Neofascism (15 April 2009)

NOAM CHOMSKY: I mean, we’re very lucky that we have never had an honest demagogue. I mean, the demagogues we’ve had are so corrupt that they never got anywhere—you know, Nixon, McCarthy, you know, Jimmy Swaggart and others. So they were kind of destroyed by their own corruption.

But suppose we had an honest demagogue, you know, a Hitler type, who was not corrupt. There’s probably—it could be unpleasant. There’s a background of concern and fear, tremendous fear, and searching for some answer, which they’re not getting from the establishment. “Who’s responsible for my plight?” You know, and that can be exploited. And unless there’s active, effective organizing and education, it’s dangerous.

Democracy Now
The significance of this Noam Chomsky quote in an interview with Amy Goodman indicates one of the reasons why the communists chose the right time for ending the dictatorship of the proletariat period (1917-1991), namely the lack of honest demagogues. (To Chomsky's list of corrupt demagogues add Bush father, son, and company.) As Chomsky points out, fear spawned by the global crisis could--if "we had an honest demagogue, you know, a Hitler type"--lead to unpleasantness. This unpleasantness can be nothing other than neofascism, fascism atuned to the times, with polished "big lies," syrupy terrorism of the likes of Sara Palin, the righteous genocide of the Bush's. Fascism, the last stage of capitalism, becomes more and more of a "threat" to capitalists as socialist countries around the world show their resiliency and immunity to capitalist-spawned crises. Capitalists can no longer isolate and undermine socialist states; to protect their sovereignty, socialist states can now get products and arms they need from other states in the socialist camp.