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Historical Context of Fascism
Elki
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
All the rules outlined in our announcement apply to this thread
This is thread will cover discussions of fascism, totalitarianism, and other modern authoritarian governments. And the parallels or lack thereof between our contemporary society and the one experienced during the rise of those governments in an effort to have a deeper understanding of the dangers presented in the Trump administration and forces driving it.
This is thread will cover discussions of fascism, totalitarianism, and other modern authoritarian governments. And the parallels or lack thereof between our contemporary society and the one experienced during the rise of those governments in an effort to have a deeper understanding of the dangers presented in the Trump administration and forces driving it.
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At first glance, Fascism seems like the most fascinating of the non-democratic forms of modern government. It took inspiration from Bolshevism in the idea of having a vanguard party entrusted to transform society (in this case, to remake society into something strong enough to survive the forces of 20th-century change). It takes the methods of socialism and uses them to reinforce the norms of the anti-enlightenment reaction, using modernism to reject modernism.
Unlike Bolshevism, though, practically every version of it was different. Baathism, Nasserism, the OG Italian Fascism, Francoism, the Iron Guard, the Guomindong, and the Nazis, all could have some claim to the ideology but all had very different ideals. So what ties them together?
In the darkest timeline I wonder if we are inching towards a similar system. Democracy with American Characteristics. If so, what is this beast even called?
That's contrasted to the Russian system which underwent significant privatization under Gorbachev and then Yeltsin (with a new constitution) only to see Putin rise to power with the backing of the oligarchs (who came to rise under Yeltsin) and establish a super-presidential system. The Russian system looks similar to ours descriptively: The Duma votes on a piece of legislation after 3 readings, it goes to the Federal Council (similar to the Senate) and the same process, then goes to the Government (executive) and is signed or vetoed. If vetoed the Duma and FC can get a 2/3 majority and override. There is also a judiciary. In reality the Government (AKA Putin) proposes legislation and the Duma and FC are essentially rubber stamps. And the judiciary seeks to please Putin because he is the true arbiter of appointments/nominations. The way Putin has pushed their system the President is the sole center of gravity and everyone tangentially involved with the Federal government does what they can to curry favor with Putin and the United Russia party.
This is also true. From a first hand source who used to be a Chinese diplomat and worked for the NPC: most party members aren't as beholden to rhetoric anymore. "True Believers" are fading, so to speak. And part of that I imagine has to do with an institutional response to Mao after his death. Deng, who was initially "purged" but still had enough clout to become de facto successor to Mao even if not in name, openly criticized both his economic policy and his constant "social revolution". Both of which were seen as obstacles to actual economic development and caused real harm to many, many people.
Ramblings about fascism. No pictures, sorry:
What is Fascism?
The term 'fascism' is derived from the root latin word fascio, referring to a bundle of wooden rods - an icon from the age of Roman imperialism that symbolized the authority of civic magistrates, but re-imagined & re-contextualized in 1920s Italy as an icon of strength through unity. Whereas a single wood rod on it's own may be easily broken, a bundle of rods acting as a cohesive whole is not.
The most widely recognized grandfather of modern fascism is Benito Mussolini, perhaps better known by his nickname, 'II Duce' ('The Leader'). Mussolini led the National Fascist Party ('Partito Nazionale Fascista') in Italy, who took power in 1922 after a 4-5 year long campaign that emphasized personal strength (literal strength), intellect, and ruthlessness as the qualities Italy would need as it entered the brave new world of the 20th century. These qualities were made manifest in the PNF's activists through acts of mob violence, civil disobedience and utter disdain for existing structures of the status quo (both government structures & cultural norms).
Fascism fundamentally frames society as an engine to empower military strength, through technical innovation, industrial growth, discipline & obedience to supposedly greater figures that best know how to wield this military strength. Almost always, fascism is alloyed to ethnic and/or religious identity politics, as some Other force is needed to provide an axiom regarding the necessity of a militarized society.
A Brief History of Fascism
Italy, like most of Europe, was a complete wreck after The Great War. The world had never seen that scale of violence before; the democratization of weapons like Maxim's machine gun, and later (often miniaturized) platforms built on the same principle, Bell & Wright's flying machines and the beginnings of aerial bombardment weapons & techniques result in death tolls that were just an order of magnitude+ more terrible than produced by any other conflict (at least in terms of sheer casualty figures; things do get a little more even when you factor-in population levels, but that is kind of an academic point). There was public weariness of war, but also white hot rage at the aristocratic systems that seem to have thrust this tragedy upon the world.
Mussolini leveraged that anger to his advantage and accumulated political support on the back of scapegoating emerging socialist philosophies & old monarchies. In an October march on Rome, Mussolini essentially seized power by force; 30,000~ activist members of the PNF (known as 'Blackshirts') occupied and shut down the train station, intimidated state police and refused to allow free movement through the streets. Mussolini demanded the resignation of the current prime minister, and King Victor Emmanuel III - fearing a violent coup - capitulated to the demand. From 1922-1925, Mussolini created a secret police force that answered directly to (and only to) him, the Squadristi, and began a campaign of systemic assassinations in order to consolidate his power.
This plan, while effective on a personal level, was probably far too short-sighted: Mussolini could not effectively manage every single government agency plus his own secret police force by himself. The Italian economy did not really collapse, because it was already in tatters - but it certainly did not recover.
Mussolini was an effective role model & inspiration, though, for a young Austrian man living in nearby Germany - Adolf Hitler. Germany was in bad shape even by the standards of the time in Europe, with a hyper-inflated currency that people were literally burning as fuel in their fireplaces & stoves because it was cheaper to do that than buy firewood or oil. Anti-Semitism has a storied history all across Europe, but it found a swollen & throbbing heart in 1920s Germany; the economic woes of the nation were explicitly and emphatically blamed on a Jewish conspiracy by the Weimar government, and German academic wrote great volumes about 'racial theory' and how lesser races served as an economic drain on society or infiltrated its economic systems and robbed it. Whereas Mussolini was able to cultivate an audience of about 30 to 40,000 persons over 4-5 years from 1918 to 1922 by scapegoating old money & communists, Hitler accumulated his power over a longer stretch of time (from 1920 to to 1934) but with much more explosive force by scapegoating Jews: upon joining the DAP (German Worker's Party) in 1919, which would later evolve into the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or Nazi Party, Hitler found himself a member of a roughly 500~ member pittance of a movement. By 1923, Hitler's fiery speeches had swelled the party to nearly 2,000,000 members - enough that the leadership felt confident in attempting an armed coup (which failed).
After Hitler was imprisoned for his role in the coup, Nazi membership plummeted to less than half of it's former glory... but Hitler was only jailed for about a year, and at the end of 1929 the stock market crashed. This sent Germany spiralling into what amounted to a civil war. Nazi membership exploded a second time, surging from about 800,000~ people at the time of Hitler's release from jail in 1924 to almost 14,000,000~ people in 1932. At this crucial point, Hitler declared his candidacy for German President; in the coming election the Nazis would win 230 of 577 seats in the German Parliament, the Reichstag.
The Weimar's aristocracy was crumbling alongside the status quo in Germany, and saw in Hitler only a useful tool for personal gain and/or public manipulation. He was befriended by Franz von Papen, who assisted Hitler in navigating around the bureaucracy & loaned him political capital whenever Hitler faced opposition from either other populist parties or Von Papen's fellow aristocrats. By 1934, the Nazis occupied 288 seats in the Reichstag and Hitler remained their figurehead... and at this second crucial point, as a result of frustrations & interpersonal conflicts, Von Papen recommended to President Hindenburg that Hitler be named Chancellor of Germany. Hindenburg accepted this proposal.
In June of the same year, Hitler assassinated former populist political allies, most members of the aristocracy (though Von Papen was spared) and opposition party leadership. He accumulated and kept close a cadre of friends & experts that had been drawn to his message during his long campaign, disposed of the democratic systems of governance and began the long road of re-industrializing and ultimately re-militarizing Germany.
Fascism Today
Modern fascism, until very recently, has been very poorly organized and has almost always made at least some effort to distance itself from the past (many will attribute this in no small part because the Allies refused to offer terms to Hitler other than unconditional surrender, which resulted in the complete & horrific ruin of Nazi Germany), out of a desire to retain some color of credibility.
Stormfront was arguably the first really successful modern online community to spring-up with a no-nonsense fascist identity & explicitly outlined racial ideology:
CONTENT WARNING: INCREDIBLY RACIST
...But it is very Web 2.0, and a little too obvious (okay, a lot too obvious) to garner a serious following.
Breitbart News perhaps represents the modern 'second wave' of fascism, coining a new moniker for themselves - the 'alt-right' - and hiding behind just enough excuses about how all Internet behavior is just silly willy nonsense to make racists who don't want to look so racist feel comfortable at home, and doing it with an extremely slick CMS-ey presentation.
So much more polite. I don't even need the content warning.
Breitbart News is simply the base of operations; the Pepe costumed crusaders can go off and operate their fascist satellite, with the behavior excused as either just a bunch of jokes or a few bad apples... even though Breitbart engages in centralized campaigns of harassment.
The Other in modern times is identified with the moniker 'SJW' (Social Justice Warrior), but encompasses all of the old ethnic & racial identities that fascists have traditionally scapegoated (Jews, blacks, homosexuals, the transgender, PwDs, etc) as well as The Great New Enemies, Muslims & feminists. The new enemies seem to be afforded more hate than the old ones, but this may be simply because it's just too obvious to talk about how much you hate Jews in the same way it is too obvious to explicitly outline your racial ideology.
Military mobilization of the public, with an identifiable Other as the cause for the mobilization. It's kind of astonishing how often said Other has been Jews, all throughout history.
- A corporatist/statist form of capitalism
- Political authoritarianism/a one party state
-Nationalism
Edit - I'd maybe add "reactionary" to the list of unifying descriptors here
This too somewhat confuses me. While we tend to maintain our own culture, we also blend in to mainstream culture more than most other groups. We normalize ourselves in ways other groups do not, but still often end up on the bad end. I'm sure there's much written on it but I've read precious little.
The explanation I've heard for this most often, and I think it's perfectly sensible, is that Jewish populations have always been fairly small. There's never been a large centralized Jewish kingdom or church to protect their interests, to flee to if they've felt persecuted, to speak on their behalf in diplomatic circles, etc.
Bullies always pick on the kids least able to defend themselves.
One of the major factors for a long time was Jews not having a state of their own. So they became stateless (this was a major step for the Nazis, stripping German citizenship from the German Jews and later from the annexed/conquered countries) and without a government to protect them. Also applied to the Romani who were similarly massacred. And applies to the Armenian genocide and I think Rwanda. So that's a big one.
EDIT: Rough outline of how it happened, procedurally in Germany:
1) Discriminatory domestic laws (Nuremburg Laws). Forbid intermarriage between Germans and Jews, remove Jews from the civil service, etc. This was sort of de facto already, but codifying it got regular Germans ready for the next steps.
2) Encourage emigration of Jews. Steal all their money on the way out.
3) Strip citizenship.
4) Forced emigration.
5) Concentration in the ghettoes
6) Final Solution
The lack of a State is often seen as why we were unable to defend ourselves, but I've rarely seen it used to understand why we were attacked in the first place. Huh. It's an interesting topic but I probably shouldn't tangent this too hard on the first page.
Back to fascists.
Edit for your edit: the Yad Vashem is painfully clear on those steps. I keep them in mind when observing current affairs.
Anyways the short version is that, before the holocaust, Jews separated themselves from gentiles. You could tell who was Jewish because of their clothing or their hair. They really did stand out more back then. During and after the holocaust blending in took on a survival role. We assimilated into the secular culture as a survival tactic, which may explain why it's so hard, now, to think of how Jews are seen as other. But it's the historical view of Jews that leads them to consistently be placed into the other category.
"What is Fascism and How to Fight It," a compilation of some of Leon Trotsky's writings on the subject, mostly from the 1930s. His analysis is entirely Marxist in perspective (obviously), but is pretty insightful and valuable. The full pieces from which the excerpts are drawn can be found on the site too.
It's not really a tangent. The scapegoating of all the nation's ills, real and imagined, onto a set of vulnerable minorities is one of the defining features of fascism
Reference to past glory (a specific kind of nationalism) and disdain for the truth seem like big ones to me.
Yes. There is always a call to reclaim greatness
The traditional model of capitalism (you work for a company, whether state owned or privately owned, derive a wage from that work and can theoretically become a 'self made man' through this process) was not really in effect in the most traditional fascist states (Italy, Japan & Germany), nor in more modern states given the moniker (North Korea, Iraq, etc). Often the trappings are there to some extent, but fundamentally fascist states must rely on slave labor to accomplish their goals. Often there is a sort of hierarchy of slavery - chattel slaves made of Others, peasant slaves working for The Cause and living ghettos, conscripts filling-out military ranks as ablative fodder, etc.
People working for no wage and without even the illusion of career opportunities are another hallmark of fascist governance.
in the present it takes the rhetorical form of Jiang Zemin's three represents but I am not an expert
regardless, at least internally, it has no problems rationalising itself as communist
externally, from the pov of Western observers there's a 2000s notion of a Beijing Consensus, which has a descent from the 1990s Asian Values discourse (note the tacit contradiction over whether it is an Asian idiosyncrasy or universal model). In common it has a relatively small group of political elites that set and demarcate political discourse, a strong, massive, and politically-insulated civil service, a weak civil society, and an internally competitive politics where government is legitimised by (supposedly) consensus/objective measures of its administrative performance.
authoritarian and corporatist, certainly, but a key element is the conscious depoliticization of most elements of daily life. Mass participation in state initiatives is not required; acquiescence is always an option; the state may consult the public but begins, moderates, and ends such consultation sessions at its own discretion. Repression is idealised as selective and targeted; productive co-optation is celebrated; clumsy mass arrests and police confrontations are a marker of the worst possible sin of governments, namely poor performance.
There is a high possibility that Jews will get themselves in category which separates them from others.
To me, the idea that slave labor is incompatible with capitalism can be handily disproven by a cursory study of United States history.
In the context of Nazi Germany, Hitler left the power structures of corporate capitalism pretty much entirely untouched other than appropriating those businesses owned by Jews. Compared to Marxist authoritarian governments (including North Korea), Fascist governments have been intrinsically pro-capitalist both in practical terms and in many cases ideological ones.
this is untrue as stated; industrialists mostly did not find the Nazi regime objectionable (some notable non-Jewish figures excepting; the arc of Thyssen is especially well-known). But in the pre-war buildup period, the Nazi government passed laws vastly empowering the economics ministry under Hjalmar Schact, up to and including rigid price controls that depressed profits, and vast state infrastructure projects funded by "contributions" from industrialist families (given that the NSDAP had spent the Weimar period assailing governments for those same infrastructure projects as giveaways to Jewish businesses and was now busy literally beating them up...).
Of course, we know how the Nazis kept the industrialists happy on net: at first, merely resist Versailles, and eventually simply steal enough French and Belgian and Polish capital and resources to postpone the collapse in the balance sheet. Which was not very nice, to say the least. But to say that the nature of capitalist power remained unchallenged is dubious: non-German capital did not find the period especially pleasant, and the German conservative industrialists were certainly surprised by how powerless they would be in the relationship.
They were not alone in thinking that they could leverage the 1930-1932 Nazi street machine to their benefit, as I remarked in the other thread: the KPD thought it could do so, too, and was equally wrong.
Well, everyone thought the jumped up raving madman would have to be stymied or would at least burn himself out at some point, so they all ignored him and jockeyed for position. Underestimating him, it turns out, was a bad idea.
Something to keep in mind 80 years later.
All of this has happened before, and all of it will likely happen again. It's not just a line from Battlestar Galactica, it's the history of the Jewish people.
We have always been the Other, because that is what we were commanded to be. We were monotheistic and surrounded by pantheons. We circumcised our boys and our women wore their hair covered. We were slaves in Egypt (according to our history. i'm not going to get into a side debate about the authenticity of that biblical story) with our own centers of life and culture. We were outcast by the Babylonians, hounded by the Romans, persecuted by the Chrisitans, almost equal with the Caliphate, accused of Blood Libel, victims of Pogroms, locked into ghettos, and slaughtered in the Holocaust.
From the Biblical stories of Abraham, Lot, Joseph, Moses, Esther, and many others, we have been taught from a young age that we are Other. We are the Chosen people, the People of the Book. We are the ones beloved and tested of God and as such we must notbe combined with the primary peoples. We study in our own temples, we pray in our own language, and we take care of our own community. And we're taught that this is how it is from the very frist time we go into Hebrew School (if that's a thing that you do).
Taking all of that into account and realizing that most of the Hebrew school education that we got as kids was moving through Jewish History as it relates to 'who wants to kill us this century', it's no wonder that most American Jews seem to have internalized this truth. No matter how much you think you are a part of the greater community, you will always really be an Other. It's a hard mindset to explain to non-Jews, but it's still there.
And that's why this whole new rise of facism has so many of us scared as hell. Sure, we're not the obvious targets at this time, but we know this song, we recognize the opening chords, and the baseline is as familiar to us as our heartbeats.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
But a lot can change across an eight year term, and who knows how resilient the cosmopolitan conventional wisdom is, really? It is only too easy to distract civil society with inconsequentialities whilst undermining the political independence of the civil service and judiciary.
Yeah; the lack of SA is the only thing keeping me from panicking.
I mostly just worry now about what the cover of war will bring. At the end of the day the death camps were in occupied territory, and the killings no doubt seemed less an alien act when the whole world was on fire.
Police in this country are itching to crack down on minorities.
And let's be real here, if there's one thing we've seen definitively about America over the last umpteen years, it's that America is very comfortable not responding to violence in black neighborhoods.
I would not be so confident about the supposed security of a large geographic area protecting against consolidated authority over the police; the Soivet Union dwarfed the U.S. in size, and Stalin was quite able to create a strong cult of personality and keep the NKVD a relevant force.
I wouldn't exactly bet on this, but a nightmare scenario in the back of my mind is that the Bundy bunch start kicking-up shit again... and Trump goes out and basically deputizes them & their militia supporters.
Oathkeepers have chapters in just about every state.
There are limits to Title 10 Orders (Federal orders for National Guard components). Not only are there time limits (in case of war or declared national emergency duration of the national emergency or war plus 6 months) but they cannot be put on Title 10 Orders for domestic actions. When National Guard units respond to domestic emergencies it's under the authority of the governor of their state. Reserve components don't respond to domestic emergencies because they aren't under the authority of whatever state they are in.
This is just a completely ridiculous comparison.
The more likely scenario is CBP becomes the Federal Police. They have jurisdiction within 100 miles of the US Border, including the coasts. That's almost every city of any import within the country. And they are just chock full of awful sadistic people who wouldn't give a fuck.