tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post6715189284749090947..comments2024-03-28T00:11:33.489-04:00Comments on bensozia: Confederate Statues and Mao T-ShirtsJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-83327881908007003252017-10-28T12:09:41.703-04:002017-10-28T12:09:41.703-04:00I can see what you're saying about FDR, but a ...I can see what you're saying about FDR, but a curious thing about Fascism and Nazism is the way they mobilized such a huge range cultural forms in their own service, and the way people of very different characters and styles could both be attracted to them and make good, "typical" members (from the nerdy, hyperproceduralist Eichmann to the demonic criminal Otto Dirlewanger).<br /><br />Thus, you could also say environmentalism, most fantasy and scifi literature (Tolkien most notably), Ayn Rand, any spectacle-oriented entertainment (including, say, Woodstock); both regular and irregular warfare; atheism, neo-paganism, and the medieval Catholic church; all sports and people who don't like sports; big business, small business, and unionism; youth rebellion and youth obedience; etc., etc., partake of proto-fascist elements.<br /><br />On anti-capitalist youth, I suspect they fall more into the anarchist than Leninist camp. I doubt many of the young people you're talking about would be very interested in the essentially cult-like, discipline-imposing, self-sacrificing (in the most literal sense) nature of Bolshevism or the CCP.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-10153231402648189712017-10-28T11:47:49.969-04:002017-10-28T11:47:49.969-04:00It is true that you can also oppose capitalism in ...It is true that you can also oppose capitalism in the name of ethno-nationalism. But the young people I know who hate capitalism also hate racism, and they are attracted to communism, not fascism.<br /><br />As for FDR, I see programs that recruited young men into work brigades (like the CCC and others) as semi-fascist. Also the emphasis on energizing the nation with huge public works projects like Hoover Dam and the TVA, the contempt for property rights and local traditions that you see in progressive agriculture programs, the talking up of national shrines and heroes, basically the whole rhetoric of national greatness.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-58405904588824182942017-10-28T11:14:14.494-04:002017-10-28T11:14:14.494-04:00@John
Where do you see FDR sounding like a proto-...@John<br /><br />Where do you see FDR sounding like a proto-fascist?<br /><br />On the capitalism aspect, it is to be remembered that Nazism was also anti-capitalist. Hitler's alliance with German business was purely instrumental, as were the "socialist" aspects National Socialism. Economic (and virtually all other) considerations were always secondary to his vision of apocalyptic national-racial power (the crucial moment came when business and the commercially-oriented bureaucracy complained about his economically ruinous rearmament policy in 1936-7; their opposition was easily crushed).Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-54957912669117004202017-10-28T10:48:33.149-04:002017-10-28T10:48:33.149-04:00I do agree that Nazism is a more realistic threat ...I do agree that Nazism is a more realistic threat to our own system than communism, because it is the extreme expression of very widespread sins: racism, suspicion of outsiders, taking pleasure in organization for its own sake, taking pride in the strength of our military and using it too often, etc. I have written before that I regularly hear echoes of fascism in American political discourse: Teddy Roosevelt strikes me as a sort of proto-fascist, FDR often sounded like one, as does John McCain. <br /><br />But I wonder if the younger generation of American liberals might be more susceptible to extreme leftism than either G or David thinks. Hatred of capitalism is very widespread among the young people I know, and I mean virulent hatred. Many young people seem attracted to ideas like guaranteed basic income, and polls show that many more young people have a weak attraction to democracy. Hatred of capitalism plus a weak attraction to legislative democracy seems to me like a recipe for terrible politics to come.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-87462495631542149882017-10-28T09:43:53.672-04:002017-10-28T09:43:53.672-04:00That said, I would agree with Verloren's point...That said, I would agree with Verloren's points as well.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-36903609191745570442017-10-28T09:40:29.753-04:002017-10-28T09:40:29.753-04:00Whoops, while I was writing Verloren got in a comm...Whoops, while I was writing Verloren got in a comment. So, for clarity, by "you" in the first sentence, I mean John.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-62193085482245419622017-10-28T09:39:21.897-04:002017-10-28T09:39:21.897-04:00I agree with what you say, but would add that real...I agree with what you say, but would add that real Leninism-Maoism, with its legions of fanatical cadres obedient to death and slogans like "Let us drive mankind to happiness with an iron fist" is dead, dead, dead. Corbyn and Sanders are simply more energetic and charismatic than usual social democrats who want to give their constituents a bigger piece of the kluge (to borrow John's term). In the Petrograd drama, they're Kerensky, not Trotsky. In western terms, they're Lloyd George.<br /><br />Leninism has never demonstrated any real prospect of power in the West, especially the English-speaking West. Yes, Kim Philby and Julius Rosenberg really were Soviet spies, there were (tiny, usually hapless and hopeless) groups of urban guerrillas in the 70s, and there have been enclaves of Marxist belief (Oxbridge and some parts of NYC in the 1930s, American universities since the 1960s) but these are all basically weird, sectarian cults, not serious, going political movements.<br /><br />In contrast, the ills of the extreme right have been a real danger in the West. Every year I ask my students, why is it that our culture is obsessed with Hitler, and barely recognizes Stalin and Mao? There are many reasons for this, but part of it, I think, is that Hitlerism gets under our western, English-speaking collective skin in a way Leninism never has and never will. Nazism's slogans and style, its beliefs, its irrational core are all homegrown, western middle class phenomena, like the private automobile. Together they form one of our dark shadows (along with, arguably, the kluge itself). Lenin, Lin Biao, Le Duan, and the rest, are alien curiosities, like Sargon and Huitzilopochtli.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-8592071707457757112017-10-28T09:18:04.078-04:002017-10-28T09:18:04.078-04:00"Why is it that people who know all about the..."Why is it that people who know all about the infamous prison on Robben Island in South Africa have never heard of the prison on Cuba’s Isle of Pines? Why is Marxism still taken seriously on college campuses and in the progressive press? Do the same people who rightly demand the removal of Confederate statues ever feel even a shiver of inner revulsion at hipsters in Lenin or Mao T-shirts?"<br /><br />Weird questions for this guy to be asking.<br /><br />1) Apartheid was much less further removed in time, was much more morally outrageous, and occured on a much larger scale than the political jailings of Cuba, so it makes sense that it'd be much better known.<br /><br />2) Marxism really isn't taken seriously by the vast majority of liberals, so that's a bit of a strawman. College campuses are the exception, because young people being thrust into the larger world for the first time tend to find themselves attracted to radical ideas without having the experience and wisdom to understand them on a deeper level and realize their flaws.<br /><br />3) As with the prior point, the vast majority of liberals find hipsters in "Revolutionary" shirts to be painfully cringe inducing. They're the political equivalent of awkward idiot teenagers who know nothing but think they know everything - oblivious to the blistering irony of railing against the evils of capitalism by buying commercial merchandise from cynical corporate entities like Hot Topic that celebrates the evils of marxism.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com