Dictatorial disputes

re: "Anti-hate hating" (BP, PostBag, November 10, 2022), re: "Reflecting on a century of Fascism" (BP, November 7, 2022)

Dear editor,

It is not clear exactly which of Jason Stanley's "own words" manifest, as Sam Wright alleges, "anti-democratic views [with] dark dictatorial promise." Mr. Wright usefully reports the professor's points that fascism is both rotten and that it does tend to be beloved of Christian conservatives peddling their perfectly unsubstantiated fantasies as all-justifying fact, fake claims if ever there were. He also helpfully summarizes Prof. Stanley's analysis of the threat that Trump poses to US democratic institutions and principles. But there is nothing in all this that is manifestly anti-democratic or fraught with dictatorial promise of the sort that continues, for example, to afflict Thailand, another nation where religion plays a conspicuous role as a pillar loyally propping up glorified tradition opposing democracy that respects human rights. 

Mr Wright has more solid grounds for his observation that Prof. Stanley fails to also rail against much else that is rotten, such as the "left-wing authoritarianism" cited as absent. It must be agreed that the ideology of left-wing authoritarianism, such as exemplified in Xi Jinping's China, if that is what is to be understood by "left-wing authoritarianism", is also rotten. But since Mr Wright does not trouble himself to indicate what he might in fact mean by the undefined term "left-wing authoritarianism", with neither explanation nor a single example being given, we can only speculate as to whether or not Xi and that ilk qualify.

There are, nonetheless, equally authoritarian tendencies than those inspired by fascist authoritarianism with its love of simple final solutions to complex social issues, typically of the "kill them" or "lock them up" type, as Prof. Stanley also discusses with regard to the modern United States with its extraordinarily high rate of imprisonment, most disproportionately of the less-white demographic.

Mr Wright might also have pointed out that Prof. Stanley could have broadened his comments beyond Christianity, since at the very least the world's other monotheistic religions, with or without the multiple personalities of the Christian god, are every bit as repressively immoral and morally stunting in their primitive authoritarianism as are the religions of the God of Abraham, with His famous Ten Commandments, the first of which explicitly dictates in Exodus 20:3 absolute intolerance of other ways of thinking, living or being. But wait, what was that we read in Prof. Stanley's essay about the political acts of Hindu nationalism in India?

Perhaps a closer reading by Mr Wright would have suggested that Prof. Stanley chose to focus on one acute threat to democracy in the West today, not to analyze every political ill, such as seen in the never-democratic likes of Iran, where religion also naturally allies itself to viciously anti-democratic violation of basic human rights, nor was he analyzing the decline and fall wrought by "left-wing authoritarianism" of Chinese democracy under Xi's rising Maoification. Perhaps that dissection of "left-wing authoritarianism" over the past century will come in a later piece, or perhaps Mr Wright could write that essay for us. 

 Felix Qui 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on November 12, 2022, under the title "Dictatorial disputes" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2436077/grim-logic