So what's wrong with fascism?

[Borachio]

I don't think you're really grasping the ads as they would appear to a British viewer. It's a caricature, yes, but an affectionate one, and one that appeals to the British fondness for self-depreciation. If anything, this sort of thing serves to facilitate an otherwise uncritical deification of Churchill, because it allows patriotic Brits to convince themselves that they're not really deifying him, no, not like those filthy Continentals, they're simply paying him due reverence. Our liberty to present a very mildly unflattering caricature of him proves that we could present a critical or unfriendly view of him, it's just that he's so bloody great nobody would ever want to.

In reality, it's very rare that you'll ever really see a truly critical look at Churchill in the British media. Even a mention of his role in the Gallipoli cock-up is immediately followed by his penance in the Flanders trenches, as if that somehow makes it all go away, while his role in the large-scale deaths of civilians in Ireland, Germany, Iraq, India, Palestine, South Africa... well, the list goes on for a bit- his role in these deaths is completely brushed over. The closest I can think of to a critical look in recent years is Stewart Lee's claim that he was actually a pig in a hat (mild NSFW), and he got away with that because it was just a little bit too ridiculous to be taken as actual criticism.

Unbelievable, I know. But how true!

Which all goes to show how easy it is to overlook the political clout that most pigs have. If only they'd put their minds, and trotters, to it.

 

[Tarquelne]

I agree fascism is extremely open to abuse. Or is it rather that you've unleashed an uncontrollable beast and the results are likely to be unpredictable? Which might lead us back to anarcho-fascism.

It's certainly extremely open to abuse, so you might get an anarcho-fascist state that's oppressive, militaristic, etc. etc.

But then all government systems can be, and are, abused.

No "But": All government systems can be, and are, abused. All government systems are not, however, "extremely open" to abuse.

Systems can also tend to be more or less self-limiting in the extent or severity in the results of the abuse. The more centralized a government, the fewer internal checks on it's power, the more severe and wide-spread the abuse.

I'm not sure what you mean by this gap between theory and practice. I'd have thought fascist theory was the easiest to implement: just find some difficult times and put your "solution", such as it is, into effect.

I mean puppies vs. thugs: Sure, fascism may be easy to put in place, but does it actually offer the benefits promised and that it's capable giving *in theory*, or is it "a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

 

[Tahuti]

You could ask much the same question about Stalin.

I think I even want to have this answered too!

No "But": All government systems can be, and are, abused. All government systems are not, however, "extremely open" to abuse.

Systems can also tend to be more or less self-limiting in the extent or severity in the results of the abuse. The more centralized a government, the fewer internal checks on it's power, the more severe and wide-spread the abuse.

Problem that it is a Liberal concern, not a Fascist concern. While I'm pretty much a Liberal myself, albeit a very atypical one, and sympathize with your concerns, ideologies must be identified by their basic social analysis and criticized on this level. The problem of this argument against Fascism and Communism is that bypasses the premise of these ideologies, which are indeed completely different, even if the results may be the same. Thus, it won't be a really impressive argument if you don't analyze Fascism to the bone and take it on there. Fascism views society as an organism and individuals as insignificant, while still urging on an individual identity based on membership of a nation.

For fascists, corruption and abuse are the result of discord, which according to them begins with seeing societies as the sum of its individuals.

 

[Borachio]

I mean puppies vs. thugs: Sure, fascism may be easy to put in place, but does it actually offer the benefits promised and that it's capable giving *in theory*, or is it "a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

I'm not so sure. Didn't fascism, given the examples of Italy and Germany, have widespread popular support? At least, initially.

And it's only under those circumstances that it's easy to put in place?

Indeed, given the same level of support, ANY system, which avoids internal disputes and equivocation (which liberal democracies seem incapable of avoiding), is easy to put in place.

Isn't it only as popular support begins to wane (perhaps, indeed, because its promises are unrealistic), that such a regime becomes oppressive in order to maintain its grip on power?

Mustn't a liberal democracy always cede power to fascism (or any totalitarian order), in the face of a demagogue's popular acclaim?

 

[sophie]

Maybe they've got a "genocidal mass-murderers" theme going on?

Well they have a Cromwell statue out there too. So I believe you may be on to something!

 

[Borachio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Square
10 statues, according to wiki:

Churchill, Lloyd George, Smuts, Palmerston, Smith-Stanley, Disraeli, Peel, Canning, Lincoln, and Mandela.

Though elsewhere it does say there are others. I'm easily confused. Where's the complete list?

Still, who'd go there? Except to make an attempted coup. In the expectation of success, naturally.

 

[innonimatu]

The thing that really separates fascism from other right-wing authoritarian systems is its revolutionary nature. Most right-wing authoriatarian systems are reactionary; ie, they attempt to stop or at least slow change. Fascism does the opposite. It actually promotes change, preferably through violent revolution. It's very similar to communism in that way - and it's no accident that many of the most violent and revolutionary Nazi and Fascist Party members were former communists (Mussolini was a former socialist) - but with one exception, the Fascist 'revolution' has never been completed.

If you look at the theory, sure, it is revolutionary: it embraces industrialization and urbanization, and seeks to find a new social order that can both take advantage of this technical progress and still maintain a pyramid of power with those who manage the state at the top and a collection of intermediate management layers that answer to them. So, an order that is neither liberal nor socialist.
It can even be said to be repressive technocracy. And that was the reason it got compared with soviet communism so often: they too were revolutionany, and became repressive technocracts in their methods and justifications. Not, however, in their aims which remained - we can argue over how honestly - to achieve a classless society. Fascism wanted to create a new social order with different classes of people who knew their "proper place", or had to be forced into it.

But if you look at the practice of fascism it had to rely, as always, on the local elites. The local conservative elites, who were not necessarily the fascist technocrats the central government would like to place running things.

 

[sophie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Square
10 statues, according to wiki:

Churchill, Lloyd George, Smuts, Palmerston, Smith-Stanley, Disraeli, Peel, Canning, Lincoln, and Mandela.

Though elsewhere it does say there are others. I'm easily confused. Where's the complete list?

Still, who'd go there? Except to make an attempted coup. In the expectation of success, naturally.

Cromwell's not in the square per se, but off to the left towards the Palace of Westminster.

 

[Tee Kay]

I'm not so sure. Didn't fascism, given the examples of Italy and Germany, have widespread popular support? At least, initially.

And it's only under those circumstances that it's easy to put in place?

You don't need widespread popular support. Just widespread popular apathy. Or fear, or panic, that works too.

 

[Borachio]

I'm not so sure about popular apathy. I'd have thought that was a prerequisite for a functioning liberal democracy.

Boredom with politics can be a good sign - if no one really minds what politicians are getting up to, they can't be up to much mischief, can they?

 

[Tahuti]

Boredom with politics can be a good sign - if no one really minds what politicians are getting up to, they can't be up to much mischief, can they?

You may be on to something: 1930s Europe (Fascism!), the Post-Soviet countries (still recovering from the authoritarianism of Soviet Communism) and the Arab world are all characterized by both (naïve) enthusiasm for politics and recent histories of authoritarian political cultures. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the two are somehow casually linked.

 

[Lord Baal]

You may be on to something: 1930s Europe (Fascism!), the Post-Soviet countries (still recovering from the authoritarianism of Soviet Communism) and the Arab world are all characterized by both (naïve) enthusiasm for politics and recent histories of authoritarian political cultures. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the two are somehow casually linked.

There's a linkage, but it's a tenous one. A politicised populace is a populace that can be mobilised, as is happening currently in Turkey.

In post-WWI Europe, that populace was politicised by the war, and many of them came up with differing solutions to their problems. The real issue in inter-war Europe was that many of those politicised individuals were former veterans; they were even easier to mobilise than disenfranchised youth, they had been hardened by years of military experience and they were prepared to follow orders from whoever they accepted as their leader. Unfortunately for Germany, Italy and elsewhere, they didn't decide to recognise moderates as their leaders, but radicals.

Turkey and the Arab states do not have this large population of veterans running around the country, desperate to carve themselves a life out of this new situation. The Eastern European countries tended to have veterans, but hadn't really been fighting wars recently, so they were simply soldiers with scant experience, not much of an issue. The places in the world that had huge numbers of experienced veterans running around just after a polarising political challenge are all in Africa. There's a reason Mugabe is in power, and I don't think I need to tell you what it is after you've read my post.

One reason Yeltsin didn't shrink the Russian Army more than was absolutely necessary after the collapse of the USSR, in fact, was because he preferred to keep those discontented soldiers, many of whom had experience in the Afghan War, in uniform rather than on the streets, and to hell with how expensive and counter-productive to military readiness it was. Better they were blowing up Chechens than blowing up him.

 

[Borachio]

There's a series on the radio at the moment about 1913. Apparently, WW1 interrupted, and calmed down, the political, social and industrial upheavals of the time.

Though really I'd have to admit that WW1 was simply a major upheaval in itself.

 

[Lord Baal]

There's a series on the radio at the moment about 1913. Apparently, WW1 interrupted, and calmed down, the political, social and industrial upheavals of the time.

Though really I'd have to admit that WW1 was simply a major upheaval in itself.

Say what? How would the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires disintegrate and the USSR be created without WWI, just to cite the most blatant examples of social change caused by the war. While it may have interrupted some change - in Ireland, mostly - it sped up more.

 

[Traitorfish]

It depends where you stand, really. In 1914, the war appeared eminently stabilising. By 1916, not so much, and by 1918, definitely not.

The trick, mind, is what kind of change. A lot of what came out of the war- the breakup of the Hapsburg, Romanov and Ottoman empires being the obvious example- is not a straightforward product of pre-war conditions that were merely suspended for a few months in 1914, but the collision of pre-war conditions and wartime conditions. The Hapsburg Empire wasn't going to continue without some sort of change, right enough, but nothing in 1914 indicated that it would fall apart entirely. That happened because of the war, not despite or regardless of it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not for all though. Keep in mind that in part of Europe there had been another serious war going on for 2 years, ending only sometime in 1913 (the first and second Balkan wars).

Moreover the prelude to the Balkan wars was bloody too, and lasted for many years, starting (at the latest) at 1908.

 

[Lord Baal]

It depends where you stand, really. In 1914, the war appeared eminently stabilising. By 1916, not so much, and by 1918, definitely not.

The trick, mind, is what kind of change. A lot of what came out of the war- the breakup of the Hapsburg, Romanov and Ottoman empires being the obvious example- is not a straightforward product of pre-war conditions that were merely suspended for a few months in 1914, but the collision of pre-war conditions and wartime conditions. The Hapsburg Empire wasn't going to continue without some sort of change, right enough, but nothing in 1914 indicated that it would fall apart entirely. That happened because of the war, not despite or regardless of it.

Was this in response to me?

If any change was going to happen to the Hapsburg Empire, it was increased centralisation. The short civil war between Austria and Hungary that was brewing - and likely to come to a head when the ausgleich came up for renewal in 1917 - would see to that. They were also liberalising it. The Ottomans, likewise were looking to centralise their regime's power structure, and they were doing well. The Romanovs, again, were slowly modernising and centralising their empire.

If WWI doesn't break out Britain would be in a civil war before the end of 1914. No questions asked. It would make the Easter Rebellion look like a romantic picnic on the beach. I'm not even going to try to work out the knock-on effects that would have, but I find it difficult to believe that none of the other powers would take advantage of it. Italy especially, with their naval persecution complex. Italian irredentism already existed, but was increased during the war. I'm not even trying to predict the direction the Balkans were going, since that changed on a weekly basis.

Then, of course, there's the growth of political and social movements like socialism, fascism, feminism, communism and Zionism all as a direct result of the war. They may have existed before it, but the war, again, sped them up nicely.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Say what? How would the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires disintegrate and the USSR be created without WWI, just to cite the most blatant examples of social change caused by the war. While it may have interrupted some change - in Ireland, mostly - it sped up more.

Well WWI was the immediate cause of defusing the Irish Home Rule Crisis, for one. And for another, the socialists who went nationalist before Zimmerwald, which helped solve more than a few social strains during the war (at least for a while). I wouldn't be surprised to learn about more situations similar to the Irish one involving ethnicities in other empires.

 

[Winston Hughes]

My first problem with fascism is its lack of ambition, setting its sights on the achievement of an exceptionally tiny list of values, and writing off every other value as worthless.

My second problem with fascism is its stance against political hypocrisy, which serves to justify all manner of evils under the guise of authenticity.

My third problem with fascism is its obsession with aesthetics over ethics, which underpins both of the previous problems.

My fourth problem with fascism is its preference for an aesthetic of struggle, conflict, violence, and oppression (as summed up by Italian poet and father of Futurism, Filippo Marinetti: "We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman").

 

[Tahuti]

My third problem with fascism is its obsession with aesthetics over ethics, which underpins both of the previous problems.

I think aesthetics and ethics overlap, and perhaps are even identical. Taste in art can largely be defined by morality and vice versa may be just as true. For the same reasons, I'm quite distrustful of ethical dogma's that I think are rife in Marxism and Libertarianism. Especially Objectivism and Marxism-Leninism tend to turn human beings into unimaginative drones, because of their over reliance on a set of ethics as opposed to life.

It is in exactly that area, that Fascism (together with Radical Traditionalism, i.e. Joseph de Maistre and the New Left, i.e Herbert Marcuse) does deserve some credit for its dedication to beauty and meaning. However, it is also highly repressive of values that it doesn't recognize as virtuous, ultimately giving the same problems as dogmatic system that suffer from over reliance on ethics, despite its premises. Not to mention it tends to totally discredit reason, depriving, rather than nourish the means to create. Again, this criticism more or less apply to Radical Traditionalism and the New Left as well.