May 6, 2004
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I’ve gone in to this before, but these are terms that have become both deadly insults and meaningless rhetoric due to overuse and distortion.
The overuse thing I am not going to address at this time, but what do I mean by distortion?
Fascists and Nazis have become inhuman devils.
A Nazi is a monster willing and capable of wiping out entire races and cold bloodedly performing lethal experiments on humans as well as able to calmly kill millions of men, women, and children.
A Fascist is a nameless, faceless authoritarian who will imprison or kill any threat to the State without mercy or compunction.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to try and revise what happened during the Holocaust or excuse the evils that occurred. But I am going to claim that those Nazis were no different than any other group of people and that by demonizing them, we lose sight of the fact that under the right circumstances, we could become them.
The library at rotten.com puts it well:
The mistake often made in describing the crimes and actions of the Third Reich is to somehow dehumanize them, turn all the players into demons and monsters, the same techniques used by the Nazis themselves to target and exterminate Jews and other undesirables. To dehumanize Nazis is to turn them into archetypes as opposed to functioning humans; it sets us up to be “surprised” again when traits of the Nazis show up elsewhere, in other places, at a lessened level but with the same misguided goals and logic behind them.
Honestly look into a mirror and imagine yourself to be a German during the early 1930s. You love your country and are proud of your people. Maybe you trust your leaders or maybe you figure politicians are politicians, but it is important to be loyal to your country. You know that you are basically a good person, albeit with a few flaws…
Fundamentally, humans are humans – this had to describe the vast majority of the German people. Yet, within a decade, Germany was inflicting horrors on the world.
Now we revile the trappings of what led to the Nazis, and we are disgusted by anything that seems too close, but yet how different is our view of the turbaned “fundamentalist Muslim terrorist” from the German view of the Yarmulke wearing “greedy murdering Jew”.
Of course, the enlightened American tells themselves, “Not all Muslims are like that – many of them are very decent people – it’s just the fundamentalists – I even know some perfectly decent Muslims.” I have gay friends! I have black friends! Or whatever. I’m sure a lot of Germans in the mid 1930s had a number of Jewish friends too.
“But I’m a liberal, I know that the propaganda is full of shit”
And maybe you do – maybe you’re immune to propaganda of the currently brewing nightmare. However, you’re still human, and unless you are always questioning your feelings and motivations, a different hook and line may have caught you.
Remember, it was humanist liberals that committed the atrocities of the French Revolution and put the imperialist Napoleon into power. Great ideas! Liberty, Equality! All men are created equal! Dreams echoed by America’s own revolution. The aristocracy were their Jews, their Muslims. The Church were their homosexuals and gypsies.
Most of us can be inspired to hate some label or another. Once we see the label rather than the person, we can be manipulated into
Know that unless you are a true pacifist, unless you can’t imagine ever being willing to kill a person for an ideal, under the right circumstance and environment, you could end up being part of the force behind the guillotine. Behind the Gas Chamber. Behind the cluster bombs and DU.
Maybe its “those Jew hating Palestinians” that would inspire you to action. Maybe its those “gay hating fundamentalist Christians” who you would send to the death camp. Maybe its those “earth raping corporate elite”. Maybe its those “jackbooted fascist cops”. Christians? Republicans? Rednecks? The French? Germans? Communists? Corporatists? Jews? Muslims? The Rich? Freeloaders? Terrorists? Hippies? Frat Boys? Masons? The British? Protestants? Catholics?
Are you sure it couldn’t happen to you? If you are, congratulations! I wish I could say I had never slipped a little down that road. That I had never lost sight of the face behind a badge or rifle or flag.
As we’re dealing with the current nightmare, if we can imagine a different variant of the nightmare capturing us, we can reach out more effectively to those who have swallowed today’s propaganda.
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Fascism. Of course, calling someone fascist or referring to the state or the police or whatever as fascist has little meaning today. It has been overlapped with “Nazi” too often and tarred with the same “inhuman” brush.
But what is Fascism? To dig further, I’d highly recommend reading Wikipedia’s write up (from which much of this is drawn).
Basically, Fascism is an elevation of the state above the individual. To expand the import of the state beyond just a system of governance. The state determines ethics – what is right and what is wrong. The state determines what is good for you and what is not good for you and enforces those choices.
Fascism knows that many individuals are weak and lazy, but that when combined they become strong. Like the Roman fasces, one stick is weak but a bundle is unbreakable.
There are many fascist elements in our society. Our society wasn’t always ashamed of this fact – it still isn’t, but it uses different terms for it.
You can see aspects of it in school loyalties – listen to team cheers sometimes.
You can see it in interstate rivalries – often good natured, but definitely builds an “us and them” mentality.
Sport team loyalties – these sometimes extend to brawls and worse.
Political party allegiances – yes, a party generally represents some set of ideas that you may be behind, but too often, it seems to degenerate into blind allegiance. I still wonder how any self respecting Republican who believes in the ideas of liberty, states rights, etc., can be behind our current President, but the label “Republican” is enough. (Before you get feeling too smug, the same happens with the labels “Democrat” and “Green”)
Nationalism – “My country, right or wrong” could easily be the Fascist motto.
Paternalistic Laws – Seatbelt, helmet, smoking, drinking, drugs, whatever. You exist to be a productive member of society and those things that decrease or eliminate your utility should be banned or restricted.
In many cases, Fascism has also included an aspect of Corporatism. Now, while we don’t give our corporations direct government representation like they did in Italy, we do recognize a corporation as an entity with many of the same rights as a person and it is impossible to ignore that they have far more influence on American politics than most individuals do.
Of course, that’s because a bundle of sticks is a lot stronger than a single stick. One problem with this in the case of the corporations is that often a lot of the individual sticks probably wouldn’t support the policy the bundle ends up pushing if they were fully aware of it.
The little sticks are just looking to make a living or do well on an investment, but those in control of the bundle can wield that bundle to accomplish many things. Great things, and terrible things.
But don’t confuse Fascism with Socialism or Communism. Fascism supports private ownership and private responsibility. The company doesn’t serve the workers, the workers serve the company. Your country doesn’t serve you, you serve your country.
From Wikipedia’s description of Fascism:
As a political science, the philosophical pretext to the literal fascism of the historical Italian type believes the state’s nature is superior to that of the sum of the individual’s comprising it, and that they exist for the state rather than the state existing to serve them. The resources individuals provide from participating in the community are conceived as a productive duty of individual progress serving an entity greater than the sum of its parts. therefore all individual’s business is the state’s business, the state’s existence is the sole duty of the individual. In its Corporativist model of totalitarian but private management the various functions of the state were trades conceived as individualized entities making that state, and that it is in the state’s interest to oversee them for that reason, but not direct them or make them public by the rationale that such functioning in government hands undermines the development of what the state is. Private activity is in a sense contracted to the state so that the state may suspend the infrastructure of any entity in accord to their usefulness and direction, or health to the state.
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As a political and economic system in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism.
So it seems that while we have called the word evil and despise the most blatant images of it, we (at least as a country) still embrace many of the ideas behind Fascism.
Comments (6)
Corruption, greed, ignorance and racism are the human factors providing the foundation upon which the Amerikan Empire is rising. The complacency with which the people of this country accept the cost of the correct war is truly alarming. The average age of a soldier in Iraq is nineteen and a half years old. By this time perhaps twenty thousand have been ‘wounded’. Multiple amputations, severe burns, and psychological damage is the cost that they have paid in our name. We do not count the Iraqi dead but for this war alone the figure seems to be about twenty thousand-and the number who have died over the last twenty years as a result of the actions of our government is several million. The economic cost of this war is rapidly approaching a half trillion dollars. When that is added to our normal military expenditure the total is equal to all the tax money collected by the government this year. Looking at it that way the rest of the federal budget is being run on credit. Most of which is owed to the japanese.Sadly there are very few who care or even care to know these things. This is corruption, this is complacency. Recently Michael Parenti has written a nice little book describing Rome as it slipped from a Republic into an empire. The parallels are striking. So, although, I was born in a republic dedicated to the principles of the founding fathers I think that I will die in an empire dedicated to greed. So balance your check book, keep your nose clean, and watch what you say on your cell phone, cuz its gonna be a long cold winter.
DUDE! This is so good! May I copy and quote you to my site as well?
yes, WolfspiritJHP. I’m flattered, but I would like to correct an error. The economic cost of the war added to our other Military expenses should have totaled up to 1.5 trillion. And I am making a (educated?) guess as to tax revenues based on the fact that military expediters in 2000 totaled 800 billion which was considered to be half of every tax dollar. The point, however was not to nitpick about numbers, but to make the point simply and dramatically.
Unless specifically noted, I’d consider anything posted to this weblog (posts or comments) to be open source.
Of course, attributions and linkbacks are always appreciated!
Re: krazykat’s comments, everyone is keeping up to date on Strange Black Cat’s blog, right?
I remember when I was living in Germany. I heard a story form an American who taught there. She said that the elderly Germans would come up to her and ask her what she thought of what happened during WWII. There was an old woman that would talk about what it was like to be a German citizen during that time. She said they were some of her more profound experiences.