Further to my previous post, the centrality of the ennobling effects of struggle and violence to fascism is demonstrated by its history, structures and rhetoric, but a particularly nice example of the latter is given in The Doctrine of Fascism, by Benito Mussolini and philosopher Giovanni Gentile:
The Hobbesian trap
But a deeper problem with misdiagnosing The Donald as fascism redux than getting the phenomenon wrong is that "The Donald is fascism now!" raises the political stakes in a dangerous way. It is already being used to justify violence against Trump rallies and supporters. (Bernie Sanders has made a particularly forthright denunciation of that violence.)
This is a dangerous upward (or, if you like, downward) spiral. But it is just the next step in a longer term pattern. The problem with virtue signalling via one's moral positions (or, more accurately, moralised positions) is that if one signals virtue by holding that X, then one must signal vice if one holds not X. Demonising those who disagree is a natural consequence of such virtue signalling.
For being honest about those who disagree gets in the way of the ludicrous demonising (in order to self-elevate one's moral splendour) of what are, taking a longer term and more global view, often quite minor differences in outlook. The demands of moral status seeking regularly get in the way of the demands of accuracy and understanding. The Donald is just providing a more intense example.
Political correctness is often justified as "speaking for the underprivileged". The fact that its adherents have generated increasing opinion conformity in the milieus they dominate (including entire industries) and have had great success in narrowing the range of acceptable opinion in the public space demonstrates how much it is an expression of power and dominance, not any sort of "under-privilege". As with the (by now, ludicrously false) pretence of expanding civility, the claim to speak for the under-privileged has long since become far more status-seeking justification than reality; a secular religion-substitute piety.
Of course, like the rhetoric of denunciation (sexist, racist, homophobe, islamophobe, etc), such justifications become a great way of not dealing with problems and of blinding their adherents to how oppressive others can find their shrieking intolerance. It is part of their relentless "othering" of those who fail to conform to their moral, intellectual and language taboos which is also, as these things so often are, a pattern of self-blinding. Thus, the rhetoric of denunciation that the Virtuous are so addicted to is never, of course, hate speech, for "hate speech" is only ever done by Bad People and clearly the Virtuous are, by definition, the Good People. Even though they regularly used terms which imply or state that their opponents are, in fact, hateful. The accusation of "hate speech" has become another vehicle for delegitimising dissent, and another sign of the addiction to the rhetoric of denunciation.
Interwar analogies
Moreover, the accusation of fascism now! has implications regarding causality one doubts those so eager to bandy it around have considered (or are even aware of). Some are currently invoking the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany via electoral success as some sort of analogy to The Donald. Econblogger Scott Sumner commented:
In fact, the interwar examples provide fairly clear key factors: how bad was economic stress?, how threatening did the local Left seem? basically sorts interwar Europe into those countries which experienced power-seizing Fascist/Nazi/Authoritarian Right outbreaks and those which did not.
The issue of how threatening the local Left seemed is a bit more complicated. A large Leninist Party (1920s) or Stalinist Party (1930s) was obviously threatening--particularly if conventional politics was looking unsuccessful and ineffectual. There was very little for any voter with any religious attachment or property which was not threatened by a Leninist or Stalinist takeover--not life, property, religion, family, freedom.
Italy, Spain and Germany all had significant Leninist or Stalinist Parties at the time of the Fascist/Nazi/Authoritarian Right seizure of power. That the democratic republic in Spain had only been recently established, and the failure to suppress political violence (including the mainstream Catholic Opposition leader being assassinated), added to the sense of threat and uncertainty.
But how the mainstream centre-left was behaving was also important. In particular, how they seemed to rural voters, as rural voters provided break-through mass support for Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. Basically, in the countries with Fascist/Authoritarian Right/Nazi breakouts, the mainstream left largely ignored rural voters while doing little to allay suspicions that they were (also) in favour of rural collectivisation--i.e. stripping peasant farmers of their property. Which made rural voters ripe for recruitment and/or mobilisation by Mussolini, Franco and Hitler.
So, countries without large Leninist or Stalinist Parties did not have major Fascist/Authoritarian Right/Nazi breakouts in the interwar period. (One can exclude examples of normal political instability, such as royalist seizures of power in relatively new states.)
Where Leninist or Stalinist Parties were more than minor affairs, countries which also had mainstream centre-left Parties who did not seem property-threatening to rural voters, also did not generate equivalents of the Fascists or Nazis--except as fringe movements--or Authoritarian Right military seizures of power.
If you want to invoke interwar analogies, they may not lead where folk like. Are there any disaffected groups among current voters? is a good question to ask. How threatening to various political and other trends seem? is another one. It is remarkable how little people who are often fond of the term reactionary genuinely consider re-actions.
Though the analogies also remind us how much The Donald is not a fascist, as Mussolini and Hitler adopted Leninist modes of total politics for their national and race-greatness projects. Something The Donald has not remotely done.
Weaponising rebound
The Donald is, in many ways, a creation of the weaponising of morality and civility, the addiction to the rhetoric of denunciation. Going even further down that spiral is not going to make things better. (Particularly as there is no reason to suppose that anti-Trump folk are going to have a permanent monopoly of violence.) Trashing basic social protections because "oppressors have no rights", "error has no rights" is a disastrous assault on what also protects those arrogant budding totalitarians who are riding their sense of moral entitlement and superiority to a wider social disaster.
[The post has been edited to increase clarity without changing content.][Cross-posted at Skepticlawyer.]
Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism.Whatever the The Donald is pushing, it is not that. The "The Donald as crypto/proto/actual fascist" is resorting to the rhetoric of denunciation: as such, it is a congenial substitute for understanding, and even more, a substitute for seriously grappling with, the phenomenon of The Donald (even just at a rhetorical level) and the support he has been able to generate.
The Hobbesian trap
But a deeper problem with misdiagnosing The Donald as fascism redux than getting the phenomenon wrong is that "The Donald is fascism now!" raises the political stakes in a dangerous way. It is already being used to justify violence against Trump rallies and supporters. (Bernie Sanders has made a particularly forthright denunciation of that violence.)
This is a dangerous upward (or, if you like, downward) spiral. But it is just the next step in a longer term pattern. The problem with virtue signalling via one's moral positions (or, more accurately, moralised positions) is that if one signals virtue by holding that X, then one must signal vice if one holds not X. Demonising those who disagree is a natural consequence of such virtue signalling.
Political correctness is often justified as "speaking for the underprivileged". The fact that its adherents have generated increasing opinion conformity in the milieus they dominate (including entire industries) and have had great success in narrowing the range of acceptable opinion in the public space demonstrates how much it is an expression of power and dominance, not any sort of "under-privilege". As with the (by now, ludicrously false) pretence of expanding civility, the claim to speak for the under-privileged has long since become far more status-seeking justification than reality; a secular religion-substitute piety.
Of course, like the rhetoric of denunciation (sexist, racist, homophobe, islamophobe, etc), such justifications become a great way of not dealing with problems and of blinding their adherents to how oppressive others can find their shrieking intolerance. It is part of their relentless "othering" of those who fail to conform to their moral, intellectual and language taboos which is also, as these things so often are, a pattern of self-blinding. Thus, the rhetoric of denunciation that the Virtuous are so addicted to is never, of course, hate speech, for "hate speech" is only ever done by Bad People and clearly the Virtuous are, by definition, the Good People. Even though they regularly used terms which imply or state that their opponents are, in fact, hateful. The accusation of "hate speech" has become another vehicle for delegitimising dissent, and another sign of the addiction to the rhetoric of denunciation.
Interwar analogies
Moreover, the accusation of fascism now! has implications regarding causality one doubts those so eager to bandy it around have considered (or are even aware of). Some are currently invoking the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany via electoral success as some sort of analogy to The Donald. Econblogger Scott Sumner commented:
... don’t make the “to know all is to forgive all” mistake. We could sit down and discuss all the reasons why millions of Germans voted for Hitler, and perhaps we could figure it all out. But that doesn’t excuse their votes in a moral sense.Yet it is still a good question–what caused that to seem a sensible choice to lots of voters? Why were so many votes up for grabs in that way?
In fact, the interwar examples provide fairly clear key factors: how bad was economic stress?, how threatening did the local Left seem? basically sorts interwar Europe into those countries which experienced power-seizing Fascist/Nazi/Authoritarian Right outbreaks and those which did not.
The economic stress issue is fairly straightforward--if sufficiently severe, economic stress tends to undermine existing politicians and their political Parties while making outsiders look much more worth considering as vehicles for making things better. There was considerable economic stress immediately after World War I (when Mussolini achieved power) and during the 1930s (when Hitler and Franco did).
Spain had a much less severe 1930s economic experience that Weimar Germany; but it also took a civil war for Franco to achieve power.
Spain had a much less severe 1930s economic experience that Weimar Germany; but it also took a civil war for Franco to achieve power.
Italy, Spain and Germany all had significant Leninist or Stalinist Parties at the time of the Fascist/Nazi/Authoritarian Right seizure of power. That the democratic republic in Spain had only been recently established, and the failure to suppress political violence (including the mainstream Catholic Opposition leader being assassinated), added to the sense of threat and uncertainty.
But how the mainstream centre-left was behaving was also important. In particular, how they seemed to rural voters, as rural voters provided break-through mass support for Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. Basically, in the countries with Fascist/Authoritarian Right/Nazi breakouts, the mainstream left largely ignored rural voters while doing little to allay suspicions that they were (also) in favour of rural collectivisation--i.e. stripping peasant farmers of their property. Which made rural voters ripe for recruitment and/or mobilisation by Mussolini, Franco and Hitler.
So, countries without large Leninist or Stalinist Parties did not have major Fascist/Authoritarian Right/Nazi breakouts in the interwar period. (One can exclude examples of normal political instability, such as royalist seizures of power in relatively new states.)
Where Leninist or Stalinist Parties were more than minor affairs, countries which also had mainstream centre-left Parties who did not seem property-threatening to rural voters, also did not generate equivalents of the Fascists or Nazis--except as fringe movements--or Authoritarian Right military seizures of power.
If you want to invoke interwar analogies, they may not lead where folk like. Are there any disaffected groups among current voters? is a good question to ask. How threatening to various political and other trends seem? is another one. It is remarkable how little people who are often fond of the term reactionary genuinely consider re-actions.
Weaponising rebound
The Donald is, in many ways, a creation of the weaponising of morality and civility, the addiction to the rhetoric of denunciation. Going even further down that spiral is not going to make things better. (Particularly as there is no reason to suppose that anti-Trump folk are going to have a permanent monopoly of violence.) Trashing basic social protections because "oppressors have no rights", "error has no rights" is a disastrous assault on what also protects those arrogant budding totalitarians who are riding their sense of moral entitlement and superiority to a wider social disaster.
[The post has been edited to increase clarity without changing content.][Cross-posted at Skepticlawyer.]
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