chickeon posted:the opposition between them is illusory
vimingok posted:Liberalism provides the material basis for fascism (during capitalist crises) but the latter is historically a revolution against liberalism right? Or at least trying to subsume it under a non- or anti- liberal fascist order?
Adolf Hitler didn't invent social darwinism, or white supremacy, or eugenics, or concentration camps, or the idea that human excellence was measured in wealth accumulation.
vimingok posted:My half-baked theory is that much of what is called fascism today is a decadent kind of liberalism and not larval fascism.
clipuuuuuuu
link to source
you could think of fascism as something that emerges from within liberalism as an attempt to resolve an impasse that it finds itself in when faced with the rapid pace of capitalist development, its tendency towards crisis... basically you can't pick and choose this shit like a video game where it just appears in a cloud of vapor suddenly on its own, divorced from material conditions.
also on ICE guards as the material manifestation of present-day fascism:
link to source
I think my definition of fascism seems pretty close to Sakai's - emerging out of defunct liberalism, attempting to enact revolutionary changes in them, subordinating everyone else under the PB which now comprises a romanticised new bourgeoisie+warrior caste. But if we accept that definition Trump and his fans still represent liberalism, albeit a version in the final stage/s of decline. You might say fascism is those final stages and maybe that is a more useful way of looking at it, but I'm not convinced.
Domenico Losurdo makes an extensive case that liberalism by its very nature relies on the demarcation of sacred vs profane spaces, hence as genocidal and oppressive if not more than fascism, in practice. But he also says that precisely because of that reliance liberals also need to adjust those spaces to changing conditions, and maintain a certain balance between them. So bearing that in mind Trump et al seem to represent a contraction of the liberal sacred spaces, ie make them more white supremacist like in the 60s or whatever. The overall effect is of delaying crisis not reacting to it (obviously, since it hasn't happened yet for white PB).
Again the question I'm thinking about is what fascism will look like if/when it does happen. Predicting an extreme version of current liberalism isn't very helpful because liberalism taken to extremes is a fantasy akin to neoreaction and the like, because current liberal ideology is itself a mix of fantastic and pragmatic excuses for stable bourgeois rule. Sorry if all this sounds hackneyed and disconnected. Many thoughts but precious little time to organise them!
vimingok posted:Again the question I'm thinking about is what fascism will look like if/when it does happen
vimingok posted:@trackfractri, thanks for responding and the links. I only read that Sakai essay and mostly agree with it. The Woodley book sounds too academic for me.
I think my definition of fascism seems pretty close to Sakai's - emerging out of defunct liberalism, attempting to enact revolutionary changes in them, subordinating everyone else under the PB which now comprises a romanticised new bourgeoisie+warrior caste. But if we accept that definition Trump and his fans still represent liberalism, albeit a version in the final stage/s of decline. You might say fascism is those final stages and maybe that is a more useful way of looking at it, but I'm not convinced.
Domenico Losurdo makes an extensive case that liberalism by its very nature relies on the demarcation of sacred vs profane spaces, hence as genocidal and oppressive if not more than fascism, in practice. But he also says that precisely because of that reliance liberals also need to adjust those spaces to changing conditions, and maintain a certain balance between them. So bearing that in mind Trump et al seem to represent a contraction of the liberal sacred spaces, ie make them more white supremacist like in the 60s or whatever. The overall effect is of delaying crisis not reacting to it (obviously, since it hasn't happened yet for white PB).
Again the question I'm thinking about is what fascism will look like if/when it does happen. Predicting an extreme version of current liberalism isn't very helpful because liberalism taken to extremes is a fantasy akin to neoreaction and the like, because current liberal ideology is itself a mix of fantastic and pragmatic excuses for stable bourgeois rule. Sorry if all this sounds hackneyed and disconnected. Many thoughts but precious little time to organise them!
i think trump and his administration, which is essentially a continuation of the same old american liberal settler institutions with the mask off, needs to be distinguished from many of the rank and file 'alt right' types who really do want to violently overthrow liberalism. like are you gonna claim that the dude that goes and shoots up a mosque to incite a race war is a liberal? these people are quite happy to support or be members of racist institutions within liberalism, like the police or the tsa, while also wanting to install actual fascism if they had the capability to do so.
chickeon posted:Given the readiness with which people admit that they aren't certain what fascism 'would' look like, what is the origin of the reticience toward recognizing the Amerikkkan Empire as fascist?
Fear.
cars posted:I think Griffin's definition of fascism as palingenetic ultranationalism is as good a place to start as any, and it's hard to argue it in a country where the president campaigns for reelection by lecturing a bunch of people in Make _______ Great Again ballcaps about how today's dishwashers just aren't as dishwasher-y as the ones your mom and dad had, you know, and I haven't gotten around to making apple pies taste more like they used to but I sure will next time! while the so-called opposition, the preferred collaborator for the state's assassins abroad, sinks everything into a strategy that argues the other guy only won office because of nefarious racial enemies brainwashing the citizenry from remote foreign strongholds, taking advantage of supporters' genuine fears of new social and technological developments while filling party coffers with quid-pro-quo "donations" from the slice of the bourgeoisie that manages them.
Griffin is where I started. It's funny you mention that... because I agree with it but I don't know if Griffin would accept his own conclusions here, since he comes from the liberal side of academic "fascist studies" which tends to stick fascism in its own special box, distinct from liberalism. So there's a lot of explanation of how fascists see the world and what is motivating them, as they understand it, but I've just about read enough psychology at this point at the expense of, like, a better understanding of the class character of fascist rule. And it makes me wonder how useful the "palingenetic ultranationalism" thing is when applied to, say, Vichy France where loyalty to the regime implied loyalty to the Third Reich. Now the true believers might really have thought France was standing on its own two feet again under Vichy, but objectively the country was just being looted for everything that was bolted down. Or neo-fascist groups in Italy in the 1970s who subjectively might have thought their actions were about all kinds of things but were objectively acting to solidify a stable, center-right, liberal political order -- and being used for that specific purpose.
I liked what I've read of Griffin's stuff on modern terrorism where he goes into the psychology of it, which I think is very eerie. Individual terrorists / mass shooter types engage in what he calls "heroic doubling;" i.e. it's like they see themselves as like superheroes, or Neo from The Matrix. And they're so bummed out and alienated, adopting this persona transforms them into their own personal Neo, so they feel really calm and focused on their little quest -- which is really just building up to a pathetic and gruesome killing spree at some point in the future. Often the case after one of these shootings, the news will publish photos the perp took himself posing with guns and glowering at the camera. It looks ridiculous, but for them they're acting like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver: "you talkin' to me?"
The hardcore Nazi groups seem to try to focus this psychology in their way, where it's about dressing up in tights and marching down the street with a lot of flash and pomp. Like when Batman goes flying past members of the public with his grappling hook, people turn and look: "mommy, it's Batman!" So provoking reactions is a form of power for the sadsacks who join these groups. But what is interesting to me now is questioning how that relates to the production and reproduction of identity under capitalism -- or identity as a branded, recognizable commodity.
Edited by trakfactri ()
They mostly didn’t look like what a lot people today think of, even people on “the left”, when they imagine “fascists”.
The Nazis just didn’t give a fuck about rewarding their existing diehard boosters outside of Austria & Germany where and when that might have been feasible, by which I mean not their base of support, but the sort of people who emulated the NSDAP in other countries and throughly expected to be installed in their country’s seats of power when the Nazis swarmed in.
The Nazis instead tended to set up puppet governments made up of crusty monarchists, stuffy industrialists, weak-kneed opportunists, etc., because
1) the Nazi-cargo-cult types in other countries had nationalist platforms that involved things like taking chunks out of neighboring countries to make “Greater” versions of their own, that is, they were all at odds from the very beginning with their counterparts nearby and with Berlin’s plans for managing Europe;
2) The Nazi leadership looked at their imitators in other countries and saw a lesser version of the SA, a bunch of unstable and dangerous losers who needed to be cleared out as soon as they outlived their limited usefulness.
Even in countries where the Nazis integrated these garish Nazi-oid movements into the puppet government, they were usually junior partners to other domestic elements, the Nazis removed their respective mini-Hitlers and installed more pliable types in their place, etc.
So who really acted as Hitler’s practical, powerful and lasting support during the war, outside Germany & Austria and the Germans living nearby within territory the Germans claimed? Who were the real fascist elite among the conquered?
It was all the people I mentioned all the way at the top.
They were not waving crazy new flags and howling at the top of their lungs about how Hitler was the greatest, not until the Nazis told them it was time. They were quiet supporters, “normal” Red-Scare-mongers, “respectable” antisemites, people in “liberal” governments and their constituencies, industrialists and landlords with wide-ranging influence over the lives and livelihoods of others, and all the little twerps beneath them sharing their values and acting in imitation of them.
I agree it would be real nice, very reassuring, if history would allow the dividing line a lot of people desperately want to find, where “liberal democracy” stops and “fascism” begins. We've learned that history does not afford us that convenience, in ways not even the old Bolshevik luminaries could have possibly known in the years before the war.
cars posted:The Nazi leadership looked at their imitators in other countries and saw a lesser version of the SA, a bunch of unstable and dangerous losers who needed to be cleared out as soon as they outlived their limited usefulness.
Good posts. Yeah awhile ago I was reading about how the Nazis came into Denmark and cleaned out the local imitators and installed their own people. One young woman who was in a family of these Danish lesser-SA types got out of there bounced around Klanada and the U.$. in the post-war years dealing heroin and promoting spooky magic sparkle Nazi / Renaissance Faire magic stuff as a white supremacist "folkmother" for convicts in the prison system, and then died.
drwhat posted:this is real ripe conspiracy theory time. I've read and thought so many in the past few days I don't even know which ones to post
post 'em up. conspiracy blitz, conspiracy gauntlet, conspiracy last man standing
There was this proto-Q who showed up before Q, during election season, in the exact same place online, and someone brought him up here and we all made fun of him. He claimed he was deep-cover FBI or something, and that Trump was going to release information that would send Hillary Clinton and "the entire government" to jail for treason that summer. He also claimed that the U.S. culture industry was a secret federal program to promote mixed-race babies. People ate it up for whatever reason, demanding more and more of this guy and giving him tons of attention, and Q is probably either that guy or, more likely, someone who saw what that guy managed to do just riffing off the top of his head and thought, Hell,
so they got a self perpetuating little blob of people to believe that no matter how bad things are now, the messiah will fix America next Tuesday as long as they keep the faith, and that was it. good job project complete, nothing more complicated to it. any greater ambitions would have too many moving parts to be feasible.
shriekingviolet posted:i'm inclined to agree with cars, although we do know that FBI spooks were actively disseminating propaganda and disinfo around the same places.
LOL yeah that FBI guy who went on 4chan and tried to convince them they should hate Russia because it fixed the election for Trump. Beefy cyber strats
"FBI officials also have yet to explain why bureau agents were in the Tsarnaevs' neighborhood, which is roughly a mile from MIT, the night Dzhokhar killed Collier."
"The FBI maintains to this day that the bombers were not known to the bureau before those photos were made public, despite the fact that federal agents interviewed Tamerlan and his family multiple times in 2011"
As Topsfield cops and state police continued their search of Morley's bedroom and a shed in the backyard, the FBI suddenly showed up, leading one trooper to say, "Who called the feebs?"
"Morley was arrested by Topsfield police that day, charged with two counts of assault and battery against his mother and her companion, and with making a bomb threat. And then, nothing. The FBI showed up at Topsfield police headquarters and seized much of the evidence taken from Morley's home after Hayward executed a search warrant. Morley was never formally arraigned in connection with the charges that Hayward swore out in a criminal complaint, and those charges were abruptly dropped without explanation by the Essex County district attorney."
