Naomi Klein is here talking about what many have pointed out: Fascism is doing within a country what colonialism did to other countries.
DOMINATION CULTURE TAKEN TO THE EXTREME
I find a bigger picture useful here: It’s all domination culture taken to the extreme.
On the partnership-domination culture spectrum, fascism and colonialism are extreme versions of the latter.
The way Israel treats Palestinians is an extreme expression of domination culture, just like the way the Nazis treated Jews – and many other minorities – was an extreme expression of domination culture. Hurt people hurt people. Traumatized people traumatize people. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is trauma behavior, and it continues the cycle of trauma, hurt, and hurting. It will continue to play itself out in that part of the world.
With the new Trump presidency, we predictably again see an extreme version of domination culture play itself out.
In two weeks, he has already inflicted immense pain and suffering on a large number of people: Immigrants, trans people in the military, all the ones – children, refugees, the sick – who will not receive help from USAID, the federal employees who are fired, and so on.
As authoritarian leaders do, Trump uses dominance as a means to funnel resources to the already wealthy and powerful and to inflict suffering on everyone else, especially the ones opposing it.
DOMINATION CULTURE & COLLECTIVE TRAUMA
Why do people vote for someone like Trump? One answer is that it’s the same reason Israel commits systematic and horrific human rights violations against the Palestinians, and has done so for decades. It’s because hurt people hurt people. It’s trauma behavior.
They have been hurt by domination culture, in their families and by lacking opportunities in life. They hurt and are in pain. And they deal with it by siding with the oppressing dynamics. They justify these dynamics, support them, likely live them out in their own lives, and vote for someone who is living it out in an even more extreme way.
A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT TRUMP AND THE US
There is a lot more to say about this and I’ll just touch on a few points.
It will lead to the erosion of the US empire. That’s Trump’s explicit agenda, so it’s not a surprise. He wants to isolate the US from the rest of the international community, and that – by definition – means the erosion and hastened end of the US empire. They won’t have the same strong position in the world as they did. Their former allies will find other alliances – for trade, security, and so on.
It also leads to the erosion within the US – of democracy and democratic institutions, of the legal system and justice, of the systems set in place to prevent corruption and abuse of power, of systems in place to help those least fortunate in society, and so on.
He is doing exactly what he said he would do. He is following the Project 2025 game plan to a T.
The ones voting for him are getting exactly what they voted for. The ones who would have voted against him, and didn’t, are getting exactly what that kind of inaction leads to. They are all getting exactly what they knew they would get. (At least if they had taken one minute to think it through.)
Why does he want to isolate the US and pull out of international agreements and institutions? Why does he want to undo all those systems of democracy, justice, and social safety nets?
It’s partly because he thinks he doesn’t need them. He is wealthy, his buddies are wealthy, and they’ll manage and do fine without it, which is true in a limited way.
Mainly, it’s because he is deeply suspicious of any kinds of agreements or systems that seem to benefit others.
ZERO-SUM VIEW
He operates from a zero-sum view of the world, which is a hallmark of domination culture. Everything is a limited resource. If you win, I lose, and if I win, you lose. So it’s better to be aggressive and use any means to make sure I win first. That’s his life in a nutshell.
He looks for how, imaginary or otherwise, he is losing if someone else is winning. He overlooks – and is deeply distrustful of – the ways we all may benefit from international agreements and institutions, and from systems of justice and social safety nets. (That said, not all international agreements and institutions benefit everyone. For instance, neo-liberal trade policies hurt the Global South and nature.)
He looks for ways to win in a way that makes others suffer because that’s what winning means to him. If others don’t visibly lose, it can’t be a real win.
This is also trauma behavior. It’s the view of someone deeply traumatized. It’s the life and outlook of someone deeply damaged by domination culture and how it played itself out in their own birth family.
THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN DOMINATION CULTURE
Where does this come from?
It’s not new. All of history is full of examples of domination culture, sometimes taken to an extreme.
That’s a clue in itself.
All cultures have elements of partnership and domination orientations, and the more extreme versions of domination culture came with the agricultural revolution.
Before agriculture, we were all indigenous. Our cultures were more on the partnership side of the spectrum. We lived in partnership with nature and the small number of people in our group. We saw ourselves as nature. We saw the sacred in everything and everyone. We lived with the seasons and what nature naturally provided. We had some hierarchies of course, typically based on skills, experience, and knowledge needed for survival. Nobody had a lot more than anyone else since it was not possible to accumulate much.
With agriculture came ownership – of land, animals, people, and resources in general. Some amassed large amounts of resources. This was a big departure from how we had lived before. So how could the ones with the new resources justify it? How could they get people to play along and even support this new system, even if they were at the bottom of the hierarchy?
They did it partly through ideologies. They imagined that… We are separate from nature. The sacred is removed from us and nature and is found in sky gods or the afterlife. Other species don’t feel and experience similar to us. Nature is unlimited in its resources. And so on.
They promoted hierarchies and inequality as divine will and justice. If you are lower on the hierarchy, it’s because of a fault of your own (lazy, karma), and if you don’t question it, you’ll get your reward in the afterlife.
This is domination culture. It’s all set up for domination – of land, animals, and people. It’s a culture of domination and control even of ourselves.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Many cultures even after the agricultural revolution were, and are, further on the partnership side of the scale. Modern Nordic countries are an example of social partnership orientation. (Although still a domination orientation with nature.)
GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL OVERSHOOT
This is all happening in a larger context:
All resources come from the commons shared by all life.
All of our resources, all wealth in society and among humans, come from the commons of Earth, it comes from the commons produced by all of life.
When we amass wealth, as we are at an increasing rate, we take resources from the web of life we are all part of.
Our collective ecological footprint is far larger than our planet. We are using far more resources than Earth can replenish. That’s similar to living on money from a savings account. When it reaches the bottom, our lifestyle comes crashing down.
When Earth is getting closer to the bottom of its savings account, which it already is and which is happening at an increased speed, civilization comes crashing down. Ecosystems unravel, and with them our civilization.
This is an expression of domination culture and a zero-sum view. Our modern civilization is built on zero-sum systems where we benefit in the short term at the cost of all of nature, future generations, and ultimately ourselves.
THE SOLUTION IS FOUND IN A DEEP PARTNERSHIP ORIENTATION
The remedy is found in a partnership orientation.
We can save ourselves by developing a genuine and deep partnership culture.
This is a culture where we… See ourselves as nature. See the sacred in everyone and everything. Acknowledge that all beings and natural systems have rights. Recognize that other species experience and feel much as we do. Create systems that take ecological realities into account.
It’s a culture with a deep partnership with nature, ourselves as nature, each other, and even future generations.
We seek win-win solutions where our life is sustained so everyone has the basics needed for a good life, and that regenerates ecosystems. We create systems where what’s easy and attractive to do is also what’s fair and regenerates this living planet.
We win. Society wins. Ecosystems win. Wildlife wins. Future generations win.
From a domination culture mindset, this seems naive. It will never happen. It can’t work. There are no such solutions. People won’t want to do it. This is one of the ways the domination mindset maintains itself. It defends itself by telling itself stories to justify itself and make alternatives seem naive and unrealistic.
WILL WE FIND THE COLLECTIVE WILL?
The reality is that we don’t have much of a choice.
If we are to survive – as a civilization and species – that’s our only real option. (The other option is collapse, a huge reduction in our population, and either learning from it or continuing with cycles of collapse until we as a species are gone.)
The reality is also that we have those solutions. We have workable win-win solutions, and we’ll find more if we collectively choose a more life-centered and partnership-oriented path.
Will we collectively choose to take that path? How far into the collapse do we need to go before we find that collective will?
How many will respond to the collapse with a solution-oriented and win-win mindset? How many will respond by going further into a domination and zero-sum mindset?
We don’t know, but we can live what we want to see in the world.
We can develop a more genuine and deep partnership mindset. We can find, join, and develop communities of like-minded people. We can speak up about all of this. We can find and promote win-win solutions. We can live some of the solutions in our own life.