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I'm pretty sure the CSA didn't build a monument in 1908 smarty-pants. edit- If you want to refer to neo-confederates rather than the actual CSA just say so. Baron Porkface fucked around with this message at 23:37 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 23:14
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One thing I realised a long time ago is trying to systemize Fascism is an invitation to mental pain. In the left we tend to think of ideologies in terms of a large heirachy of logical arguments and counterarguments in the way that Marxism, Anarchism or even Capitalism is. But these where all creeds largely invented by philosophers. Fascism was not. Its a set of orientations that grew out of power as practiced. Nobody sat down and wrote a treatise which got pondered over and then put into action. Not relly. Theres no central argument to it, that if proven true would flip on a lightswitch and reveal fascism to be the one true way. Its just not that way. Its a thinking style , (in the same way some cog psychologists propose "liberalism" and "conservatism" to be, although arguably liberalism as formally understood does have its share of axioms, and perhaps even conservatism too). Personally my take is that Fascism is at its core a Mythical mode of understanding the relationship to labour and power. It sees depersonalized forces such as labor alienation and class conflict as the result of dissent or interference from those outside a constantly shrinking magic circle that divides "us" and "them", and maintains that magic circle by creating mythical conflicts "white man" vs "the jews". "The family" vs "Queers". "good christians" vs "evil muslims". "Happy housewife" vs "Scheming feminist" etc, and all strung together with conspiracy theories and oral lore. Its the act of defining that magic circle , and the violence involved in enforcing it that make for "Fascism" as understood. If that makes any sense.
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May 9, 2021 23:57
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duck monster posted:One thing I realised a long time ago is trying to systemize Fascism is an invitation to mental pain. I think you're right that there is a mythical element in fascism, and that it is a central one, but only as presented to the masses, the rank and file followers. I think it's important to understand the difference between how fascism presents itself and its myths, and the true ideology of its leaders, who I believe are mostly cynical elitists and opportunists interested in personal power. For example, the vast masses of the working men and women of Germany certainly didn't belong in Hitler's magic circle: quote:The mass of the working class want nothing but bread and games. They can never understand the meaning of an ideal and we cannot hope to win them over to one. What we have to do is to select from a new master class, men who will not allow themselves to be guided, like you, by the morality of pity. Those who rule must know they have the right to rule because they belong to a superior race. Of course, he could never say anything like this publicly (that is from a conversation with Otto Strasser). The workers are an integral part of the official fascist myth of national glory, but note how Hitler's personal "superior race" does not include them. For Hitler, the crucial divide is not between the white man and the jew; it is the gulf between the "mass man", who is only interested in material trifles, and the Nietzschean Ubermensch, who is ready to rid himself of morality and ruthlessly dominate lesser men.
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May 10, 2021 01:49
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Flannelette posted:I might be that fascism requires a certain level of industry, science and technology and understanding of the reality before it goes from just a group that got things wrong because they didn't know better to willful deceit and fearmongering on a grand scale as a pillar of society that is an evolution of guilds wanting more control to make more money etc. Rather than spartans who were maybe rightfully afraid for their saftey, instead of just a small group of them trying to be rich. The Spartans were paranoid lunatics https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/
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May 10, 2021 03:14
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That's why they're so easily lionized by other paranoid lunatics with a capacity to hagiographize the militant warrior society
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May 10, 2021 04:17
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Charlz Guybon posted:The Spartans were paranoid lunatics Yeah but are they doing that to carefully manipulate the society for cronyism or are they actually all insane and believed this stuff? Seems like facism is a bit hard to define, maybe just call the actual fascists who coined the word that and let the groups that do similar things be known by their own names with the negative image coming from their deeds. For example calling the CCP or KSA fascists is kind of redundant when I can just call them CCP and KSA and know they are already as bad as fascists. You don't go around saying Nazis are bad because they are fascists. Flannelette fucked around with this message at 04:48 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 04:45
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Baron Porkface posted:I'm pretty sure the CSA didn't build a monument in 1908 smarty-pants. Yeah, the CSA are best described as counter-revolutionaries or militant reactionaries. Much more in common with Vandee than Vichy
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May 10, 2021 08:19
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Flannelette posted:Yeah but are they doing that to carefully manipulate the society for cronyism or are they actually all insane and believed this stuff? Both of course. Every member of the council of elders was once a tortured indoctrinated child who was literally brainwashed into believing in the cult.
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May 10, 2021 10:35
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Charlz Guybon posted:Both of course. Every member of the council of elders was once a tortured indoctrinated child who was literally brainwashed into believing in the cult. We haven't seen what happens when a proper facists state last more than 1 generation yet have we? When the people left running it are the ones who got fed the cool aid their whole life. It seems like fascists states would either need to tone it waaaay down after a little bit or they'll self destruct.
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May 10, 2021 12:26
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Mark Twain put at least some of the blame for the rise of Southern Nationalism in the pre-war years on the embrace of romanticism and a rejection of the enlightenment. It's kind of interesting to read his observations on southerners' "longing for an imagined past." You can kinda see the parallel to Germany's embrace of reactionary romanticism in response to a perceived revolutionary threat. It's also kinda funny to see the equivalent of a flamewar between Twain and a dead author: https://harpers.org/2007/07/how-walter-scott-started-the-american-civil-war/ "Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still."
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May 10, 2021 15:28
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Fascism always has an element of grievance to it. There was a glorious past in which things were better- but we didn't lose that by any fault of our own. It was taken by Them. By that metric, Lost Causers were/are fascist (or at least fascist adjacent), while the original recipe CSA wasn't.
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May 10, 2021 15:51
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Flannelette posted:We haven't seen what happens when a proper facists state last more than 1 generation yet have we? When the people left running it are the ones who got fed the cool aid their whole life. It seems like fascists states would either need to tone it waaaay down after a little bit or they'll self destruct. Have you seen the modern GOP? E: but yeah you’re right the US kept its growing fascism pretty well curated until recently
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May 10, 2021 16:22
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Flannelette posted:We haven't seen what happens when a proper facists state last more than 1 generation yet have we? When the people left running it are the ones who got fed the cool aid their whole life. It seems like fascists states would either need to tone it waaaay down after a little bit or they'll self destruct. Guess what happened to Sparta. 
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May 11, 2021 04:00
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Charlz Guybon posted:Guess what happened to Sparta. They went full ethno state and naturally selected themselves out of power I think.
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May 11, 2021 04:18
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Flannelette posted:They went full ethno state and naturally selected themselves out of power I think. Ehh... Kinda. I don't think "Become a living museum for tourists from the dominant political hegemon to gawk at" would be the desired goal of any fascists dreaming of an ethnostate
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May 11, 2021 05:35
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Possibly the earliest attempt to reckon with fascism was Luigi Fabbri's Preventative Counter Revolution. Written before the Italian fascist movement had seized power but when they were ascendant. In addition to a history of its early acts of repression it looks at the political ideas and economic base. He believed fascism wasn't fundamentally new, Italy at least had experienced multiple similar forces in the last century, what was different was the scale of support these ideologues and their paramilitary movements were receiving. His idea was that the red years and factory occupations while failing to launch a social revolution had scared the Italian leadership that one was pretty close. So since the regular forces of tradition and order had failed to contain the threat fringe extremists suddenly got a lot more funding and connections with the police and army (the book contains many detailed accounts of the army giving fascist squads weapons and the police using their trucks to ferry fascists directly to socialist party offices and union halls to burn down). And while before the reactionary right in Italy had been divided over issues like Republic or Monarchy, Catholicism or Secularism, big business or traditional firms etc, while on the surface they still were a diverse bunch the difference largely stopped mattering, republican and atheistic fascist leaders swore oaths to King and Pope for example. And in general their propaganda tended towards common values for the majority of the population, (patriotism, law and order, stability etc) but in practice despite the radical posturing and some small restructuring seemed to just be doing more of what the powerful in Italian society were already doing only more so. More Imperial expansion, more labour discipline, more control over public life etc. Meanwhile the turbulence of WWI gave this clique a rare opportunity to build a mass base out of the disaffected from all classes, workers, peasants, intellectuals etc.
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May 28, 2021 16:35
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I think one of the questions you have to ask is why you're defining Fascism. If you're talking about it as a historical movement it's pretty specific to early 20th century conditions and doesn't quite translate to modern day. The anti-capitalist elements (corporatism, for example) don't really exist in modern authoritarian right movements. It also wasn't particularly consistent even when it was a real ideology, and if you get too specific you get definitions that include the Spanish and Italians but not the Nazis, which feels a bit weird. I think most people just mean it as a pejorative for right wing authoritarianism. If it's pejorative then that's fine and I don't really care about someone making fun of these people but it isn't going to work into any sort of real theoretical framework.
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May 31, 2021 19:01
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I still like being able to mean something specific when I reference Nationalism (a preference for ethnostates), Supremacy (a belief that some population of people are inherently 'better than' some other population of people), Authoritarianism (advocacy for strict hierarchy, with all persons expecting to obey their betters and to be obeyed by their lessers), Dictatorialism (government by dictation, a la trump 'ruling' via twitter and exec orders? I don't have the sharpest definition here), Totalitarianism (one party, and that party is present at every book club, every church service, every sports game and radio broadcast), Stochastic Terrorism (actively working to foster the conditions under which anti-social behaviors are expressed with greater frequency within a target population), Disinformation (obscuring truth, and designing and promoting competing narratives not grounded in fact), Accelerationism (advocating for a political course that accelerates the decline of the present systems of government and economics), and other such (distinct) concepts. If 'Fascism' is simply meant to be some mix of the above, sure, it's a useful slur (and Nazi is specifically a fascist that advocates for genocide, I suppose). But if it's used in lieu of understanding each of the above points, it will produce lazy arguments. And I think a full understanding of each of the above will inevitably result in a very good understanding of Fascism. But yeah, I'm setting aside the historical context with this approach. e: I am interested in other terms to add to that list, or other interpretations of those words. I'm not entirely sure what 'despotism' is, tbh... and I don't have a very fine definition of 'tyrant' (an authoritarian dictator that enforces compliance by fear, I guess?) Uglycat fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 03:25
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As to WHY Fascism... So, I have this pair of concepts... organic and artificial modes of thought. Consider Christianity. If we were to pick any Christian from any point in human history, investigate how that person came to be introduced to Christianity, and continue following the chain back through time, you will inevitably reach Paul (who, notably, never met any historical Jesus). At no point did a human in the Aztec empire (for example) spontaneously arrive upon any belief system that you could describe as Christian. I consider Christianity to be an artificial mode of thought. Contrast this with Atheism. It seems to me as though atheists exist in every human civilization in history (though I suppose we could quibble over the definition, and maybe it doesn't happen in /every/ culture, but...). There was an Atheist in charge of the Aztec empire just before the Spanish arrived. Buddhism has its origins in the rejection of the Upanishadic metaphysics. I've read some fascinating accounts of some thinkers that were tortured and killed by the Inquisition. It seems as though Atheism is an organic mode of thought. If this distinction makes sense (I do hope it does...) I've been thinking of Fascism as being an organic mode of thought - occurring spontaneously in myriad human civilizations, a complicated sociological fractal grounded in logical fallacies and cognitive biases and language barriers and human greed in aggregate. I have certainly been surprised to see the form it takes as it emerges, and absolutely dumbfounded at some of the places I've seen it (a 'kek' pin on a deadhead pinboard at an early spring festival in Maine, 2018, for example). The rise of a fascist movement doesn't follow a pattern like Paul's evangelizing. Support for fascism rises alongside with the charismatic leader, your mother and uncle and weird friend from high school acting all glassy eyed and flying the fascist flag, and behaving in a way that betrays very low emotional intelligence, often expressing microagressions toward all classes of 'others', and supporting the racist and genocidal policies on the leader's platform. But it doesn't seem like it's inevitable in every human civilization, the way atheism is. I don't know that anything resembling fascism existed on Turtle Island before the white man got here; oral traditions and gift economies and the absence of coins and capitalist currencies and institutions doesn't really allow much of any of this to translate. I don't think Tribalism is the same thing as Nationalism, though there's essays to be written on their relation. I suppose you could point to the Great Law of Peace (and its role in forming the Five Nations, and how it mixed with french enlightenment ideals to poo poo out the US Constitution), but I think it can much more squarely but put on the Roman Empire, and probably Alexander before that. I imagine it traces to Senecharib too, and further back from there. The Old Testament mentions genocides where whole cities are besieged, then raped and razed. There's a chain there, and it follows from the humans that moved from Afghanistan to Europe (what was that, 20kya? it was more recent than the population from India taking dugout canoes to Australia, right?). The same ones that domesticated the Cow 10kya and killed off the Aurock. I very much doubt they invented sailing, but once there was sailing on the med these folk took to it. The Trojan War would have been along this lineage too. Whig History is relevant, and some goon schooling me on it here a long while ago definitely had an impact on me. It pairs with white supremacy. As far as how a person might come to behave like a sociopath and shout 'GOOD!' when someone says '... but they're stripping infants out of their mothers arms and ensuring they'll never meet again ...'; which is to say, why is it that when some small group of sociopaths decide to collude an engage in a campaign to build a fascist movement* , there always seems to be humans ready to step up and fill the role? Why is it so easy for cults - to recruit members? That's a human nature question. One of my little bits of poetry, I tell people 'Humans are my favorite animal.' The variety of reactions I've recieved from people I've gotten to know makes me think it can be predictive. If you genuinely love humans, you are not likely to be a Qanon cultist. It's people who have been abused and traumatized enough times to wholly mistrust humans, often hate them. It's people who mumble and grumble hate beneath their breath as they drive. It's judgemental people that are ready to scapegoat any other for any inconvenience. Humans are my favorite animal. If you really wanna fight fascism, cultivate that sentiment in others. But we must also fight the deliberate campaigns of disinformation utilizing a variety of 'mainstream' media plus 'new media' and social media influence campaigns led or signal boosted strategically by a large sockpuppet claque, operated by hackers that understand the subtleties of the algorithsm on the platforms they operate in. *and then there's the question if that's even necessary for a fascist movement to arise; I've seen hippies sorta 'stumble' into the lovely guru cliche and start building a cult almost entirely unaware that they were following a well known formula. It's possible that fascists movements can happen in a similar manner. Still, there are conditions under which it is more or less likely to arise. Party Politics seems to be a prerequisite, right? Uglycat fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 03:51
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I was thinking that it might be getting overthought and fascism is really just another very strict way to protect The Hierarchy (tm) because you have to have the hierarchy, if we didn't people would have to think about all the bad things and how they are guilty of them and maybe try to make things better and that's too icky so better to have system like fascism that brutally enforces the hierarchy even if it is doomed to self destruct.
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Jun 1, 2021 06:19
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Flannelette posted:I was thinking that it might be getting overthought and fascism is really just another very strict way to protect The Hierarchy (tm) because you have to have the hierarchy, if we didn't people would have to think about all the bad things and how they are guilty of them and maybe try to make things better and that's too icky so better to have system like fascism that brutally enforces the hierarchy even if it is doomed to self destruct. Yeah, but fascism is also about DEFINING the hierarchy. I don't think you can have fascism without having an ideologically-rather-than-logically driven definition of who the In Group is and who the Out Group is
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Jun 1, 2021 12:59
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Flannelette posted:I was thinking that it might be getting overthought and fascism is really just another very strict way to protect The Hierarchy (tm) because you have to have the hierarchy, if we didn't people would have to think about all the bad things and how they are guilty of them and maybe try to make things better and that's too icky so better to have system like fascism that brutally enforces the hierarchy even if it is doomed to self destruct. I think one issue with this definition is that fascism's hierarchy isn't necessarily the same as the existing one in its society. The Nazis, for instance, were brought into power by traditional conservative elites who wanted to preserve the legacy of the Prussian aristocracy and thought they could co-opt Hitler's popularity to those ends, and they turned out to be wrong because Hitler wasn't interested in the Prussian aristocratic hierarchy, he was interested in imposing a new hierarchy based on extremist understandings of race and nation. A lot of definitions of fascism try to distinguish it from conservative or even reactionary politics for this reason, because in practice fascist movements in history were often less about preserving what exists or reaching back to an imagined past, and more about imposing an idealized future.
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Jun 1, 2021 14:42
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vyelkin posted:A lot of definitions of fascism try to distinguish it from conservative or even reactionary politics for this reason, because in practice fascist movements in history were often less about preserving what exists or reaching back to an imagined past, and more about imposing an idealized future. An example of this is "The Futurist Manifesto," written in 1909 by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti, who was a self-identified fascist. The Futurist Manifesto posted:
A blend of idealizing youth, violent struggle, and the then-modern aesthetics of speed and industry, but also the destruction of the past and an explicit rejection of cultural progressivism, especially women's rights in this case. To me what binds this specific flavor of fascism together is that it provides specifically young, downtrodden men with a supremacist ideal and a suggestion of what to do with that ideal. I wonder if, in general, there is something to learn by examining the intended audiences of fascism, rather than the specific ideals used to appeal to that audience. Muscle Tracer fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 15:47
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Muscle Tracer posted:An example of this is "The Futurist Manifesto," written in 1909 by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti, who was a self-identified fascist. The "downtrodden" part is suspect because actual fascist movements tend to be middle class in composition, not working class or poor.
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Jun 1, 2021 16:31
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It's more 'downtrodden' in that they perceive that they are not living in a world that automatically elevates them for being young, or men, or white, or whatever. (Combined with a relative lack of any other ways to view themselves other than through the lens of being men.) The Futurist Manifesto and Bronze Age Mindset are the exact same poo poo through the lens of two different eras.
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Jun 1, 2021 16:58
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sean10mm posted:The "downtrodden" part is suspect because actual fascist movements tend to be middle class in composition, not working class or poor. It became attractive to them as it gained power and attention. It started with pathetic incels and desperate losers. Once it becomes clear that bourgeois democracy is failing and it’s socialism or barbarism, the middle class always lines up against socialism. I don’t deny that many enthusiastic fascists would have been seen today as never-ran failsons of the middle class, burning with resentment that they were never handed all to which they felt entitled.
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Jun 2, 2021 01:17
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Everyone's downtrodden if the definition is "doesn't always get what he wants".
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Jun 2, 2021 07:50
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Uglycat posted:As to WHY Fascism...
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Jun 2, 2021 08:23
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Charlz Guybon posted:There is so much that is wildly ahistorical in this post, but this one takes the cake. Humans in nature, knowing nothing of how the world actually works, are naturally superstitious and prone to shamanistic belief. Hi you didn't understand what I wrote edit: I never made the case that humans are inherently naturalist by default. I said that atheists seem to 'pop up' spontaneously in all civilizations, regardless of cultural descent.
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Jun 2, 2021 09:23
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vyelkin posted:I think one issue with this definition is that fascism's hierarchy isn't necessarily the same as the existing one in its society. The Nazis, for instance, were brought into power by traditional conservative elites who wanted to preserve the legacy of the Prussian aristocracy and thought they could co-opt Hitler's popularity to those ends, and they turned out to be wrong because Hitler wasn't interested in the Prussian aristocratic hierarchy, he was interested in imposing a new hierarchy based on extremist understandings of race and nation. A lot of definitions of fascism try to distinguish it from conservative or even reactionary politics for this reason, because in practice fascist movements in history were often less about preserving what exists or reaching back to an imagined past, and more about imposing an idealized future. This is a interesting distinction in fascism yeah. Not only saying that the monarchy, aristocracy was the wrong way to preserve the hierarchy but that they were outright bad and to create more of primitive race and culture mythology for the hierarchy, like some kind of a Neo-neolithic.
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Jun 11, 2021 05:32
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