June 05, 2005

Fascism and how to recognise it.
  • ah, fascism, smells like... ...napalm in the morning...
  • Good, but I found the post just before this one offers a better and more well thought out commentary on the situation in the US today.
  • Boobs = fascism
  • Why do you hate America?
  • If you really want a great analysis of fascism, what it is and how close we are, check out Orcinus. His "Rise of Psuedo-Fascism" link on the left column leads to a PDF of what was originally seven essays, and is chilling in its conclusions.
  • Glad to see the Right does not have a monopoly on false historical analogies! Seriously, this is awful. Suharto a fascist?! And then there is "8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined." Not under Mussolini, who made separation of church and state one of the basic tenets of facism (along with progressive taxation. Or under Hitler, whose facsism also had an anti-clerical strain. "13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption" misses the mark as well, most fascist parties rose to power on anti-corruption platforms, arguing that corruption was an inevitable part of democratic decadence, and that fascist discipline was the answer. And surely the identifying characteristics of fascism are a single political party and a command economy, neither of which are listed. Look, I don't like Bush. But this kind of silliness does us no good.
  • In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. Hence, all the victims of 9/11 were in fact "heroes".
  • Oh, anybody can string together these stories to make the administration look bad, but it doesn't prove that they are fascists! After all, the trains NEVER run on time.
  • Ah yes deconstructo, but the planes to and from Iraq do run on time.
  • On the subject of fascism and religion, I found this fascinating: Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism: Reflections on Fascism and Religion
  • Look, I don't like Bush. But this kind of silliness does us no good. Hmm, you're right. Disagreement with where our country appears to be headed doesn't do any good. Care to share that sandpile so we can all bury our heads? The Republiban have not yet achieved the level of Fascism in Italy pre-WWII, but it is a good idea to at least keep an eye on what they're doing and where they're going, because is sure seems like that's what they're aiming for.
  • So Fascism isn't a good cach-all word for our current Tyranny-in-Development. Nobody ever succeeded in Tyranny and Mass-Murder by duplicating any previous Tyrant's playbook, least of all the ones who lost World War II. That's what we call repeating History by not learning from it. All you need to take over the world is this simple Formula for Greatness.
  • So if they're not fascists, what are they?
  • drivingmenuts: Hmm, you're right. Disagreement with where our country appears to be headed doesn't do any good. Now where did I say that again?
  • So if they're not fascists, what are they? Rich
  • "So if they're not fascists, what are they?" On the way to being rich despots. Despotism (wikipedia) Despotism, Encyclopaedia Britannica Films 1946 (11 min)
  • A rich despot worse than fascist dictator or better?
  • Or under Hitler, whose facsism also had an anti-clerical strain
    Apart from you know, the whole cuttting deals with Pius.
  • I've only ever lived in a "democracy". I'm not sure that terms such as "facism" "nazism" "communism" or "pacifism" can be understood unless lived in (or under or during). No expert I, but I think the Bush administration is a great example of "corruption" over a long period of time. Maybe call it "power".
  • Umberto Eco lived under fascism.
  • Argh nails it, Oligarchy comes the closest to fitting the current administration of anything.
  • No fan of Bush here, but the US is still very much a democracy. You still have elections, and despite the rumoured electoral fraud, half the voters chose Bush. Interestingly for foes or fascism: two governments that more closely fit that label were pre-invasion Afghanistan and pre-invasion Iraq. Make what you will of that.
  • Abiezer, that Eco article is great. Thanks for posting. one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class This, I think is the missing element. You can't have fascism without active participation by a large part of the population. To get that, they need to be really pissed off. When the Dow hits 1000, that's when fascism is likely to rear its head. That or perhaps a nuclear attack on an American city. Another sign that the US is not a fascist state is that there are all these people on this thread saying that it is. When fascists take over, you'd get the midnight-knock-on-the- door for your trouble.
  • Fucking retards. Buy "Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. That will give you an educated point of view on what the symptoms and causes of totalitarianism are. While there's some disagreement about the weight she gives individual points, on the whole a better book about the theory of totalitarianism has never been written. Trying to call Bush & Co. fascists instead of oligarchic plutocrats is insane and ignorant.
  • >Buy "Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. That will give you an educated point of view on what the symptoms and causes of totalitarianism are. While there's some disagreement about the weight she gives individual points, on the whole a better book about the theory of totalitarianism has never been written. Read it with and without the 'fucking retards' and other pointless disparagements, and see if it gains or loses anything.
  • >two governments that more closely fit that label were pre-invasion Afghanistan and pre-invasion Iraq. So what we might call fascism there has been replaced by what we might call anarchy and occupation. I'm not sure that bears on our form of government here, or the form government may eventually take there.
  • I'd call it chaos, not anarchy.
  • I stand corrected. (I'd go on to say I'm not convinced there's a practical difference, but I don't want to start The Anarchy Argument....)
  • " Read it with and without the 'fucking retards' and other pointless disparagements, and see if it gains or loses anything." What the hell are you even on about? Calling Bush and friends fascist demonstrates an amazing lack of nuance and sophistication with regard to political ideologies. It's this type of lazy rhetoric that allows the right to group protesters in with terrorists. That's retarded.
  • (And Stan, there's a very salient difference between anarchy and chaos. Anarchy means the lack of a state or government, chaos means the lack of order. International law is a realm of anarchy, but not generally chaos. Iraq has a government, no matter how illegitimate or inept they seem.)
  • Are we allowed to call people "fucking retards" while rebutting a charge of fascism? I'm not sure about accepted etiquette here, but I venture to guess that Miss Manners wouldn't like it much. So cut it out, js, you dick!
  • >(And Stan, there's a very salient difference between anarchy and chaos. Anarchy means the lack of a state or government, chaos means the lack of order. International law is a realm of anarchy, but not generally chaos. Iraq has a government, no matter how illegitimate or inept they seem.) Now I stand really corrected. You're absolutely right. >What the hell are you even on about? ...That's retarded. But you're still coming off like a dick. Why converse with retards? Ain't you got nothin' better to do?
  • What he's going on about, js, is that lately you sound like you haven't been taking your meds.
  • I apologize. I get frustrated with the yobbo interpretation of "OH NOES!!! ITS TEH FASCISM" that this brings to politics, but I probably shouldn't take it out on you. As for the "what the hell?" I could sense the general gist, but the syntax left me head scratching. So, I'll retract "retarded" and put forth "moronic" to the claims that this web checklist actually has anything to do with fascism. And watching politics repeatedly become the focus of inane and peurile "analysis" is nothing I feel ashamed about feeling is frustrating.
  • I want a T-shirt that says, "OH NOES!!! ITS TEH FASCISM".
  • Latest Orcinus: The drums of elimination
  • Say, did Rummy ever get around to cleaning up the radiological materials left lying around Iraq?
  • What's wrong with "Islamo-fascism"? For starters, it's a terrible historical analogy. Italian Fascism, German Nazism and other European fascist movements of the 1920s and '30s were nationalist and secular, closely allied with international capital and aimed at creating powerful, up-to-date, all-encompassing states. Some of the trappings might have been anti-modernist -- Mussolini looked back to ancient Rome, the Nazis were fascinated by Nordic mythology and other Wagnerian folderol -- but the basic thrust was modern, bureaucratic and rational. You wouldn't find a fascist leader consulting the Bible to figure out how to organize the banking system or the penal code or the women's fashion industry. Even its anti-Semitism was "scientific": The problem was the Jews' genetic inferiority and otherness, which countless biologists, anthropologists and medical researchers were called upon to prove -- not that the Jews killed Christ and refused to accept the true faith. Call me pedantic, but if only to remind us that the worst barbarities of the modern era were committed by the most modern people, I think it is worth preserving "fascism" as a term with specific historical content.
  • Islam is a religion. Fascism is a system of government. There's no necessary correspondence between the two.
  • That article is worth copying in here - the next paragraph: Second, and more important, "Islamo-fascism" conflates a wide variety of disparate states, movements and organizations as if, like the fascists, they all want similar things and are working together to achieve them. Neocons have called Saddam Hussein and the Baathists of Syria Islamo-fascists, but these relatively secular nationalist tyrants have nothing in common with shadowy, stateless, fundamentalist Al Qaeda -- as even Bush now acknowledges -- or with the Taliban, who want to return Afghanistan to the seventh century; and the Taliban aren't much like Iran, which is different from (and somewhat less repressive than) Saudi Arabia -- whoops, our big ally in the Middle East! Who are the "Islamo-fascists" in Saudi Arabia -- the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents? It was under the actually existing US-supported government that female students were forced back into their burning school rather than be allowed to escape unveiled. Under that government people are lashed and beheaded, women can't vote or drive, non-Muslim worship is forbidden, a religious dress code is enforced by the state through violence and Wahhabism -- the "Islamo-fascist" denomination--is exported around the globe.
  • and following: "Islamo-fascism" looks like an analytic term, but really it's an emotional one, intended to get us to think less and fear more. It presents the bewildering politics of the Muslim world as a simple matter of Us versus Them, with war to the end the only answer, as with Hitler. If you doubt that every other British Muslim under the age of 30 is ready to blow himself up for Allah, or that shredding the Constitution is the way to protect ourselves from suicide bombers, if you think that Hamas might be less popular if Palestinians were less miserable, you get cast as Neville Chamberlain, while Bush plays FDR. "Islamo-fascism" rescues the neocons from harsh verdicts on the invasion of Iraq ("cakewalk... roses... sweetmeats... Chalabi") by reframing that ongoing debacle as a minor chapter in a much larger story of evil madmen who want to fly the green flag of Islam over the capitals of the West. Suddenly it's just a detail that Saddam wasn't connected with 9/11, had no WMDs, was not poised to attack the United States or Israel -- he hated freedom, and that was enough. It doesn't matter, either, that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites seem less interested in uniting the umma than in murdering one another. With luck we'll be so scared we won't ask why anyone should listen to another word from people who were spectacularly wrong about the biggest politico-military initiative of the past thirty years, and their balding heads will continue to glow on our TV screens for many nights to come. On to Tehran! It remains to be seen if "Islamo-fascism" will win back the socially liberal "security moms" who voted for Bush in 2004 but have recently been moving toward the Democrats. But the word is already getting a big reaction in the Muslim world. As I write the New York Times is carrying a full page "open letter" to Bush from the Al Kharafi Group, the mammoth Kuwaiti construction company, featuring photos of dead and wounded Lebanese civilians. "We think there is a misunderstanding in determining: "'Who deserves to be accused of being a fascist'!!!!" "Islamo-fascism" enrages to no purpose the dwindling number of Muslims who don't already hate us. At the same time, it clouds with ideology a range of situations -- Lebanon, Palestine, airplane and subway bombings, Afghanistan, Iraq -- we need to see clearly and distinctly and deal with in a focused way. No wonder the people who brought us the disaster in Iraq are so fond of it. Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.
  • This passenger, an American citizen who has the misfortune to be of Iraqi descent, the other day was compelled to remove a tee-shirt because the Arabic writing on it apparently made some of his fellow-passengers nervous. This means anyone, no matter how ignorant, or how ill-founded and irrational their suspicion is, can lodge a complaint against some other passenger and have it acted upon. There is no reason involved in this sort of thing, and very certainly no justice. But every little incident helps reinforce America's Fear Culture. And of course the terrorists win each time this happens.
  • Welcome to the United States, the land of the free brainwashed and the home of the brave spineless cowards who watch their country slip away while watching reality TV and eating trans fat-free burgers. That story makes me feel disgusted inside. That is all. Sad. *cues the Vandals* ...They say America stands for freedom But if you think you're free Try walkin into a deli And urinating on the cheese...
  • But Rush said they were just blowing off steam!
  • Excerpt from Bush's American Legion speech: On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation, the right of all people to speak and worship and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism, the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They're successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century, and history shows what the outcome will be. Umm, is it me, or does it seem like he's talking about his own adminstration??
  • who the fuck knows anymore. Goddamn they're fucking up the fabric of space/time fer crissakes
  • Didn't you hear? On 9/11, everything changed.
  • HA!
  • *peaks in, rolls eyes, and leaves*
  • *heads for door slowly
  • *yanks GramMa back with the cane I borrowed from her*
  • This passenger, an American citizen who has the misfortune to be of Iraqi descent, the other day was compelled to remove a tee-shirt because the Arabic writing on it apparently made some of his fellow-passengers nervous. It could be worse.
  • I'm gonna use that with chicks. "Hey, that shirt's making me nervous. Take it off."
  • Truly frustrating to read that link homunculus! "This is laughable, just because my name is Mohammad Salama. If we look for somebody with the last name McVeigh, should we just arrest them and harass them? I really think this has nothing to do with me." Well played Professor Salama... I feel for his family and kids. My wife, who was granted the um, conditional permanent residence status just shy of two years ago, has yet to receive her physical green card. It has been an ongoing clusterfuck in dealing with INS BCIS USCIS. It's a hot issue for me, immigration law and how it can devastate families...
  • I cannot view the current debate about the Bush Administration’s latest attempt to remove all checks on its power without thinking about how my German and Austrian grandparents must have watched with disbelief as Europe sank into the madness of fascism. I think about how unprecedented those changes were, and how difficult it must have been to believe that things could really become as bad as they did. My grandparents had once been as comfortably integrated into their communities as I am in mine. In the end their assimilation mattered not at all; they fled, leaving behind family, friends, property and possessions. Unlike millions of others, they were fortunate to escape with their lives. .
  • Yes, I think I will second that. The slippery slope has been well-oiled Indeed...
  • My grandmother hauled ass out of the homeland as crazy mustache guy rose to power. She literally pawned the family jewels to pay for the trip. Man that lady was a mean old bat!
  • The "F" Word and How To Escape From Its Clutches So we're here. No more shilly-shallying about whether America is beginning to resemble a fascist society. We're now plopped right down into it... America is fast moving itself into an authoritarian, militarist, imperial state, one that has more in common with Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitlerian Germany than with traditional American society.
  • I wish you guys would just go back to the time when y'all only denied the fundamental human rights of communists, gays, black people, witches, the Navajo, women, etc.
  • Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America: Author Stan Goff, a retired 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces, sounds a warning call that many of the historical precursors of fascism—white supremacy, militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization—are ascendant in America today.
  • Another astounding link homunculus. We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad But more telling: The dustup recently about a Marine singing a song (which was published on the Internet as a video), called ”Hadji Girl,” in which he humorously describes killing Iraqi children to the raucous applause of his fellow Marines, was hardly a blip in the corporate media.
  • Damn! I'm 55 minutes late to join!! More ridiculous behavior. Shit like this makes my nerves twitch.
  • "All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. ... What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. ... Women are by nature instruments of Satan -- they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation." -- Malleus maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published by Catholic inquisition authorities in 1485-86 (via the link)
  • they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation." And thank god, or satan, or whoever, for that.
  • Blood Shuga Bay-bay! She Has it!
  • Two Adorno references in that article homunculus, sweeeeet.
  • Part X: The Human Legacy (has links to the rest of the series).
  • Chris Hedges: The Road Map to Despotism
  • Chris Hedges on Stephen Colbert Hedges's book was discussed on MeFi here.
  • To Sinclair Lewis, who sardonically titled his 1935 dystopian novel "It Can't Happen Here," "it" plainly meant an American version of the totalitarian dictatorships that had seized power in Germany and Italy. Well it doesn't seem like we're moving away from it. Secrecy growing, Imperial presidency, unaccountability, etc. If Joe Conason had any co-joe-nays he'd give the book away as a CC-licensed .pdf. Fascist.
  • Is there anyone - on any side of this, or any other issue - who isn't peddling fear? I'm beyond sick of it. And it's counterproductive to a real solution.
  • Less counterproductive than ignoring things, methinks.
  • At this point, ignoring things is the preferred choice. Wake me if anyone has anything more intelligent to say than OMG TERRORISM or OMG FASCISM.
  • OMG, BRITNEY HAIR FOR $1MM! How's that? Nah, Mussolini got nuttin on Britney.
  • I don't know, rocket. I sometimes listen to right-wing radio (seems I'm in the car mainly for Hannity's show and some guy named Mark Levin), and these guys really do sound like they're actively trying to push anybody they can along the road to fascism. I'm dead serious; it's shocking, listening to them. They're emboldened by the steps the Bush administration has taken towards a powerful, martial form of leadership, and they want more. (i.e. "actually, the Constitution DOESN'T give everyone the right to vote, and I think that's the direction we need to head. And the libs who disagree are traitors, and should be shot dead as traitors, et cetera, ad nauseum...") And what's scary is how on board everyone who calls in is. I used to guffaw at the idea that there's a real fascist threat in the U.S., but the presence of a real, effective propaganda arm that seems quite amenable to at least some aspects of a fascist state has led me to real worry, worry which I think is legitimate. These people need to be watched and countered at every turn possible. In other words, I don't think sleeping is wise.
  • .
  • Yep. And there's more every minute, literally. You can hear it every time you turn on the radio or TV. It's a flood of bullying and hate and intolerance, every goddamn day. Awesome link, H-dawg.
  • *emails copy of Constitution to self, with similar hopes*
  • Fascists stole Cliff Richard's Eurovision victory. Surely the most monstrous of their litany of crimes?