People's Politics Gone Awry

[Sinister Intents]

I'm thinking of people changing their politics from one 'extreme' a la otra extrema.

Like Mussolini apparently starting out as a socialist and then a former socialist creates the idea of fascism. A mere culminating of ideas taken to a logical extreme from one original point. Like flipping a coin and from one side to the other, they flip.

What influences people to make vast political, philosophical and economical changes? What exactly makes someone have a flip of sorts?

[4thInter]

I'm thinking of people changing their politics from one 'extreme' a la otra extrema.

Like Mussolini apparently starting out as a socialist and then a former socialist creates the idea of fascism. A mere culminating of ideas taken to a logical extreme from one original point. Like flipping a coin and from one side to the other, they flip.

What influences people to make vast political, philosophical and economical changes? What exactly makes someone have a flip of sorts?
Nationalism, Mussolini from what I've gathered really changed when he embraced nationalism.

[Sinister Intents]

Nationalism, Mussolini from what I've gathered really changed when he embraced nationalism.

Yeah I know this, but its good to restate things. How could one make the opposite happen, towhere radical changes in thought are made?

I kknow how I can help someone from going against socialism, I've helped several see it in a more positive light. Yet, they still remained distinctly capitalist

[4thInter]

Yeah I know this, but its good to restate things. How could one make the opposite happen, towhere radical changes in thought are made?

I kknow how I can help someone from going against socialism, I've helped several see it in a more positive light. Yet, they still remained distinctly capitalist
It could also be the war. Mussolini became very aggressive while sharpshooting for the Italians army in WW1. He saw it his mission to eradicate all who he deemed week. Then that translated into modern fascism as we know it.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

Fascism is basically submission to animalistic instincts that have a detriment to society. Those animal instincts manifest into the totalitarian state which then goes on to enforce systematic violence.

The fact is, fascism is an easy ideology because it uses easy scapegoats and doesn't require any kind of deeper understanding of how the world works. It's based on pseudo science as well and only requires that you reject any enlightenment or progressive values. So fascism is easy and people fall to it like a drug unfortunately.

[4thInter]

Fascism is basically submission to animalistic instincts that have a detriment to society. Those animal instincts manifest into the totalitarian state which then goes on to enforce systematic violence.

The fact is, fascism is an easy ideology because it uses easy scapegoats and doesn't require any kind of deeper understanding of how the world works. It's based on pseudo science as well and only requires that you reject any enlightenment or progressive values. So fascism is easy and people fall to it like a drug unfortunately.
Hence mussolini having the urge to eradicate the weak.

[DOOM]

I believe it's something deep in the beliefs of these people.
For example, Horst Mahler. At first he was a radical leftist, anti-imperialist, best known for his involvement in the RAF. Deep structural-antisemitic beliefs have grown faster than his beliefs in equality and freedom. He basically turned into a Nazi.

[Sinister Intents]

What other people have just flipped? Any users of this forum? Which I've probably seen in the past but forgot :/

[RedWorker]

I doubt that Mussolini was ever an actual socialist, even if he claimed to be one. Hitler was a member of a party named "socialist" too, that doesn't make him one. In fact his whole ideology was based on what he called "socialism".

[Loony Le Fist]

...
He saw it his mission to eradicate all who he deemed week.
...

I've always seen fascists as suffering from a very extreme lack of self-reflection. In fact, it seems precisely inverted like self-projection.


Fascism is basically submission to animalistic instincts that have a detriment to society. Those animal instincts manifest into the totalitarian state which then goes on to enforce systematic violence.


Subcognitives are pretty basic. Rhetoric that appeals to it, is strongly tied to fascist idealogy.



The fact is, fascism is an easy ideology because it uses easy scapegoats and doesn't require any kind of deeper understanding of how the world works. It's based on pseudo science as well and only requires that you reject any enlightenment or progressive values. So fascism is easy and people fall to it like a drug unfortunately.

Yes on all counts. It is easy to turn someone into the outsider, so you can thrust all your problems onto them. What is more difficult is actually having courage to face those problems and developing real solutions to them. It is an ideology for those who seek both intellectual poverty and cowardice. I have absolutely no respect for them.

[synthesis]

I doubt that Mussolini was ever an actual socialist, even if he claimed to be one. Hitler was a member of a party named "socialist" too, that doesn't make him one. In fact his whole ideology was based on what he called "socialism".

Uh, Mussolini was definitely a socialist, albeit one with petit-bourgeois and nationalist biases, unless you want to get into "no true Scotsman" territory; this of course only applies up until the beginning of WWI.

[Sinister Intents]

I identified Leninist years back before becoming an anarchist and touching Marxism from time to time. I'm strictly anarchist now, but not staunchly so I'm a jerk about shit (like some Marxists I've ran into) is everyone's politics essentially ever changing? Is there a point of no return politically?

[Brutus]

Mussolini was in the right wing of the PSI. His syndicalist, reformist and nationalistic tendencies were evident, culminating in his faction leaving the party to support World War One.

[Remus Bleys]

A number of terrible points in this thread. The first being chalking up fascism to mussolini. Brutus is correct, fascism came from the reformist, right wing "socialist" nationalists who were more into class collaboration then class struggle. It was a defense capital used against a proletarian political force - relying on machoism, nationalism, workerism, social Democratic reforms, progressively concentrating wealth to rebuild the economy, all under the populist support of the masses (at least some of them). The open dictatorship of capital is extolled, bureaucracy crushed to "get things done," and revolutionary fervor goes to this new state, with all being fine of its open dictatorship (for it is thought of the dictatorship of Italy, of the common man). Fascism is not a return to feudalism, but rather a more developed capitalist tendency which could only be temporary. Capitalism is in its totalitarian stage. To cry for the return of liberalism is wholly reactionary - only proletarian dictatorship can crush capitalism and its "natural" progress.

[exeexe]

I guess its easier to follow the flow of present society than to put your whole existence on the line for a radical transformation of society where people are not ruled by capital. So some people just chickens out and decides nationalism is a better solution and its better to keep exploiting people than to ruin the national economy. And when that logic is taken to the extreme, those who ruins the national economy should be exterminated.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Early socialism was very varied like it is today, but everything from social democrats and national chauvinistic populists and then left wingers of all stripes were kind of in the same general group. A lot of the socialist parties during that time had huge splits on the issue of supporting or opposing the war.hell, Hitler apparently briefly took part in the rev activity in Germany in 1919. I'll need to find citations but yeah... It was during that time that social democracy as we know it today and communism were really able to be differentiated

[motion denied]

There is no such thing as sudden change of political view. It's a process of degeneration.

Social-democrats, for example, had been fought by communists long before their ultimate treason.

[Comrade #138672]

We should not focus so much on individuals. Some people who were reformist become more radical later on. Other people who were radical became reformist. And other people who were radical somehow have taken reactionary politics to the extreme. It is all a matter of sociology (in the non-bourgeois sense) and material circumstances. No individual is holy. Some betray their cause in the end, when things get difficult. Kautsky, for example...

[Devrim]

Mussolini was in the right wing of the PSI. His syndicalist, reformist and nationalistic tendencies were evident, culminating in his faction leaving the party to support World War One.

Mussolini certainly wasn't on the right of the party and actually opposed it. He was deeply involved in the struggle against the right over the Libyan War in 1911, which led to later Prime Minister, Ivanoe Bonomi, and his allies being expelled.

What led Mussolini to support the First World War was the idea of national liberation and 'freeing' the Italians under Hapsburg rule.

Devrim

[Rafiq]

Mussolini's rightward swing was very abrupt and not a logical result of his previous politics. Mussolini had been a fierce warrior of the proletariat before the first world war

[Sinister Intents]

Mussolini certainly wasn't on the right of the party and actually opposed it. He was deeply involved in the struggle against the right over the Libyan War in 1911, which led to later Prime Minister, Ivanoe Bonomi, and his allies being expelled.

What led Mussolini to support the First World War was the idea of national liberation and 'freeing' the Italians under Hapsburg rule.

Devrim

So could I use this national liberation as an argument against national liberation in this case?

What other people in history made abrupt changes?

[Rafiq]

So could I use this national liberation as an argument against national liberation in this case?

What other people in history made abrupt changes?

It is not so much that this renege appeared from thin air, but that the tacit fervor spawned from the first world war ideologically triumphed over Mussoloni's revolutionary politics in the same way the defeat and degeneration of the October revolution did the same to others. This is of course partially a personal problem - the lack of conviction for the cause goes. That does not, however mean Mussolini's socialist politics were the cause of this. Legitimacy is a difficult thing for Communists to attribute the revolution, it is a problem all the more relevant today.

[ckaihatsu]

I identified Leninist years back before becoming an anarchist and touching Marxism from time to time. I'm strictly anarchist now, but not staunchly so I'm a jerk about shit (like some Marxists I've ran into) is everyone's politics essentially ever changing?




Is there a point of no return politically?


I'll argue that the bourgeois state exerts a constant black-hole-like gravitational influence on everyone's political mindset, as through the corporate media.

On the other hand, going 'leftward' requires one to consciously acknowledge a series of contradictions, as one moves further leftward. (Is the state *synonymous* with the interests of the people? Can the state be *reformed* to serve the interests of the people? Can the state be *pressured* into serving the people's interests? Can the people themselves provide for their own interests, *despite* the existence of the state? Is trade unionism enough?) (Etc.)


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

http://s6.postimage.org/zc8b2rb3h/110211_Ideologies_Operations_Left_Centrifug.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/zc8b2rb3h/)


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://s6.postimage.org/cpkm723u5/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/cpkm723u5/)

[Alexios]

I'll argue that the bourgeois state exerts a constant black-hole-like gravitational influence on everyone's political mindset, as through the corporate media.

On the other hand, going 'leftward' requires one to consciously acknowledge a series of contradictions, as one moves further leftward. (Is the state *synonymous* with the interests of the people? Can the state be *reformed* to serve the interests of the people? Can the state be *pressured* into serving the people's interests? Can the people themselves provide for their own interests, *despite* the existence of the state? Is trade unionism enough?) (Etc.)


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

http://s6.postimage.org/zc8b2rb3h/110211_Ideologies_Operations_Left_Centrifug.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/zc8b2rb3h/)


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://s6.postimage.org/cpkm723u5/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/cpkm723u5/)
wat

[ckaihatsu]

wat


Do you have a specific question?

[Red Economist]

Libertarians often cite people politics going from Nazi to Communist or Communist to Nazi in Weirmar Germany during the early thirties, but I don't have any cases of this. I think the psychology involved is simply a question of power and getting so desperate that people look for answers and will try anything, even going from one extreme to another.

hypothetically speaking this is about the relationship between an ideology and psychology. I'd guess that most forms of reasoning can become so warped because of a person's psychology that it can be used to justify anything. however cerrtian 'fundamentals' will remain relatively constant as these are the things that warp people in the first place.

[Red Commissar]

What other people in history made abrupt changes?

Would you count those who went into right-wing territory in general, not just fascism? There's many of those unfortunately, US history is littered with them and I'm sure this holds up in other countries. It's a rather pathetic display, though it's usually not of the Mussolini type, more of the disillusionment or "found out the evil truth" trash type flip.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What other people in history made abrupt changes?

N. Bombacci went from a communist to a fascist. A. de Ambris, from an anarcho-syndicalist to a fascist. Conversely, C. Malaparte went from a fascist to a sort-of Maoist.

S. Pankhurst went from a left communist to a supporter of the Ethiopian emperor.

P. Struve started as a Marxist, and later became a liberal and whiteguard, hardly the only ostensible Marxist to do so. A. Ciliga went from a proto-left communist to a Menshevik collaborator to Nazi.

M. Shachtman, regrettable to say, once considered himself a Trotskyist, before becoming the staunchest of the Cold War social-democrats.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Like half of the old-school neocons used to be Trots (or at least some form of red diaper baby). Christopher Hitchens, a weird mix of atheist, social democrat and neocon, was a Trot and a supporter of Cuba's revolution too.

It's not uncommon for Leftists to become rightwingers, especially when they lose hope in the possibility of revolution and fall back on more traditional views of universal meaning, economic development or democracy. Their Leftist politics include a teleological hope for humanity, but when that teleology is abandoned for whatever personal reason they naturally adopt a new one. In the case of ex-Trot neocons, it was some vision of global capitalism and democracy with a "human face," which of course comes to justify all sorts of "inhuman" political programs, like supporting military dictators or invading oil-rich, strategically important countries. All things they would have seen as abhorrent before.

Perhaps equally interesting, why do conservatives and liberals become socialists, and under what conditions?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The older generation of American neoconservatives were mostly followers, direct or indirect, of the aforementioned Max Shachtman. And as far as I can tell Shachtman did not consider himself a Trotskyist after 1958, when his group, then called the International Socialist League, joined the Socialist Party of America. So I would say that, while Shachtman's earlier associates, Draper and so on, were Trotskyists or at least ostensible Trotskyists, his later followers, Harrington and others, were not.

Which is not to say Trotskyists can't degenerate into social-democrats or worse, that's half of what Trotskyists do. Two examples: the conspiracy nut and semi-fascist L. LaRouche used to be a member of the SWP, the American Committee of the Fourth International and briefly even the Spartacist League. The secretary of the postwar Fourth International, M. Pablo, eventually ended up as a minister for abandoned properties in the regime of Ben Bella in Algeria.

edit:

And lest we forget, the chief figure of the ACFI, later the Workers' League, one T. Wohlforth, went from an ostensibly r-r-revolutionary Trotskyist to a pro-intervention true-blue American conservative (during the civil war in Yugoslavia, he constantly baited the liberals for insufficient enthusiasm when it came to bombing the Serbs). Workers' Vanguard printed an "introduction" to his life and work in the nineties, titled "Who is this Roadkill?" (one of the sections, by the way, is titled "Time Wounds all Heels", which is the greatest thing any human being has ever written). I think they were unnecessarily kind. Really, the reason I appeared to be avoiding cases of ostensible Trotskyists going off the rails in my original post is that there are so many listing even a small minority of them would probably constitute sectarian spam.

[Devrim]

What other people in history made abrupt changes?

Probably not a name that many on here would know, but Doğu Perinçek, leader of the Turkish İşçi Partisi would be one. The Workers' Party was a formerly Maoist group, and Penincek was a strong supporter of Kurdish nationalism, and had indeed co-authored a book with PKK leader Abdullah Öcelan. Then they decided that Turkey was an oppressed country, the PKK were therefor imperialist puppets, and they ended up working hand in glove with the fascist MHP, and he personally was convicted of genocide denial in Switzerland, and arrested for being part of a military coup plot in Turkey.

Devrim

[Sabot Cat]

I think the psychological trend that unites people of disparate ideologies, and could perhaps serve to explain how someone could flip from ardent socialist to fascist, is that they are not beholden to cultural norms when it comes to politics. They are not content to idle along with the majority opinion, and for one reason or another have extremely idiosyncratic beliefs about how society should be. This is what makes them radicals or reactionaries, and it's what motivates great changes to our pre-existing orders for better or for worse.

[Red Commissar]

Two not so well known examples state-side

-Thomas Watson: Not a marxist but a 1800s populist from the US. Unique with respect to being one of the few southern, much less American, politicians to openly run against racism and even encouraging poor whites and blacks to unite rather than divide them with racism. It seems that after the 1900s he abandoned this and began scapegoating blacks, catholics, and jews for all the problems of the US. In this sense he went from someone advocating for racial and ethnic equality to one of white supremacy.

-Gustave Paul Cluseret: He considered himself a socialist and alongside other radicals, like Joseph Weydemeyer and August Willich, fought on the Union side in the American Civil War. He latter returned to France and led Communard forces before their repression. Following an amnesty he sat in France's legislature as a socialist, but apparently devolved into anti-semitism and xenophobia to such an extent that he positioned himself with those who were in favor of a guilty verdict in the Dreyfus trial and thus with the antisemites of the Dreyfus affair.

And then there's plenty more- John dos Passos, Jay Lovestone, Whittaker Chambers, Max Eastman, Benjamin Gitlow, Walter Reuther, etc etc. Daniel Horowitz is a pretty notable example of a "new left" era person turned into a far-right bigoted nutjob.

Why? There can be many reasons for flips. For some it may simply be that what they thought of communism or what ever they went into didn't match up with what they thought it should be. Nowadays it's much easier for us to sort out political ideologies and what parties stood for- this wasn't the case back then when your exposure to a party or movement came from recruiters and maybe a participation in an event. For others it was embrace of ideologies that at some point was embraced by the historical left in the country- liberal nationalism of the late 1800s is a good example seeing how it ended up in the next century with the far-right's use of nationalism and likewise certain individuals following that trajectory. Disillusionment is one in of itself which can be tied into any of the above, and of course pure opportunism in order to seek a place in the world, though they'll say it was disillusionment since that looks better in their tell-all memoir about the evils of x party or y ideology.

As an example of a flip that went in the other direction, mystery author Dashiell Hammett started off as a Pinkerton who broke up strikes and eagerly ran into WWI, but afterwards radicalized and joined CPUSA. He still ended up fighting in WWII, but the rest of his life was mostly spent in left activist circles- anti-war, civil rights, etc.

Likewise, one of the murdered of the Haymarket Affair, Albert Parsons, in his youth supported the Confederacy and all it stood, so much that he joined it underage, before before deserting it and becoming an early anarchist.