Survival of the Fittest in the Lebensraum Left Today

At a time when more and more poor and working class people either ignore electoral politics altogether or join the ranks of the wanna-be Nazis, leave it to the Democrats to help accelerate their own demise by refusing to acknowledge reality. The reality is that ever since Bill Clinton and the New Democrats abandoned poor and working classes in favor of middle classes, they’ve pushed people into the hands of America’s Third Reich. In fact, the party made this big push to the right in an attempt to beat Ronald Reagan at his own game. It worked, until it didn’t, and it hasn’t ever since.

The reality is that the politics of middle classes abandoning the poor and working class actually has a name. It’s called “Malthusian Social Darwinism,” otherwise known as “survival of the fittest.” Thomas Malthus believed the middle classes were superior to poor and working class humans and believed that the harsh survival brought out that superiority. He believed that a coming global crisis would wipe out a bunch of humanity and that God ordained the middle class to abandon the inferior poor and working classes. That sounds familiar too, doesn’t it. We just call it the American Dream.

It turns out that the Democratic Party has been practicing this for decades now, all in an attempt to beat the Republicans at their own game. To paraphrase the guy who gave Hitler the idea of The Third Reich, the “lesser empire” of the Second Reich will never succeed because it’s just a cheap imitation of the “greater empire” of the Third Reich. Too bad nobody reads the classics anymore! We could learn something, like what NOT TO DO or maybe HOW TO RESIST!

Speaking of classics, you know the good friend of former president Teddy Roosevelt who wrote the book about the myth of the Aryan Race that Hitler loved so much? He talked about the difference between ancient and modern concepts of race and whiteness. Before the modern version, which centered on melanin, aka what causes differences in skin color, race and whiteness was understood differently.

Way back then, like WAY back, race and whiteness meant something much closer to just supposedly being “civilized” over a “savage” or “barbarian.” You could be “white” in the modern sense and be “savage” in the ancient sense. You could be “black” in the modern sense and be “civilized” in the ancient sense. It had more to do with supposedly civilizing the so-called savage inside. This is what the Democratic Party is fighting fascism with today.

They believe in an American Second Reich where everyone should have the opportunity to civilize the savage inside them, work hard, and become middle class. Just because someone has the opportunity to do something doesn’t mean they will succeed though. They can be left to die just the same, though maybe with a little welfare to smooth over the rough edges of their demise. Middle class Democrats don’t want too many poor and homeless people. It’s such an eyesore, especially when they have to see them in their pretty pretty suburbs!

The fact that this magical middle class “land of opportunity” was only possible because it was built on the backs of slaves on stolen land and an environment that we’ve exhausted for resources, apparently doesn’t matter. The “middle class nation” that papa Biden talked about wasn’t just built by unions, but by colonist unions in a nation that manufactured things and loaned money to the rest of the world.

Now that same manufacturing was outsourced by the rich so they could oppress and exploit people in the Global South after the capitalism ushered in by the New Deal descended into massive crisis. We then went from a crediter nation to a debtor nation and, honey, our government is capital “B” broke. None of these conditions are changing anytime soon, so the idea that this is going to be a land where everyone becomes middle class is just propaganda. It’s a war that’s been waged against us by people who just want to stay comfortable and secure.

Have you figured out the strategy on offer by the Dark MAGA forces of America’s Third Reich yet? You would if you knew that the way the Nazis helped lots of people into the middle class was by seizing the property of Jewish folks who were sent to the camps. Guess what’s happening to people seized and sent to camps prior to being deported in the USA?

In this way, the strategy of America’s Third Reich is more realistic than what the Democratic Party has been offering. Whether it’s the same neoliberal trickle down strategy of what Harris called the “opportunity economy,” or Bernie’s “New New Deal” undertaken by a government with a higher debt to GDP ratio than the height of the New Deal, neither are realistic.

Regardless, each of them just promise everyone will have the chance to civilize the savage inside themselves and be part of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive middle class, while everyone else is left to die. They call it a capital “D” dream, but it’s really a nightmare.