On another Natco foundational text
I’ve mentioned Josh Hammer as one of the most prominent fascist thought leaders. I’ve been remiss in not linking to his own essay on the matter. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-only-path-forward-is-national-conservatism/
While perhaps not as concise as Glenn Ellmers’ essay on the subject, Hammer does bring to light certain elements of American fascism — what he calls “national conservatism,” again with the wink to the obvious parallel of “national socialism” — that deserve mention. (Note: despite that, the term fascism is absolutely not a synonym for Nazism. I am not calling Hammer a Nazi because he is not a Nazi.) Some quotes:
Any relevance of claims to either universal truth or empirical generalization notwithstanding, a political movement inherently arises in a specific time and place in order to address a set of concrete challenges.
This is quite clearly a refutation of the old conservatism’s emphasis on first principles; on absolute moral values. He instead values the typical revolutionary’s focus on the here and now; what needs doing to destroy our present enemies, and whether we have the guts to do what needs doing. A Reaganist might counter that valuing absolutes — truths that we hold self-evident, one may say — is precisely what separated the American revolution from the French and its resulting horrors. (and the Russian, and Iranian, and Cuban, and German.)
“Virtue, shorn of any legitimate political claim upon freedom, becomes freedom’s handmaid.”
It pains me that I have yet to specifically note in these esteemed posts fascism’s specific, bitter opposition to libertarianism. For instance, their peculiar hobbyhorse of the “Draq Queen Story Hour” only makes sense when one realizes that Reason magazine, say, would absolutely support the right of drag queens to read books to kids. Also, libertarians, even of a more conservative bent, favor drug decriminalization; one may readily assume Josh Hammer’s attitude on the same.
Fascists feel it is imperative for a strong government to regulate moral, and even religious, choices made by individuals. In fact, Adam Vermeule’s preferred term for fascism remains “common good conservatism”… which, as Hammer notes here, is just a synonym for what he’s talking about.
Fusionism [i.e. Reaganism -me], as a roadmap for governance, stifles well-intentioned statesmen from pursuing the actual art of politics. It is inherently effete, limp, and, as Hillsdale College’s David Azerrad might say, unmasculine. And it is effete, limp, and unmasculine because it removes from the political arena, and consigns to the “private” sphere, the very value judgments and critical questions that most affect our humanity and our civilization.
Again, note how fascism must by definition include a focus on the masculine. Without sexism, a movement might be authoritarian, but it cannot be fascist. This is why their strongmen must almost always be male.
The defensive posture of liberalized fusionism, which ensures never having to face pushback from one’s political opponents on the most contested issues, makes for a cowardly way to approach politics. It is also predicated, in its entirety, on the fundamentally and empirically false distinction between the “private” and the “public” domains.
Fascism is collectivism. If there is one thing one can learn about fascism, of national conservatism, let it be that. “The personal is political” as a phrase may have originated with second-wave feminists — what we today call radfems — but the fascists believe in it just as strongly.
The Natcos use as their excuse that the hated libs are already regulating people’s private lives anyway, and that the only counter to wokeism is a strong central state regulating people’s decisions about sex, gender, religion, and so forth by force.
I believe that if a Reaganite challenged this with, “Would you really want a liberal president with this power?,” Hammer would counter with “The woke corporations and universities already have this power.” What he would leave unsaid: In a Natco state, a liberal president would never have this power because there would never be a liberal president again, and that in turn is because there would never be a meaningful election again.
The postwar, neoliberal-inspired “conservative movement” also, in crucial ways, sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Give credit where credit is due: So-called “three-legged stool” conservatism helped defeat the Soviet Union, slash taxes, and sustain at least reasonably, if not quite consistently, high GDP growth.
Wow, what utter monsters! No wonder why we must slay this beast.
Forty-eight years after Roe v. Wade and 39 years after the founding of the Federalist Society, Roe remains on the books.
This was written in November of 2021. Hammer, a lawyer, was of course aware that Roe was already headed to the garbage chutes. He’s just mad that those limp-wristed RINOs of Conservatism, Inc. went through proper legal and democratic channels — the wimps! — instead of just striking it down by perogative fiat. Democracy takes too much time, and we’re on flight 93. We’re always on flight 93.
Hammer then goes on a side rant against China and free trade. I’m not sure where he was going with that, except perhaps to deny the ideal of “free trade” as one of the Reaganites’ first principles.
Burke’s conception of a people as a concrete “partnership of generations dead, living, and yet unborn” is difficult to reconcile with the fact that American immigration law remains governed by Ted Kennedy’s beloved 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act —
You know where he’s going with this. You can’t argue that my ancestors immigrating in through Ellis Island was good, but those people immigrating today are bad, without dispensing with principle.
Instead, I want to focus on one word here as used by Hammer. People, as a collective noun.
Because this gets to the true soul of fascism. Blood and soil. The Volk.
As noted endlessly by scholars and historians of fascism, “Volk” is almost impossible to translate to English. Words like “people” and “folk” do not have the tribalistic connotations of the German term, yet the Anglo word “tribe” doesn’t work either because it’s reserved for numerically tiny communities; whereas, “nation” also fails as we English speakers tend to falsely conflate it with “country.”
But the more intellectual fascists such as Hammer are fixated on this principle of “the nation as tribe,” and it is impossible to grasp what they’re saying without understanding this concept.
This is why for him, the wokesters are not just petty annoyances the way normal people treat them. For him, the battle against the wokesters (and neolibs — he fails to see these are two separate groups) is instead a world-ending climatic battle between the Volk and *them*; a Ragnarok between pure good and pure evil, where “good” is synonymous with “interests of the nation-tribe.”
Again, between our sacrifice of the art of politics itself and our obsession with neoliberal orthodoxy, we have sowed the seeds of our own destruction. We have supplied the wokesters the very rope with which to hang ourselves… Neoliberal platitudes are not going to save our late-stage republic now. Values-neutral proceduralism, such as exaltations of laissez-faire absolutism and legal positivism in constitutional law, will not save America now…
This need for drama is peculiar to fascism, and is another thing that’s hard for outsiders to grasp. This hysteria was first introduced to a wider audience in the flight-93 screed that left so many outsiders perplexed.
In a way, fascism has no concept of time or history. What I’m trying to say: they are unable to view this day or this moment as just another entry in the timeline; instead, right now is always not only special, but CLIMATIC. That is why every single election is portrayed as the nation on the brink of destruction. This is why the same people who portrayed 2016 and 2020 as Armageddons are preparing to do the same with 2024.
If one assumes that right now is THE most important moment in the nation’s history — never mind such trifles as 1861 or 1941 — then, of course, all kinds of governmental overreach, authoritarianism, and atrocities may be imagined.
The only way for the American right to accomplish this, once regaining power, is to prudentially wield that power in the service of pursuing our ideal of the substantive good, and to reward friends of our just regime and punish enemies of our just regime within the confines of the rule of law.
One may only imagine the smirk when he threw in a mention of “rule of law.” Necessity hath no law, as a certain proto-fascist once remarked.
But note the odd remark of “friends” in what’s supposed to be a treatise about a political movement. “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law,” he’s trying to say. But, I believe, with that word “friends,” he’s also once again trying to rope in that elusive concept of the Volk.
Hammer then ventures into mediations on the extra-legal and extrajudicial penalties he would mete out to his “enemies” such as the Ford Foundation, Big Tech, and CRT, but you get the point. The specific Enemy of the Day tends to shift rapidly, but it’s all the same. *They* are on the brink of destroying the Volk; therefore, the Volk must toss off old, dusty considerations of petty legalities and ethics to destroy them first.
Finally, I’ll just note the primary conceit the Natcos engage in: that they themselves could never be declared the enemy of the people; that Trump or DeSantis would never decide Hammer or the Claremont Institute have outlived their usefulness. Hammer does not consider that in his preferred world, backing the wrong horse in the coming Trump vs. RDS showdown might not just cost him a chance at political office; it might cost him his job, his citizenship, his freedom, his life. Because, after all, there is never a greater declared danger to the Volk than the false, traitorous leader — and his supporters.
Me? I look at countries in history that also decided that democracy and rule of law is for cucks, and traded them in for an authoritarian leader promising easy answers. Then I look at the most desirable countries to live in today, and try to decide how many of them have a governmental system that Josh Hammer would prefer.
Liberalism works. Authoritarianism — the default state throughout human history — does not. It does not matter how much you hate CRT or wokesters. Some things are absolutely true, and Hammer’s hatred does not change them.
