Fascism

[BIXX]

Why is fascism considered the "dying stage" of capitalism? It seems to me that it could originate from things other than capitalism, and it doesn't necessarily seem like it is the last stage as capitalism has remained through fascist systems before. So why is this?

Any help is appreciated!

Edit: Just realized that this should be in OI, if anyone could move it that'd be great.

[Fred]

Why is fascism considered the "dying stage" of capitalism? It seems to me that it could originate from things other than capitalism, and it doesn't necessarily seem like it is the last stage as capitalism has remained through fascist systems before. So why is this?

Any help is appreciated!

Edit: Just realized that this should be in OI, if anyone could move it that'd be great.

Fascism is a "last resort" stage of capitalism. That is, the bourgeoisie concedes a fair degree of political power to the fascist movements to protect the capitalist order from being overthrown for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Fascist movements vie for power under a very narrow set of conditions. There must be capitalism, there must be social upheaval, a sizable workers movement that could also vie for power. Fascism a populist ideology that is most attractive to the petite bourgeoisie ruined by the bust periods inevitable under capitalism. Think of German shop keepers and farmers in the 1920s. Look at where fascism is rearing its head in a most alarming way today -- Greece.

[AnSyn Blackflag]

Why is fascism considered the "dying stage" of capitalism? It seems to me that it could originate from things other than capitalism, and it doesn't necessarily seem like it is the last stage as capitalism has remained through fascist systems before. So why is this?


It makes more sense to say that fascism is "A Dying Stage" of capitalism. It just seems kind of narrow to say all capitalism ends in fascism. It doesnt sound like a completly unfounded claim though, so I will look into it some more as well.


Edit: Just realized that this should be in OI, if anyone could move it that'd be great.

Its an excellent inquiry so I would say it is an acceptable topic for both the learning and OI forum. I would pose the question there as well if you havnt already. You might get different answers.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I think the best description of fascism ever written is Umberto Eco's "14 Points of Fascism". Eco grew up during Mussolini's reign, so he experienced fascism first hand as a child.

It goes like this:


Eternal Fascism:
Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/images/spacer.gif http://www.themodernword.com/eco/cleardot.gif
By Umberto Eco Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.
The following version follows the text and formatting of the Utne Reader article, and in addition, makes the first sentence of each numbered point a statement in bold type. Italics are in the original.
For the full article, consult the New York Review of Books, purchase the full article online (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=1856); or purchase Eco's new collection of essays: Five Moral Pieces.
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/cleardot.gif
In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. * * *
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.
This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
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. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
* * *
Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/cleardot.gif
Umberto Eco (c) 1995

[Madame Ennui]

Because fascism is the rich's last resort to stay rich I guess. With fascism you can keep the poor under total surveillance and weed out any subversives under the guise of "safety." And anyone who is poor is considered a subversive element because they're the ones who have the most to gain from taking us down. Every part of their lives are under control, their minds are taught a history saturated with the dogma of the rich of how other terrorists [poor people] tried to change things but failed (and any time the poor actually won, it would be written as "subverters of democracy and freedom")
The point of it all is to discourage any form of change, let alone revolution. And it will begin only when the poor (from anywhere in the world) do something to completely sever class relations.
The first big event of that was 9/11. Several radicals from Saudi Arabia kill a few thousand rich people and the poor have taken the brunt of the rich's wrath ever since. And what they expect is that the poor won't take it, while also being fed propaganda. That way, they can separate the poor between reactionaries who stand with patriotism and democracy (aka allowing the rich to get richer under the guise of "I want to be rich too") and revolutionaries (who are 'anti-American and pro-terrorist') and use the tensions between the reactionaries and revolutionaries (or maybe just the liberals and conservatives) to stagnate political movement by keeping the nation hostage by partisanship, at which point the rich can move on their own accord and use whatever crisis to their advantage.

[BIXX]

I think the best description of fascism ever written is Umberto Eco's "14 Points of Fascism". Eco grew up during Mussolini's reign, so he experienced fascism first hand as a child.

It goes like this:


Eternal Fascism:
Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/images/spacer.gif http://www.themodernword.com/eco/cleardot.gif
By Umberto Eco Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.
The following version follows the text and formatting of the Utne Reader article, and in addition, makes the first sentence of each numbered point a statement in bold type. Italics are in the original.
For the full article, consult the New York Review of Books, purchase the full article online (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=1856); or purchase Eco's new collection of essays: Five Moral Pieces.
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/cleardot.gif
In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. * * *
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.
This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
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. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
* * *
Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/cleardot.gif[SIZE=4]
Umberto Eco (c) 1995

Thank you so much for that. My question here are a few things: what is the difference between Ur-fascism (eternal fascism) and other strains of fascism?

Also, I'm just gonna post my understanding of each of them so that others can tell me if I've got it right or not.

1. Seeing as there is already a "universal truth" out there "hidden" by "forgotten languages" and "dispersed" throughout different religions and mythologies which are all alluding to this "universal truth", rather than trying to discover new truths, you must only search for that one, which makes it impossible to learn anything else under Ur-fascism. This is the traditionalist effect on society-follow tradition, not new ideals, ideas, and concepts.

2. I don't really get this one, but it seems to be implying that there was a form of doublethink occurring with the Nazis, where they convinced themselves that they were rejecting the modern world by industrializing their nation in the name of Blut und Boden. This doublethink is inherently anti-rationality, which leads to a cult of irrationality.
It makes more sense to me if I think of Ur-fascists as a separate group from the Nazis, cause then their rejection of the modern work wouldn't contradict itself. Then they could reject "the Age of Reason" and therefore be irrational without contradiction.
Can someone explain this one?

3. Basically seems to be saying that you must do without thinking, because thinking is not to be trusted.

4. Thinking leads to distinctions, and and that is a sign of modernism (pretty simple).

5. Disagreement is a sign of diversity, which goes against all fascism as it is based off of a fear of difference, or "outsiders". This makes fascism inherently racist.

6. Ur-fascism comes from a feeling of political weakness/ feeling cornered, this happens specifically with the petite-bourgeoisie, who feel impotent due to the crushing power from above, and afraid of the power from below. Fascism appeals to this by promising them power.

7. Fascism gives people a clear social identity- it gives them a national one. However, after this bit, he says that there is an obsession with plot. Is this because the only way to define who is on your side is to identify who isn't, which implies there is an antagonist who is constantly causing conflict, this creating plot? And seeing as this is an international plot, it can only be resolved by international dominance. People must feel besieged, thus there is xenophobia. The reason Jews are often the targets is because they are often within and without of a nation, causing internal and external plot.
Can someone clarify this one?

8. The followers must participate in doublethink, where they believe their enemies are intensely powerful at the same time as being weak enough to be defeated. "Too strong and too weak". This means that followers of Ur-fascism are incapable of determining the strength of their enemies.

9. Struggle isn't for life, life is for struggle. Therefore life is a permanent war, and this leads to an Armageddon complex, which means that the "heroes" (fascists) can only win against their enemies in a final battle. This however, implies that there will be an era of peace, which contradicts the permanent war concept.

10. Seeing as fascism is inherently elitist, there isn't contempt for the "not elite". There is a hierarchy from bottom to top: those not belonging to the nation (bad), then those who do belong to the nation (good), then the party members (better), then the leader (best). Due to the contempt of the lower parts of the chain, fascism creates the idea that the lower levels of the hierarchal chain need and deserve a leader.

11. Everyone is educated to be a hero and die a heroes death. Simple enough.

12. Ur-fascists turn a lot of the will to power to sexual interaction, again, simple enough.

13. The people in Ur-fascism are viewed as a monolithic entity, who all agree. Due to the impossibility of this, the leader speaks as "the voice of the people". This means that whenever a politician criticizes a government as no longer being the voice of the people, they are highlighting themselves as that voice, and this, are exhibiting traits of Ur-fascism.

14. Ur-fascism utilizes newspeak to avoid people being able to critically think on any meaningful manner.

Any help would be appreciated in answering my questions/correcting my understanding!

[BIXX]

More questions:

Can someone explain other forms of fascism?

Also, can someone tell me why fascism dislikes diversity, and how you can derive this, whether this is from something the fascists say directly, or something that is inferred from what they've said?

Can someone tell me where the hero worship comes from?

Where does the traditionalism come from in fascism?

Are there any books you all could recommend?

[BIXX]

I hate to be triple posting/reviving a dead thread, but I have another question.

My dad and I have been in a debate for a while now, about the fact that fascism is 100% of the time racist. I've been advocating the fact that it is, and he has been saying it doesn't have to be, even though it nearly always is.

He brought up Musolini's fascism, and how Mussolini stated that race was 95% a social construct. He conceded that after the alliance of Nazi Germany and Italy, they became racist. However, he won't agree that before that it was racist. I argued two things from there: the first is that fascism plays off of people's fear of difference, and mixed races are in fact too diverse for any form of fascism. I also argued that seeing as fascism is nationalistic, racism is its logical conclusion, but he said that was too weak of an argument. Are there any more difinitive arguments to be made stating that all fascism is racist?

[CatsAttack]

I hate to be triple posting/reviving a dead thread, but I have another question.

My dad and I have been in a debate for a while now, about the fact that fascism is 100% of the time racist. I've been advocating the fact that it is, and he has been saying it doesn't have to be, even though it nearly always is.

He brought up Musolini's fascism, and how Mussolini stated that race was 95% a social construct. He conceded that after the alliance of Nazi Germany and Italy, they became racist. However, he won't agree that before that it was racist. I argued two things from there: the first is that fascism plays off of people's fear of difference, and mixed races are in fact too diverse for any form of fascism. I also argued that seeing as fascism is nationalistic, racism is its logical conclusion, but he said that was too weak of an argument. Are there any more difinitive arguments to be made stating that all fascism is racist?

This is not only wrong, but extremely dangerous. We analyze society from the point of view of classes, which is the supreme dividing line. We analyze social movements based on their class nature, all else is secondary.

Do not fall into the bottomless well of identity politics!

[TheEmancipator]

I hate to be triple posting/reviving a dead thread, but I have another question.

My dad and I have been in a debate for a while now, about the fact that fascism is 100% of the time racist. I've been advocating the fact that it is, and he has been saying it doesn't have to be, even though it nearly always is.

He brought up Musolini's fascism, and how Mussolini stated that race was 95% a social construct. He conceded that after the alliance of Nazi Germany and Italy, they became racist. However, he won't agree that before that it was racist. I argued two things from there: the first is that fascism plays off of people's fear of difference, and mixed races are in fact too diverse for any form of fascism. I also argued that seeing as fascism is nationalistic, racism is its logical conclusion, but he said that was too weak of an argument. Are there any more difinitive arguments to be made stating that all fascism is racist?

Nationalism itself is a form of racial discrimination if you will. By that I don't mean racism is a "logical conclusion" of nationalism I'd say that's a generalisation - NB : if you look up Belgian Rexism it called for the absolute unity of Flanders and Wallonia while Flemish fascists are generally racist towards Walloons, so Rexists argue De Grelle was fighting racism - by that I mean its a different type of segregation we should fight anyway ie this people living in nation x is necessarily better than any other. It isn't racism (nothing about race in the rhetoric) but its just as bad. Ask your father the moral difference between racism and nationalism. I bet he's pretty stumped on that one.

Also, your dad is right when he said not all theoritical fascism is necessarily racist. But as far as I can tell only The Nazis openly supported racial class status (Aryans - master race; Slavs, Jews inferior) as political theory. Yet the rest of the fascists still discriminated and scapegoated many minorities, but never made it a law of the universe, especially modern day fascists.

Fascism usually rises thanks to its extreme form of populist tactics already detailed a bit above. Its most powerful weapon is scapegoating minorities since they are easy to pick on. Keeping it officially undercover is just part of the deceit fascists usually show with their electorate.


This is not only wrong, but extremely dangerous. We analyze society from the point of view of classes, which is the supreme dividing line. We analyze social movements based on their class nature, all else is secondary.

Do not fall into the bottomless well of identity politics!

He's not debating a Marxist, his father will not take him seriously, sadly :(

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Good luck reducing fascism to a coherent ideology - the fascists themselves were unable to do so, having tried everything from Corradini's nationalist deformation of Marxism to Gentile's Hegelian absolutism, with no success whatsoever. Eco's checklist is another such attempt - all actually existing fascist movements pass it, but so does, for example, the morbidly death-obsessed conservatism of de Maistre. And why should the ideological trappings of fascism even concern us? Surely, to us the point is the class nature of fascism and its relation to the workers' movement? I would recommend Trotsky's Fascism: What it is and how to fight it (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm). For those who do not care to read the entire work, Trotsky held that fascism is a bourgeois-bonapartist mass movement (this is the key distinction, since previous aristocratic and bourgeois-bonapartist dictatorships were not backed by such a mass movement) chiefly consisting of the petite bourgeoisie and the backward layers of the proletariat.

[jookyle]

Good luck reducing fascism to a coherent ideology - the fascists themselves were unable to do so

That's a pretty good answer to question as far theory goes. I think in terms the most you could say about fascism in it's attempts of establishment in the 20th century was that fascism was the capitalist response to socialism.

[Philosophos]

More questions:

Also, can someone tell me why fascism dislikes diversity, and how you can derive this, whether this is from something the fascists say directly, or something that is inferred from what they've said?

Can someone tell me where the hero worship comes from?


fascism is 100% racist because they have to. you can't control the masses if you don't give them an enemy or some super deity that watches over them. that's why you have god and you make the fascist leader seem like something above human.

that's also why you MUST have foreign people look as the bad guys that want to harm you. otherwise people will understand that their enemy is actually fascism itself.

[Rafiq]

Fascism is certainly an ideology. It is a bourgeois ideology, a replacement for liberalism. All fascism was, was an attempt on behalf of certain national bourgeois classes to change their political mode of dictatorship.

[BIXX]

This is not only wrong, but extremely dangerous. We analyze society from the point of view of classes, which is the supreme dividing line. We analyze social movements based on their class nature, all else is secondary.

Do not fall into the bottomless well of identity politics!

In my opinion, while the class divide is the absolutely most important thing, identity politics do matter to an extent. Otherwise we wouldn't have issues to deal with such as racism and homophobia. Of course, class is the most important thing, but fighting oppression of minorities of all types shouldn't be rejected. That's just absurd. It's like saying that you shouldn't help people for being oppressed simply because their oppression doesn't happen to fit into your idea of what we should be analyzing and fighting against.

Anyway, the debate was about whether or not fascism is racist. It had nothing to do with the struggle as a whole. It's just my dad and I having a disagreement as a side topic.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

In my opinion, while the class divide is the absolutely most important thing, identity politics do matter to an extent. Otherwise we wouldn't have issues to deal with such as racism and homophobia.

Except that racism (actual systematic racism against minority races) and homophobia are part of the bourgeois dictatorship, and are ultimately grounded in the class structure of society. Without a materialist understanding of oppression - and a materialist understanding is a class understanding - we end up down the rabbit hole of radical-liberal identity and privilege politics, debating whether headmates are more oppressed than transspecies people.

[BIXX]

Except that racism (actual systematic racism against minority races) and homophobia are part of the bourgeois dictatorship, and are ultimately grounded in the class structure of society.

I agree, no issue.


Without a materialist understanding of oppression - and a materialist understanding is a class understanding - we end up down the rabbit hole of radical-liberal identity and privilege politics, debating whether headmates are more oppressed than transspecies people.

I think I didn't state my point clearly enough. All I was trying to say is that we can't ignore an issue because it isn't a directly class-based issue, and while our solution (communism) will theoretically solve the issue's source, but why must we avoid helping these people before we get communism implemented?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think I didn't state my point clearly enough. All I was trying to say is that we can't ignore an issue because it isn't a directly class-based issue, and while our solution (communism) will theoretically solve the issue's source, but why must we avoid helping these people before we get communism implemented?

No one thinks that we should avoid helping people, but at the same time the class nature of a movement should be kept in mind, and we should resist the temptation to get into bed with the "radical" bourgeoisie - the "official" gay movement for example, wealthy black intellectuals and so on. This isn't because we hate or are indifferent toward gay or black people, but because the bourgeoisie, even when it presents itself as radical, hurts these groups.

[BIXX]

No one thinks that we should avoid helping people, but at the same time the class nature of a movement should be kept in mind, and we should resist the temptation to get into bed with the "radical" bourgeoisie - the "official" gay movement for example, wealthy black intellectuals and so on. This isn't because we hate or are indifferent toward gay or black people, but because the bourgeoisie, even when it presents itself as radical, hurts these groups.

I agree with this. Often I just think people are trying to avoid analyzing issues by automatically writing them off as identity politics.

[Luís Henrique]

Thank you so much for that. My question here are a few things: what is the difference between Ur-fascism (eternal fascism) and other strains of fascism?

If I understand Eco correctly, he isn't pointing to a strain of fascism, but to an ideological core that is common to all fascist and proto-fascist currents. Indeed, something that is even present within totally non-fascist ideologies, but that, given appropriate circumstances, may develop into a fascist movement, or turn something that was not originally fascist into fascism.

One important aspect of fascism that Eco's analysis does not cover is its relation to police. Fascism is always a police-ish ideology, concerned with control of behaviour. And it always becomes really dangerous when it infiltrates the police apparatus of a given society. The road to power of fascist movements always includes winning over a sizeable part of policemen and police departments. Also, the fascist ideology is appealing to policemen for a series of reasons, starting with its obsessions for control and about conspiracies, and including its utopic nature (the task of the police is also unattainable, it is impossible to eradicate crime, and if it could be attained, it would imply the end of the police itself) and the impossibility of estimating the power of enemies (crime, not being an actual physical entity, is also not suitable for strength evalution).

Luís Henrique

[Comrade #138672]

Except that racism (actual systematic racism against minority races) and homophobia are part of the bourgeois dictatorship, and are ultimately grounded in the class structure of society. Without a materialist understanding of oppression - and a materialist understanding is a class understanding - we end up down the rabbit hole of radical-liberal identity and privilege politics, debating whether headmates are more oppressed than transspecies people.I thought that a class understanding of society didn't necessarily exclude privilege theory?

[TheEmancipator]

Can someone explain other forms of fascism?

Important distinction to make between Fascism (that of Italy, Spain) and Hitler's racial doctrine.

In Mussolini's manifestos, (http://www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/nacionalismes/nacio/docs/muss-doctrine.pdf) he clearly outlined that for him the State preceded the nation and that the nation itself was an artificial creation of his newly formed bourgeois elite (since his minions were now the controllers of the factors of production instead of the old bourgeois class). This proves to us outright that the bourgeois class are the inventors of nationalism in order to reenforce their grip on capital via the state instead of the unreliable, and as Marx proved, inevitably doomed market forces. The Fascist pseudo-Revolution is really just the petit bourgeois, some misguided workers, the usually traditionalist peasants and intellectuals coming together to overthrow the liberal bourgeoisie in order to create a new ruling class. This is why it must be the proletariat that overthrows the bourgeois sytem, as it the only way we will achieve a classless, stateless system.

Hitler can be easily summed up as hate speech and racial nationalism. An ignorant ideology befitting of a horrible human being. If you read Mein Kampf you will know what I'm talking about. But the main message is clear your race/nation precedes anything and is your soul.

Basically, Orthodox Fascism = dangerously intelligent at times, but overall another bourgeois state in the making, excpet material conditions that make it harder for prollies to emancipate themselves. Hitler's main ideological doctrine = ignorant populism, tribalism and scapegoating in order for Hitler to gain power. Nothing more really.



Can someone tell me where the hero worship comes from?I see it first and foremost as a populist tool in order to big up the Hero that we all want to be inside of us.

Philosophically however, the answer lies in Stoicism. Stoicism was the main doctrine of the Roman Empire, a phenomenon the Fascists worship as for them it promotes the ideal "State" with glory, etc.. I'm no great philosopher so I suggest you read other sources on Stoicism, but the main idea I get from their particular brand is that you should embrace pain, suffering and oppression (Spanish Fascists used to cry "Viva la Muerte" and shit like that). This is exactly what we are against.


Where does the traditionalism come from in fascism?Again, Mussolini and Gentile cites in the link above that the "tradition" of a nation or a people is only used to bind them together (in Marxist terms, to keep the proletariat class unconscious) to the State. Nothing more.

Hitler is not really a traditionalist. If only to enforce order.



Are there any books you all could recommend?You could read Mein Kampf if you can (its quite hard with all the cringing and eye rolling to read a whole sentence) if you want to understand more about ignorant neo-Nazis and racists/white supremacists, which are the ones antifa tend to deal with. Don't hesitate to look up some fascist pamphlets, some are stomach churning though (look up the aptly named Russian Liberal Democracy Party's manifesto. Openly racist, revisionist, and to think the guy got a huge amount of votes.

Otherwise Roger Griffin's The Nature of Fascism and Fascism.

[Point Blank]

He brought up Musolini's fascism, and how Mussolini stated that race was 95% a social construct. He conceded that after the alliance of Nazi Germany and Italy, they became racist.

Possibly because there wasn't a base of pre-existing racial tensions that I know of in post-WWI Italy, before 1938 Italian fascism was racist only to an extent (or in a different way from Germany, if you prefer). Racial policy was not central to its doctrine, but only a side consequence of its hypernationalism.
There was a contempt of 'bourgeois' and 'plutocratic' free-market capitalist nations (especially England and the U.S.) and the peoples of Libya, Ethiopia, etc. were portrayed as inferiors who needed to be 'enlightened' by the Italian imperialism. While these are definitely forms of racism, they are closer to the mindset of contemporary imperialist powers (UK, France) rather than to the policy of ethnic cleansing of Nazi Germany.