By Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D.
The Center for Geostrategic Studies organized from December 6-8 the International Online Conference: The Reanimation of Fascism in the 21st Century in Europe and the Possibility of its Prevention.
Among the eminent speakers was the American professor Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, whose speech we publish here below.
My appreciation to those with the foresight to organize this conference.
I limit my remarks to definitional clarity. By „fascism“ I assume we mean not merely economic corporation between government and private business, but the over-riding of citizens’ values and opinions by powerful groups in control of governing. We mean by fascism the ignoring and suppression of popular opinion.
Moreover, we mean the use of media as propaganda in order to implant falsehoods in the minds of the populations that make them easier to sway and control. Under a regime of fascism, official narratives are constructed, and any dissent, regardless of how factual, is dismissed as „misinformation.“
In these few words, I have described our current existence in the Western World.
The beliefs that made us free by restraining government power and holding it accountable are everywhere under attack. We are being dehumanized by fascism, which makes it easier to dispose of us. For example, the liberal city government of San Francisco on November 29, 2022, by a vote of 8 to 3 gave robots the right to kill humans. San Francisco will now employ killer robots as members of its police force.
In the United States today free speech is said to be a threat to democracy if it dissents from official explanations. There is talk about criminalizing „misinformation.“
We know how close we are to being muzzled when in the United States free speech, protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution is under attack as a „threat to democracy.“
There is a second necessary definitional clarification. We must not confuse fascism with nationalism. It is the globalism of American hegemony and the globalism of the World Economic Forum’s „great reset“ that terminates self-rule that are the threats, not nationalism. The nations of the world are being turned into towers of babel where internal disunity makes them unable to resist tyranny. Once Identity Politics divides a population, there is no unity necessary to constrain a government. Only a people unified with common values into a nation can resist the global forces constructing a tyranny. If nationalism is conflated with nazism and racism, on what political basis can globalism be resisted? Globalism is the ultimate tower of babel. The division created by Identity Politics eliminates the unity necessary for opposing tyranny.
The belief system that upholds liberty is seriously weakened by decades of attack. In the Western world the costs imposed on belief systems by self-denunciation and virtue-signaling are now apparent. To restore freedom to people requires resurrection of an almost dead civilization. I hope clarity about the definition of fascism contributes to this important effort.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this important conference.
December 12, 2022
