On The Yellow Brick Road to Fascism: On MAGA Communism
MAGA Communism? Nothing new here; just plain old yellow socialism. We have seen it before.
On The Yellow Brick Road to Fascism: On MAGA Communism
When you think of the color yellow, what comes to mind? One might think of bananas, or legal pads and sticky notes, or the color on a traffic light that tells you to slam down your foot--on the gas.
But recently, as I have made the mistake of listening to the chatter of the Twitterati commentariat, I have found myself face to face with what is being hailed as 'MAGA Communism'. From a meme that was taken too seriously, we have seen a 'movement' arise--or, well, we have seen a lot of people talk about it, whilst the various tribes of digital illiterates have flung their feces at each other about it. As is the human condition, if you make enough noise someone is going to come by and see what the fuss is about, and unfortunately for us, those people were the bastard children of shock jocks and mayonnaise-skinned gamers; the YouTube star. In our case, the most annoying, moronic version of this particular group were the ones to pick up on this; Jackson Hinkle, one of Tucker Carlson's personal muppets, and Haz Al-Din, who plays two of the three stooges--one played by him, the other played by the thesaurus he uses when he writes so he can go crazy using italics. If this is the brain trust of this soi-disant 'MAGA Communism', then what we are witnessing, here, is the result of a botched lobotomy.
But there is no need, really, to spend time with their ideas beyond this; they are not ideas but the incorrect pronunciation of the echoes of history. The re-phrasing of incantations from long ago. When I see this discourse, I see yellow. And while bananas, legal pads, and the yellow light are all good guesses, that is not what I think of when hearing of this nonsense.
I think of yellow socialism.
* *
Now, what is 'yellow socialism'? Well, its other monikers are 'yellow unionism', 'business unionism', and 'Fédération nationale des Jaunes de France' (FNJF). The last of these is the name of a political party founded by a corporatist named Pierre Biétry, who first called this group the Parti Socialiste National when he made a break from French Marxists in 1903, before calling it FNJF. It is a movement that existed for a long time, even after the term 'yellow socialism' stopped being used after World War 1. One could consider Vladimir Lenin, if your need for a preferred authority must be satiated, and his use of the term against the Berne International.
Yellow socialism, it is known, was a movement that professed socialists goals within a nationalist framework, often fanning, using, and praising chauvinistic, racist, and bigoted prejudices. Whether this was because of Biétry's explicit acceptance of anti-Semitism as a part of the political program of FNJF, or due to its American version, lead by Samuel Gompers, being opposed to immigration and the IWW and being for World War 1, yellow socialism has long been a version of working class organization that was socialist in name only. It is, to this day, a reactionary ideology.
Of course, as I have always said, ideas survive by mutation--today, the bigotry of yellow socialism has changed. Or, at least, the defenses for it have. Instead of railing about Alfred Dreyfus or the supposed Rosenberg Ring, they now talk about George Soros. Where they once (and frankly still do) despised homosexuals as 'degenerates', they now focus on transgender individuals. They have a reverence for patriotism, fervent Christian beliefs, and embrace 'social conservatism' (which means whatever they wish it to mean). All of this is tied together in an opportunistic love of socialism, in name only, that is all about aesthetics while dismissing any initiatives that would be socialism sensu proprio. They have found a wonderful home in America, in our Fidelean Republic, where decisions on politics are based on anything except for politics. And they do it by dressing up every one of Americans' favorite prejudices in the clothing of 'the working class' or 'working class values' to ease the poison into the throats of internet Leftists.
This reincarnation of living prejudices comes to us with the tinge of the stupidity that Twitch streaming brings to any person who is attempting to discuss the world. The likes of the 'patriot socialists', who are now the MAGA Communists, should be called for what they are; yellow socialists. And all I can say on them, that has not already been said, is that this movement is neither new nor interesting.
* *
To some, however, the rise of MAGA Communism comes as an inexplicable but 'interesting' event. Apparently, to Thomas Frazi at Compact Magazine, this movement has arisen not from history, but from a meme. As one reads the article, one has to deal with this very first sentence:
"A specter is haunting American politics--the specter of #MAGACommunism."
As one is wont to do when faced with stupidity in its extreme, I was given to that old thought experiment called 'If I was Dictator'--and if I was dictator, everyone who mutilated well known quotes in this manner would be sent to work in slaughterhouses; there, at least, their tendency to butcher might be useful.
This butchering is followed by paragraph after paragraph of a writer who has all the credulity of people who watch Ghosthunters, fervent in their belief that the tiny heat signature on the screen is a ghost. He tells you about the irreverence of MAGA Communism. He says:
"But MAGA communism isn’t a mere joke. Indeed, some powerful actors in American society are taking it seriously, as shown by Google’s decision to affix a warning to search results related to the hashtag."
To amuse myself, I tried this. No such 'warning' appears. Perhaps Frazi, in his rush to write about this trend before it dies, was looking at the wrong tab when the warning popped up on his Google search. But even were he right, this does not suggest anything about 'powerful actors' or irreverence. But that is the evidence he gives.
Of course, this is not where this fall into credulity ends but where it begins; he follows up this odd assertion by referencing that this had been popularized by Al-Din Haz and Jackson Hinkle. He describes the first as the 'brain' behind it, and the latter as a 'popular communist'. It turns out that you can't have the first in order to believe the latter, as a brain might prompt you to look up what communism is--and see that Hinkle nor Haz fit into that definition. The only way Haz is the brains in any conjunction with Hinkle would be if they were doing a badly budgeted, live action version of 'Pinky and the Brain'.
From here, our frazzled Frazi praises Haz:
"Al-Din is a gifted speaker—or “debate bro,” in the parlance of internet politics—who is capable of discussing heavyweight political theory in an informal, jocular manner. It’s enough to listen to one of his videos, or to read one of his dense Substack posts, to realize that Al-Din is dead serious about #MAGACommunism—that is, about the notion, which most people would find preposterous, that communists in America should support the MAGA movement."
Parlance. Apparently, it seems that the editors at Compact (aside from being as radical as drinking milk a day after its expiration date) can be impressed by two syllable words, even if their use is something like white noise, emitted to cover up the sound of knuckles dragging on the ground. It also seems to be the case that this article should never have been an article, but should have been titled 'Dear Haz', and left as an unpublished love letter from a typist to his favorite member of the vainglorious nerdery. Perhaps they ought to have given it to Nicholas Spark, so he could make it into a grocery store shelf romance novel and a grade C Hollywood movie starring a failing Disney actress. I say this because, after this lubricating introduction, the next 6 paragraphs is little more than a hand job in print--I am sure even Haz, homophobic as he might be, can find pleasure in the rimming he has received here at Compact. All he needs to do is what he does when he is reading anything complicated; close his eyes and imagine.
But allow me to spare you; I do not wish to document everything from this essay. Throughout Frazi's essay, I was reminded of a line from Gore Vidal's The Best Man. Like William Russell, I just love the way Frazi's prose seems to state the obvious with a real sense of discovery, because while his praises of Haz and Hinkle are exaggerations at best and lies at worst, he truly wrote this article to let us know what he found out about MAGA Communism--something most of us already know. His essay is like the song 'Ice Ice Baby' by Vanilla Ice--a product that does so terribly at what it is meant to do, that it should be mined by low-grade rom-coms and Will Ferrell movies until the end of time.
From applauding Haz's supposed 'anti-elitism' to praising MAGA Communism as 'Socialism with American characteristic' (so, you know, 'socialism with nationalist characteristics'), to re-stating the claim that MAGA Communism has 'reintroduced class struggle' into American politics, one becomes exhausted with Frazi's naivety. If, of course, you give him the benefit of the doubt, which I don't; he talks about what he thinks the Trump flags imply, while leaving out the kinds of flags that often fly with the Trump flag; Nazi flags, Confederate flags, and the Blue Lives Matter flag. One wonders why he left those out.
Maybe it's just because of 'what they say about Trump supporters', hm?
* *
MAGA Communism might drape itself in red--be it the Soviet flag, the Trump flag, or the blood that rushes to their face when a mermaid is allowed to be black. But much like the safety glasses they wear as 'sunglasses', everything they do is tinted in yellow. We have seen these people before, even if their ideology now is allowed to avoid all intelligible writing and put it into a meme format--or a Compact article. Calling it yellow socialism is not only correct, but I think creatively apt; yellow socialism is like yellow fever--a short lived feeling of nausea, chills, and pain which is spread by blood sucking pests. And deadly, if not treated.
Here is where I would turn to something serious to say about the essay; but one cannot say anything serious about what is not serious. Instead, I find myself turning away from the tinge of yellow towards a work of Aldous Huxley's; his first novel, a satire called Crome Yellow. When reading this essay, I could not help but think of Denis' struggle, in which he was 'making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular'--a struggle this writer does not seem to have. He is quite content writing about nothing in particular. And what better description is there of this yellow socialism than Mr. Scrogan's description of himself--vox et praeterea nihil?
All in all, I find myself a Scogan, sitting in the Crome estate. This and that fad make their way through the doors, in the form of faces; this pundit over here, this streamer over there, that sweaty politician and that over-excited TikToker. The sensitive, the interesting, the clueless, and the nonsensical come together, having their discussions, with this snarky tweet here and that video essay there. All of this activity, and yet nothing expended but hot air.
And I sit with a Denis-type, who says they wish to write about the world. I already know the plot, the heroes and villains, its deviance and its subversion; something about the irreversible changes of American politics, the coming of class warfare, the need for a unity of conservatives and socialists.
I know this one; it's title is something stupid like 'Socialism and the Family' or 'MAGA Communism'. I laugh. And then I'm asked, but what is the proper title? I smile. It's obvious.
On The Yellow Brick Road to Fascism