From 'Totalitarianism' to 'Islamofascism'. posted by Richard Seymour

I've had a bash at this preposterous 'totalitarianism' notion before, but there's a good piece about it in Socialist Worker this week. I particularly want to highlight the section that deals with Blair's grubby little catchphrases and connects with a very old kind of Cold War ideology:

In Blair’s Los Angeles speech, he spoke about how in politics “the increasing divide today is between open and closed” - and “open” in this context means “free trade” and “managed immigration”.

The notion that the fundamental political distinction is between “open” and “closed” societies was first championed by Karl Popper.

He was an Austrian philosopher whose political theories rose to prominence at the end of the Second World War and became deeply influential in right wing circles during the Cold War.

Popper came from a Jewish background and had to flee his native Austria when the Nazis came to power. He opposed fascism - but he was also a fanatical anti-Marxist. Popper argued that communism and fascism, far from being opposites, were in fact twins.

Both were examples of “closed” societies marked by “totalitarian” political ideologies.

Liberal democracies, on the other hand, were “open” and thus equally opposed to both extremes, left and right.

These ideas, and related theories of “totalitarianism”, were eagerly championed by ruling classes across the US and Western Europe.

They provided the perfect cover for imperialist meddling abroad and political repression at home. Liberation movements in the colonies and trade unionists in the West could all be labelled as “communist”, and therefore as “enemies of freedom”.

The other crucial feature of Popper’s “totalitarianism” theory was that it deliberately blurred the distinction between left and right - another favourite theme of Blair.

This allowed Western ruling classes to put a “left wing” gloss on their ideology when it was convenient. Communism was the same as fascism, the left opposed fascism, therefore the left should side with the US against Russia - or so the logic went.

These arguments did in fact attract certain sections of the far left. Trotskyist activists such as Max Shachtman in the US, reeling from the murderous repression meted out by Stalin’s agents against revolutionaries, started to see Western capitalism as relatively progressive.

Shachtman’s followers supported the US during the Vietnam war and some, such as Irving Kristol, became full-blown neoconservatives.

Blair's arguments, then, come directly from the Atlanticist tradition in the Labour Party which have always dovetailed neatly with Cold War liberalism and its successor, neoconservatism. It is interesting in that respect how easily, almost gracefully, New Labour idiotology has become outright neoconservatism.