So I’m sitting at a bar, nursing an Obstler. I can’t figure out if my drink tastes like peach or pears. And that really confuses me when I’m on one of them special self-medicating evenings. Btw, for the longest time when I was a child I never really understood the difference between peaches and pears. Of course, obviously, both look different and they even taste different, but to me, while youthfully contemplating fruit, there was so much more of a difference between pears and oranges that trying to figure peaches and pears was just too much. Which brings me back to the subject at hand–i.e. steering gallantly away from my subpar intellectual youth. And so. Like I said. While nursing a drink at a local pub a man and a woman near me were arguing about politics. And not just any politics. They were arguing about grabbing pussy-politics, i.e. fascism–which means, in short, they were talking about my beloved #Americant. The thing that made the argument interesting to my ears, though, was the fact that the woman was defending #Trump. According to emancipated-slash-feminist Euro-babes, Trump’s boy-talk while exiting a bus wasn’t such a big deal. Obviously it’s gonna take #Eurwastelanders a bit longer to get over Trumpism and I suppose many a pub, bar, kneipe, drinking dump will see conversations like this one en masse. Or maybe not. Which is fine by me on account these confused, tribal people (Eurowastelanders) are a hoot to behold while they discuss pussy-politics. Seriously. Europeans are clueless to politics these days, especially real politics. (For those who get it… pun intended!) Seriously. The only thing Europeans can do is buy stuff, pay taxes and take in war torn refugees because of wars of oil, etc. Anywho–before I get too far off subject yet again…
Almost finished with my drink and about to pay, the man next to me who was gayly arguing with his counterpart reached around and said to me: can you define fascism?
How do you know I’m American, I said to him.
He then pointed to the bartender to give me another drink–on him. Not one to refuse the kindness of strangers, I gulped down the remainder of my drink and had a long look at the woman my new friend was drinking and arguing with. I said to myself: I’d have a gooh with that philly.
My new drink arrived. Obviously my benefactor was a friend of the bartender because the drink was definitely a double. I took a sip, stopped goo-goo eying the mans arguing counterpart and then said: are you sure you want to talk to me about this stuff? Besides, I continued, Europeans don’t know politics anymore. It’s been kinda beat out of you, don’t you know. Except, of course, maybe the French. Yeah, the French know politics a bit. But you Germans… (gulp, gulp, gulp; the Obstler was starting to have an effect.)
Fascists are just authoritarian capitalist, right, the woman said.
No, they are political extremist, racists, bigots, they are the riffraff that behave in any manor that would facilitate their day-dream of rags to riches, my Obstler benefactor said.
As the only American in the room, it was time I took control.
Well, my fellow comrades, Freunde, federalists, I’ve actually given Fascism a thought or three during my years as an expat on the continent. Without turning over all the rocks we’ve politically lined our shores with (from under which rare jumping oysters thrive), allow me to put it this way. It’s really quite simple. Fascism is nothing more than a political answer to communism. If you want to define fascism you can read all the scholarly and academic writings about it or you can just look up communism, then try to understand what went on in the former Soviet Union, and what’s now going on in China and North Korea, among other countries, and then simply find the polar opposite.
The polar opposite, the woman asked.
Well, almost the polar opposite I said taking another swig from my Obstler. Let me put it another simple way. Fascism is the answer to post 1917 communism. There would be no fascism without communism. Communism came first, never forget that. Fascism is the only way for capitalists to save their own greed souls when humans turn to social collectives. What we have now with America’s new Trumpism is simply another colour, another version of Fascisms many faces–or as an old friend of my mine once called it: the rainbow coalition of greed mongers.
My phone. My editor from LA was calling. So I gulped my drinking benefactors drink, smiled at the Euro-babe he was arguing with and left.
Not a moment too soon.
Rant on.
-t
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