Fascism

Second Summer

Second Summer

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Fascism and related ideologies are again in vogue some places in Europe and around the world, so I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion about the topic.

Also, what does the term really mean? Who is a fascist? The below article (highly recommended) attempts to list all the defining features of fascism.

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

[...]
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Full article: Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt (Umberto Eco, on TheModernWorld.com, first published in New York Review of Books, 2nd June 1995, pp.12-15.)
 
I do wonder what it is like to be brought up in a country where the rest of the world seems to delight in glorifying the world wars against it, in the past. Films like the Dam Busters and wotnot, and we unveiled a new sculpture the other year of some WWII pilots, in the UK; stuff like that.


And no one likes to fell guilty. People in the UK feel pride over our part in WWII. What must it be like to be brought up in a country that is responsible for The Holocaust?
 
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Blobbenstein said:
I do wonder what it is like to be brought up in a country where the rest of the world seems to delight in glorifying the world wars against it, in the past. Films like the Dam Busters and wotnot, and we unveiled a new sculpture the other year of some WWII pilots, in the UK; stuff like that.


And no one likes to fell guilty. People in the UK feel pride over our part in WWII. What must it be like to be brought up in a country that is responsible for The Holocaust?
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I really don't think post-war generations of Germans (or inhabitants of other former Axis countries) should go around feeling guilty about what their countrymen were up to 70 years ago. Feeling guilty about the sins of your ancestors seems about as silly as feeling proud of your ancestors' positive achievements, I suppose. Both are hard to avoid though, as that kind of thinking is so ingrained in the culture.
 
yes, when I politician in say the UK or the US invokes pride about what happened in WWII, he, or she is sort of telling people(if they are young enough) that they can be proud of stuff that previous generation in their country achieved before they were even born. It logically follows that they are also saying that younger generations in parts of Europe perhaps should also feel shame about what previous generation in their country did.
The reaction to this cultural guilt may be fascism, amongst other things.
People will not tolerate being made to feel guilty for long.
 
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One thought ..

Anti-fascist witch hunts (as in usualy well intentioned atempts to nip 'fascist' thinking in the bud) usualy end up employing inherently fascist tactics.

Anywhere we see or hear "I demand this/that not be discussed" , "This is the 'official' line. End of discussion", etc, we are seeing and/or hearing that happen.

As IS's article says "For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason."

By that criteria anyone(s) who seek to silence those they disagree with (other than by force of rational argument alone) is a fascist.
 
Another thought ...

Would it be fascist to suggest limiting omnis to eating each other (on grounds of implied consent, perhaps?) as the veg*an 'final solution'?

If not then I'll happily donate my oven.
 
I assume the definition of fascism is different from source to source. My brother claims Nazi Germany never was fascist.

Blobbenstein said:
What must it be like to be brought up in a country that is responsible for The Holocaust?
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No different than growing up in a country that did genocide against the Indians and the buffalo.
 
rainforests1 said:
I'm not sure what you're asking about. As far as I know, the killing of the Indians and the near-extinction of the buffalo are facts of history. I hope you're not questioning either.
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I think the question was regarding your belief that it was "no different". I feel pretty confident there are quite a few differences between the two. (The Germans lost their war, the Americans won. The German Nazi regime had a deliberate program of extermination, whereas it seems the slaughter and land-grabs in America lacked a similar planned-out strategy etc.)
 
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well, apart from the differences, I was asking about how rainforest could know what it was like. I could say that as I've seen footage of people on the moon and know a bit about the physical conditions of the moon's environment, that I know what it was like to be on the moon. But does anyone know what it is like, apart from those that have been, and even for them it was an individual experience.
 
A friend of my daughter's emigrated from Germany to the US in her teens. The young woman wrote a very thoughtful and touching essay about carrying the guilt of her ancestral land; if my daughter still has it, I will post it here.

I had never thought of her point of view before. She discussed feeling as if she has to weigh every word before she utters it for fear of sounding like a nazi, and how many Germans feel they can't ever distance themselves from their WW2 past.
 
Indian Summer said:
I think the question was regarding your belief that it was "no different". I feel pretty confident there are quite a few differences between the two. (The Germans lost their war, the Americans won. The German Nazi regime had a deliberate program of extermination, whereas it seems the slaughter and land-grabs in America lacked a similar planned-out strategy etc.)
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Aye, there is a 'history is written by the victors' kinda thing in this too ...

Had the Nazis won the war then they would have written the history of it.

Nazism would not then have become Germany's shame but Germany's pride.

America's victory over the indigineous Indians (Indian actualy means an indigineous person, I think?) was still being celebrated whole heartedly when I was a kiddie.

A celebration spanning a fair few hundred years. The shaming of that victory being a VERY recent thing.
 
I know this is off-topic, but India had many famines under British rule(just by coincidence, famines were far less common before British rule). This includes the Bengal famine in 1943(which Churchill had responsibility for). The British government has been very brutal at times throughout its history and has no right to complain about others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule

Indian Summer said:
I think the question was regarding your belief that it was "no different". I feel pretty confident there are quite a few differences between the two. (The Germans lost their war, the Americans won. The German Nazi regime had a deliberate program of extermination, whereas it seems the slaughter and land-grabs in America lacked a similar planned-out strategy etc.)
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My understanding is the Indians relied on the buffalo. Our government had the buffalo slaughtered so they could starve the Indians. If this is the case, it was definitely a planned-out strategy.
 
rainforests1 said:
My understanding is the Indians relied on the buffalo. Our government had the buffalo slaughtered so they could starve the Indians. If this is the case, it was definitely a planned-out strategy.
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Yes, all Indians lived in tepees and hunted buffalo. They also said "how" for hello, were always stoic, and made great sidekicks for the hero.
 
The large scale slaughter of the buffalo, while appalling, was motivated by profit, not as an effort at ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. The really large scale slaughter started when a new method for curing hides was invented, making it possible to cure large numbers of hides quickly and inexpensively. That drove up the demand for hides.
 
rainforests1 said:
It depends on what you read, so it's pointless to argue.
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,
You end up saying that in various threads, while you are in fact arguing.


I'm not arguing that the decimating effect on certain Indian tribes wasn't a welcome side effect of the profit driven buffalo slaughter.

However, if the complete elimination of Native Americans had been the goal, there would have been much more direct, efficient, and easier ways to achieve that. For one thing, as das_nut pointed out above, only a handful of tribes were dependent on the buffalo. Arguing that the intent of the buffalo slaughter was to eliminate Native Americans comes from Plains Indian* - centric point of view, or from complete ignorance of the number and variety of native tribes and how they variously lived.

You really should try to educate yourself a little bit about native tribes. There's a richness of diversity in cultures to be found there, quite unlike what you glean from just watching movies and TV.


*And not all Plains tribes were dependent on the buffalo.
 
ledboots said:
A friend of my daughter's emigrated from Germany to the US in her teens. The young woman wrote a very thoughtful and touching essay about carrying the guilt of her ancestral land; if my daughter still has it, I will post it here.

I had never thought of her point of view before. She discussed feeling as if she has to weigh every word before she utters it for fear of sounding like a nazi, and how many Germans feel they can't ever distance themselves from their WW2 past.
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And thus one of the major differences between Germany and the US. The Third Reich/WWII/Holocaust is relatively recent compared to the genocide and slaughter waged against the native Americans here in the US. A lot of Americans are either unaware of the scope of what happened in this country, or they are but aren't concerned about it. For most Americans, it's distant history and has no bearing on today's US. (That's why a lot of people don't understand the feeling behind the call to rename the Redskins. As far as they're concerned, it's just a name and doesn't hurt anyone.)
 
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Amy SF said:
And thus one of the major differences between Germany and the US. The Third Reich/WWII/Holocaust is relatively recent compared to the genocide and slaughter waged against the native Americans here in the US. A lot of Americans are either unaware of the scope of what happened in this country, or they are but aren't concerned about it. For most Americans, it's distant history and has no bearing on today's US. (That's why a lot of people don't understand the feeling behind the call to rename the Redskins. As far as they're concerned, it's just a name and doesn't hurt anyone.)
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The British policy of starving tens of millions of people in India was more recent than our Indian policy. Should that be talked about then? The genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda were more recent too. It has nothing to do with what is recent. The media just selectively chooses what it does and doesn't want to talk about.
 
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