dagblog - Comments for "Fascism!"

Baudrillard also speaks of an

moat — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:47:51 +0000

In reply to trying to wrap my mind around

Baudrillard also speaks of an erasure of history through its representation. His view is perhaps more radical than Blau in the matter of an "agency of illusion"; If the Real has been murdered, Illusion just lost its job of concealing it. I think both writers would agree that the matter of the "excluded middle" is what has to be investigated. I will try to express this idea more in the context of Destor's post so that it doesn't seem I changed the subject or got lost in my thoughts while thumbing magazines in Lacan's waiting room.

When referring to something as Fascist, how do we distinguish the state, person, or concept thusly named from garden variety Despotism? All the answers lead to looking at Fascist regimes as a new development in our history.

One kind of answer takes the form of Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. Her analysis goes beyond the ideologies of different regimes to look for a structure present in all systems that create an environment where no element of society is allowed to stand apart from the apparatus of power. Arendt's work established a ground for comparison that is one of the reasons why "fascism" has come to be used so broadly beyond its original meaning. For example, a biography like Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin would be meaningless without that kind of analysis.

But the Arendt point of view throws into shadow an entirely different kind of answer that actually better reflects how the word "fascism" was used as a general term for many decades. The word described the antithesis of socialist and Marxist efforts to overturn the class system of the Bourgeoisie. Used in this way, perhaps no better example can be found than that given by Georg Lukács in his The Destruction of Reason where he argues that Nietzsche was a Fascist who provided the founding principles of the capitalist dominion before it had truly come into its own. It would not be a fair representation of this essay to quote just one line of it, but in the interest of brevity, I will do just that to highlight how the use of the term fascism has become hopelessly entangled in a no-man's-land between disconnected cognitive spaces.

Halfway through the essay, Lukács quotes Nietzsche:

"I challenge the idea that egotism is harmful and reprehensible: I want to give egotism a clear conscience."

For Lukács, this statement is emblematic of a class consciousness that places the life of some individuals above other individuals. What Lukács is calling fascist is also the essential ingredient in the often hallucinated American Dream.

The point in drawing out these differences is not for the sake of saying something definitive about Nietzsche and his philosophy or deciding what is really fascist. The point is to ask how do we talk about being individuals in a language that isn't the "operationalization of all social and individual life" that Baudrillard is militating against.

The "excluded middle" is the experience that is imagined and protected by our personal rights. Those rights are critical to our becoming better humans. But they do nothing by themselves.

Was looking for something

Elusive Trope — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:34:15 +0000

In reply to Fascism!

Was looking for something else and came across this. Thought it was apropos (not to mention, a reminder that as bad as the current GOP field is, it could be worse)

I guess my issue, Kyle, is

Michael Maiello — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:57:07 +0000

In reply to I understand and appreciate

I guess my issue, Kyle, is that you seem to define groups and organizations that do things you like as being in the public interest. But the Chamber of Commerce also claims to be acting "in the public interest." So a lot of it comes down to tastes and priorities. Since you and I will tend to like the same group, it'd be easy for us to just set this little disagreement aside. But, you know, when a bunch of Christian social conservatives want the Ten Commandments put up in a public court house, they really believe they're doing the public a great service by pushing the justice system towards a more Christian interpretation that will ultimately save souls. The Chamber of Commerce thinks it is creating the best jobs the economy will allow.

I don't see equivalences because, yes, I realize that fighting global warming makes a lot more sense for the world than trying to save souls. But groups are all the same in that they exist to advocate for their members. The relationship between, say the UAW and the Sierra Club has always been complicated, to say the least, even if they both broadly support Democrats during elections. Remember that GM, which was rescued by the government, was and is still suing California over its environmental regulations.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this, by the way. If I'm in a union and am paying dues, I want and deserve a practical advocate.

No one's saying they're

Verified Atheist — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:48:14 +0000

In reply to I understand and appreciate

No one's saying they're equivalent, just that they all have special interests to consider. In some cases the special interests represent less than 0.01% of the population, and in others the represent significantly more. That doesn't degrade the latter to be recognized as a special interest, any more than it degrades humans to be recognized as mammals even though they share that distinction with rodents (or vice-versa, your pick).

I think most people agree with your central thesis that labor union lobbyists are useful in a manner that, for example, big oil lobbyists generally are not, or that big pharma lobbyists rarely are. (I think it's possible that the latter are useful on occasion, however.)

I understand and appreciate

kyle flynn — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:19:07 +0000

In reply to conveniently located directly

I understand and appreciate Bruce's point, I just don't think we're addressing quite the same question.

It's disturbing that labor unions lobbying government broadly on issues of worker pay, healthcare, time off and safe and clean conditions is considered equivalent to the narrow, private interests of, say, big pharma or the oil lobby. And it's lame that public interest organizations like the Sierra Club are lumped in there, too. I expect it from the Newt Gingriches. His ilk have been hard at muddying those waters from the beginning. But it's disheartening to hear it argued by folks from the left.

Sure, there are times, often in fact, when conflicts arise among different trades. Working from the same book doesn't mean everyone's always on the same page. And tensions between labor and environment are real, serious obstacles. In fact, that tension could very well be the paramount wedge issue of these times. The Gingriches sure as hell will continue to fan that flame. But I don't think it's any coincidence that during rallies last winter in support of the events in Wisconsin, or during the WTO protests in Seattle, or at Occupy sites all over the world this past summer and fall labor and environment stood shoulder to shoulder. What do folks imagine that solidarity represents if not to broadly serve the interests of everyone?

I don't think General Electric and labor unions are up to the same thing at all when they lobby government in the context Destor offers:

that these institutions can, in concert with the government, act to pass unpopular laws, start unpopular wars and let hedge fund managers pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than everyone else.

And I think I'm right to insist on a difference that isn't idiosyncratic.

Alright, so we're a bit more

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:16:10 +0000

In reply to Or, we might be smart enough

Alright, so we're a bit more primitive, but parts could apply, non?

conveniently located directly

artappraiser — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:00:57 +0000

In reply to I guess I'll chime in here

conveniently located directly under the Faragut West metro stop in the heart of our nation's capital

good one!

Location, location, location......the IMF & World Bank both in the hood! (As is the DAR-they ain't in on it, are they? Might be kind of disturbing to some of their members)

And uh, on the topic at hand, may I suggest everyone, for the purpose of understanding what Bruce and others are saying, just replace the word "unions" with "public employees' unions," where those actually legally representing the public's interest are adversaries on the other side of the table from the union representatives. It's just not always possible that what a union wants is the same thing as the "public interest" as traditionally defined (sure ok, if you have some idiosyncratic definition of "public interest" created for yourself for your next blog entry, go for it, whatever floats your boat)

I am reminded of examples given me in childhood by my Dad elaborating on what he did for a living...... say......well, the policemen's union there wants to keep hiring Irish only......well, it's the firemen's union wanting their pay to recognize they are better finer workers and people in general than policemen......well, the garbagemen are going on strike because they say they work harder than the policemen or firemen and deserve the same pay and benefits......

trying to wrap my mind around

Elusive Trope — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:35:20 +0000

In reply to The definition of fascism as:

trying to wrap my mind around this, but it does remind me of one my more favorite passages from Herbert Blau:

The issue of credibility is written into history, the illusion of continuity. What we normally call history, the assessable life we live in common and of which our records appear to speak, is always threatened with oversimplification or extinction. We overdocument it or erase it. In an era of information systems, we don't know where we are, as if all knowledge (as it is) is the agency of illusion, part of the conspiracy, since we don't appear to know what we know either. Thus, the life we actually live is threatened at the extremes, as if there were still at the periphery a barbarian invader. The via media under tension becomes a virtually excluded middle, and all we appear to have left is the pathology of the margin, a via negativa, which is the path by which reason yields to the unreasoning for the sake of making sense of a dead end.

It also reminds of Blau's take on Genet and The Balcony. But it is late and so for another time...

The definition of fascism as:

moat — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:30:28 +0000

In reply to Fascism!

The definition of fascism as: "a merger of state and corporate power" does a yeoman's job of describing various political systems but it does a poor job of representing the orgy of violence and what the collective participation in that kind of violence is about. Making a distinction in the matter is not an attempt to dismiss the importance of integrated power as a cause of events, just to say that the narrative is not self explanatory. There are many instances where authoritarian structures did not trigger what happened in the twentieth century and turned a label for a particular ideology into an omnivorous descriptor.

Consider Jean Baudrillard's view of Fascism as a species of nostalgia:

Fascism itself, the mystery of its appearance and of its collective energy, with which no interpretation has been able to come to grips (neither the Marxist one of political manipulation by dominant classes, nor the Reichian one of the sexual repression of the masses, nor the Deleuzian one of despotic paranoia), can already be interpreted as the "irrational" excess of mythic and political referentials, the mad intensification of collective value (blood, race, people, etc.), the reinjection of death, of a "political aesthetic of death" at a time when the process of the disenchantment of value and of collective values, of the rational secularization and unidimensionalization of all life, of the operationalization of all social and individual life. Fascism is a resistance to this, even if it is a profound, irrational, demented resistance, it would not have tapped into this massive energy if it hadn't been a resistance to something much worse. Fascism's cruelty, its terror is on the level of this other terror that is the confusion of the real and the rational, which deepened in the West, and is a response to that.

In view of the enormity of the crimes he is referring to, Baudrillard's statement is very provocative. I struggle against the totality of his account. Even so, he is remembering in a way that the logic of cabals and conspiracy cannot.

Or, we might be smart enough

Ethanator — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:19:45 +0000

In reply to Oh idunno, if I recall French

Or, we might be smart enough to know intuitively that America 2012 is nothing like Egypt in 2011, the Balkans in 1991 or France in 1789.