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iCe-CuBe. posted:That's not fascism. Heads up: an ideology that has "bad opinions" is not automatically fascist, no matter how repugnant those opinions might be. Fascism is a very specific set of beliefs tied to an ideology. Job Truniht already answered this in part, but fascism as an ideology is essentially incoherent. While certain core elements (violence, reaction, anti-intellectualism, etc) tend to appear in most/all flavors, they can vary wildly depending on who you're talking about and when. Hell, the Nazis themselves had a reasonably strong anti-capitalist wing under the Strasser brothers before Hitler made his peace with German industry upon taking office, and then Georg got killed and Otto fled following the Night of the Long Knives. I mean yeah, I agree it's lazy thinking to just slap the fascist label on any right wing or anti-modern movement out there that we don't like, but there's substantial wiggle room around the edges for groups that have fascist tendencies but aren't overtly so. This is exacerbated by there being no core manifesto one can use as a measuring stick for this group or that. The Integralists, whom I presume is who Mans is referring to, I'd slot as quasi-fascist.
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Aug 14, 2013 01:04
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Job Truniht posted:Not really. Read any book about Mussolini and you'll soon realize how inconsistent he loving was. He did everything in his power to deny his pacifist movement when Italy invaded Tripoli when he got involved in state violence against the Greek islands shortly after he got into office. Libertarians, conservatives, and fascists all hold one thing in common: They're reactionaries. Captain_Maclaine posted:Job Truniht already answered this in part, but fascism as an ideology is essentially incoherent. I disagree. Yes, it's a heterogeneous ideology, but I still think it's an ideology that we can define and then discuss--and that makes sense from the point of view of the people who hold it. "Different people have different opinions" is not the same thing as "incoherent." Moreover, I don't think fascists are simply reactionaries, given that they have a concept of what the world should look like which is very different from the ideal society of traditional conservatives. Remember, Nazis hated German conservatives too--they wanted to create a world which would share the best elements of the distant past and the technocratic future, not bring back the Kaiser or whatever. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 01:18
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I mean yeah, I agree it's lazy thinking to just slap the fascist label on any right wing or anti-modern movement out there that we don't like, but there's substantial wiggle room around the edges for groups that have fascist tendencies but aren't overtly so. This is exacerbated by there being no core manifesto one can use as a measuring stick for this group or that. The Integralists, whom I presume is who Mans is referring to, I'd slot as quasi-fascist. Whoever he was referring to in the thing I quoted (and I'm not well versed in Portuguese history) sounds pretty much like an average, everyday conservative party. Does Mans think that the Republicans are fascists too? Does he think that the tsars were fascists in Russia? And yeah, Hegel is right there, too. The Nazis absolutely hated the old aristocracy, which was part of what gave fascism its "revolutionary" character. quote:Far-right authoritarian states who reach power as a way to stop socialist\lefitst organizing and rise in popularity and who use brutal methods to maintain the status quo and stop the left in their tracks. No, those are actually just authoritarians. Franco, for instance, wasn't a fascist, he was a generic conservative/reactionary/whatever - he used the fascist party and then tossed them aside and marginalized them when they were no longer needed. I know if you go through and read the Great Soviet Encyclopedia it'll call just about every right-wing authoritarian government out there fascist, but that's wrong. Labeling Pinochet a fascist is just silly. He was just a piece of poo poo military dictator who repressed his people. Hope that doesn't bother you.  edit: also, no, Cuba wasn't and has never been a Stalinist state. Stalinism outside of Albania died with Stalin. iCe-CuBe. fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 01:46
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Just as a general comment that applies to some of the discussion in this thread as well as other threads/topics, it seems like some people draw a hard line (one that I think isn't appropriate) between speech and actual physical action/violence. Speech can cause just as much harm as physical violence, and it really doesn't make sense to think that it should be OK to express all ideas while at the same time universally condemning violence. I think that this perspective largely stems from the people who hold it being fortunate enough to not be a member of the demographics that are actually directly hurt by bigoted speech. There's this idealistic view that bigoted ideology will naturally die out in the marketplace of ideas, but it's incredibly naive and ignores what we should have learned from history (and also continue to see in the present). Letting people freely express their bigotry causes actual, tangible harm. I see no real difference between letting the KKK march and letting them slap people in the face; it can hurt the groups they hate just as much. The only argument that holds any water is the one that it's a slippery slope to ban some speech/ideas. But we draw lines all of the time in law, and I'm not really convinced that the harm caused by banning said speech/ideas would outweigh the harm that is caused by allowing them to continue to be expressed. At the very least, I think that it is definitely wrong to be in favor of universal free expression from an ideological stand-point (though it's sort of been drilled into our heads as Americans that free expression is some inherently Good Thing). Being in favor of it for the more pragmatic reason of thinking that banning speech causes more harm than the alternative is at least an argument that someone could reasonably make. edit: It might not seem like it from my post, but I'm actually undecided on this. I lean towards thinking that some speech/ideas should in fact be banned, but it isn't at all a firm belief. One concern I have is that banning might increase the popularity of ideas in some situations. I think that in most cases banning speech/ideas does in fact cause it to fade away, but if it has enough popularity to begin with it might have the opposite effect. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 01:49
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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:I disagree. Yes, it's a heterogeneous ideology, but I still think it's an ideology that we can define and then discuss--and that makes sense from the point of view of the people who hold it. "Different people have different opinions" is not the same thing as "incoherent." I call fascism incoherent not solely because it's got a lot of different, at times contradictory flavors that have existed here or there, but rather that I've never come across any form of fascism that was internally coherent. This is one of the great strengths, I think, of the Eco essay I linked a few pages back, where he lists those things he thinks (and I agree) are common to all forms of fascism, and especially points out how several contradict one another. The anti-intellectualism and rural nostalgia coupled with a fetish for technology, particular of a military. The shifting nature of the Enemy, however defined, as simultaneously both menacingly fierce and laughably incompetent. Defining life as lived for struggle while at the same time promising an eventual utopia one the Enemy is defeated, in which no further struggle will be needed (this point in particular reminds me of O'Brien upbraiding Winton Smith in the Ministry of Love in 1984 about how the fascists, as The Party's ancestors, came close but got things wrong). Privileging acts of will over reasoned thought. The worship of heroism coupled with the sublimation, bordering at times on obliteration, of the individual. None of this of course is to say that we can't talk about and even classify and define fascist movements and fascism generally, but rather that we should keep in mind there are going to be bits that just don't make sense, and at times contradict themselves. As such, we should be aware of this and careful about defining things too rigidly, as edge cases are bound to arise which defy easy classification as fascist or not. quote:Moreover, I don't think fascists are simply reactionaries, given that they have a concept of what the world should look like which is very different from the ideal society of traditional conservatives. Remember, Nazis hated German conservatives too--they wanted to create a world which would share the best elements of the distant past and the technocratic future, not bring back the Kaiser or whatever. I'd agree, and suspect we've read the same primary material from Nazis complaining about how the old Romantic Nationalists are weights holding the Nazis back, particularly during the early days of Hitler's Chancellorship when he had briefly to deal with a coalition government. It is in that hoped for new world, though, that I see contradiction and incoherent (and in many other places too, as I think I've made clear above), and why when dealing with the Nazis even compared to other fascists I hold we need to make allowance for the at-times arbitrary nature of their ideology. iCe-CuBe. posted:Whoever he was referring to in the thing I quoted (and I'm not well versed in Portuguese history) sounds pretty much like an average, everyday conservative party. Does Mans think that the Republicans are fascists too? Does he think that the tsars were fascists in Russia? The reason I brought the Integralists up is there the closest thing Portugal, and by extension Brazil incidentally, have/had to a major fascist party. They differ from the full-on fascists in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere in hewing much closer to traditional monarchistic/clerical conservatism, but also contain elements normally seen in more fascist groups (political paramilitarism, nationalistic exclusionism, etc). As such, I find they lend weight to the concept of quasi-fascist groups bridging the gap between traditional conservatives and out-and-out blackshirts. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 02:12
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edit: a bad post
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Aug 14, 2013 02:15
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Ytlaya posted:Just as a general comment that applies to some of the discussion in this thread as well as other threads/topics, it seems like some people draw a hard line (one that I think isn't appropriate) between speech and actual physical action/violence. Speech can cause just as much harm as physical violence, and it really doesn't make sense to think that it should be OK to express all ideas while at the same time universally condemning violence. I think that this perspective largely stems from the people who hold it being fortunate enough to not be a member of the demographics that are actually directly hurt by bigoted speech. I don't know why the "marketplace of ideas" concept strikes you as naive. As far as the KKK marching goes, it has all but disappeared from our society, and it certainly has as a political force. It used to have such power that it could literally get away with openly murdering a couple hundred people per year at public events. It's mostly gone because attitudes have changed in a way that undercut its membership and forced our government to get serious about dismantling it. It's a very strange example to choose, because inside of a century it has virtually vanished. There are clearly many things that have lead to its current state, but amongst those we can't realistically include hate speech laws. Attempts were made to regulate Klan rallies away, but that only gave it noteworthy court victories, as far as I know. Basically, my point is that if there is any kind of marketplace of ideas, the KKK has been a clear loser. That sort of racism has also declined and has been pushed underground, again, by changing ideas of what beliefs it is socially acceptable to hold. This isn't to say that progress has been as fast as anyone would have liked, but that there has been progress. As to your point regarding drawing lines in law, we already draw a hard line at direct incitement to other illegal acts. I'm personally comfortable with this because it leaves fairly little room for discretion. Either speech is saying "go do this, now" or it isn't. The requirement for directness is what makes me comfortable that there won't be any long-term slippage. I don't know how we could possibly word hate speech laws in that there would be similarly little room for movement, and before anyone brings up the fact that other countries have hate speech laws already, well, other countries also have cases of criticism being regarded as hate speech. Frankly, the political range of "mainstream" Americans also contributes to this, in which we have people sure that protesting Israel's continued occupation of Palestine is antisemitism as well as people sure that protesting the construction of a Muslim community center somewhere in the vicinity of the former site of the WTC is anti-Muslim bigotry. I can see how hate speech laws could work somewhere, I just don't trust them to work here.
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Aug 14, 2013 02:51
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iCe-CuBe. posted:edit: also, no, Cuba wasn't and has never been a Stalinist state. Stalinism outside of Albania died with Stalin. Don't forget North Korea.
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Aug 14, 2013 09:24
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I call fascism incoherent not solely because it's got a lot of different, at times contradictory flavors that have existed here or there, but rather that I've never come across any form of fascism that was internally coherent. This is one of the great strengths, I think, of the Eco essay I linked a few pages back, where he lists those things he thinks (and I agree) are common to all forms of fascism, and especially points out how several contradict one another. The anti-intellectualism and rural nostalgia(1) coupled with a fetish for technology, particular of a military(2). The shifting nature of the Enemy, however defined, as simultaneously both menacingly fierce and laughably incompetent. Defining life as lived for struggle(3) while at the same time promising an eventual utopia(4) one the Enemy is defeated, in which no further struggle will be needed (this point in particular reminds me of O'Brien upbraiding Winton Smith in the Ministry of Love in 1984 about how the fascists, as The Party's ancestors, came close but got things wrong). Privileging acts of will over reasoned thought.(5) The worship of heroism(6) coupled with the sublimation, bordering at times on obliteration, of the individual.(7) I think these values are more vague in nature than you think. I can see similar values in: Neoconservatism: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6) Marxism: (2), (3), (4), (6), (7) Islamic Fundamentalism: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7) Objectivism: (2), (3), (4), (5), (6) etc... Blackbird Fly fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 09:36
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Omi-Polari posted:(The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is 26 times the physical size of Berlin, and almost everyone drives. In Berlin you might be on the same U-Bahn train as a racist skinhead. Berliners, tell me if I'm exaggerated things?) chances are about 1000% higher to meet someone from the left or a muslim than a skinhead in Berlin, you would have to drive to the rural areas of the neighbouring federal states like Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and go to one of the many small villages where they breed like rabbits
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Aug 14, 2013 10:23
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Blackbird Fly posted:Can't many of these values (excluding the rural nostalgia and anti-intellectualism) be applied to any ideology that creates a friend/foe dichotomy and advocates for revolutionary action? I agree. Eco's description of Ur-fascism seems to consist mostly of generalities that could apply to any revolutionary movement.
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Aug 14, 2013 10:29
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Omi-Polari posted:I'm really quibbling over details - I don't have a radically different take. Fascism is inherently violent, but it is not just inherently violent. Violence is necessary to build a better future, as the fascists see it. Violence is used to destroy decadence and create the foundation for a regenerated and revolutionary (and unified, hierarchical, racially purified, blah blah so on) new society based on eternal mythic values. I haven't caught up on this thread 100%, so sorry if this is a retread. I don't want to let this pass, and it was buried under trolling. This is 100% wrong, and that is due to a fundamental misapprehension that is not getting through to some people in this thread. For fascists, violence is a means, but it is also an end. A fascist's idea of utopia is explicitly a place in which power is expressed and legitimized through violence. Being unable or unwilling to enact arbitrary violence on one's social inferiors on a daily basis, in fascist ideologies, makes one unfit to lead- and, by extension, necessarily a target of violence. An example of this that many goons are familiar with is the antagonist of Pan's Labyrinth. If you read Del Toro's interviews about the historical basis of the character, you get some insight into why he couldn't rise in the ranks and was ultimately suicidal: the brutal violence he enacts was not enabled by his position. It was required. Promotion in Franco's regime was explicitly based on one's ability to commit sadistic acts of violence. As repulsive as the character is, he hates himself because he cannot live up to the fascist ideal. Because he does not enjoy hurting people, and therefor, despite his willingness to torture innocent people to death in order to display his power, he can never embrace that violence to the degree required by his beliefs. He was ultimately too good a person to live up to his own disgusting ideals, and he hated himself for it even as he hated his own actions. His only way out was to hope to die in battle. That was, and continues to be, fascism. To not understand that is to be ignorant of the subject, its history, and its ideology. And by spouting that ignorance you, in a small way, support and legitimize it. Communism, and even democracy (in the French Revolution), have seen terrible, unpardonable things done in their names. But those actions were not ends in themselves. The crimes of fascism were not regrettable to fascists. They were positive expressions of ideological ideals. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 10:54
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Hodgepodge posted:This is 100% wrong, and that is due to a fundamental misapprehension that is not getting through to some people in this thread. "Fascism is inherently violent." I don't see where we disagree, except that I think fascism is not just simply about violence. I think fascists have a distinct ideology that is as distinct from liberalism as is Marxism, and that in addition to its reactionary and destructive edge, also has a side which the fascists believe will build a better world like all utopian ideologies. Hodgepodge posted:And by spouting that ignorance you, in a small way, support and legitimize it. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 11:18
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iCe-CuBe. posted:Whoever he was referring to in the thing I quoted (and I'm not well versed in Portuguese history) sounds pretty much like an average, everyday conservative party. Does Mans think that the Republicans are fascists too? Does he think that the tsars were fascists in Russia?
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Aug 14, 2013 11:37
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Omi-Polari posted:But I said this: We disagree in that you (at least in this post) characterize the role of violence in fascist ideology primarily as a means, rather than as an end. Necessity, creation, and destruction are all terms which indicate a temporally bounded utility, rather than a teleological purpose. One could, for example, say that capitalism (or communism) is inherently violent because the goals of capitalism, in practice, always require the application of violence. And you could say that capitalists (etc) consider violence at some points necessary. That, however, is not the same thing as saying that capitalists hold violence to be a desirable end in itself. Which is fundamentally misleading, because it confuses the ends of fascism with those of other ideologies. Other ideologies are willing to use violence, and that violence is more entrenched than their adherents might prefer to admit. An honest fascist would have no more trouble "admitting" the role of violence in fascist society than a liberal/capitalist or a communist would to the role of equality in their respective societies. Does that seem like a subtle distinction? Because it is one many people are having trouble grasping, and it is the fundamental distinction between fascism and the ideologies with which it competes. quote:And therefore, what? Should I be subject to Anti-Fascist Action? No, but you should stop being a smarmy prick. HighClassSwankyTime posted:Don't forget North Korea. Stalin's restless ghost only wishes that Stalinism was as hosed-up as Juche. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 11:58
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Typo posted:National Socialism hated the old aristocracy (well sort of, Hitler had no problem with using the Junkers when it suited him), but Fascism of Mussolini incorporated it (i.e leaving the monarchy intact) rather than opposed it. The Nazis were pretty unique within European Fascism for how revolutionary it was in trying to reorganize German society when every other movement was deeply deeply conservative. Captain_Maclaine posted:I call fascism incoherent not solely because it's got a lot of different, at times contradictory flavors that have existed here or there, but rather that I've never come across any form of fascism that was internally coherent. This is one of the great strengths, I think, of the Eco essay I linked a few pages back, where he lists those things he thinks (and I agree) are common to all forms of fascism, and especially points out how several contradict one another. The anti-intellectualism and rural nostalgia coupled with a fetish for technology, particular of a military. The shifting nature of the Enemy, however defined, as simultaneously both menacingly fierce and laughably incompetent. Defining life as lived for struggle while at the same time promising an eventual utopia one the Enemy is defeated, in which no further struggle will be needed... Privileging acts of will over reasoned thought. The worship of heroism coupled with the sublimation, bordering at times on obliteration, of the individual. The problem, of course, is that nobody really lives like that. Against that mystical whatsit, real life is bound to look like failure no matter what you do, because in real life obstacles don't melt away when you wish them to. And I agree with Blackbird Fly and Sakarja about the simultaneous overvaluing and undervaluing of the enemy--everyone with an enemy does that. Edit: In the interests of full disclosure, though, I recognize that not everyone shares my views. A professor I was talking to, one of my advisor's friends, doesn't want to use the word "ideology" when discussing Nazism at all, since the high command subordinated so many of the ideas in Nazi thought to their aims for power. In the end, I guess I'm not sure. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 12:23
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Hodgepodge posted:Does that seem like a subtle distinction? Because it is one many people are having trouble grasping, and it is the fundamental distinction between fascism and the ideologies with which it competes. That's not that subtle a distinction at all, and it's a good one to make. Many ideologies are comfortable with the use of violence. Fascism, however, is all about violence. It not only fetishises it, but almost deifies it.
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Aug 14, 2013 12:52
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Smudgie Buggler posted:That's not that subtle a distinction at all, and it's a good one to make. Many ideologies are comfortable with the use of violence. Fascism, however, is all about violence. It not only fetishises it, but almost deifies it. Literally to fascists existence is based in struggle,ethnic purity (doesn't have to be based on skin color necessarily)and submission to the state. Now the part where it people get confused is how fascism divides itself remember just like you can have libertarians and liberals and have them both be Capitalist you can have populist,monarchist,theocratic and good old fashioned corporatism in fascism. It depends on the place much like with Capitalism or Socialism. SirKibbles fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 15:27
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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:As a mass movement which desires a "total transformation of society," Fascism is explicitly anti-conservative, even Italian Fascism. Especially Italian Fascism, given its massive iconoclastic streak early on and its syndicalist roots. While life in Mussolini's Italy moved to a great extent in its traditional channels of patronage-networks and regionalism, that doesn't mean that Italian Fascism as an ideology was conservative, it means that ideology ended up not counting for much once people had to deal with realities on the ground. It is telling that some groups originated from the so-called "conservative revolution" movement, which was primarily romantic in nature. This, I think, is one of the few defining characteristics of a kind of 'typical' fascism. That fascism is marked by national differences seems only logical since as a political movement fascists put the nation (and thus a certain narrative about its past and future) at the core of their discourse. A very interesting take on the origins of fascist (specifically nazi) thinking is, in my opinion, to be found in E. Traverso's The Origins of Nazi Violence. He places nazism in a 'genealogy' of different 19th century ideological/cultural tendencies. These are as varied as imperialism (the national-socialist project as a European imperialist war?), capitalist factory-based production (factories of death etc), racial and class-based anthropology (eg. he refers to studies into the 'pathology' of Parisian communards after 1871), among various others. It is a very interesting book, even though not everyone will agree with its central premise: nazism is rooted in the history of capitalist Western Europe and is as such not the result of a German Sonderweg.
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Aug 14, 2013 15:36
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I don't think people who are trying to compare fascism's "life is lived for struggle" with other movements' stressing the need for struggle in the present day are really getting it. Islamism and communism want ideal societies, at which point the struggle can end. Fascists just think that people fighting and killing each other is the only way for the human race to "stay vital." It literally has roots in an insane, death-courting rich fop deliberately steering his sports car into a ditch, surviving and then thinking "everything should be like this, forever!" a worshiper of death and chaos posted:We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses. Nothing but freaks who want to take us with them into oblivion.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:51
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And then they started murdering/jailing modern artists and making GBS threads all over their work when they finally found an artistic statement other than the stridently offensive anticulture/fuckyoudad phase that every art movement goes through in it's formative years. E:Actually, anticulture/fyd is the perfect way to describe fascism. There's this bit of the Futurist Manifesto where they describe themselves hiding miserably in a shack and being murdered and then possibly eaten by their own children, and they're just so unbelievably enthused by the idea of being hunted like animals by their betters. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 20:39
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Sakarja posted:I agree. Eco's description of Ur-fascism seems to consist mostly of generalities that could apply to any revolutionary movement. Umberto Eco's well known description is about 20th century Fascism, which has some significant differences from what 21st century Fascism is/will be like. This excerpt is about Breivik and how his manifesto relates to modern Fascism. And for your point that many facets of Fascism seem to be part of any revolutionary movement, from that article (bolding added): Richard Seymour posted:In making this claim, I have to tread carefully. The great historian of fascism and Vichy France, Robert Paxton, has argued that it is no accident that there is no Fascist Manifesto, as fascism possesses no coherent ideology or philosophical system. Fascists have shared neither assumptions, nor enemies. European fascists were often hostile to Christianity, for example, but this was not true of Franco or Petain. Similarly, while fascists from the northwest and east of Europe directed their most deadly ire against Jews, Mediterranean fascists were far more conspicuous in their hostility to the Left and colonized peoples. At the same time, fascists have rarely elaborated a programme and stuck to it. Mussolini’s 1919 programme promised sweeping social change, from the eight hour day to workers' involvement in industrial management. The 'Twenty-Five Points' of the Nazis in 1920 boasted hostility to all forms of non-artisanal capitalism. In neither case did the programmes prefigure the regimes, both of which involved coalition with conservative elites.[3] Corvinus fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 21:17
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:Don't forget North Korea. North Korea's got nothing to do with communism or Stalinism; it's probably got more in common with Japanese WWII racism and nationalism than anything else. Juche is a weird false ideological cover for their actual (even weirder, more evil) beliefs.
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Aug 14, 2013 21:58
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Fascism and Futurism weren't the same thing, nor did fascism derive from Futurism in any straightforward sense. While it's a neat description, I think the idea that fascism was focused on violence as an end in itself is a little too neat to be historically viable -- the emphasis on violence was more of a Sorelian thing that the Italian fascists partially co-opted. For instance, the guy who was more or less the official philosopher of fascism, Giovanni Gentile, placed emphasis on dialectical opposition but only in terms of it being subsumed into a single superior whole, the totalitarian state. The reconstruction of the world order was a pretty teleological idea for many fascists who also saw violence only as a means to the end of establishing a just world order, with varying levels of utopianism (e.g. Kita Ikki advocating the unification of the world's warring states beneath a single sovereign). I would generally describe the ideological core of historical fascism as the transposition of the language of Marxist class struggle to the international arena, with nations or states as the individual agents. (edit: Specifically in the case of Italian fascism and its derivatives, that is -- I think it's anachronistic to group together the massively divergent modern far right movements under that label) Zohar fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 22:39
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Zohar posted:...I think it's anachronistic to group together the massively divergent modern far right movements under that label...
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Aug 14, 2013 23:22
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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:Can anyone tell me about the intellectual history of the modern far-right? I was under the impression that you could draw lines of continuity among them, or between all of them and Evola. Where in the world are you talking about? Europe right? Because as far as I know it's a clusterfuck of things.
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Aug 14, 2013 23:47
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OwlBot 2000 posted:North Korea's got nothing to do with communism or Stalinism; it's probably got more in common with Japanese WWII racism and nationalism than anything else. Juche is a weird false ideological cover for their actual (even weirder, more evil) beliefs. Juche being cover for something weird and evil is like throwing a bedsheet over a ghost and saying 'Now, no one will know that I have stolen a ghost!'
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Aug 15, 2013 00:06
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Corvinus posted:Umberto Eco's well known description is about 20th century Fascism, which has some significant differences from what 21st century Fascism is/will be like. This excerpt is about Breivik and how his manifesto relates to modern Fascism. I'd agree that there're significant differences between fascism as it existed in the mid-20th century and the neo-fascism of today. But the entire point of Eco's description is to identify the characteristics of Eternal Fascism. Anyway, the intended target of my criticism wasn't Eco's ability to accurately describe neo-fascism as it exists in the 21th century. My point was that his description consists to a large extent of statements so general that they could easily apply to any revolutionary movement. The fact that many of them "are typical of other forms of despotism and fanaticism" is even mentioned in the text. So it's not about the facets of fascism as such, but rather which of them Eco chose to include, and how he describes them. Thank you for linking the article, I haven’t been able to read it yet, but it seems interesting.
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Aug 15, 2013 00:26
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I'm not seeing how Eco's essay can be applied to all revolutionary movements, especially Left leaning ones.
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Aug 15, 2013 00:31
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Sakarja posted:I'd agree that there're significant differences between fascism as it existed in the mid-20th century and the neo-fascism of today. But the entire point of Eco's description is to identify the characteristics of Eternal Fascism. It's not actually self evident that non-fascist revolutionary movements are indistinguishable from fascist ones, so I have no reason to buy your assertion. Also, your post leads me to believe you didn't read any of the quote, especially the bolded part, that I posted earlier. Corvinus fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 01:10
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Corvinus posted:It's not actually self evident that non-fascist revolutionary movements are indistinguishable from fascist ones, so I have no reason to buy your assertion. Also, your post leads me to believe you didn't read any of the quote, especially the bolded part, that I posted earlier. Maybe there's some misunderstanding here, because I can't remember ever asserting that fascist movements are "indistinguishable" from non-fascist revolutionary movements. I didn't address the bolded part of the quote because I didn't think it was relevant to the matter at hand. I disagree with the author on several points, and I think the main argument of the excerpt raises several questions. But I can't see how it's relevant to the discussion of Eco's description of Ur-fascism.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:53
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SirKibbles posted:Where in the world are you talking about? Europe right? Because as far as I know it's a clusterfuck of things.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:24
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What I wonder about with these fascist developments; fascism is inherently reactionary right? So what is it reacting to now? The original fascist movements where basically capitalisms immune response to the rise of Communism. Communism and left wing ideology has never been weaker. Right wing neoliberalism dominates the globe. There is no socialist bloc rapidly industrializing and gaining strength. So what is the reaction?
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Aug 15, 2013 04:18
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quote:What I wonder about with these fascist developments; fascism is inherently reactionary right? So what is it reacting to now?
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Aug 15, 2013 04:22
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Rutibex posted:What I wonder about with these fascist developments; fascism is inherently reactionary right? So what is it reacting to now? The original fascist movements where basically capitalisms immune response to the rise of Communism. Communism and left wing ideology has never been weaker. Right wing neoliberalism dominates the globe. There is no socialist bloc rapidly industrializing and gaining strength. So what is the reaction? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 04:29
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International socialism is so weak as to be nonexistent in its power but you'd never know that to listen to the American right.
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Aug 15, 2013 04:32
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Rutibex posted:What I wonder about with these fascist developments; fascism is inherently reactionary right? So what is it reacting to now? The original fascist movements where basically capitalisms immune response to the rise of Communism. Communism and left wing ideology has never been weaker. Right wing neoliberalism dominates the globe. There is no socialist bloc rapidly industrializing and gaining strength. So what is the reaction? "Capitalism" is kind of a meaningless word by this point, something like "nationalism's immune response" is probably more accurate. Nationalism being the sort of 18/19th century modern conceptualization of "people" and "place" as identifiers.
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Aug 15, 2013 04:34
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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:Or you could argue that this demonstrates that fascism is not inherently reactionary, and that it's more (and more interesting to study than) "capitalism's immune response to the rise of Communism." But that seemed to be exactly what it was? Hitler saved capitalism and it's social hierarchy both within Germany and on the world stage. The capitalist countries where rotting and weak; had Stalin continued to expand unopposed we would be living in a Communist world right now. Cicero posted:Poor economic conditions and/or immigration? That seems to simple. I think with time Neoliberal ideology could take care of these problems within it's own framework; though I guess it isn't so I could be wrong. Berke Negri posted:"Capitalism" is kind of a meaningless word by this point, something like "nationalism's immune response" is probably more accurate. Nationalism being the sort of 18/19th century modern conceptualization of "people" and "place" as identifiers. This makes a lot of sense. The world is becoming smaller and more global at a very fast pace; this really clashes with nationalism. The rise of Fascism is a reaction to...the internet?
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Aug 15, 2013 04:49
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I wouldn't even say fascism is/was an immune response to communism, or really anything we'd identify as 'left.' It's more reactionary to the Enlightenment - the fruits and values of which were only finally adopted wholesale in European public policy in the interwar period - than to any identifiable ideology like socialism.
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Aug 15, 2013 04:54
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Rutibex posted:But that seemed to be exactly what it was? Hitler saved capitalism and it's social hierarchy both within Germany and on the world stage. The capitalist countries where rotting and weak; had Stalin continued to expand unopposed we would be living in a Communist world right now.
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Aug 15, 2013 04:58
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