babyhueypnewton posted:The only thing that's not important is to list the historical features of fascism, all that does is embarass the speaker when every feature can be found in the United States on every day of Obama's presidency.
I don't think I quite understand this sentence, or how it follows from the earlier points.
How are you defining fascism without reference to its historical features? If it's a "form of capitalism itself in a certain situation" then it is partially these historical features that allow us to differentiate it from other forms of capitalism.
Gssh posted:babyhueypnewton posted:The only thing that's not important is to list the historical features of fascism, all that does is embarass the speaker when every feature can be found in the United States on every day of Obama's presidency.
I don't think I quite understand this sentence, or how it follows from the earlier points.
How are you defining fascism without reference to its historical features? If it's a "form of capitalism itself in a certain situation" then it is partially these historical features that allow us to differentiate it from other forms of capitalism.
I mean like this
The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
These are either too specific or so general as to easily apply to America at all times. But something like "fascism is the alliance of the nationalist bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie, and settler aristocracy in a decaying imperialist state" you have a definition that actually allows us to understand fascism instead of otherize it or define it polemically as anything bad. And Eco's version is the most developed of this type, most studies of fascism read like a list of things liberals project onto conservatives.
c_man posted:the silicon ideology did as good a job in describing fascism as possible without the necessary emphasis on colonialism imo, much better than the eco thing that bhpn linked
I liked this piece, it linked together a lot of things that I had been thinking about separately for a long time. In hindsight I'm nearly certain I dodged a bullet a few years ago by not falling in with the neo-reactionaries. As a teen I was adjacent to so many of the 2000's movements described in the piece and I feel like it would have been completely plausible for me to veer hard to the right if I had stayed a virgin for like 1 more year lol
i know these have already been posted, but if anyone hasn't read them both yet, go for it. required reading for the current situation imo:
Shock of Recognition.
2017 sakai interview
e: just read the j sakai thing above though if you havent yet because it's fire
Edited by Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia ()
Today I was working with a great example of petty-bourgeoisie fascism. Dude was quite a bit older than me, probs late 50s, but due to my sweet smile and inquisitive questions he really “opened up” to me. Tbh there was nothing particularly unique about him, but he loved to talk.
He started out by saying he was watching a great show on tv called “Can't Pay, We'll Take it Away”. From what I gathered this was a program about following some bailiffs around as they stole peoples washing machines and evicted them because they couldn’t pay rents and mortgages. Instantly I knew I was in for a great day!
He went on about how if these people couldn’t pay their debts they deserve to be kicked out etc. etc., turned out at some point he used to be a bailiff himself and make people homeless for a living. It was quite clear that to him “paying your debts” was very important. A couple more questions brought out the contradictions in him – he'd owned a number of small businesses and had really struggled to pay bills, wages etc at times and been in quite a lot of debt himself at one point and at risk of the baliffs coming calling. But since he'd managed to sort himself out he naturally couldn't see a single reason why everyone else couldn’t do the same.
He disliked everyone poorer than him as “lazy scroungers” and thought that the government were a bunch of crooked thieves. He disliked authority and the police, but understood how they were necessary to “maintain order”. He respected multi-millionaire business owners for being hard working and for pulling themselves up with their bootstraps and thought people were too hard on Philip Green, but really hated bankers and saw conspiracies in “the city”. He had a gay son, and a trans son, but talked a lot about “normal families” and how he thought gay marriage was bad.
He very proudly told me about all about the times he'd successfully returned various items to shops for refunds despite not having the receipt.
He didn't consider himself racist, and kept saying he wasn't every time he talked about “them over there” coming “over here”. He didn't talk about people “stealing our jobs” and respected immigrants who worked hard and “did their bit”, but said that many of them were here to steal benefits and take advantage of the hard workers.
He got onto talking about one of his sons. Apparently the son was struggling to make a decent wage in life, working difficult proletarian jobs, which contrasted with his petty-bourgeoisie father. The son was very angry about immigrants and Muslims stealing his jobs and apparently frequently uttered the words “fucking romanians”.
The day went on (and on, and on and on, boy did this day drag!), eventually he started talking about how 9/11 was an inside job – naturally it was all about how jet fuel cant melt steel beams. By this point I was bored and daydreaming about bashing his head in with my hammer, so I tried to steer the conversation onto neutral things but to no avail.
Fortunately I was saved from having to listen to any more from this concentration camp guard in the making by someone in london running over some pedestrians then stabbing a police officer to death outside the houses of parliament, which “shook up” my boss, we all did that “oh noe the terryrism” face in sort of solemn pantomime. I managed to prevent myself laughing at this point and just lay down on some haybales pretending I was overcome with shock, and then he said i could go home, phew.
i really got to get out of the countryside
Edited by Synergy ()
extract from The Paths of Glory, November 1946 - Martha Gellhorn
The night before the verdict we decided to escape into the rubble that is Nuremberg. We would drive out into the country-side, which is sweet and richly green, and find a village and a pub and a meal and some beer. In Ansbach a boy offered to guide us to a café. He was tall and blond, twenty years old, with charming manners and blue eyes and white teeth. We invited him to eat with us.
We have talked to many Germans since the early days of entering this country with the Army. I remember the very beginning when white sheets of surrender hung from every window and no one was a Nazi, and oddly enough vast numbers of Germans were half Jew and everyone had hidden a Communist, and all were agreed that Hitler was a monster.
Then, six months later, I remember that had changed and we heard how even during the worst period of the war they had butter and coal and clothes to wear and now (with an accusing look at us) there were none of these things. I remember my German driver eating a large whitebread sandwich and telling me bitterly that everyone was starving. But listening to this handsome boy in Ansbach was probably the most melancholy experience of all.
He had been a soldier since he was sixteen, in the Panzer grenadiers, which means that he was top-notch quality by German standards. He had been wounded three times, had fought against the English at Caen and on the Russian front. He said quite simply that Germany made war because England was ready to attack her. The Allied bombings, he said regretfully (for he did not wish to hurt our feelings), were not correct; they could not be forgotten: What did innocent women and children have to do with war? .
'Then why do you suppose the German air force bombed Warsaw and London and Coventry first?’ we asked. He was puzzled by this, but said there was probably a reason.
He went on to remark that this talk about the concentration camps was exaggerated and propaganda; he had seen people returning from ’protective custody’ to this very town and they were fat and sunburned.
There must have been some look in our eyes which stopped him, for he changed the subject by saying that it was wrong to kill the Jews, it was a mistake. On the other hand, said the boy, you could not help hating the Jews because they never did real work. In his life he had only seen the Jews changing money in a tricky way. Now Jews were returning to this town, and German families had to give them back their houses and sit in the street; no one spoke to the Jews.
Life was very hard nowadays, and there was little to eat. Of course you could buy whatever you liked on the black market The black market was run by foreigners and notably by all these Poles. The Poles, he said, got many extra pairs of shoes from UNRWA and sold them and so grew into rich black marketeers.
The Hitler Jugend, he opined, had been a fine organization; they were given trips and concerts; they were taught culture. In the worst year of the war in Germany, everyone had everything he needed, but look at them now.
'Didn’t you get all the things, the food and the clothes and all the little niceties, from Poland and France, Belgium and Holland?’ my colleague inquired.
'No,’ said the boy proudly, ’from Germany.’
'Nuts!’ said my colleague, who was beginning to feel sick.
At the end of the war, the boy continued, people hated Hitler because he had lost the war; but now they were beginning to see that Hitler was not really so bad, for things were much worse than when he had been running Germany. As for these trials, said the boy, Goering followed his ideals, he admitted it, he tried to do his best for Germany. The generals and admirals obeyed orders and should not be tried at all. But Funk, who had wept on the witness stand, was not a real German and whatever happened to him was all right. Anyhow, of course, the Allies would do whatever they liked at this trial since they had won the war.
When we left, the boy looked at us with hurt eyes, for he saw that he had not made a favorable impression though he had been so friendly and tried so hard to help us understand Germany.
babyhueypnewton posted:groundservices posted:I think that's the right lne of questioning, colddays. A decline for white workers, real or imagined, the end of a unipolar phase of capitalism lead by a hyperpower, plus the social democratic model becoming unviable as a pressure release valve, in the context of internal colonization along both color/gender/national as well as geographic lines (the US south, especially south Louisiana, being an internal colony and really anything outside the major metrolpoles being a colony) as well as yet more labor competition on the global market even among skilled and specialized labor plus the influx of war/economic refugees intensifying competition for what jobs aren't yet automated is why relatively secure places like the US or France, who still have sources of super profits, become increasingly violent and draconian especially against internal colonies and refugees from nonwhite nations
I agree with this though it's important to note this is very different than the fundamental realignment of global imperialism that Hitler anticipated in the rise of the American economy. Inter-imperialist war was the only option for Germany to find a place in this new world order even if it didn't happen under fascism. The rise of China or whatever is pretty far from that. Perhaps this explains why the liberal bourgeoisie still has strong resistance to Trump's policies which have so far been pretty mild compared to the (overemphasized but still real) contradictions between the German bourgeoisie and the Nazis. Alternatively it could mean Trump is not actually fascist as the US is not a marginalized imperialist power. It's important to look at the mass base of fascism and the class form of fascist politics but it's also essential to remember the big picture and the fact that fascism is more than the aggregation of fascists but a form of capitalism itself in a certain situation. The only thing that's not important is to list the historical features of fascism, all that does is embarass the speaker when every feature can be found in the United States on every day of Obama's presidency.
this is gibberish, learn to write bro
anyway buy