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I have this cool book from the library called "The Reactionary Mind" and it's very good. One thing it has shown me very well is how essential the idea of an 'aristocracy' (so to say) is to reactionary politics. The author quotes Edmund Burke (1700s writer very opposed to the French Revolution)quote:To obey a real superior... is one of the most important of all virtues - a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of anything great and lasting. As Ardennes and Akratic Method rightly point out, the failures of liberal democracy and capitalism in the lives of these budding fascists is the fuel for that fascism. What I think is worth pointing out is it is not just a failure to deliver a healthy society and functioning economic production process. It is also a failure to produce a hierarchy that can be credibly given faith, a hierarchy that one might enjoy submitting to. Into this vacuum comes the easy answer of nationalism, racism, and other forms of otherization that allow the budding fascist to simultaneously be the aristocracy while joyfully submitting to the aristocracy. There's way more stuff in this book that is worth mentioning here, so I will try to find it. I also have this cool book on the psychology of fascism in Nazi Germany that I will dig up. Fakie edit - Another subject related to fascist psychology would be opposition to the process of subject-object inversion (or commodity fetishism) that is the result of capitalist modes of production. Loosely, subject-object inversion is when objects (commodities) determine the movement of subjects (humans) through the logic and power of market discipline. The tradition of subjects (humans) determining the movement of objects (objects) is subverted. Identification with violent nationalism is a way for the subject to re-assert some of their lost subjectivity. For more on this, see Marx, Foucault, Heidegger. This also ties into the idea of legitimate vs. illegitimate aristocracies. Losing ones subjectivity by submitting to a peer group for the glorification of race and nation can feel better than losing ones subjectivity by submitting to the blind logic of economic calculation.
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Aug 10, 2013 10:12
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- hi
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 14:48 |
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Pesmerga posted:I always like to see people quoting Foucault. But how does this factor into the aggressive push for business that fascism represents? I'd say in this respect, commodity is still fetishised, it's just a different type. That resistance against certain types of commodities gets co-opted into the accepted networks of power as an exercise of resistance to be quashed, and instead, new commodities that determine worth become important, be they flags, uniforms, and other symbols of power. It's also possible to argue that it's not the commodities that are the source of contention, but who possesses them/prevents them from being possessed by the 'right' people. I'd like to be careful with the word 'commodity' here. By commodity I specifically mean the object alienated for the purpose exchange in a capitalist market that produces the self-organization of the Invisible Hand of Value. The Fascists certainly have fetishes, but commodities are not among them. The specific appeal of Fascism is to break the fetishism of commodities and replace it with fetishism of race/nation/so on. The important thing about a fetish is not that the fetish is held in high regard, it is that it creates a 'social vortex' around itself that organizes society according to it's logic. So the fascist may like the hierarchical masculinist competition of business, but ultimately the logic of commodity exchange can not be the 'top dog' so to say. It has to be that business gets dragged along for the glory of the nation. It cannot be accepted that the nation is dragged along for the glory of the market. I found that book I was thinking of. I think a cool example of the fascist desire to replace the logic of the market with another sort of logic is expressed by this quote taken from some sort of Nazi townhall meeting. quote:We don't want lower grain prices. We don't want higher grain prices. We want National Socialist grain prices. Ocean Book fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Aug 10, 2013 |
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Aug 10, 2013 17:36
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