit continues, the challenge for the coming generation will be to drain the poison of Liberal Fascism from our body politic.   And for the real world of the future where policy needs to stem from clear evidence and the benefit of experience, the role of UKIP will be to become the party that drives forward this new and exciting agenda!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby