Fascism!

[josef k.]

I think the article that josef k didn't link to up thread/QUOTE]

I am bad.

 

[vimothy]

Perhaps inherently fascist activities could include pogroms, sieg heiling, setting up paramilitary organisations in order to stage a coup, that sort of thing?

So, fascist writers idealogues or artists are not fascists unless they are also paramilitaries?

 

[craner]

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.

 

[josef k.]

Here is Kirsch's key statement on Zizek's fascism:

There is a name for the politics that glorifies risk, decision, and will; that yearns for the hero, the master, and the leader; that prefers death and the infinite to democracy and the pragmatic; that finds the only true freedom in the terror of violence. Its name is not communism. Its name is fascism, and in his most recent work Zizek has inarguably revealed himself as some sort of fascist. He admits as much in Violence, where he quotes the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk on the "re-emerging Left-Fascist whispering at the borders of academia"--"where, I guess, I belong." There is no need to guess.

Zizek endorses one after another of the practices and the values of fascism, but he obstinately denies the label. Is "mass choreography displaying disciplined movements of thousands of bodies," of the kind Leni Riefenstahl loved to photograph, fascist? No, Zizek insists, "it was Nazism that stole" such displays "from the workers' movement, their original creator." (He is willfully blind to the old and obvious conclusion that totalitarian form accepts content from the left and the right.) Is there something fascist about what Adorno long ago called the jargon of authenticity--"the notions of decision, repetition, assuming one's destiny ... mass discipline, sacrifice of the individual for the collective, and so forth"? No, again: "there is nothing 'inherently fascist'" in all that. Is the cult of martyrdom that surrounds Che Guevara a holdover from the death worship of reactionary Latin American Catholicism, as Paul Berman has argued? Perhaps, Zizek grants, "but--so what?" "To be clear and brutal to the end," he sums up, "there is a lesson to be learned from Hermann Goering's reply, in the early 1940s, to a fanatical Nazi who asked him why he protected a well-known Jew from deportation: 'In this city, I decide who is a Jew!'... In this city, it is we who decide what is left, so we should simply ignore liberal accusations of inconsistency."

 

[josef k.]

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 this, 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'

Well, I wouldn't agree with that position at all... but nevertheless, I still think the question of how fascist power might be constructed from the bottom up is worth considering. Is there a specifically fascist form of debate, for example? One, say, which might invoke certain tropes of authority, and take its stand on a certain dogmatism...? I feel that there is.

 

[vimothy]

Ah, but if you had bought the print version, you'd know that Zizek writes in SeaGreen.

 

[josef k.]

I'm not sure I follow that defense... and for my part I think that term "Islamo-fascism" is highly unhelpful.

 

[craner]

I still think the question of how fascist power might be constructed from the bottom up

But, er, you have to decide and clarify what fascist power actually is before you can even do that and I don't think Deleuze or Foucault ever managed to, or, at least they maybe mismanaged it madly.

 

[craner]

and for my part I think that term "Islamo-fascism" is highly unhelpful.

Ok, we'll scratch it from the thread. You're probably right.

 

[vimothy]

I recall a thread at Abu Muqawama where Exum says that the phrase 'Islamo-fascism' is indeed unhelpful, and that Raymond Aron would doubtless agree. Aron said, "there remains a difference between a philosophy whose logic is monstrous, and one that lends itself to a monstrous interpretation." Meaning that if in practice the differences are not clear, then at least theoretically they are.

If you read the comments you will note one from Daniel J. Mahoney. It's quite germane:

It's worth pointing out that in his MEMOIRES Aron repudiated the remark that was quoted from 1965's DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM precisely because he came to belief that it conceded far too much to the monstrous "pseudo-universalism" of Marxist-Leninism. And he was speaking of National Socialism and Communism and not some amorphous "fascism"(it was not Aron's habit to conflate Nationalism Socialism with the various "fascisms"--he was quite critical of the use of "anti-fascism" by the European Left). In his MEMOIRES Aron refered to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as sharing some of the core features of "political religion." This allowed a comparison--although not a simple identification with--twentieth century European totalitarianism.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Is there a specifically fascist form of debate, for example?

Well you could hold a 'debate' with someone while keeping their head pinned to the ground under your jackboot. That'd be fairly fascistic, no?

I guess what I'm saying is, the whole idea of 'debate', of 'dialectic' or whatever, is inherently antithetical to fascism, which surely relies on the 'obvious' superiority of violence, or the threat of violence, and of absolute conviction over (weak, decadent, effeminate, intellectual*, Jewish etc. etc.) analysis, inquiry, compromise, pragmatism. You don't need to debate anything when you've got a gun in your opponent's face. Or you can have a 'show' debate, for the sake of appearances, with an opponent who knows you've a gang of armed heavies just outside the room. This is common to all totalitarianisms, of course, from the Spanish Inquisitors and 'witchfinders' of European mediaeval theocracy to Stalin's show trials.

*Actually, strike 'intellectual' from that list if Z-boy is anything to go by these days.

 

[josef k.]

I still think the question of how fascist power might be constructed from the bottom up

But, er, you have to decide and clarify what fascist power actually is before you can even do that and I don't think Deleuze or Foucault ever managed to, or, at least they maybe mismanaged it madly.

I wonder if this is so - could one not suspend the question at both ends, and see what takes place in the middle? Here would be one thought - fascism is a kind of machine that requires various different pieces to function.

There are thus a series of necessary, but insufficient conditions to fascism - political religion, glorification of violence, authoritarian posture being among them. There are also a series of gratuitous elements that are not necessary, but may nonetheless occur in certain cases - anti-Semitism being one, pretensions to a deeper Leftism perhaps being another...

 

[swears]

I guess what I'm saying is, the whole idea of 'debate', of 'dialectic' or whatever, is inherently antithetical to fascism, which surely relies on the 'obvious' superiority of violence, or the threat of violence, and of absolute conviction over (weak, decadent, effeminate, intellectual*, Jewish etc. etc.) analysis, inquiry, compromise, pragmatism. You don't need to debate anything when you've got a gun in your opponent's face. Or you can have a 'show' debate, for the sake of appearances, with an opponent who knows you've a gang of armed heavies just outside the room. This is common to all totalitarianisms, of course, from the Spanish Inquisitors and 'witchfinders' of European mediaeval theocracy to Stalin's show trials.

*Actually, strike 'intellectual' from that list if Z-boy is anything to go by these days.

Here's a quote from the Spanish philosopher Ortega which sums this stance up quite nicely:

"Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions."

 

[Mr. Tea]

Here's a quote from the Spanish philosopher Ortega which sums this stance up quite nicely:

"Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions."

Sure...I guess this ties in with the Fascist (and especially Nazi) co-option/perversion of Darwinism: not necessarily that the Fascist doesn't care about being "right", but that his ethics can be summed up as "I am right because I am strong, and strong because I am right" (from the idea that a species or variety is successful because it is fit, and fit because it is successful).

 

[josef k.]

Interesting how the Marxian trope of cognitive closure supports such a stance - that is, I cannot give reasons, because the capitalist system has already foreclosed them to me in advance.

 

[vimothy]

Josef -- reasons for what? Do you mean the modern inability to posit a credible alternative?

Think that the intellectual expression of fascism is key, if you understand fascism to be this 20th century explosion of radical mass movements that rode the apex of the nation-state curve and the beginnings of globalisation (i.e. 'fascism', but in a really lose, imprecise and general kinda sense). You can find quite readily fascists who are 'intellectual' (although being out-right in favour of totalitarianism is somewhat discredited nowadays and normally a position I associate with teenage black metal bands...)

 

[john eden]

So, fascist writers idealogues or artists are not fascists unless they are also paramilitaries?

Er.... that's not what I was getting at, we seem to be on a bit of a derail with this, for which I apologise!

Just saying that this:

I am self-proclaimed doctor of invasive surgery... but would you let me perform a colostomy on you?

Is not the same as Zizek saying he is s a self proclaimed leninist or whatever.

 

[john eden]

Really? I've never heard anyone descibe themselves as right wing.

It's usually in the context of discussion about law and order or capital punishment and the people tend to qualify it by saying "I suppose I am a bit/quite right wing". But it certainly happens.

Often these people don't talk about politics per se, but have a whinge about the country going to the dogs /regurgitate something they have read in the Mail or Sun etc.

I can't remember the last time I talked to someone outside of subcultural context (politics, music, etc) who described themselves as left wing, in fact.

 

[matt b]

I am self-proclaimed doctor of invasive surgery... but would you let me perform a colostomy on you?

i don't really get your point.

zizek may not be a leninist state communist, but he claims to be one. surely that alone is shameful enough?

i read the article- i'd say we do indeed need to decide upon a useful definition of fascism (one that encompasses hitler, mussolini, franco).

one key difference between fascists and totalitarian communists is that fascists don't want a revolution. they want control of state apparatus as it already exists. they're reactionary.

 

[matt b]

The word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. – George Orwell, What is Fascism?. 1944

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