Fascism for Dummies

Umberto Eco has a concise definition of fascism.

Mine is even shorter:

Fascism is the political expression of Sadomasochism.

(To be nice and sparkling clear, I'm talking S+M in the original Marquis de Sade sense, not fun and games with safe words.)

First-edition Sadism. Ur-Sadism. The Sadistic equivalent of Classic Coke.

Defined as: Getting off on somebody else's pain. Expressing your dominance through cruelty. Defining your own superiority by selecting a victim, and putting them in a submissive, inferior position by humiliating, degrading and hurting them — up to the point of murder.

That's the original flavor.

I was slow to make the connection. I didn’t get it at first, even after reading about George Floyd's murder. But it started a slow train of thought. I got to wondering ...

Floyd's ugly killing is nothing new. That’s the ugly truth. White cops have slaughtered unarmed black people for a long, long time. Video records of this ultimate police brutality are relatively new. They’ve sparked street actions before — but not on this scale. Floyd’s execution pushed African-Americans over the edge — and ignited a gut-level reaction on a national scale. Why? What's the difference? 

The answer is dead-obvious, at least to black people. Being a sheltered white guy, I failed to see it, even after reading the news story. Then I clicked on the video of George Floyd's execution. Just a few seconds. Couldn't take any more. But that was enough.  

A YouTube video's worth a thousand words.

What's the difference?

After seeing Floyd's murder-by-cop with my own eyes, I finally got the picture ...

Officer Derek Chauvin didn't merely kill George Floyd. He took his time. Enjoyed it. Got off on it.

It was a classic act of sadistic cruelty. A kink. A form of sexual perversion. That's what I saw after more than a week. That's what black people instantly saw. And why America's streets are on fire. 

George Floyd was starring in a white cop's personal snuff film. Black people don't want to play that anymore. Then it hit me ...

This snuff film has a name ...

Fascism. The all-American franchise called white supremacy.

Slow learner that I am, I finally realized that fascism = S+M with parades, flags and uniforms. It's a sexual fetish. Duh. All the leather, jack boots, whips, and stomping. What else could it be? 

Not the most original observation, I know. 

Intellectually, I already knew it. 

It's a major theme in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. The ugly lesson of the movie Closet Land. And the nightmare takeaway of George Orwell's 1984 ...

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

This kink is global. And it's been around for a long, long time.

But in these United States, the face tends to be black.

And white people wear the boots.