A return of Fascism in Europe?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > A return of Fascism in Europe?

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

DongsMcMurphy posted:

It always strikes me as sickening and ironic that some of the inhabitants of countries that fought tooth-and-nail against the Axis are now saying "hey this fascism thing has always worked historically hyuk hyuk" and deliberately using imagery that evokes the Nazis in their iconography. Case in point, Golden Dawn:

Not necessarily. Every country in Europe during World War II had domestic fascist movements and many collaborated directly with the Nazis. It's still sickening to want your country to be under Nazi hegemony. Because obviously. But many of these modern neo-fascisms (though not all) trace their history to these quislings. Many occupied countries also became embroiled in bloody civil wars between local fascists and communists. I don't think it's that incongruous.

There's even an argument to be made that the historical consensus should shift to consider France to have been an Axis power, not an Allied one. I think I've heard that more French troops died fighting against the Allies than with them. There's a stupid popular stereotype in some countries that France is a cowardly nation, dating to the military collapse in 1940, but many Allied troops died fighting hardened Vichy soldiers.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Aug 10, 2013

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 10:19

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BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

fspades posted:

Meh, I feel like you are overstating your case here. Barring some edge cases like Greece, I'm not convinced these fascist movements are in any way a threat to liberal democratic order. The vast, vast majority of fascist organizations in the first world fizzles out without achieving any sort of power. So while it's easy to find scary pictures of goosestepping idiots their mere existence is not in any way an evidence of Europe is going back to 30's.

Far, far more dangerous possibility is not the fascists overthrowing liberal democracy, but conservatives co-opting (some of) their rhetoric for their own ends and presenting (some of) their policies as the new conservative normal. This is what's happening in Russia, UK, France, Austria and Switzerland. Anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Muslim hatred is undoubtedly on the rise but that hatred is not channeled to proper fascist organizations no matter how much fascists would want to. Instead it's finding more and more voice in conservative circles and that's a far more troubling development.

Fascists do not need to achieve national power to do untold amount of harm to a community, so you do not need to wait for the new f�hrer to take power to fight fascists. But at the same time focusing on these small-time fascist organizations at the expense of ignoring mainstream politics is a fatal mistake.

I think many on the left make a mistake and see nasty policies (such as immigration restrictions or regressive corporate tax laws) and conclude this means a shift towards fascism. Fascism is not interchangeable with bigotry, social exclusion and anti-immigration laws. It's a specific type of extreme, ultra-right-wing revolutionary politics that proposes a completely transformative kind of totalitarian political order.

Once you look at it that way, the appetite for it starts looking a lot weaker in much of Europe. The EDL is a very nasty terrorist organization, and there are individuals and small groups that cause real harm, but I don't think the masses of the British people are clamoring for a rebirth of the BUF. The EDL is not a mass movement. I think it's actually gone into steep decline already. I think we can draw similar conclusions in Germany, France, Spain and elsewhere. But I wish I could say the same about Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries.

Also, I wouldn't say this: "Far, far more dangerous possibility is not the fascists overthrowing liberal democracy, but conservatives co-opting (some of) their rhetoric for their own ends." No. It's far more dangerous for fascists to overthrow liberal democracy! That's obviously more dangerous than conservatives co-opting some of their rhetoric. It's far safer for a mainstream conservative party to suck the air out of a fascist movement and provide a space for the concerns people have with immigration, multiculturalism, etc. than it is for these issues to be monopolized by the extreme right.

To confess my unpopular opinion: It may be a better tactic for anti-fascists to build alliances with conservatives in order to pull people vulnerable to far-right recruitment away from those groups. That may be more effective than trying to turn them red, so to speak. But who am I kidding that will never happen.

The caveat, of course, is when this happens:

quote:

A para-fascist regime is imposed from above (often by the military) and represents traditional elites trying to preserve the old order, but surrounds its conservative core with fascist trappings. These trappings may include an official state party, paramilitary organizations, a leader cult, mass political ritual, corporatism, and the rhetoric of ultranationalist regeneration. Para-fascist regimes may be just as ruthless as genuine fascist ones in their use of state terrorism. Unlike true fascism, para-fascism does not represent a genuine populist mobilization and does not substantively challenge established institutions. During the 1920s and 1930s, [Roger] Griffin argues, para-fascist regimes arose in several European countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, and Austria, joined by the Vichy government after France surrendered to Germany in 1940. Para-fascist regimes regarded genuine fascist movements as a threat and used various strategies to contain, coopt, or crush them. In Spain during the Civil War, for example, General Franco "imposed a shot-gun marriage between Falangists and the traditional (that is non-fascist) radical right" as part of his strategy to establish a para-fascist dictatorship.

http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~lyonsm/TwoWays.html

Sound like Russia?

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Aug 10, 2013

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 11:04

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Why can't you just use the state's law enforcement and intelligence forces to monitor fascist parties? Someone said earlier that Germany is the country that's least likely to see the fascists gain any sort of influence at the political level again, and it's my understanding that the German state has a pretty intense apparatus set up for monitoring and controlling them.

We have all of this surveillance technology and tools for keeping tabs on people. Why not allow fascist parties to advertise and stand for elections, but make it so they're effectively only pretending to be a real party?

Pope Guilty posted:

Why are people acting like fascists are a legitimate political theory/group? They're not. They don't have policy differences. For fascists violence is not a tool like it is for legitimate political positions, it is an end. Murdering and dominating everybody other than the in-group is the entire point of fascism. Fascism is not correctly characterized as politics, but as organized crime using politics as a pretext. We should no more offer fascism the protections and rights we offer to political positions and philosophies than we should the Mafia or the Aryan Brotherhood.

All fascist organizing is organizing for mass murder. All fascist propaganda is incitement to mass murder. Pretending that fascism is a valid political philosophy and pretending that its adherents are anything other than criminals and would-be criminals is suicidal.

What do you mean by valid political philosophy? Fascism is a political philosophy with a distinct and coherent set of ideas attached to it. It's suicidal, self-destructive, racist and murderous - it's all of these things. But they believe that murder is necessary in order to establish a better world. Killing is not an end to itself in fascism, it's a means to build a racially pure, homogeneous, unified and organic totalitarian state. They believe this is necessary in order to purge their national community of decadent and destructive foreign influences, and therefore make their nation better and the lives of their kinfolk better. It's a humanist political philosophy in a weird way, albeit a selective and exclusionary one.

Now, that I'm saying this is potentially risky because it says that fascists have actual ideas. These are dangerous ideas and they should be opposed. But it's not like murder in a fascist system is just senseless. There's absolutely a reason behind it and it's quite discriminating for ideological reasons. You could make the argument that Marxist-Leninist class war is murderous, and historically it's demonstrated that. But it's not senseless. Killing large numbers of targeted enemies is necessary in order to build a classless society.

Yes, fascists are gangsters and murderers. This is obvious. You're right when you say that fascist organizing is organizing for mass murder. But they're not simply murderers because they're evil and like murder. There's pretty much no actual historians and experts on fascism who will say that.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Aug 11, 2013

# ¿ Aug 11, 2013 06:50

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pope Guilty posted:

In the US at least, the cops don't really care. They're too busy monitoring and infiltrating Islamic and leftist groups to care about people who also hate Muslims and leftists. Look at how liberal states treat fascist organizing compared to leftist organizing and figure out the difference.

I hear this a lot, but I'm not sure I really believe it. Actual fascist groups like the Patriot movement, sovereign citizens, etc. are spied on and infiltrated by the federal government all the time, though. Neo-Nazi prison gangs are called prison gangs for a reason, right? (They're prisoners.) Or look at Hal Turner, who's sitting in prison right now.

I grew up in a really conservative, right-wing place in the South. And the cops were racists. I had a friend whose dad was one of these racist, right-wing cops. They absolutely hated the skinheads in the area and thought they were scum. The cops knew all the skinheads' names, monitored them and kept tabs on them. If they saw them driving around, the cops would follow them and call their location in. The reason wasn't political, but just because the skinheads were dangerous, violent people who didn't like cops. Of course the police didn't like them.

It's not like if you're a racist Neo-Nazi skinhead in America, the cops just leave you alone like "oh no big deal the communists are who we're worried about!" I don't think that's how it really is. Though if you're in an anarchist or communist group, then yeah you'll be monitored by federal and state police.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Aug 11, 2013

# ¿ Aug 11, 2013 07:08

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Cerebral Bore posted:

See the bolded part? This is where your understanding of fascism breaks down, because violence is quite literally an end in and of itself in fascist thought. If you want to I can start quiting Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" here.
This is why fascism is uniquely toxic among political ideologies, and why there are no peaceful fascists. This is also why violent resistance is always morally acceptable against the fash, even if it might not be smart every time.

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.

Marxists insist fascism is essentially destructive and reactionary. I disagree with this. But I can see why Marxists insist it is this way, because the Marxist interpretation is reluctant to acknowledge other kinds of competing revolutionary forces other than Marxism - forces which use tactics in a similar manner to how Marxist regimes attempted to implement their own revolutionary new order. (See Lenin's writings about violence as inherent to class war.)

Orange Devil posted:

If you knew what fascism entails you wouldn't tolerate it.

I think the problem is that - like the German neo-Nazi murderers - racist violence is being carried out more and more by small groupuscules of extremists who carry out murders on their own initative, and not by members of formal fascist parties.

Similar are "lone wolves" who carry out racist terrorist attacks on their own; are radicalized entirely over the internet, and do not operate under any command structure. Newly radicalized but non-violent extremists nonetheless go on to join non-fascist (but right-wing populist) parties and constitute an extreme fringe. How to censor, restrict or use violence against these people are really difficult questions. There's a certain point somewhere where anti-fascist violence stops solving the problem.

Captain Oblivious posted:

Holy poo poo this shouldn't be that complicated.
Violence is an inherent part of fascism whereas the same cannot be said of communism, can we end the false equivalency now and move on?

Both communism and fascism propose totalising solutions to the ills of liberal society, and when implemented over the 20th century in their Nazi and Stalinist forms, provided the rationale for industrialized mass murder.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Aug 11, 2013

# ¿ Aug 11, 2013 15:06

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Don't feel too bad about it. While there is a ton of work out there exploring fascism generally and this or that variant of it in particular, at root fascism as ideology is incoherent once you move beyond a few core principles that all strains seem to have (is violent, exclusionary, lovely, etc). I may have missed it in the last several pages, but (oddly) I don't think anyone's linked Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism which, though dealing with classical forms, is still largely relevant to modern fascist movements.

I like the Eco essay. I'd also recommend Roger Griffin's take on it as a form of palingenetic ultranationalism.
http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/resources/griffin/coreoffascism.pdf

quote:

Fascism is best approached as a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anticonservative nationalism. As such it is an ideology deeply bound up with modernization and modernity, one which has assumed a considerable variety of external forms to adapt itself to the particular historical and national context in which it appears, and has drawn on a wide range of cultural and intellectual currents, both left and right, anti-modern and pro-modern, to articulate itself as a body of ideas, slogans, and doctrine. In the inter-war period it manifested itself primarily in the form of an elite-led �armed party� which attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to generate a populist mass movement through a liturgical style of politics and a programme of radical policies which promised to overcome the threat posed by international socialism, to end the degeneration affecting the nation under liberalism, and to bring about a radical renewal of its social, political and cultural life as part of what was widely imagined to be the new era being inaugurated in Western civilization. The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics, and actions is the vision of the nation�s imminent rebirth from decadence.

I don't have any problems with anti-fascists using defensive violence, if necessary, against local fascist thugs still capable of whipping up racial hatred.

I'm concerned about the open-ended nature of violence that committed anti-fascist activists endorse, however. One of the issues that compounded the inter-war crisis in Germany and Italy (the only time fascism has ever been successful) was a competing revolutionary challenge from the extreme left. This helped destabilize liberal states and undermine their legitimacy. When the traditional conservative forces were too weak to reassert their authority, the fascists were the only ones left to approach the mass public and convince them that fascism was the only means to end the crisis.

quote:

If the sense of nationhood was in the main highly stable, if nationalistic aspirations were generally sated, if the legitimacy of existing constitutional arrangements was widely taken forgranted, if liberal taboos against violence or radical change were well entrenched, then even a profound socio-economic and political crisis would tend to be resolved without whipping up extra-systemic or extra-parliamentary forces. In other words, without a generalized `sense making-crisis' (Platt, 1980) which called the status quo and all prevailing norms into question, fascism was impotent. But where objective pressures on the legitimacy of the existing liberal order created a resonance with widely held misgivings about its legitimacy and its capacity to deal with the crisis, it cast doubt on whether the constitutional arrangements in which it is embodied were not in fact alien to the national tradition, or an obstacle to its regeneration. At this point a fascist organization could find itself with increased room to manoeuvre, and become a fully fledged `mass movement'.

[...]

Anti-fascist activists and scholars alike should beware of enhancing the credibility of the minute political constituency represented by true fascists by treating the genuine threat which fascists pose to social harmony and political stability in localized conditions as a revolutionary threat to the nation as a whole.

http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/resources/griffin/failbritfas.pdf

There's a risk that tolerating illegal, paramilitary anti-fascist actions could risk destabilizing the liberal state and, ironically, opening up greater space for fascists to thrive.

I don't think this is a risk in the U.S. or Britain, or other North American and West European states, though. For example, if you look at the implicitly white nationalist Ron Paul movement from 2008-2012, it was unable to mount a credible challenge to the state, and resorted to staging non-violent putsches against state GOP conventions (mostly unsuccessfully) because violence was not an option in the American political system - the U.S. no longer tolerates organized violence by paramilitary groups during election seasons.

In these countries, I think the threat from fascism is primarily localized racial hatred and occasional violence. And the risk of small-scale or lone wolf terrorism. I don't think fascists can pose a revolutionary challenge to these states because they're too pluralized and multicultural to give fascists the space to form a political movement that can grow (on a small scale) for more than a few years before imploding, which is what we've seen over and over again. We saw it with the N.F., the BNP and now the EDL. Since fascism is based on violence and needs to use violence, a state which does not tolerate organized extra-legal violence means fascism cannot thrive. But this doesn't mean I'm saying you shouldn't be able to use extra-legal violence in a defensive manner against the threat they pose on the local level, like in city neighborhoods.

But Greece is different. After Ilias Kasidiaris's attack on two rival MPs on live T.V., the Golden Dawn's popularity grew, and it allowed the party to present itself as (literally, in this case) hitting back at the enemies of the state. It shows that the taboo against political violence in the context of a weak liberal state in Greece has broken down.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Aug 12, 2013

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 03:38

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Ardennes posted:

One issue is the soft assertion that this may not happened in Western Europe and North America, and to be honest I don't buy it. The Tea Party or the UKIP even the FN are not at quite that level yet, but is a matter of time and eventually the right edge will become harder. (Also, Neo-confederates can easily be rolled as precursors to more open fascism.)

Basically the answer to the question: it's a simple waiting game.

I hear you. What I'm saying is: neo-Confederates and their ilk would be more dangerous in a society that tolerated organized and extra-legal paramilitary violence.

Since fascists thrive and grow stronger because they use violence, a society in which political violence is not tolerated means that fascism doesn't have the oxygen it needs. And ultimately most Americans reject those groups. And the demographics and character of the U.S. are changing even more. I'm pretty optimistic. A strong liberal state is the best bulwark against fascism. Unfortunately, there are too many anti-fascists who are also anarchists and communists. If you're an anarchist it's going to be in your interest to destabilize the state, but the problem is that it gives an opening for fascists to thrive. I don't know what to do about Russia.

But if you want to get into bar fights with skinheads, then knock yourself out.

Also, funny and depressing story, but I contacted the local anti-racist activists in my town about a Death in June concert coming here. They're a neo-Nazi band and there's another (local) band that's explicitly about as fascist as it gets opening the show - at an anarchist-owned venue no less! I was told that not only is Death in June not a fascist band, but the real fascists are the Republican Party in the U.S.

I went to a free show by the opening band once at a local art space here, just to see it with my own eyes, and there were literal blackshirts walking around. So this is going on at an anti-fascist venue. Yeah. Real anti-fascists.

Rutibex posted:

Exterminating people is not an ideological principal of Marxism-Leninism. Mistakes where made, but they where mistakes. Stalin or Mao never set up gas chambers to kill people en mass for the glory of communism.

Fascism revels in death and suffering, it's the entire loving point. Would you let Hitler stand on a street corner and preach? Every fascist is Hitler. Hitler doesn't get another chance.

Mistakes were made. Stalin and Mao used different methods to kill millions for different reasons. Lenin believed that there was no progress without revolutionary violence to counteract reactionary violence. When applied on a sufficiently large scale I'd say mass terror and murder is inexorably bound up in Marxism-Leninism. And it's been demonstrated.

I think you should wonder why fascists end up exterminating millions. It's not just because they're sadists or like murdering people. It's considered a necessary measure in order to purge the nation of unhygienic elements. They don't even believe the people they're killing are people. They think they're exterminating lice or something. It's a giant housecleaning operation with human beings being gassed instead of insects. When applied on a national level that means mass murder.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Aug 12, 2013

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 05:20

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

^ I think that's probably true. I think communist regimes are on the whole better than fascist ones, of course, even though I'm not a Marxist or communist. It was clearly preferable for Stalin to win the war than Hitler.

Ardennes posted:

That is the thing, a liberal society is not sustainable under capitalism, eventually it will eat itself and fascists will be the rather inevitable result.

Maybe so. But I think a society can weather such a crisis if, as Roger Griffin puts it: "the sense of nationhood was in the main highly stable, if nationalistic aspirations were generally sated, if the legitimacy of existing constitutional arrangements was widely taken for granted, [and] if liberal taboos against violence or radical change were well entrenched."

Jakse posted:

Yeah dude, wanting to eliminate income inequality is on par with people burning mosques. Just because "communist" and I put them in quotes on purpose dictators did horrible things doesn't mean it is core to the ideology. True leftists don't hope for that poo poo to happen. In fascism it is a feature not a bi-product.

No. I think it's integral in both cases. Ultimately fascists want to build a revolutionary new kind of society purified of contaminating, foreign influences. Murder is the process by which the state purifies itself. There's a related process by which a Marxist-Leninist regimes purifies itself of the forces of reaction.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Aug 12, 2013

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 05:47

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Jakse posted:

That is only if you think any communist nation in our history is actually fulfilling the ideology. I think myself, and many other leftists, would disagree that those regimes embody anything that we believe.

That's fine. You can agree or disagree with those regimes and still be a communist. It's your ideology and it's up to you to shape it. But for me, if it walks like a communist, talks like a communist, and shoots landowners in the head like a communist, it's probably a communist.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 05:53

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pope Guilty posted:

Communist regimes kill people, as do liberal regimes. In both cases, the killing is a means to an end. It serves a purpose. In a fascist regime, and I feel like there's several posters not getting this, killing is a purpose. Violence and force and domination are means to liberals and communists. They are ends to fascists. Liberals and communists kill and dominate people to take power or achieve political ends. Fascists seek power in order to kill and dominate people.

For the sake of argument, I'll agree. But one solution is to build a society in which organized political violence is not tolerated. This prevents domestic fascism from strengthening into an existential threat as they are denied the means to actually be fascists, or to exercise practices that are integral to their ideology (assassinations, extra-legal street militias, armed cadres, etc.). Instead they are forced to become awkward fascist-"lite" parties like the BNP, effectively neutralized as a political force.

The response I'm hearing to this, is that such a society is not possible or sustainable, and that we should launch pre-emptive attacks on domestic fascist movements since the society is going to collapse anyways and violence will make a comeback. But (1) I don't think that's guaranteed and (2) allows violence to become self-justifying in the absence of an existential fascist threat. It's similar to how radical primitivists will say that since civilization is doomed anyways, we better speed up bombing hydroelectric dams or whatever so we can forestall worse damage later. I don't think Socrates would look kindly on this syllogism.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Aug 12, 2013

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 06:10

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Of course organized violence is instrumental to how the world works. But it's generally not a sign of a stable society when you have armed vigilante groups (of whatever political orientation) running around beating each other up, or killing each other, or committing all kinds of violence. Fascists benefit when there are armed clashes happening on the streets - which is why fascist groups like the EDL try to provoke it. It's important for anti-fascists to not fall into their hands. Though I have reiterated that self-defense can be necessary depending on the local circumstances.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 08:31

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Zewle posted:

All fascism is a rightwing response to the breakdown of a market society. The machinery of capitalism creates fascism like an abusive parent, socialism is the attempt to do better, fascism just beats its kids worse.

But I think it's worth thinking about how different fascist movements approach capitalism differently. In the present, you have some fascist groups which are more pro-capitalist than even a lot of capitalists. The libertarian movement in the U.S. is a great example of a fusion of extreme capitalist ideology combined with ultranationalism, anti-egalitarianism, etc. But this isn't true for fascist movements everywhere. The third positionists are extremely anti-capitalist in addition to being anti-Marxist, and new fascist movements have placed anti-globalization and anti-capitalist rhetoric at the forefront. There's a danger of these groups making inroads into traditionally "left" spaces.

That capitalism is simply capitalism at its worst also ignores the extent to which actual fascist regimes came to to blows with capitalism. Fascist regimes never abolished private property, but the regimes also involved themselves in the economy at a level only seen in capitalist economies during total war mobilization. Then the regimes combined that with mass organizations in the form of state-run youth, sport, technology programs, etc. The big business conglomerates were left intact but lost control over state policy.

I think it's better to see fascists as a kind of counter-reformation to the socialist movement's reformation. It attempts to build a fundamentally new kind of order but it has an uneasy and contradictory relationship with the old one. There's also a crazy Maoist named J. Sakai who described Nazism as "shocking techno-culture of mass worship and violent mass re-identification." If it's the product of the machinery of capitalism, then maybe it's like what happens to a washing machine when you throw a concrete cinder block into it.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 07:26

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Miltank posted:

Are the same posters who are against antifa action for hate speech laws? Is that just because hate speech laws work within the state's monopoly on force?

I can see where hate speech laws might be useful in certain circumstances, but they have to be tailored. I don't think you can apply the kinds of hate speech laws we see in Europe, Canada, etc. to the United States. Content-neutral speech protection is foundational to the American system; hate speech laws here are about as realistic as saying America should adopt Catholicism as the state religion or start putting Elizabeth II on the currency. It might be an interesting thought experiment but the odds that it could happen at a state-level are about nil. I also question these laws' effectiveness at staunching far-right recruitment.

On the other hand, there is a lot the state is doing wrong about this. This isn't just about fascism. The U.S. (to just use as an example) has an intense surveillance and counter-terrorist system, but it's very lunk-headed and reactive.

Take the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The FBI became aware he was becoming radicalized, and indeed contacted his mother. But there was no attempt to block that process from continuing. It was really just a question of whether Tsarnaev had committed any crimes or not. It wasn't until after he carried out a terrorist attack that the security services moved in, and they did so in a (characteristically) heavy-handed and over-the-top way. Or it's these stupid sting operations where they give a guy a fake bomb and then arrest him.

We need to be a lot smarter about this. There really needs to be an effort to identify people before they're fully radicalized, and we need to be comfortable approaching the families and telling them that this is not a good way to go. We need to be able to say: we're concerned that Timmy the 16-year-old is becoming a skinhead, we (really: you) don't want to see this happening, this might cause problems for Timmy. This also means building ties with faith communities, schools and families in programs aimed at stopping far right recruitment. Antifa does this and I understand Britain is experimenting with these kinds of programs (with mixed success). But sometimes Antifa does things which seem like monkey-brained violence that risks playing into the hands of fascists who are seeking to provoke a confrontation since disorder and chaos is ultimately what strengthens them.

Blackbird Fly posted:

Edit: As for forbidding fascist rallies in the US on safety grounds, that could easily be turned around into a ban on Marxist or civil libertarian assemblies.

Interesting fact is that the reason the U.S. cannot prohibit fascist rallies on public safety grounds is because of a series of Supreme Court cases in the 1910s-1920s involving communists being prohibited from forming groups and putting on rallies - including one case in which a municipality prohibited a communist youth group because the red flags were seen as an incitement to lawlessness and anarchy. The Court ruled these prohibitions unconstitutional except in circumstances where speech would lead to "imminent danger;" an incredibly high burden for the state to meet.

Most fascist and hate rallies will not meet the standard of imminence. But there are some exceptions like public cross burnings which are seen as an imminent threat a priori. In Norway such an action would be something a black metal band does at a concert or whatever, but in America it is a historically pervasive tactic used by a specific domestic terrorist organization. But that goes back to my first point about tailoring laws based on local circumstances.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 15:31

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Yep. But also it's worth it for Americans to give Europeans some wider latitude, I think. Anti-fascism is going to take different forms depending on where you are. Violence might be a necessity in one place where it's not appropriate in other places.

For one, there are actual fascist gangs and militant party cadres of actual fascist parties in some parts of Europe that Americans just don't have to deal with. The Ku Klux Klan is more of a joke than anything these days; a lot of their members are not even physically capable of administering their insulin let alone commit hate crimes. The issue of who controls "the streets" doesn't even apply in many American cities because everyone drives everywhere. (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?)

I remember attending an anti-fascist protest against the National Socialist Movement. This is a neo-Nazi group with an estimated 400 total members, or one out of 750,000 Americans. It is the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country. The odds of encountering one of those guys in my lifetime outside of a planned protest is pretty low. And after the rally, with a lot of chanting "our streets!", everyone got in their cars and went home. They may have even driven past each other on the highway, how would you know?

But go to the Balkans and you still have American soldiers patrolling around because ultra-nationalist, ethnic violence could erupt. People were put on trains and ethnically cleansed from their communities in 1999. There were people who saw scenes of people being forced onto trains by men with guns in "Schindler's List" and several years later they were literally forced on trains by Serb gunmen and dumped into Macedonia. It's a different ballgame, so to speak, in some parts. And Kosovo is an extreme example. But just look at Portugal. It's important for Americans who may have never even seen a skinhead before to understand that many Europeans are much more sensitive about the subject and have more immediate experiences.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 19:41

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

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.

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.

But I said this:

"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.

And therefore, what? Should I be subject to Anti-Fascist Action? This is getting weird.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Aug 14, 2013

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 11:18

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Tony Fark posted:

Whoever told you that was dead wrong. The French army lost many more troops in May 1940 alone than Vichy France did throughout its entire existence.

Oh, you're right. I got it wrong. More French fought for the Axis than the Allies during World War II, not died fighting, according to Max Hastings.

Around 23:00-24:00. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/MaxHa

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 16:29

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Ardennes posted:

Basically, Fascism's solution to turmoil is a return to an artificial period of cultural greatness without major changes to pre-existing power structures. It is revolutionary in only the sense it does want to change society culturally but only to limited extent since it is bound attachment to past norms.

Women are usually portrayed as perfect wives and mothers, reinforcing norms that already existed in order to establish a previous era of "greatness."

There was a left strain of Nazism at one time, but it was purged very quickly after Strasser was expelled in 1930. The Nazis left the capitalism structure almost entirely untouched into the last years of the war when they had no choice to nationalized critical industries or face even quicker defeat.

Mussolini had a similar relationship with Italian industry, as did Franco.

I largely agree with this but I would use the word rebirth instead of return. The idea behind palingenesis is that it's not a return to the past per se, but the creation of an entirely new kind of society which contains the essence of the old. If you use the metaphor of the phoenix, it dies and is reborn, and dies and is reborn again. But it's not the same phoenix. It gets weird because you'll see the Nazis praise romantic depictions of the ancestral German past, while giving the expressionist painter Edvard Munch (of "The Scream") a state funeral and accelerating work on massive highway construction projects, giant totalitarian buildings and sophisticated war machines. When fascists talk about returning to the past, I don't think they mean it literally, but as a mobilizing myth and a way to justify their power.

Now this might seem contradictory. I think that's a reasonable argument. But I also don't think fascism is simply backwards-looking. It is backwards-looking but I'd phrase it something like "let's boldly go forward into the past" complete with a programmatic and totalitarian system for organizing the entire social lives of its subjects. It's modernist while being anti-modernity.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 16, 2013

# ¿ Aug 16, 2013 00:12

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Install Windows posted:

Yeah to be clear I'm not saying "fundamentalist" Christianity is fascist, just that it comes out of the same quite modern concepts while claiming to reject modern things as corrupt.

I wouldn't say fundamentalist Christianity is fascist, but American-style fascism has adapted itself to American culture by using fundamentalist Christianity has a mobilizing force. Take a look at Gerald L. K. Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade. He's responsible for this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_of_the_Ozarks

And he built a Christian theme park in the area which I think has either closed in recent years or been on life support.

Another way of thinking about fascism is that it shares with fundamentalist Christianity "a deeper impulse, namely the drive to formulate a new social order capable of redeeming humanity from the growing chaos and crisis resulting from modernity�s devastation of traditional securities."

quote:

Seen in this way a major paradox lies at the heart of modernism: its emotional wellspring is not modern. Rather it lies in a primordial human drive to erect what sociologist Peter Berger called �a sacred canopy� to act as a shield against the terror of the void of chaos and death. Modernity, by tearing holes in that canopy, by threatening the cohesion of traditional culture and its capacity to absorb change, triggers an instinctive self-defensive reflex to repair it by reasserting �eternal� values and truths that transcend the ephemerality of individual existence. If the canopy is damaged beyond repair the conditions are created for what is known to anthropologists as a �revitalisation movement� that seeks to erect an entire new canopy, a new metaphysical sky to make the world anew.

From this perspective modernism is a radical reaction against modernity. At its most programmatic and utopian, it is a bid to stem the tide of �decadence� by constructing an alternative modernity on the other side of contemporary society�s structural and moral self-destruction. It is against this background that racist variants of nationalism emerged. These sought to revitalise a decaying society by reconnecting modern citizens with their history, their culture, their ethnic roots and the soil, not in an anti-modern spirit but in order to establish a new future.

http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/1415/springtime-for-hitler

# ¿ Aug 17, 2013 18:51

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pornographic Memory posted:

Typically "reactionary", to put it really basically, is used to mean "extremist conservative." If a conservative could be said to want to hold back change and maintain the status quo, a reactionary wants to not only prevent further progessive change in society, but to actually undo progress that's been made and make things back into how they used to be. In this sense fascism could be said to be reactionary in wanting to return the nation to some vague state of greatness based on (what they perceive to be) past values, culture, racial purity, whatever. It would be confusing to call Marxism reactionary under this use because Marxists generally want to radically change society without much particular regard to traditional culture and institutions and the like.

I mean, it's clear you meant "reactionary" in the sense of "this ideology formed in reaction to", but in political ideology-speak it's not a term typically used that way.

But I think the revolutionary/reactionary divide gets confused when talking about fascism. Fascism was also bound up in techno-futurism and high-tech fantasies, and often existed in cooperation with - but also in competition with - reactionary elites who wanted to go back to the way things were. There are some scholars now (non-Marxist ones) who argue that fascism is a distinct revolutionary ideology as distinct from liberalism and communism as they are from each other. The mythic past in fascism is not a literal return to that past, but the basis of a national reawakening and the foundation for a new society.

There's a good paper about this, I'll except the part about what makes fascism different, and also why violence is so inexorably bound up in it:

http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/resources/griffin/fasrevolution.pdf

quote:

The radical destructiveness implicit in the Nazi utopia was compounded by features intrinsic to
fascist ideology as a whole. All revolutions are by definition destructive, and prepared, even if
only in the �transitional period�, to prioritize one segment of humanity over all others which are
holding back �progress�. The liberal revolution necessitates the destruction of a feudal or
communist �ancien regime�. The communist revolution in theory requires the destruction of
bourgeois capitalism, and in practice has led to mass murder and terror on a vast scale in many
of its national variants, e.g. in Russia under Stalin, in China under Mao Tse-Tung, or in Cambodia
under Pol-Pot. Even the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 in Poland and Czechoslovakia destroyed a
Soviet colonial system which had brought to many ordinary citizens some measure of stability,
material security, and social peace all of which were quickly eradicated by the wild capitalism
which ensued.

Where the fascist revolution differs significantly from liberal (bourgeois) and Marxist
ones is that in theory these, though carried out locally, aimed to establish bridge-heads in the
territorial battle against the �old order� in a process which would one day bring benefits to
humanity on a global scale. One of these benefits was to be international peace. Certainly there
was talk in the inter-war period of a �universal� fascism and a number of attempts at forging
international linkages with like-minded movements, linkages which post-1945 fascism has
continued to cultivate and which have become truly global in the 1990s with the advent of the
Internet. Moreover, both the Fascists and the Nazis saw themselves as saving, not just their
nation from decadence, but �civilization� as a whole. Nevertheless, the main focus of fascism has
always been the �home� nation, not �humanity�, and its revolution in that sense is a highly
sectional one. It was Italians whom Fascists wanted to revitalize by reawakening in them the
heroic qualities of the Ancient Romans, while the Nazis resorted to the most extreme measures
imaginable in order to weld all healthy ethnic Germans into a unified national community, or
Volksgemeinschaft.

Another important difference lies in the fact that, unlike the liberal or Marxist, the fascist
cannot envisage a �steady state� of society which has reached a point of social equilibrium and
calm. To a fascist stasis means, not a welcome stability, but stagnation, entropy, and death.
Fascism is thus driven to perpetuate the dynamism of the revolutionary moment that brought
it to power, to create the conditions of �permanent revolution�. A radical, eugenically fixated
fascist regime such as the one which the Nazis actually installed (and others such as the
Romanian Iron Guard or contemporary American neo-Nazis have only been able to dream of
establishing) is forced by its own logic to preside over a constant process of creation and
destruction: the establishment of the �new state� must be accompanied by destroying or
coordinating the old system.

For the fascist revolutionary, then, destruction of enemies is thus neither nihilistic nor
inhuman, but an integral aspect of a permanent revolution. The principle which logically follows
from the mythic premises of his world view is one of destroying to build, or what one fascist
thinker has called �creative nihilism�. The fascist transforms or (in the case of Nazism)
surgically removes the �unhealthy� elements of the nation so that it can be regenerated, prunes
the national tree of its dead branches and excess foliage so that it can grow better, preserves at
least his segment of humanity from the ravages of decadence and the threat of being �swamped�
by �inferior� cultures and races so that civilization can be saved.

And whether fascism has material or immaterial goals: they're quite material:

quote:

The stress I have placed on the subjective dimension of the Fascist revolution should not,
however, detract attention from the changes which both regimes sought to bring about in external
reality. For example, while neither the Fascist nor Nazi state wanted to abolish capitalist
economics and private property, they had no scruples about involving themselves with the
economy on a scale unprecedented in any liberal state except in wartime, whether through the
corporative system as in Italy, or through cartelization and huge state industries as in Germany.
In the build-up to the Second World War both regimes also pursued the goal of self-sufficiency
(autarky), the Nazis to the point of creating a vast European empire whose material and human
resources (i.e. foreign workers and concentration camp inmates by the million) were ruthlessly
exploited for the good of the Third Reich. When large industrial firms such as Krupp, Daimler
Benz, or IG Farben made high-tech products with slave labour it was hardly business as usual
for capitalism.

Both regimes also indulged in a massive programme of social engineering which involved
creating mass organizations for every social grouping, retooling the educational system,
symbolically appropriating all aspects of leisure, sport, culture, and technology, whether by
associating them with the genius of the new state (as in Italy) or through enforced coordination
and social control (as in Germany). The goal common to both regimes, however, was to create
a thoroughly fascistized cultural habitat in which a new type of human being, the fascist �new
man� (and woman), would spontaneously emerge, instinctively and joyfully prepared to devote
all their talents, idealism, and energy to the cause of the nation. Vast public works such as the
building of motor-ways and (in Italy) the draining of marshes, the Nazi plans to rebuild the centre
of Berlin on a monumental scale and rename the city �Germania�, the radical overhaul of the
educational system to mass-produce Fascist or Nazi values: these were hardly symptoms of a
purely �subjective� revolution. It was the sheer scale on which both regimes were prepared to
mobilize the nation�s human and physical resources to pursue their territorial claims on Europe,
and the horrifying extent to which the Nazis carried out their scheme to create a racially pure and
healthy Third Reich which is the most eloquent testimony to the revolutionary dynamic of
fascism.

Fascism was not just a revolution of values, an attempt to make a clean break with the
liberal, humanist, and eventually Christian traditions, but a concerted effort to deploy the
unprecedented capacity of the modern state for social engineering to bring about a fundamental
transformation in the way society was going to be run and every one of its inhabitants was going
to live. It took a massive effort by the British, the Americans and the Russians to create a military
machine sufficiently powerful to prevent the Nazis from turning even more of their utopian
fantasies into grim realities.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Sep 9, 2013

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 09:14

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

rudatron posted:

I can't agree with this. The fact that fascism has no endpoint, no stable node, to me means that the transformation that fascists are after only exists in metaphor, it does not and cannot exist in reality. The fascists transformation has no basis in materialism. The fact that they kill/exile/oppress for the sake of it is what makes it tragic and pointless. In that sense, I cannot call it a modern way of thinking, but pseudo-modern. If you read people like plato, you'll notice that they tend to fixate on ideas of 'virtue' when talking about politics. The liberal revolution is understanding that a 'virtuous' view of history and society tells you jack-poo poo, you have to talk about a human subject and the environment they are in. Socialism inherited that as well, it's why historical materialism is one of the factors behind Marxism. Fascism is the inheritance of the old virtue-based perspective on history and society, combined with the products of modern thinking (technology and bureaucracy). Copying the results without doing the working, as it were.

I'd actually go out on a limb and claim that libertarianism is a kind of Market Fascism (everything within the market, nothing outside the market, nothing against the market) because of it's focus on specific entrepreneurs and 'captains of industry' as part of it's perspective on economics. Everyone does best in never-ending competition, the free market is best because it allows virtuous people to impose their will on everyone else, etc, etc.

I think libertarianism and fascism also share the sense of unleashing the powers of human will. I remember in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that the state (which was based on Stalinism but had fascistic qualities, it is a general totalitarianism) had no laws as such. It's in the interest of totalitarian ideologies like fascism to break down established legal codes because it's an obstacle to the untrammeled will to power. It's interesting that libertarianism's chief political icon in the U.S. in recent years has now gone back to speaking at schismatic and traditionalist Catholic events with Italian neo-fascists now that's retired. There's this sense you get from libertarians that they need a dynamic "captain" to overthrow corrupted legislative bodies and impose his will.

On the part about fascism being pseudo-modern: I would call it anti-modern modernism. Fascism seeks to construct an alternative form of modernism in response to modernity wrecking traditional values and securities. It wants to impose a universal order, aesthetic and way of life based on older "eternal" myths but also use totalitarian and programmatic means to construct a new society.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Sep 9, 2013

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 10:20

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Yeah. If anything, liberal democracies tend to be (initially) more sympathetic towards fascists as they act as bullyboys and curbstompers towards the hated and feared Reds, see also how post-Weimar German society, still fairly liberal and not yet heavily Nazified, by and large breathed a sigh of relief after Hitler came to power and "cleaned up the streets" ie: arrested and/or deported the communists and socialists. It wasn't until after everything went south and the Red Army had steamrolled into Berlin that German moderates suddenly remembered they'd always hated fascism and were really its first victims when you stop to think about it.

Similarly, the liberal West, here defined at the US and its allies during the Cold War, had no problem with quasi-fascist/reactionary nationalists all over Central and South America rounding up and disappearing inconvenient socialists. I mean, I get that popularly, at least in America, "fascist" is still a harsher accusation to toss around than "socialist" (though not by much, due to right-wing talking heads having muddied those waters as furiously as they can for the last several decades), but historically liberal states tend to be much more afraid of native socialists than fascist encroachment. Often as they incorrectly presume the latter can be kept on a leash, whereas the former is the stalking horse of the International Communist Conspiracy or ZOG or whatever.

I agree with a lot of this particularly regarding U.S. and allied support for quasi/proto-fascist movements in Latin America and Europe, but you don't want to let communist states entirely off the hook either. North Korea was a Soviet allied state that was and still is outright national socialist (maybe even more so than any state the U.S. and NATO ever armed and equipped) in everything but name and the color of the flag. I'm not sure liberal states ever signed anything as heinous as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But historically I suppose it was true during the 1920s and during the Cold War.

Edit:

Interestingly, the DIA considers "aggressive authoritarian capitalism" a greater threat to the U.S. today. Socialism doesn't even make the list. We should show this to right-wingers and freak them out.

^ Michael T. Flynn

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Sep 9, 2013

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 10:42

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Cerebral Bore posted:

This, of course, is nothing but the old, tired liberal talking point that socialists must adopt losing tactics because of the dear ~moral high ground~. This is bullshit. Stalin had tried to form an anti-Axis alliance with the UK and France before and was rebuffed. Stalin even offered to intervene on the side of Czechoslovakia during the Sudet crisis and was rebuffed. So why the gently caress should he trust and/or cooperate with the western governments who quite openly wanted to topple the USSR and had just handed Hitler, whose desire to topple the USSR was as open as open can be, a huge victory without a single shot fired?

You have this backwards. It was the UK and France that tried to bring Stalin into a defensive alliance over Poland, and Stalin rebuffed them, because Stalin believed that the western governments weren't seriously going to fight over Eastern Europe. He was wrong but he had reasons to believe they wouldn't.

But there was also an ideological reason: the Soviets didn't consider fascism to be that different from capitalism. Fascism was considered to be a deformation of capitalism instead of a distinct (and competing, revolutionary ideology), and the Soviets through the Popular Front had already defined social democrats as "social fascists" and they had an alliance there - so why not an alliance with German fascists? The Soviet Union had good relations with capitalist Weimar Germany, so Nazi Germany wasn't that different, from the Soviet point of view.

Plus, a non-aggression pact made sense as a matter of realpolitik: let the "capitalist" states fight and bleed each other. It gave Stalin half of Poland, gave him the go-ahead to attack Finland, and freed up Stalin's forces to pivot against Japan (which Stalin felt was the real threat). He then drastically miscalculated the German build-up in 1941 and nearly lost the war.

Anyways, I initially brought up the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not to boost liberalism's moral high ground.* Just to respond to someone else who said liberalism has an awful record of collaboration with fascists, which is true, but then mentioned Marxists favorably (in an attempt to boost Marxists' moral high ground). I'm really saying: pot. kettle. black.

Antwan3K posted:

It is indeed impossible to regard Nazism as a 19th century-type reactionary ideology, akin to say French legitimists or American southern planters. A very interesting take I read some years ago was that Nazi violence is - as you say - anti-modernist but very modern in that it directly employs modern ideas but radicalises and re-contextualizes them. For example, you can say the Nazis waged an imperialist war, but instead of Africa they wanted to settle Germans in Eastern Europe. You can also read the perverse factory discipline of the death camp as inherently modernist (as it necessitates modern logistical and 'production' methods), only employing them to destroy instead of producing.
Of course, scientific racism, total warfare and numerous other cornerstones of Nazi ideology are also very much modern in origin.

Oh yeah. Also think of Nazi architecture.

* Ok. Maybe I'm trying to boost it a little bit. But hey, the Soviet Union did do most of the fighting in World War 2 and you can't really beat that in the anti-fascist credibility department.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Sep 9, 2013

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 14:50

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Cerebral Bore posted:

Have we already run out of excuses? You know, for explaining away the fact that western liberals literally hired the fash to be their henchmen in post-war Europe?

Which is totally unlike how the Stasi operated in the DDR. No Nazi war criminals or ex-Gestapo in that organization no siree. :rolleyes:

Edit: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/ns-verbrecher-und-stasi-wer-nazi-war-bestimmen-wir-a-397473.html

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Sep 9, 2013

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 16:34

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Captain_Maclaine posted:

He's exaggerating a bit, but there have been more prominent (though still not particularly credible) sources on the American far right that have for some time now gone out of their way to play up the S in NSDAP. In particular, I recall back when Glenn Beck still had a show on FOX he interviewed the chairman of the CPUSA (if I remember the party right) and repeated referred to his party's platforms as "nationalized socialism" in like every other sentence to dribble from his mouth. Also, you might consider the unfortunate popularity of prodigal cretin Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism another indication of this move to equate fascism with the left.

I wouldn't consider Goldberg part of the far right in a Glenn Beck sense, but his book is the most well-known of all that.

It's interesting to track down Paxton and Griffin's critiques of it. These are two of the more well-known historians of fascism and they're normally very respectable in tone and they told him his book was garbage; like, this is loving stupid. Unfortunately you also have the National Bolsheviks and people who are really into Gregor Strasser running around who just end up confusing people.

I see it most often on the far right libertarian end. Where statist = left therefore Nazis = statists = left. And I want to blow my brains out.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 17:28

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

NikkolasKing posted:

Of some relevance, I was involved in one of the never-ending topics of "who was worse, Hitler/the Nazis or Stalin/the Russians?" and a man poster characterized Stalin as merely selfish while Hitler was evil. This was because Stalin merely killed people as a byproduct while Hitler set out to kill people on purpose.

This was a very peculiar view to take, to say the least. I didn't question it because who am I to tell anyone their views of good and evil are wrong? But the point is that Stalin is interpreted in two ways: a typical power-mad dictator who had no higher ideals than consolidating his own rule, or a "true believer" who was still trying to carry out the glorious revolution of the proletariat.

Either way, I regard them both as evil monsters, and I don't think the victims of Soviet collectivization who all starved to death are gonna forgive Uncle Joe just because their deaths were "accidents."

Yes but I don't think it's a very difficult question. Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was terrible but also clearly preferable (!) to Nazi domination of Eastern Europe. Just taking a glance at Generalplan-Ost or whatever it's called: that is enough to close the book on that argument. The ultimate Nazi aim was to kill people on a scale maybe not seen since the genocide of the American Indians.

I've heard some people say that liberals fear communists more than fascists, but I dunno. It seems like the liberal states would have sided with the Nazis against the Soviet Union in that case, as some conservatives did favor. Even if it's true, though, it'd be a catastrophic mistake since fascism is clearly the greater threat to everybody. Ultimately, a communist world and a liberal capitalist world were able to co-exist for much of the 20th century without descending into general war.

I just don't really buy it. "But in 1919 in Germany..." and you have a point. But both sides did form an alliance to defeat Hitler and can sit in the same room together without pulling knives out. You can't really say that liberals fear the International Socialist Organization or whoever more than they do the Ku Klux Klan or even the Tea Party. The liberals I know in my city are going to protests with Marxists and they think the Tea Party are just crazy, Hitler-like people and don't want anything to do with them. So I don't know what universe you are all living in.

rudatron posted:

Read that as code for 'China' rather than as any self-conscious economic policy.

But who said it was self-conscious?

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Sep 11, 2013

# ¿ Sep 11, 2013 10:42

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Yeah he owned newbs by the millions. Awesome K/D ratio.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Sep 11, 2013

# ¿ Sep 11, 2013 10:49

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

I'm glad Emden and NikkolasKing are posting because presumably if you wanted to learn more about fascism you should talk to actual fascists.

One thing that stands out is that both talk about feeling a sense of existential ennui and loss of meaning and purpose in life. One person is mixed race and from Detroit, a city which has had its sense of community, cohesion and ability to absorb change wrecked by neoliberal economics. The individual is lost in that environment, so he's become attracted to an ideology that asserts eternal values that transcend his individuality and promise a revitalization of the entire community and the creation of a new social order that will sweep the nation and the world. Like you're sitting in your apartment in a city somewhere and you think you're part of this elite, militant movement that's going to take over the world. It's wild stuff.

The other thing (and excuse me for treating you like a laboratory animal) is that he describes himself as a cynical young guy who has an anxiety about being hip. That's interesting because it shows that fascism is attractive as a form of counter-culture or dissident movement. Historical fascists movements, if you remember, were not staffed by traditional elites but a lot of students, cynics, veterans, artists and journalists. (I think Joseph Goebbels was a dropout and a poet before he joined the Nazi movement.) Like right-wing hipsters.

I also think it's interesting that one was a former communist and the other says he has an affinity for the radical left. There was a story I read once where a journalist out drinking during Weimar Germany needed a place to crash, so a friend he met that night offered to put him up. They go back to his space in a rented-out attic, and the journalist is shocked that the walls are covered in Nazi propaganda, portraits of Hitler, and the like. The journalist asks: "Wow, don't you think this a bit much?" And the guy replies: "No you should have seen it six months ago. I was a communist then!" It used to be all red flags of socialism and so on.

ErichZahn posted:

you subhuman piece of poo poo.

That might make you feel good but I don't think that's going to convince him.

Pesmerga posted:

It sounds more like you're desperate to feel a sense of belonging to something, and you're reaching around for whatever that may be. It might be an idea to drop the fascism, and consider counselling.

That's a better way but they're both talking about real anxieties. I think a better way is to say: look, it's perfectly normal to feel this way. Fascism did actually take power in two countries and had widespread popular support, it's not outside the realm of human experience or understanding. You're not crazy or insane, but this isn't the right way to go about things. In both cases it led to the destruction of those societies. There was some really unprecedented destruction involved. And then one of them says he's moving away from fascism and towards religion because humans are fallible and imperfect. And that's why you should reject fascism. Utopian promises in the hands of imperfect people will fail and create a dystopia.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 00:04

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

I'm also skeptical Golden Dawn higher-ups would have ordered it. This reads like a better theory:

quote:

Speculation is rife that the leadership of Golden Dawn may have lost control over a party whose grassroots supporters view themselves as soldiers in an armed struggle aimed at overthrowing a political establishment they blame for the country's woes.

"It is up to the government now to deal with Golden Dawn once and for all," said Giorgos Kyrtsos, a prominent political commentator. "We know very little about the inner workings of Golden Dawn, and whether its leadership has lost control [over its members]. But what we do know is that, for the first time, the government has them in a corner."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/18/greece-ban-golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas

I'm part of the non-Marxist brigade in this thread but I think we can all come together and hope Greece will smash Golden Dawn into the pavement.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 22:25

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

It's my view that you should be very careful with violence/antifa action.

I don't think fascists should be physically assaulted simply for having fascist views or demonstrating. But I also think there's such a thing as a red line and that when they cross it, everyone should get together and just smash them. If your political party kills someone then you don't get to be a political party any more. You're a terrorist group.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 06:52

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Mans posted:

Again, bashing leftists for what basically defending themselves ignores the center-left social democrats (or liberals in the U.S.) simply putzing around desperatly searching for a middle ground and always siding with the right.

Germany in 1919 was in a state of civil war with artillery being used to shell left-wing armed group that had seized power in several cities and were attempting to overthrow the national government. I wouldn't try to draw sweeping conclusions about how social democratic and liberal regimes behave considering the extraordinary and singular circumstances of the war. Twenty-two years later, liberal and communist regimes would be in alliance against Hitler.

Mans posted:

Since center leftists have a mind of their own they should also be responsible for their actions. In fact, when you look at the last two decades of European politics, the center-left should be considered in even worse terms than the right.

According to what terms?

# ¿ Sep 22, 2013 00:15

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

BBC reports the arrest is on charges of criminal conspiracy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24314319

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 07:42

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Keep in mind there wasn't much of a choice then as now.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 08:03

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Gen. Ripper posted:

Do tell?

Whether or not it'll harm the fortunes of the Golden Dawn is a secondary question, I think. Hitler had to be arrested because he attempted a coup. Likewise the Golden Dawn is a criminal syndicate like the mafia. Even if it doesn't hurt them over the long run, they should still be put in jail.

Edit: It's a pretty major crackdown. Thirty members arrested or being hunted by the police, including Mihaloliakos, the chief spokesman, and the party's general secretary.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Sep 28, 2013

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 09:40

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Emden posted:

I'm actually grateful for recent events. For one it finally puts an end to the standard left analysis of fascism in which fascism is lead into power by the bourgeoisie in weak liberal states. Secondly because the arrest and persecution of the Golden Dawn will probably make them stronger/more sympathetic to the Greek public at large.

Or the reverse happens: swing voters move back to New Democracy and Golden Dawn's ability to organize and build support is gravely weakened; offices shut down across the country; etc.

There's a chance this could benefit Golden Dawn in the long run, depending on how they play it, but I don't think many in the Golden Dawn are grateful that their party is being outlawed.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 23:42

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Orange Devil posted:

Ok imagine you get your biggest wish politically, what would society look like if you could reshape it to your vision?

The Strength-Through-Homer Car.

LngBolt posted:

I've heard other people who say they're in Greece really emphasize point 1.
Overall what's very interesting to me, as an American, is to see people's reactions to Golden Dawn. The typical American urban liberal professionals are just hoping that the Greek government will crack down. But when you ask them, so what happens if the Greek government is all just doing this to look good, but continues to allow killings? What should the response be then? The total [learned] helplessness that characterizes the liberal response shows their fundamental weakness. It's why I simply cannot take those people seriously, they're loving weak.

Well hopefully the Greek government continues to crack down. Here's what I'm reading:

quote:

By NEKTARIA STAMOULI And ALKMAN GRANITSAS
ATHENS�Greece moved to effectively to outlaw the country's far-right Golden Dawn party over the weekend, in the boldest step yet to address the extremism that has boiled to the surface over the past few years stemming from Greece's protracted economic crisis.

The party's chief Nikos Michaloliakos, three lawmakers and more than a dozen other party members were arrested early Saturday on charges of founding and participating in a criminal organization following a high-profile murder allegedly connected to a party member.

[...]

Center-right New Democracy, which dominates the country's two-party coalition government, has been criticized for soft-pedaling the threat posed by Golden Dawn in an effort to lure back some of its traditional voters who have drifted to the far-right party. New Democracy has dismissed the criticism, saying it was the first to condemn the recent acts of violence.

"The arrests represent a turnaround by the government," said Ilias Nikolakopoulos, a political scientist at Athens University. "So far it has decided to tolerate Golden Dawn, now it is leading the charge to repress the party and is going to do that by using the antiterrorism law."

[...]

But the real issue is what comes next. The arrested lawmakers don't lose their political rights or seats in parliament, unless there is a final court ruling against them. If the lawmakers decide to resign, it could prompt by-elections in 15 regions around the country where it holds seats.

On Saturday, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras ruled out the possibility of snap elections.

"Justice, stability, without elections," Mr. Samaras told reporters after meeting with Greece's justice and public reforms ministers to discuss the Golden Dawn case. "The case is now in the hands of the justice system."

[...]

Five days later a Supreme Court deputy prosecutor completed a preliminary investigation against the group that included testimony from immigrant groups, journalists and unidentified former party members. In a nine-page report, the party is described as a crime gang and Mr. Michaloliakos at its leader. The charges include 10 counts of murder and attempted murder, blackmail, and money laundering.

Being a member of a criminal gang is a felony under Greek law and prosecutors can now pursue criminal charges against any member of the group, including its entire leadership, regardless of whether they had any connection with specific violent acts.

Mr. Dendias has also moved to overhaul the Greek police�which has been accused by immigrant and left-wing groups of turning a blind eye to Golden Dawn's activities. Seven senior police officials have been replaced or transferred for what Mr. Dendias said was their failure to take a tough-enough line against the group.

Two of the officials handed in resignation letters saying they had resigned for personal reasons; the others have not commented publicly.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Sep 29, 2013

# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 21:58

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

It wasn't just the Weimar government. Almost no one saw the threat for what it was. People didn't have historical hindsight at how new and dangerous the fascist movement really was.

I think we might tend to get too into this Weimar tunnel vision. Note that the United States didn't crack down on Coughlin, L.K. Smith, et al. with force until after Pearl Harbor. What made the U.S. different from Germany?

# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 22:34

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

I didn't make the connection at first but Golden Dawn MP Giorgos Germenis was one of the arrested. He's the bassist in this band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1-BfZ7Jnc

# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 21:43

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

bpower posted:

I'd love to know if these arrests were already on the way before the recent murder. If they weren't its really dodgy. Did they just find out this stuff recently or were they sitting on this information for ages?

Me too. Everyone knows that there are elements within the security services that support Golden Dawn; and that Golden Dawn had infiltrated the security services to some extent. You have to wonder if it was mutual. Golden Dawn for the state was a reserve force and an extra-legel paramilitary force. Now that Golden Dawn has gotten out of control, the idea is: it's now time to sever our relationship and use that dossier that's been building for the past few years juuust in case this didn't work out.

The hand of the state giveth and also taketh away, basically.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Oct 1, 2013

# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 22:45

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

With parties like the FPO shouldn't you make a distinction between fascism and post-fascism? The FPO seems to embrace similar but not-outright-fascist concepts like national conservatism. But there's no armed vanguard or party militia, the party is populist but not revolutionary like the Golden Dawn. Could you say, if the FPO became Austria's governing party, that it would voluntarily relinquish power once it loses an election? You certainly can't say that about the Golden Dawn. Am I being unreasonable? Is their racism more extreme than the Republican Party in the U.S.?

QUILT_MONSTER_420 posted:

I always thought the FP�'s panicked racism was hilarious as well as reprehensible, because it ompletely misjudges the threat.

Its not gen. 1/.5 immigrants or loving, I dunno, bilingual street signs in K�rnten that present a mortal threat to Austrian culture and Austrian language: its American popular culture, English as international language of business / tourism / science / computing, and Hochdeutsch.

I wonder if the FPO realizes this. I think they probably do but don't focus on it as much for strategic reasons.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Oct 7, 2013

# ¿ Oct 7, 2013 00:43

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 14:07

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Emden posted:

I'm slightly younger than you are and I can't even get a poo poo low pay job. I work temporary jobs which are a rung below the worst of the worst. I don't even have the security of a minimum number of hours. We have no future in this country at all.

You're below the age of 21 and work temporary jobs? That is totally outrageous! You are entitled to so much more!

Perhaps you work lousy jobs at 19, or 20, or whichever age you are because you are 19 or 20 and that's the kinds of jobs people work at that age because no one trusts you with any responsibility because why should they?

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 20:36

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > A return of Fascism in Europe?

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