Below, find a brand new commentary from Notes From Disgracedland’s Bjarne Knausgaard who regular readers will recall pens some of the best political/economic color around.
The first link there is to his blog and the second is his Twitter, which you should follow.
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When it came to political revolution against an autocracy only a privileged minority had something to gain by resisting the forces of change, but in changing the relationship of men to women every man, rich or poor, stands to lose by a change.[1]
Identity code has a generally excluding effect capable of mobilizing negative energies and social forces towards those who do not share the same origin, territory and/or cultural code. One of Franco Berardi’s persistent themes has been the idea that deterritorialization results in a disconnect of people from their identity code. Movements of reterritorialization are always manifested through rituals of aggressive re-identification (e.g. violence, racism, war,…). Fascism is the fundamental obsession with identity, origin and belonging (and recognizability). It is generally inclusive, which reflects a fear of small numbers – it likes size because identity robustness had been eroded by the defection and erosion of ranks. Fascism absorbs everyone willing to join in and expresses hostility to outsiders — burning bridges reinforces commitment to the identity[2].
Every response to identity crisis, every identitarian fantasy and obsession is accompanied with a distinct mode of misogyny. There are four main modes of misogyny that relate to the underlying types of identity loss: Traditional patriarchal, Italian fascist, National socialist, and American.
Patriarchal setting: Linear misogyny
There is a relatively narrow spectrum here. All patriarchal structures have a certain degree of hostility towards women; they only differ by mode and intensity. The hostility is particularly palpable in monotheistic religions, which carry strong overtones of repressed (male) homosexuality. In that particular aspect, radical Islam goes further than other religions which show more restraint and apparent tolerance. The quarrels between Islam and Western conservative Christian societies when it comes to the position of women is only about the mode and extent of repression: How much freedom should women have and how explicit the boundaries should be; should women not be allowed to work at all or should they only be paid less than men for their work[3].
This is the world where there is no place for a woman outside of her reproductive role. However, men are expected to couple with women — they must perform their reproductive community service — which they do, often against their desires. Muslim women are removed from men’s sight by being forced to cover their faces and bodies — men don’t want to be reminded of their existence. Hassidic Jewish communities, on the other hand, have a somewhat subtler approach. Their women are all forced to wear identical wigs and clothes, to have the same appearance. They become “invisible” by being indistinguishable. Any sign of distinction or sexuality is inhibited. Physical contact is purely for reproductive purpose, stripped of sexual connotation as much as possible and minimized direct contact. The hostility is supported by sustained subliminal narrative of their impurity, the fear of menstruation and need for special cleansing rituals in those days.
Defeminization of society: Italian fascism
Although women are intrinsically linked to man’s mobility, their deserving role in that department has been lost with time thanks to persistent development of elaborate institutions of women’s repression. Velocity and acceleration became synonymous with the modern tools of male potency. Franco Berardi gives an insider’s perspective on how this trend created fertile ground for both fascism and misogyny in Italy: One cannot understand Italian fascism if one does not start from the need for defeminization of cultural self-perception. Italians have always regarded themselves from a feminine perspective. The greatness of Italian culture is its femininity, Mediterranean sweetness, taste for life, tenderness, and slowness[4].
Towards mid-19th century, Italian national culture became ashamed of its peaceful femininity and began inoculating itself with testosterone. Fascism in Italy represents the turning point from feminine self-perception to masculine assertiveness. It is defined by a need for erasing feminine self-perception together with its Mediterranean sensitivity, and affirming a different self-image based on acceleration. National pride, military aggressivity, industrial growth, etc. was all fake and artificial; this is why Italian fascism is often perceived as a farce. The result was a ridiculous display of machismo perfectly embodied by such clowns as Mussolini and Berlusconi[5].
Subordination to higher cause: National Socialism
Unlike Italian fascism (or Islamofascism for that matter), which is inclusive, National Socialism is based on the denial of humanity to the Other – it has clearly defined boundaries and highly restrictive admission rules, accessible only to the chosen. Like any other identitarian movement, it likes size (and large numbers), but it has a different plan for achieving those goals, by growing from within. This is where women come in.
German fascism was not a programmatic cultural defeminization, but rather an establishment of systematic downgrade of femininity to reproductive function as a part of the new nation serving hierarchization. Its essence was a utilitarian placement of women as birth factories, their subordination to the interests of the National Socialist political agenda, to serve the numbers.
This produced a nationwide program for the advancement of national health and racial purity, and general physical and mental fitness, the eroticization of masculinity personified by soldiers, and women’s subordinate role in that context. While these attributes had never gone out of vogue completely, their systematization had never reached the same proportions as in Germany during the 1930s.
Although this program was short lived and with tragic consequences, remnants of the institutions of women’s repression and exclusion lingered on for the remainder of the 20th century. Until well into the 1990’s all shops, including food, operated on stubbornly inflexible schedules incompatible with the idea of working mothers, all closing by 6pm on weekdays, and 2pm on Saturdays (closed on Sundays). All this in a Germany that was rebuilding at an accelerated pace and notoriously lacking a labor force, needing to import a large contingent of foreign workers to fill that gap. It took enormous effort and a long time to “modernize” and adapt it to contemporary standards where working women and fully functional families became compatible with each other.
Decomplexified femininity and nostalgia for idiot housewives: American misogyny
Man’s vision of woman is not objective, but an uneasy combination of what he wishes her to be and what he fears her to be. (Eva Figes)
American-style misogyny and the underlying identity crisis behind it is effectively a composite of the three previous examples, enhanced with additional layers of an ideological mindfuck, required to tackle complexities that developed during the late stages of neoliberalism. While 21st century America has incorporated new advances in communications and media techniques into all aspects of social and political life, in many ways it is still struggling to shake off backwards-patriarchal attitudes and its inability to fully embrace the social emancipation consistent with modernity.
In the decades of all-inclusive and all-permissive (ethnic, racial, gender, and cultural) neoliberalism the masculine core of American culture, its male assertiveness, aggressivity, and impulsiveness, had been diluted. The essence of America was emasculated, its survival threatened.
White American males have always been in charge. They made the rules and they called the shots in the workplace, in the home and at the ballot box. They’ve owned the world for so long and have been getting increasingly uncomfortable as their grip on power had been eroding. Now the unthinkable is happening: They are becoming the minority. For the first time more minority babies were born than white babies (it is damn numbers again)! And a black president has served two terms, his Secretary of State was a woman, the most educated segment of the society are black women, and every other daytime talk show or news anchor is gay. This is what conservatives are really upset about. Suddenly this country is way off the main path; the whole system needs to be restored and some reset buttons need to be pushed.
The problem requires a systematic approach. Restoring order means the resolute masculinization of society (of course). This should start by arming men with weapons — the more lethal, the more masculine they are — establishing male supremacy values (this has worked since the Stone Age, and it should continue to work in the 21st century as well) and establishing a fear of god – this helps the male cause because god is a dude (white, of course).
As a part of the masculinization program and return of patriarchal values, assault on women’s rights and their position in society must be thorough and systematic — women’s emancipation has to be undone. However, this part requires a subtle approach and proper framing – women must not be antagonized; they are many and they vote. The most effective way is to strike at the root of a woman’s influence.
No one has more influence on a person during his/her formative age than their mother. As such, she is a constant threat to both the state and to men in general. The decision of life and death has to be taken away from women. Their influence and importance in the life of their children have to be diminished, if not de facto, then at least symbolically. Right to life! This is ultimately the question about who has jurisdiction over the life of an individual, their mother/family or the state. With the help of proper framing, this becomes the theme that defines the core of the right wing identity, an issue slowly hijacked by (predominantly white) men. They have the view, they feel righteous and they present themselves as defenders of human life while women take a back seat.
Decomplexified femininity
Feminism is here to stay, so it has to be incorporated into the new model of woman. Femininity needs to be redefined and decomplexified. The latest right wing assault on women’s emancipation process was the introduction of the MILFs of the new rank[6] into political life. There are two essential groups. Sarah Palin, NRA women Dana Loesch, Michelle Buchman, Omarosa… are typical representatives of the first kind. These women impassion America, they bring a new Eros to politics. They embody “post-feminist” femininity without a complex, uniting the features of mother, teacher (glasses, hair in a bun), public person, and, implicitly, sex object, and, with a dash of their oversexed vulgarity, reinforce the existing cultural boundaries. The message is that they “have it all” – and that, to add insult to injury, these are Republican women who, in some metric, had realized the left-liberal dream.
The second kind, the lower echelon, like Jane Porter, Roy Moore’s wife, Sarah Hucka-San, Katrina Pearson, have a slightly different appeal: Their trailer park pedigree and manifest lack of interest for any semblance of intellectual integrity and sophistication are paraded and advertised as an integral part of the entire value system. These are the women who perfectly fit the backwards patriarchal model, with a dash of modernity. Their little secret is that their popularity comes predominantly from white men. All others — minorities, women, democrats, non-white men – hate them. Only white men like them. These women represent something those men miss dearly: The traditional idiot housewife.[7]
As the ranks of the successful and prosperous are shirking in the face of rampant inequality, the number of those that are left behind and can no longer be reintegrated into the society swells. The numbers are there, they just have to be bundled together under one umbrella. The two opposite sides, super rich and poor, have to be united despite conflicting interests. And so, the need for the eroticization of stupidity grows, as the existing ideology becomes increasingly more difficult to sell. Without a functioning liberal class, the anger among the working and the middle class is being expressed in ideologies that detest democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy. The right wing populist narrative gains traction and with new constituents gradually finds its way to the ballot box. White trash becomes fully engaged in their dual role as booth the victims and their own executioners.
Rage capital is ready for picking. It is harvest time.
[1] John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, Penguin Classics (2007)
[2] Franco Berardi, Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide, Verso (2015)
[3] A particularly sharp treatment of the subject dealing with proximity of the conservative Christian and radical Islamic worldviews can be found in Michel Houllebecq, Submission, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2015)
[4] Franco Berardi, After the Future, AK Press (2011)
