Personal Responsibility

Or how an ideology of freedom results in authoritarianism and fascism. Large parts of the Republican party in the U.S. and other right-wing parties around the world identify as libertarians or, as was trending for a while, "classical liberals." These ideologies contain the word "liberty," but in practice amount to an ideology of hierarchy, control, bigotry and authoritarianism. Here's why.

In fact, I've written about this subject many times before, so you could browse through my older posts to get an answer. However, I stumbled across a couple of videos the other day that explains the whole phenomenon in a nutshell; it's linked below. First and foremost these freedom-loving right-wingers all support and love capitalism. Since it's the ideology that's conquered the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's common practice to utter the words "capitalism" and "freedom" in the same sentence, as if these concepts are inextricably tied to each other. No capitalism without freedom. No freedom without free markets. And no democracy with one of them missing. This is simply presumed in almost all discussions about politics, society and economy. The fact of the matter is that capitalism creates a power-hierarchy with capitalists, the owners of the means of production, at the top. Capitalism is why there's no real democracy and why America is "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."

This ideology (yes, capitalism is an ideology) has at its core the belief and precondition that all actors in the economy seek to maximize their own profits. It's funny how "free marketeers" fail to see that this simple fact about capitalism pits employers and employees against each other; employees will want to maximize their wages and minimize working hours, while employers will want to pay as little wages as possible while making workers work as long as possible. Since the employers are also the capitalists, they have the means to influence governments to do their bidding, which is why democracy works for them, but not for the rest of us. But hey, according to the freedom-loving libertarians these capitalists should be free, left unburdened by any government regulations or taxation.

From that we arrive at the unshakable belief in personal success, personal failing and personal responsibility. If you're a millionaire, you personally achieved that success. If you're poor, you're personally to blame. Whatever fate befalls you in life, it's your personal responsibility. This dumb and reductionist view makes it easy to glorify the rich and blame the poor, easy to believe that the rich are somehow better, more deserving, harder working and more talented. It creates a hierarchy not only in power but in human self-worth. And it hinders any attempt to analyze and solve systemic problems. In this ideological framework there are no systemic problems, only personal failures. When these people see a ghetto with thousands of poor black people, they won't look for an answer as to why this large group of people is so poor, badly educated and largely unemployed. Instead they'll say to them that they should work harder. Or they'll assume there must be something wrong with them. Something in their culture maybe. Or, God forbid, something in their genes.

It doesn't take much imagination to see how this ideology of personal responsibility is a precursor to authoritarianism and fascism, the opposite of freedom. But please watch the included videos; they do a much better job than I can in the limited time I have tonight at explaining all this. And let me add that of course not all people who identify as right-wing libertarian are fascists or racists. This simply explains why fascist and white supremacist or white nationalist ideologies are far more prevalent in that ideological section of western societies, which is something we can all see with our own eyes.

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