Terry van Feleday posted:Say, Disinterested, are you still taking questions re: Fascism? 'Cause I have one, though it is a little vague. Much discussion has been made over the fascist movements in Germany and Italy, for obvious reasons, but I don't much hear discussed fascism in countries where it didn't succeed. Were there such movements in, say, Britain and America, and if so, why did they fail? At least according to the Marxist theory, fascism should arise eventually in any capitalist nation, but there's this irritating undertone in pop culture and laypeople's discussions that fascism is something uniquely German and the only vision of a fascist America there can be is one where it was militarily defeated in some idiotic WWII alt history scenario. I can tackle that, and I think it's a mistake to think that all Marxist theory says that capitalism will definitely have a fascism. I think the simplest explanation is actually that traditional elites and political structure simply don't fail in either country. Governments are capable of governing more or less consensually, the police, traditional elites etc. simply never hit upon social problems so insoluble that they have to look to someone like Mussolini for a solution they can't provide themselves. That's even true to a greater or lesser extent in France which never had a very meaningful fascist party until after a state-sponsored one is imposed upon it, outside some minor incidents. A functioning liberal democracy is actually pretty good at fending off fascism, it has to be pretty broken down to need to make a faustian pact with external far-right actor to save it from poors and communists. That to me is I think the most satisfactory and straightforward response to the question. You could heap on some other things: these states had won the last war. They didn't have to engage in soul-searching of the same type; they could think of themselves as superior. In the case of Britain and France, their left wing parties that gave a gently caress about the Labour movement also weren't strongly excluded from power. Britain handled the great depression quite well with strong growth backup to 100% of real GDP by 1934 (I think). Germany's contraction lasted a little longer. Marxists of course are usually playing on a longer historical timeframe, and one can ask questions about the spectre of fascism in the present climate of economic failure and political blockage, with figures like Trump or Le Pen. I think if we get fascism again it will be, as in the past, where a pissed off group of elites have to turn to a more demagogic and violent form of politics to destroy groups who try to fight the existing political order, but it seems more likely to me that we will slide in to a more and more technocratic form of authoritarianism instead, in the style of many eastern economies (the EU could be cast in this role in Europe). Disinterested fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Jul 22, 2016 |
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Jul 22, 2016 11:56
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I think Who Goes Nazi? is a relevant article for fascismchat.
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Jul 22, 2016 11:58
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Wait, does Shropshire have some kind of weird pronunciation? Native English speaker from LA here, but looking at it my mind just sees "sh-rop-shire" as in the "sh" sound from "poo poo" or "shinola", the "ro" sound from "rod" but with a P at the end, and shire, like where Baggins comes from. Does it have some weird non-phonetic pronunciation in English english? Shrop-sherr. Not an 'eye' sound, an 'uh' sound. Like I say, shire on its own is pronounced like where Baggins came from, but on the end of a given shire it's pronounced with a shorter e. Worcestershire is the same except Worcester also becomes abbreviated to Wooster (as in Bertie).
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Jul 22, 2016 11:58
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Umm no not at all Britain, France, and America fought the Nazis, we didn't join them thank you very much.Disinterested posted:And the name Isis is preserved as well for the part of the Thames running through Oxford et al. as part of the Roman name Tamesis for the river in full. The distinction between a man of Kent and a Kentish man comes to mind as well, depending on your side of the Medway. You can easily tell the difference between a Kentish man and a man of Kent, because only the Kentish men (and maids) have tails. Grand Prize Winner posted:Wait, does Shropshire have some kind of weird pronunciation? Native English speaker from LA here, but looking at it my mind just sees "sh-rop-shire" as in the "sh" sound from "poo poo" or "shinola", the "ro" sound from "rod" but with a P at the end, and shire, like where Baggins comes from. Does it have some weird non-phonetic pronunciation in English english? No. "Shire" by itself rhymes with fire, but in the names of counties it sounds the same as sheer. In RP at least, other accents are different. Hegel's man who said "Salop" literally said "Salop" and the musterschreiber didn't know he meant Shropshire; like someone saying they're from D.C. and people thinking he's from a place called Deesee because they've never heard of Washington, D.C.
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Jul 22, 2016 12:04
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The war is then kind of the ultimate disproof of the ideology for at least a generation, of course, and a lot of things are tinged even by association. Eugenics, for example, which did have quite a considerable life in the United States in particular and is now post-facto labeled as proto-fascist. it's very difficult to imagine what could have innaugurated significant enough political failure in the anglosphere for someone like Mosley to power. In Britain I don't think it would be Mosley anyway, the man was a joke and he was never close. I think Orwell said if Britain was going to have a fascist movement of any substance it wouldn't be led by an idiot in a stupid uniform but a man in a pinstripe. I think in the US it's actually worth thinking more about Father Coughlin and Lindbergh who were actually relatively close to getting their way and have been tremendously influential on some later generations, but it's hard to see how you transition from Nazi sympathy to paramilitary blackshirts gunning down trade unionists in the street because state repression has failed.
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Jul 22, 2016 12:04
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Disinterested posted:but it's hard to see how you transition from Nazi sympathy to paramilitary blackshirts gunning down trade unionists in the street because state repression has failed. What like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain you mean? (and not just gunning trade unionists down, bombing them from the air to boot)
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Jul 22, 2016 12:31
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Yvonmukluk posted:I think Who Goes Nazi? is a relevant article for fascismchat. A good read.
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Jul 22, 2016 12:34
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feedmegin posted:What like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain you mean? (and not just gunning trade unionists down, bombing them from the air to boot) That is the species of event you'd be looking for, but the state repressive apparatus would have to show signs it was going to fail.
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Jul 22, 2016 12:36
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Disinterested posted:I think in the US it's actually worth thinking more about Father Coughlin and Lindbergh who were actually relatively close to getting their way and have been tremendously influential on some later generations, Huey Long's governance of Louisiana also had some potential, I would think?
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Jul 22, 2016 12:58
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I forgot to say: I think, and it's actually been rather well argued by some critics, that one can potentially make quite a strong argument that the KKK is actually the original and successful fascist movement, long before Italy, and that it did for a time operate in some southern states as a kind of para-state apparatus. ulmont posted:Huey Long's governance of Louisiana also had some potential, I would think? Long's quite an ambiguous figure to me, but then again you might have been able to say the same of Mussolini. I'm not sure.
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Jul 22, 2016 13:02
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Disinterested posted:The war is then kind of the ultimate disproof of the ideology for at least a generation, of course, and a lot of things are tinged even by association. Eugenics, for example, which did have quite a considerable life in the United States in particular and is now post-facto labeled as proto-fascist. it's very difficult to imagine what could have innaugurated significant enough political failure in the anglosphere for someone like Mosley to power. In Britain I don't think it would be Mosley anyway, the man was a joke and he was never close. I think Orwell said if Britain was going to have a fascist movement of any substance it wouldn't be led by an idiot in a stupid uniform but a man in a pinstripe. How instrumental was the battle of cable street in blunting the momentum of the BUF? IIRC (and this is shaky, 5+ years ago passing reference in an undergrad class recollection) the big thing was that the anti-fascist demonstration shook the government badly enough that they basically passed a law that prevented dressing up in jackboots and marching around with police escort. Coincidentally, that was one of the main ways the BUF made itself visible and without the ability to do that, they sort of faded away. Does that kind of thing really require the backdrop of imminent war in Europe to be a viable response to fascist movements?
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Jul 22, 2016 13:13
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FAUXTON posted:How instrumental was the battle of cable street in blunting the momentum of the BUF? IIRC (and this is shaky, 5+ years ago passing reference in an undergrad class recollection) the big thing was that the anti-fascist demonstration shook the government badly enough that they basically passed a law that prevented dressing up in jackboots and marching around with police escort. Coincidentally, that was one of the main ways the BUF made itself visible and without the ability to do that, they sort of faded away. I don't think it does (and in any event, this was 1936) but I think the event just demonstrates how utterly puny the BUF is in any event, in relation to the size of the counter-protest. I don't think the BUF fails for reasons of state repression against it, I think it just never achieved any meaningful underlying support in the first place for the reasons I already mentioned. I'm sure it hurt but I'm just not convinced it would have built up a head of steam anyway for the reasons I already mentioned.
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Jul 22, 2016 13:18
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FAUXTON posted:How instrumental was the battle of cable street in blunting the momentum of the BUF? IIRC (and this is shaky, 5+ years ago passing reference in an undergrad class recollection) the big thing was that the anti-fascist demonstration shook the government badly enough that they basically passed a law that prevented dressing up in jackboots and marching around with police escort. Coincidentally, that was one of the main ways the BUF made itself visible and without the ability to do that, they sort of faded away. Well, there was also the Olympia rally where some socialist protesters heckled Mosley from the audience and the fascists very publicly beat the poo poo out of them. That sort of thuggish behaviour from the group that was supposed to be promising order kind of put off the middle class Tory types who might otherwise have thought him a good egg, plus by the late 30s it was becoming obvious that the Nazis in particular were going to be A Problem for Britain whatever you thought of their political system so being pro-Nazi/fascist became a lot less popular.
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Jul 22, 2016 13:23
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Hey Gal: to continue your wacky name parade, I once took care of a gentleman whose first name was Honorius and family name was shared with an important general of the 20th century. Definitely a spiritual successor to your folks.
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Jul 22, 2016 16:09
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feedmegin posted:Not really 'old' per se, people from Shropshire are Salopians (and Old Salopians are specifically people who went to Shrewsbury School in Shropshire), much as people from Manchester are Mancunians or you can still abbreviate Oxford as Oxon(ia). and Cambridge as Cantab(rigia). Stuff like that tends to stick around over here. And the Shrewsbury School is where "the Men", Evelyn Southwell and Malcolm White, taught at before they joined the army. 
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Jul 22, 2016 20:11
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Disinterested posted:I forgot to say: The KKK and Huey long were not fascists. I'm phone posting so in not going to go into detail but it takes more than just being a bunch of racist authoritarian fuckeits. The KKK arguably doesn't even get the authoritarian bit down. Arguably you really can't have fascism before communism. It is self consciously a reaction to communal extreme leftism. It's part of the same reaction to industrial modernity that communism comes out of. The klan were reprehensible but they weren't fascists.
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Jul 22, 2016 20:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:
You might be glad to hear that I have A Very Short Introduction to Fascism on order. In the meantime, if you need that reaction to extreme leftism, can any movement today be fascist as opposed to authoritarian, racist, nationalist etc? Asking as someone who's yet to read Trump's nomination acceptance speech Nine of Eight posted:Hey Gal: to continue your wacky name parade, I once took care of a gentleman whose first name was Honorius and family name was shared with an important general of the 20th century. Definitely a spiritual successor to your folks. Can I just throw the name Cloudesley Shovell onto the weird name pile
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Jul 22, 2016 20:23
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Probably. The reaction to modernity bit is the key, it's just that communism comes out of that same tension and fascism reacts pretty negatively to it. Remember also that there is no hard and fast definition. It's more a list of charistics where the bulk should be there. And no Trump isn't fascist.
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Jul 22, 2016 20:29
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Edit: go check Wikipedia if your impatient. The entry on fascism is pretty OK from what I remember.
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Jul 22, 2016 20:30
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Cyrano4747 posted:And no Trump isn't fascist. He's like one of those really rich dudes in the 19th century that would just throw a poo poo tonne of money into power projects. Sadly in the 21st century he simply cannot got bankrupt whilst attempting to overthrow a South American nation and die of cholera awkwardly afterwards.
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Jul 22, 2016 20:33
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I could entertain the argument that the early 20's Klan specifically was kind of fascisty, what with all the huge public marches and torch lit rallies and stuff. e: like not necessarily purestrain fascist, but feeding off the same zeitgeist. P-Mack fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jul 22, 2016 |
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Jul 22, 2016 20:52
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The "first klan" (the post ACW one) was basically just an anti-Republican white supremacist gang, but the "second Klan" (the one spawned by "Birth of a Nation") was pretty darn close to fascist. All or at least most of the American Nazi sympathizer groups got their start in the second Klan.
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Jul 22, 2016 21:21
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You could make an argument that businesses not literally owning their workers was the extreme leftism of the day too.
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Jul 22, 2016 21:23
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Cyrano4747 posted:The KKK and Huey long were not fascists. I'm phone posting so in not going to go into detail but it takes more than just being a bunch of racist authoritarian fuckeits. I'm going to request more detail when you're off-phone. The NYT thought strongly enough about it that in Long's Obituary (9/11/1935) they bluntly say that "Senator Long set up a Fascist government in Louisiana": quote:It is to Senator Long as a public man, rather than as a dashing personality, that the thoughts of Americans should chiefly turn as his tragic death extinguishe the envy. What he did and what he promised to do are full of political instruction and also of warning. In his own State of Louisiana he showed how it is possible to destroy self-government while maintaining its ostensible and legal form. He made himself an unquestioned dictator, though a State Legislature was still elected by a nominally free people, as was also a Governor, who was, however, nothing but a dummy for Huey Long. In reality. Senator Long set up a Fascist government in Louisiana. It was disguised, but only thinly. There was no outward appearance of a revolution, no march of Black Shirts upon Baton Rouge, but the effectual result was to lodge all the power of the State in the hands of one man.
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Jul 22, 2016 22:05
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Cyrano4747 posted:The KKK and Huey long were not fascists. I'm phone posting so in not going to go into detail but it takes more than just being a bunch of racist authoritarian fuckeits. The KKK arguably doesn't even get the authoritarian bit down. Just to be pedantic, the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. Not to mention, which Klan? feedmegin fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 22, 2016 |
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Jul 22, 2016 22:23
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uggghhh 100 Years Ago Right. Time to come in off the long run and really get annoyed with some bullshit. 16 July: It starts with the capture of Ovillers. This is a Bad Thing, because now General Haig is thinking about what to do next, and it's becoming harder and harder to go "people often think this is black and white, but here is some ocean grey and some military grey for you"; and we're also considering that diversionary attack at Fromelles and how the 5th Australian Division should not have been within 20 miles of it; and the situation at Delville Wood continues to deteriorate, quite literally for the trees. Louis Renault suddenly decides that his company is in the tank business; Neil Fraser-Tytler has some boffo adventures out in No Man's Land; E.S. Thompson has a reassuringly boring day in camp and encounters another genuine Reo Speedwagon; Emilio Lussu introduces us to loophole 14; and Maximilian Mugge inches a little closer to an Army-approved heart attack. 17 July: Delville Wood is still getting worse and nobody in the rear is interested in taking any responsibility for sorting it out, as General Haig makes some entirely fatuous remarks about the failure at High Wood while dealing with the Fromelles situation in the manner of Sir Ian Hamilton. There's a large force of Ottomans marching on the Suez Canal; JRR Tolkien comes out of the line to find the official news of a friend's death; mildly insane American student Briggs Kilburn Adams drives the Voie Sacree; a German soldier talks about life about 250 yards from where Henri Desagneaux was stationed at Verdun (it's just as poo poo on his end); and Clifford Wells can hear the guns as he waits for orders to go to France. 18 July: The South Africans in Delville Wood are literally being blown out of it; and General Monro allows Fromelles to go ahead tomorrow. Hey, remember last weekend when I talked about why you see constructions like "1/6th Blankshires" and "2/8th Umpshires"? The attacking forces will be one division of new Australian recruits who barely know which end of the rifle to hold, and about half a division's worth of second-line Territorials, few of whom are actually considered fit for anything more strenuous than holding the line in a quiet sector, which is slightly upsetting. Tank training continues as the tanks' weaponry arrives and has to be attached with judicious use of a very large sledgehammer; after two years of squabbling over Lake Tanganyika and Spicer-Simson and all the rest, a land advance is forcing the Schutztruppe to scuttle their ship and flee; Neil Fraser-Tytler is hard at work doing his job this time; Louis Barthas is being trained to operate an infantry gun, not a trench mortar; and Maximilian Mugge is now at work in the cookhouse.
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Jul 23, 2016 14:26
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Oh loving hell why did I start looking into 19th century sabre fencing now I've got a poo poo-ton of BBC period dramas to watch. I'm sure this is somehow all your drat fault, SBS!  Edit: Okay so J.S. & Mr. N. isn't technically a period drama, being alt-history-slash-fantasy, but it still counts on account of having Wellington in it. Siivola fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jul 23, 2016 |
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Jul 23, 2016 20:54
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It is also very good, regardless of the historical lack of wizards.
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Jul 23, 2016 21:16
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Siivola posted:Oh loving hell why did I start looking into 19th century sabre fencing now I've got a poo poo-ton of BBC period dramas to watch. I'm sure this is somehow all your drat fault, SBS! Once you get by the saber bug it never leaves your system!
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Jul 24, 2016 01:03
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Waci posted:It is also very good, regardless of the historical lack of wizards.
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Jul 24, 2016 01:16
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Cyrano4747 posted:The KKK and Huey long were not fascists. I'm phone posting so in not going to go into detail but it takes more than just being a bunch of racist authoritarian fuckeits. The KKK arguably doesn't even get the authoritarian bit down. I think there's a potentially unwelcome methodological assumption here: fascism has to be a reaction to the far left, or to any one or more specifically specified -ism or movement in too narrow a way. I think it is at least arguable that it could best to understand the KKK as potentially the best contender for the first proto-fascist glimpse at the future, in some way, rather than classifying it as in a different species altogether: "But it is further back in American history that one comes upon the earliest phenomenon that seems functionally related to fascism: The Ku Klux Klan. Just after the Civil War, some former confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African by the Radical Reconstructionists in 1967, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order. The Klan constituted an alternative civic authority, parrallel to the legal state, which, in its founders eyes, no longer defended their community's legitimate interests. In its adoption of a uniform (white robe and hood) as well as its techniques of intimidation and its conviction that violence was justified in the cause of the group's destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe*. It is arguable, at least, that fascism, understood functionally, was born in the late 1860's in the American South * David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, the First Century of the KKK 1865-1965, correspondances between fascism and the Klan in the 1920's are explored by Nancy Maclean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of a Second Klan' - The five stages of Fascism, Robert O. Paxton. But this comes down to the major problems of defining fascism, obviously, that I spoke about a long time ago: it's not like communism, both in that there is no official doctrine or indeed a more concrete ideological structure to the movement in general, so you're always going to get stuck on some problematic definitional question like 'the fascist minimum' or a more meta explanation a la the Marxist one, though the Marxist one is fairly compatible with a lot of broader definitions like the ones Paxton has to offer in that article, which are more about thinking about fascism as a process conservative interests enter in to in the light of social problems indissoluble to state power. feedmegin posted:Just to be pedantic, the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. Not to mention, which Klan? The Communist movement was pretty non-existent in 1848 though, it took time to acquire a head of steam; it was more of a 'spectre' than a real political phenomenon until later. In this case the argument is in relation to Klan 1.
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Jul 24, 2016 09:50
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Talking about Trump itt was just in relation to someone asking 'well isn't the perspective of the Marxists that fascism is inevitable in capitalist society' which I disagreed with, the real question was what underlying differences did the US and UK have with Germany et al to prevent fascism ever being successful.
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Jul 24, 2016 09:55
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Quick question: what do people think of Mark Zuehlke's Canadian Battle Series? I'm curious about Canadians in WWII, and some cursory googling suggests that this is the most readily available books on it. Are there better books available I should look for? Also, a quick public service announcement: you can get Teddy Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812 off Gutenberg.
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Jul 24, 2016 11:01
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Disinterested posted:The Communist movement was pretty non-existent in 1848 though, it took time to acquire a head of steam; it was more of a 'spectre' than a real political phenomenon until later. In this case the argument is in relation to Klan 1. Is it? We've had people talking about the Birth of a Nation-era Klan as being fascist, and personally that sounds a better fit to me than the original lot, especially given Klan 2 effectively ran their local police/government with no meddling Reconstructionists around. I'm not sure I see a big difference between being black in Mississippi in the 20s and, say, a socialist in Mussolini's Italy; indeed, you'd probably be safer as the latter.
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Jul 24, 2016 11:11
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feedmegin posted:Is it? We've had people talking about the Birth of a Nation-era Klan as being fascist, and personally that sounds a better fit to me than the original lot, especially given Klan 2 effectively ran their local police/government with no meddling Reconstructionists around. I'm not sure I see a big difference between being black in Mississippi in the 20s and, say, a socialist in Mussolini's Italy; indeed, you'd probably be safer as the latter. I'm just representing an argument made elsewhere. As you can see from the quotation there are people writing about Klan 2 in this context as well: I think what's luring people in to wanting to talk about Klan 1 in this way is some of the delicious narrative similarities, as much as anything else, like dejected military officers after a lost war turning to a paramilitary organisation/secret society/etc. for redress in a time of social chaos. There's also not as much interest in describing a fascist movement in the 20's, since there are quite broad phenomena to talk about in that period in every country.
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Jul 24, 2016 11:17
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Who was the worst leader of Nazi Germany, Hitler or Dönitz? I'm leaning toward Dönitz, he lost the WW2 in just one week and couldn't remain Reichspräsident for more than 20 days. 
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Jul 24, 2016 14:10
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Maybe but Hitler killed the Führer.
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Jul 24, 2016 15:39
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There are two key aspects of fascism that I consider vital to distinguishing it from other forms of authoritarian totalitarianism or more run of the mill racist-nationalist political movements. 1) an all encompassing vision of they way society should be 2) a movement that is not only a reaction to the "injustices" that they believe have been perpetrated against the people they purport to represent, but which also rejects the traditional elites who they feel failed them. I believe that the Klan fails on both of these measures, although as they become more radical and more fringe there is an increasingly strong argument that they meet them. In particular the modern Aryan Nation and its ilk probably fit the bill, although I haven't really thought that through so its more of a sketch of an idea. As for issue #1, its important to note that the vision of society that fascist movements have is one where it is mobilized, in its entirety, to their agenda. The Nazis, for example, don't do what they do because they hate Jews, they hate Jews because they see them as an inherently foreign presence that must be expelled or destroyed to ensure the survival of the German racial state. Their core belief is in a zero-sum competition between races in which the only nations that will prosper and survive are those that maintain their racial cohesiveness - those that mix with others only dilute their unique strengths and cause their own extinction, both as a state and racially. The objectives of the Klan can roughly be summarized as white supremacy (in the WASP sense - Irish need not apply) and, in its earliest forms, the political revival of the CSA and the reversal of the political settlement of the ACW. Unlike 20th century fascists these demands don't completely supersede other cultural and societal norms. They don't, for example, attempt to co-opt the church to the degree that it becomes a religious arm of their ideology. Going back to the Nazi example, they were extremely skeptical of traditional religious structures and where they were coopted (the "German Christian" movement for example) it was for the purpose of creating something that would work within the framework of National Socialist core beliefs. This is a leap the Klan never makes. They tend to work within existing social structures and co-opt them for their own benefit by recruiting senior members. It should also be noted that there are a lot of issues and areas of life that the KKK never presses any claim to absolute authority, superseding the needs and agendas of the people and organizations managing them. Again, the church example stands out, but you also don't see official stances on science, education, international politics, etc except where they directly intersect with their racial politics (and their emphasis on revitalizing the CSA in the first wave Klan), and they don't make an attempt to set up a parallel system. Education is a good example. The KKK was a vocal supporter of mandatory public education in the 1920s. In their view it was a great way to ensure the Americanization of immigrants as part of their broader nativist sentiments. Their concern re: education was to further a racial agenda, not transform society as a whole. If anything they wanted it to form a bulwark against what they saw as a society transforming around them. In short, groups like the Klan have too limited a scope. Fascists have an all-consuming ideology that purports to regulate every aspect of society, which is why it so frequently gets labeled as anti-conservative or anti-traditional along with anti-democratic and anti-communist. Fascism is about national transformation, the Klan is a conservative movement to roll back the clock to an earlier time - it's about preserving authority or an imagined past, not creating a new, improved society. This also gets into my point #2. The Klan - especially during its more "respectable" second wave - doesn't propose upturning the social order. They want to solidify the grasp of traditional elites on a society that they think is slipping away from them. Fascist movements can and will co-opt traditional elites when convenient, but ultimately they frame themselves as a response to old elites that somehow betrayed the nation or hosed up through incompetence. This is ultimately, for example, why the German conservatives fail in their bid to elevate Hitler to power and then contain him. Hitler didn't give two shits about the Junkers as a corner stone of German traditional society. If they could be flattered and used to further his own agenda, great, but they weren't a critical component of it. Compare this to the Klan, where the preservation of traditional elite power was crucial to both its political and its racial ambitions. Same with Mussolini - he was trying to grab power from the elites to revitalize what he saw as a failed state, not ensure their continued hold on power. There are reasons why a lot of the initial impetus to Italian Fascism came from veterans who through that their military leadership had been incompetent and that the country had gotten hosed in the peace settlement. All that said, there is an argument for lumping the KKK in with the broad field of extreme 19th century movements that can be argued as proto-fascists. There was a lot bubbling around in this period and it would be wrong to assert that the methods and styles developed by not-quite-fascist groups didn't have an influence on the ones that came later.
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Jul 24, 2016 15:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:In short, groups like the Klan have too limited a scope. Fascists have an all-consuming ideology that purports to regulate every aspect of society, which is why it so frequently gets labeled as anti-conservative or anti-traditional along with anti-democratic and anti-communist. Fascism is about national transformation, the Klan is a conservative movement to roll back the clock to an earlier time - it's about preserving authority or an imagined past, not creating a new, improved society. Isn't this to some degree an inaccurate description? Nazi Germany is often quite self-consciously about rolling back to an earlier time, albeit even more idealised and earlier time periods than, say, 1776; that also seems to me to be more inaccurate the further you push in to any given example other than Nazi Germany. There are so many strange examples of very strange reactionary behaviour in Nazi Germany though, from members of the SS conducting parades in pseudo-medieval armour, to bizarre attempts to revive folk customs and practices, to a vision of a future that takes people back to agricultural life and a transmogrified classical architecture. You see it in Nazi historiography: indictments of German emperors of the past who fail to advance a perceived German racial interest, praise for those, like Otto I, who succeed, and a deep longing for a time in which Germans were seen to be part of a single nation with boundless possibilties for eastward expansion. The use of Tacitus' account of German customs as if they were relevant and programatic for today. It also underlies every concept about the distant racial past - isn't turning the world back in to a zero-sum game for racial domination really a rolling back to a perceived state of nature. It's obviously a very eclectic, idealised and jumbled vision of the past, but it seems to me that Nazis utterly rely on that in their ideology, and that that stacks up in other ways with Italy w/r/t to the Roman Empire, and far more so with Franco's state, let alone someone like father Tiso etc. It's clear that the KKK are much more genuinely conservative, though (although I think there probably is some underlying acceptance of some really radical racial ideologies). On the other hand, they also didn't ever have the same kind of canvas to paint on. Their movement was much more abortive. I also think that I worry about how emphatic you are about the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany, though you don't actually use that word - isn't it really a smokescreen, albeit one that fascist ideologues also find useful? Isn't it also, in any event, less and less true the more you move away from Nazi Germany towards any other example? Trying to find any substance to Mussolini's totalitarian claims is very difficult. I think it probably is better to ringfence the KKK to a large extent away from 20's-40's Europe, and really that it's just an interesting thought to play around with.
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Jul 24, 2016 16:31
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For the most part, the KKK is a cross between a social club and a scam. It may be racist, and its members may perpetrate violence, but it's not organized about it. The modern day Klan doesn't even have any centralized leadership. Also the whole deal where it maintains a goofy level of secrecy sort of gets in the way of things so that they can't really go too far beyond a bunch of violent disorganized idiots. When they want to do more, they end up forming different groups so they can work more directly.
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Jul 24, 2016 16:48
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