Fascism!

[john eden]

BNP's roots remain not on the right but explicitly fascist - they are part of the neo-Nazi and neo-fascist international, such that it exists.

I think it's absolutely clear that they have their roots in outright nazism (they were selling holocaust revisionist mags out of their office/bookshop in Welling in the early 90s) but they have made an electorally sensible decision to ditch outright nazism in their policies and public face.

I have no idea if Nick Griffin or the inner circle is actually still a nazi or if he himself actually believes in the actual stated policies of his party. But certainly, the BNP as political force is fascist/nationalist but not nazi at present.

I only make a point of saying this because I don't believe people are attracted to the BNP in the main because of nazism. So there will be people (possibly the majority) who vote for them or join who are decidedly not nazis. So it is not tactically useful to oppose the BNP by exposing them as nazis.

Similarly there is little point, tactically, in trying to defeat the BNP with violence in their current form. Tho I won't shed a tear if they get the odd smack here and there.

 

[john eden]

I would rather die at the hands of a monster than make myself into one.

I'm currraaazzzzeeeeee.

I'd rather be alive and wrong, personally.

 

[nomadthethird]

I'd rather be alive and wrong, personally.

Yeah, I understand that, too. But I've never been too keen on living for the sake of it anyway.

 

[craner]

What I don't understand is when the UK media say that Griffin has turned the BNP into a 'slick electoral machine' when this kind of shit is so easy to locate.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

fascism doesn't start as an army...

right, right. just, it's easier to be an anti-fascist when the other side dresses up in Nazi regalia & yells "hey! we're fascists!". very few things are that clearcut tho. of course now most everyone knows that fascism is a very bad idea but at the time lots of people thought it was or at least might be a good idea. even some reputable people.

I just mean that it's not so easy to say "by the time they show up at your house it's too late". alright, fair enough, but when is the time to start fighting back then? where is the tipping point at which violence is defensive & not aggressive?

I just don't think it's a very good way of justifying or not justifying violence.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'd rather be alive and wrong, personally.

definitely.

plus who's "right" & "wrong" is usually decided after the fact. also I think it's much more likely you'll be a mix of the two.

 

[Tentative Andy]

Nothing intelligent to add, but bloody hell, how shifty does he look in this picture? Shiftier than Richard flaming Nixon.

 

[craner]

I don't think BNP members are as blind as they are made out to be. I'm not talking about voters. I'm talking about members. You don't join a political party without taking some interest in the policies and people who make up the voting blocs. BNP is rocked by ideological microschisms and the members all know what is at stake. Obviously some of the supposedly more "palatable" elements, like the 2007 rebel faction of Chris Jackson, Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith are simply racially-motivated extreme nationalists not, uh, Nazis. But Griffin and his henchmen expelled them from the party! This is not to mention that Stormfront is still a large part of the cadres.

 

[nikbee]

badious hypothesis is that the forms of communism that took place, and failed, in 20th century were a betrayal of the communist hypothesis..

what youre saying is too easy.. youre certainly right, as far as im concerned, with the criticism towards State Communism .. but to claim that fascist statism and communist statism were equal is crazy.. you must see the revolutionary (universal) core of, whatever, theres a million examples here, Bolshevism in its historical constellation. Communism represents an attempt to create a whole new historical and political universe. fascism is totality inscribed as totality. Communism strives for emancipation, fascism for nation/race, to put it as basically as possible.

and totality needs to be separated from totalitarian. by totality badiou implies essentially a finitude, not totality relating to the State as such (unless the state really is the finitude). the problem with State is a serious one, thats not been resolved, not with 20th century communism, obviously, but maintaining or reinscribing the emancipatory core of communism is imperative.

im afraid youre still not seeing the implications of badious ethics. let me try another example, still related to the One vs the Two. this is all from one chapter in The Century, its really worth reading. this is essentially straight from the book:

Chinese Cultural revolution: here badiou threads his idea of the One and the Two directly. Mao (the Two), believed that the socialist state must not be the policed and police-like end of mass politics, but rather, act as a stimulus towards unleashing it. Deng Xiaoping (the One) believed - since economic management is the prinicpal aspect of things - popular mobilizations were more nefarious than necessary. Mao's position at the top of the party was at stake here. The militants of the Cultural Revolution never stopped quoting Lenin's declaration, according to which in the final analysis 'the problem is that of power'.

Thus, China today.....

No, I would not kill a Nazi. I would never contribute to any violent efforts of any sort. The only time I would ever even consider resorting to violence would be if I was being directly threatened with violence at someone else's hands. And then I would only try to maim, and get free, not kill the other person.

There is nothing humanistic about taking a moral stance against violence. I believe the right to be free from violent harm is a basic right that we should extend to people (like health care, among many others)--not because I believe humans are essentially good, but because I believe humans can be very very violent, and this impulse is not conducive to healthy social interaction. Ever. I believe the negative tendencies of humans need to be fought against, not surrendered to for the sake of some cosmic Ideal (i.e. communism).

Humanism is not identical to just any moral stance. Humanism is a doctrine of essentialism that makes claims about universal traits that make humans what they are. Communists are humanists, who believe that humans are essentially "equal" and all essentially good--that it is only capitalism or unjust power structures that cause all human problems.

I am not a humanist, because I do not believe there is an essence of humanity. I believe humans are determined by several factors--biological/genetic, social, economic, linguistic, cultural, etc. I believe humans display a whole range of behaviors that is never static, unchanging, or universal. If you change the factors that determine human behavior, to the best of your ability, by refusing to support, or abide by, or further, or participate in negative, destructive behaviors (on interpersonal, cultural, and global-social levels), you change the way humans are likely to behave. Humans are not essentially any one thing. Humans are all different and always morphing into different beings.

In order to make people what I want them to be--peaceful, non-violent, non-aggressive, not petty, not psychotic, not mass hysterical creatures--it is necessary that violence be avoided at all costs. The costs of violence on human social interactions is just too great in terms of irreparable damage to be worth it, not even with the best of intentions. In fact, I believe that the means are the ends--if you are forced to use violence to bring about a regime, that regime will be violent.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

i was rereading the thread to get some coherence back in my head.. i think theres been some misunderstandings.. specifically on difference..

im sorry for not being clearer here, i didnt pick this up when i read it first time.. yes, we cant overcome difference (overcome was the wrong word. i certainly did not mean some humanist "lets hold hands and overcome difference" shit).. this is absolutely right.. what i mean is that we cannot construct a Law based on the contingency of difference. a system (philosophical, State) should construct a space for thought in which different subjective types, expressed by the truths of its time, coexist.

but what do we do about changing the situation.. arent you in a deadlock? how do we achieve change without violence (and here i mean purely subjective violence)?

 

[nikbee]

is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Philippe_Pétain

not a problem?

 

[viktorvaughn]

I think it's absolutely clear that they have their roots in outright nazism (they were selling holocaust revisionist mags out of their office/bookshop in Welling in the early 90s) but they have made an electorally sensible decision to ditch outright nazism in their policies and public face.

I have no idea if Nick Griffin or the inner circle is actually still a nazi or if he himself actually believes in the actual stated policies of his party. But certainly, the BNP as political force is fascist/nationalist but not nazi at present.

I only make a point of saying this because I don't believe people are attracted to the BNP in the main because of nazism. So there will be people (possibly the majority) who vote for them or join who are decidedly not nazis. So it is not tactically useful to oppose the BNP by exposing them as nazis.

Similarly there is little point, tactically, in trying to defeat the BNP with violence in their current form. Tho I won't shed a tear if they get the odd smack here and there.

Interesting. The BNP has always been something i had liked to be a little more informed about, gauging the exact nature of the threat etc. There is something sickly fascinating about them ...I guess i find it almost ridiculous/absurd that the fascist/nazi dogma can be alive and kicking after seeing it filtered through so many layers of popular culture/film/books/histories etc.

To a layman like me fascism evokes the mechanism of an extreme political machine (e.g. the state despotism of Mussolini, Franco) and not simply far-right politics. Should probably read the thread before commenting more.

 

[crackerjack]

I only make a point of saying this because I don't believe people are attracted to the BNP in the main because of nazism. So there will be people (possibly the majority) who vote for them or join who are decidedly not nazis. So it is not tactically useful to oppose the BNP by exposing them as nazis.

I don't quite grasp this.

Since most BNP voters (if not activists) aren't Nazis and would probably be repelled by Nazism, surely t makes sense to expose the party's Nazi past and force those who share that past to say exactly where they've changed their views and why.

 

[scottdisco]

Yo, Viktor, i like what Oliver said early doors on the thread.

I guess I'm principally interested in the more micropolitical forms of fascism... "the fascist within", to quote Deleuze and Guattari.

I used to subsribe to these kind of ideas, too. "Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life" and all that. Now I don't, because in the end it gets as hollow and airy as 'power = fascism'; it's exactly what leads to the denuding of fascism as a useful and apposite term. The trouble is, the Fascist and Nazi regimes, when they existed, didn't or couldn't effectively theorise themselves, and attempts to do so became famous jokes (Marinetti's punch-ups, Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century lying unread next to Hitler's bed). Go to a decent bookshop and you can usually find a well-stocked Marxism section, but you wouldn't even be able to stock a Fascist equivalent. In the last few years I've read George L. Mosse and Renzo de Felice, and their books Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice and The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism are both rich and vivid and useful.

I think part of the corruption of fascism as a clear political and theoretical category was caused by the Cold War 'totalitarian' theories, too, and that's to be regretted: this seemed to sharpen the critique of Communism while diluting the defeated foe (that still actually existed in Portugal, Latin America, etc.): so you end up with, I suppose, Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 'Dictatorships and Double Standards'. Actually, Felice's analysis of fascism is so specific and forensic that he doesn't even consider the Franco regime to be fascist, per se.

(plus my little contribution

Oliver:


i just wanted to note that the Roger Eatwell book i mentioned earlier (only just started it) follows Felice in this regard

the book i mean is this one.)

i've got the Felice on order, as it happens.

 

[nikbee]

First of all, what do you know about my "education"? Nothing.

But either way, more super cogent points from Nikbee.

Hey Nikbee, why don't you write a new Communist Manifesto. It'd be short, and would go something like this:

You can't think!! Are you crazy!??!?!? OMG communists never killed anyone! Read Badiou!@!

And let's get this straight--you just said that "abstraction is what makes you human", and ESSENTIALIST DOCTRINE, and you're trying to claim you're not a humanist?

This is getting super hilarious.

Communists call THEMSELVES humanists now. Althusser's project seems to have failed. Like so many communist projects do.

where did i say communists never killed anyone?

badious claim is that 'thinking the impossible' (being towards the Two) simply rearranges the coordinates of possibility. there is no 'essence' involved.

edit: the separation of the 'betrayal' from the 'Truth', as i said, was not do deny the crimes of communism.. but to define the Badiouian ontic point.. thats all..

edit edit: the 'read badiou'.. i only say this because he addresses some of your points directly.. there is nothing abstract in his ontology.. its there. if you dont accept it, thats a different story.. but you cant just arrest one point, separate it from his ontic system, and keep hammering it.. again, i make no claims anywhere about anything, really.. other than killing nazis (edit: that is, when theyre in your village.), which i accept.

 

[nomadthethird]

There are not now, nor have there ever been, only "Two" options politically.

I don't care how many times you repeat phrases from Badiou--keep on doing it, and I'll keep on disagreeing with him.

The last thing the world needs is fundamentalist insistence on either/or ultimatums--such as capitalism OR state-communism. It's not intellectually rigorous. It's pseudo-religious in the worst possible sense.

You offer a bunch of jargon about "dialectical" ontologies, but no new strategies, no new words, no new conception of how communism might be enacted without a reliance on authoritarian principles and praxes.

Universalism is a dead, phallogocentric narrative that is so easy to eviscerate with FACTS and REALITY that it's almost cute that people are trying to revive it.

Talk about the nostalgia mode!~

 

[nomadthethird]

Saying "abstraction is what makes us human" is most definitely an essentialist, humanist statement.

 

[nikbee]

There are not now, nor have there ever been, only "Two" options politically.

I don't care how many times you repeat phrases from Badiou--keep on doing it, and I'll keep on disagreeing with him.

The last thing the world needs is fundamentalist insistence on either/or ultimatums--such as capitalism OR state-communism. It's not intellectually rigorous. It's pseudo-religious in the worst possible sense.

You offer a bunch of jargon about "dialectical" ontologies, but no new strategies, no new words, no new conception of how communism might be enacted without a reliance on authoritarian principles and praxes.

Universalism is a dead, phallogocentric narrative that is so easy to eviscerate with FACTS and REALITY that it's almost cute that people are trying to revive it.

Talk about the nostalgia mode!~

nomad. i love you.. here we go...

the Two does not imply only 'two' options politically (the Two describes the ontology itself, or its interpretation of dialectics.. and its a particularly 20th century ontology. we can even say, outdated?). this is the only reason why i started posting here.. not to be a cheerleader for communism, or the Two, (which you keep implying im doing), but to defend badiou from crappy polemics. i cannot, and will not, accept that fascism = communism.. thats my only claim.. how many times did i say, when badiou talks about communism, it does not mean for a return to the communism that has passed.. badious claim is that there are Truths to 'arrest' from past political Events. i do not want State Communism..

 

[nikbee]

if the means = the ends (i believe you said this somewhere), then we are in a perpetual deadlock.. how do we make any decisions?

 

[nomadthethird]

If all of this is true, why are you on the internet right now and not revolutionizing?

Because you don't, you haven't, and you can't explain how to make communism actual without resorting to violence and authoritarianism.

If you had any ideas about how to do this, I might actually respect what you're saying. But you don't, so I don't.

If the means are the ends, then the only change worth making is one that doesn't rely on idiotic religious-universalist grandiosity and/or violence.

If we can't come up with a solution that isn't just more stupid rhetoric about why I'm good and everyone else is bad, that makes life livable and sustainable for everyone, then we haven't come up with a real solution. We've come up with just another regime.

 

[john eden]

I don't quite grasp this.

Since most BNP voters (if not activists) aren't Nazis and would probably be repelled by Nazism, surely t makes sense to expose the party's Nazi past and force those who share that past to say exactly where they've changed their views and why.

Well the way I see it is that people are attracted to the BNP because they are "saying the unsayable" - they have managed to present themselves a filling a gap that no other party is able to.

What they are saying isn't nazi. The people attracted to them are not nazis. Indeed, they probably have very real grievances about being marginalised. Exposing Nick Griffin as a nazi 20 years ago is a bit of a weird way of engaging with this problem. Indeed the proof of the pudding is in the eating and there is absolutely no correlation between these boringly predictable nazi exposes and the BNP's electoral performance.

I think how BNP voters see it is that the BNP are a bit rough round the edges but have basically got it right and that the accusations of nazism come from the exact same people who have caused the problem in the first place i.e. the political establishment, mainstream parties and the raggle taggle coalition of students, vicars and the like. Or, if you prefer, Rik from the Young Ones.

Plus, the leadership is entirely happy to harp on about how they've changed their views and how patriotic they are and look we're using a Spitfire on our posters, we wouldn't do that if we were nazis, blah de blah.