Originally posted 30 July 2007.
All revolutionaries are fascists.
There, I’ve said it. Whether they proclaim the world’s salvation through anarchism, socialism, sharia, or thelordandsaviourjeezuschrist… they’re fascists at heart. They care less about ruling the world according to their hero’s plans than in taking excessive revenge on all those who either actively scorned them or didn’t care.
The revolutionary is impatient. Not for him the ‘quiet revolution’ of slowly winning people over, of weaning them from outmoded traditions and ingrained habits. Revolutionaries believe that Utopia is as quick and easy to bring about as opening up a tin of Instant Change and ramming it down everyone’s throats.
The revolutionary is dualistic. You know, “If you’re not part of my solution, you’re part of the problem.” Which immediately makes the majority of society into an enemy, if not merely silent accomplices to the iniquity of the ruling class – the ruling class, incidentally, which the revolutionaries want to become.
The revolutionary is ignorant of human nature. Humans are not capable of completely subsuming their personal desires in favour of the common good, or the reverse (no matter how much modern capitalism claims otherwise.) Humans are naturally drawn to form hierarchical power structures, to be risk-averse, to compare themselves to their fellows. The typical revolutionary dogma generally ignores the facts of human nature – to its peril.
The revolutionary is ignorant of history. They look at the spectacular failures of national-scale Communism or Socialism – China, North Korea, the late USSR – and shrug. Then they go back to their comforting holy books and fantasise some more about “starting from zero.”
Which is exactly what led to the downfall of the revolutions in those countries and the dereliction of their revolutionary ideals!
Here’s how the revolutionary system works. You start with a silver-tongued leader, like Lenin or Mao, and his followers. No, it doesn’t matter what the ideology is. There is always a Leader with the personality and will to lead, and there are always followers who are too in awe of this idiot to seriously question him… at least to his face.
The Leader has to rouse not only the fighting spirit in his followers, but also sway as much of the population as possible. It helps if the existing ruling class can be provoked into crackdowns and the like to help turn public opinion against them and demonise the existing rulers yet further.
Then comes The Day. Revolution! Mass uprisings beyond the scope of the state to repress, a lot of unthinking destruction and vandalism as the symbols and unlucky scapegoats of the ruling class burn.
Eventually you’re left with a blank state to work from. The first line of work is to install yourselves with a significant power advantage to suppress any upstarts with ideas of their own for the new Utopian age. I understand this was called the “necessary tyranny” by Marx. So, you enforce the party line, set up a hierarchy of police and bureaucrats, and make sure that not only alternative ideologies are quashed, but also the pre-existing one.
Now here’s the thing: the period of “necessary tyranny” never ends. The magical transformation from tyrannical hierarchy to egalitarian utopia wasn’t adequately explained by Marx and never occurs. You see, the revolutionaries like having dominion over everyone else. They like it a lot. And they don’t want to lose it and sink back into the crowd…
The other is the problem of scale. Anarchy or Communism might work on a small scale – perhaps up to 200-odd people or a small village – but beyond that the problems of communication and information handling pile up exponentially. Invariably, the government expands, and the bureaucracy too.
Another problem is that revolutionary doctrines are often excessively detailed, especially religiously-based ones. (But then all revolutionaries are religious in their thinking.) The more aspects of life your doctrine mandates, the more control you need to enforce them. The more aspects of life your doctrine controls, the more chances there are for someone or something to cast doubt on the entire doctrine, therefore you need to enforce them rigorously and suppress any deviation. This starts to breed resentment, hopefully contained by the effort of keeping all the rules, and thus lots and lots of enemies for the new ruling elite. To suppress resentment, information must be rigorously controlled, which increases the level of resentment, which in turn requires more stringent control…
You get the idea. That’s how Josef Stalin got so much power. It’s how Kim Il Jong or whatever his name is remains in power in North Korea. It’s how Robert Mugabe got the way he is. It’s why the Communist Party (which is quite misnamed) stays in power. It’s why the Middle Eastern countries are in such a piteous backward state… And what is happening to the United States.
Revolutions are what wheels do, going around and around in circles. Fascism is a dead end for humanity, and revolution is the first step. So the next time you meet a wanna-be Jesus or Mohammed or Mao or Lenin on the road, smack some sense into them.
