[A-List] Re: The anatomy of fascism, by Robert Paxton

["tony black" <tal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "tony black" <tal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 11:57 AM
Subject: The anatomy of fascism, by Robert Paxton


> I would proffer that Micheal Parenti has highlighted fascism 's essential
> characteristics more clearly than Monsieur Paxton seems to below (i.e.
> seeing no shred of a class analysis mentioned in the review)..I thus leave
you
> with a few passages from Parenti's slim 1997 work, "Blackshirts and Reds":
>
> '...In fact, if fascism means anything, it means all-out government
support
> for business and severe repression of antibusiness, pro-labor
forces....This
> may not be all it is, but that certainly is an important part of fascism's
> raison d'etre...'
>
> 'Some writers stress the "irrational" features of fascism. By doing so,
they
> overlook the rational political-economic functions that fascism performed.
> Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols.
> Certainly, this is true of fascist ideology, whose emotive appeals have
> served a class-control function.....First there is the cult of the
> leader....With leader worship came the idolatry of the state....Fascism
> preaches the authoritarian rule of an all-encompassing state and a supreme
> leader. It extols the harsher human impulses of conquest and domination,
> while rejecting egalitarianism, democracy, collectivism, and pacifism as
> doctrines of weakness and decadence....'
>
> '...Fascist doctrine stresses monistic values: Ein volk, ein Reik, ein
> Fueher (one people, one rule, one leader). The people are no longer to be
> concerned with class division...'
>
> '...This monism is buttressed by atavistic appeals to the mythical roots
of
> the people...'
>
> '...Fascism's national chauvinism, racism, sexism, and patriarchal values
> also served a conservative class interest...'
>
> '....Genetics and biology are marshalled to justify the existing class
> structure....Along with race and inequality, fascism supports homophobia
and
> sexual inequality...'
>
> '...Patriarchal ideology was linked to a conservative class ideology that
> saw all forms of social equality as a threat to hierarchal control and
> privilege...'
>
> '...What distinguishes fascism from ordinary right-wing patriarchal
> autocracies is the way it attempts to cultivate a revolutionary aura.
> Fascism offers a beguiling mix of revolutionary-sounding mass appeals and
> reactionary class politics..'
>
> '...Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular
> politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary
> class content. It propagates a "New Order" while serving the same old
> moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of
deception.
> That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves
are
> misled.'
>
> Tony
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>
> To: <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 5:29 AM
> Subject: [A-List] The anatomy of fascism, by Robert Paxton
>
>
> Fascism: From Adolf to Benito
>
> The Anatomy Of Fascism by Robert O Paxton (Allen Lane, £20)
> Reviewed by Iain Macwhirter
> The Sunday Herald, 9 May 2004
>
> Sicily has a lot to answer for. It gave us the Mafia, the modern drugs
trade
> and vendetta. It also had a hand in the origin of fascism. The peasants
who
> rose against the landlords of Sicily in 1893 called themselves the Fasci
> Siciliano, roughly meaning "solidarity".
>
> Benito Mussolini, teacher, bohemian novelist and socialist orator, rather
> liked the sound of that. So did his syndicalist collaborators and the
> Futurist intellectuals who travelled with Il Duce on his crazy adventure.
>
> It was all so, well, modern. Miss Jean Brodie wasn't alone in idolising
> Mussolini. Fascists seemed radical, progressive, heroic even. Left-wing
> intellectuals, like Oswald Mosley, were seduced by the sheer style of
> fascism, which he emulated with his black-shirt cadres.
>
> Fascism was above all an aesthetic experience according to US sociologist
> Robert O Paxton. It was about raw emotionalism and not unlike the passion
of
> the football terracing - all form and no content. Intoxicated by violent
> emotion, its followers believed they could conquer the world, rather as
> football fans do today.
>
> Fascism replaced reasoned debate with sensual experience. Instead of
> political programmes and dull meetings it offered rallies, leadership and
> the romance of national destiny. It was ideally suited to the emerging
mass
> communications industry. It still is. Silvio Berlusconi, who's given
> ex-fascists government posts, is a media tycoon. He has also modelled his
> party, Forza Italia, on a supporters' club.
>
> Mind you, fascism didn't dispense with radical politics altogether. At its
> founding conference, in Milan in 1919, the Italian fascist party programme
> called for women's suffrage, abolition of the monarchy, an eight-hour day,
> worker control, punitive taxation and seizure of Church properties. This
put
> it to the left of the British Labour Party.
>
> But within a year, Mussolini had lost his affection for social democracy.
> His thugs broke into the Milan offices of the socialist daily Avanti,
which
> Mussolini edited, and smashed its presses, killing four people. Fascism,
> said Il Duce, declared war on socialism because it had "abandoned
> nationalism".
>
> So, is fascism simply a bastard union of socialism and nationalism? Many
> believe that to be an adequate definition of a movement which was, after
> all, called the National Socialist or Nazi party in Germany. Sociologists
> like Hannah Arendt, finding similarities between Soviet communism and the
> fascism of Nazi Germany, concluded they were essentially the same beast.
>
> Paxton disagrees. He has little patience with any of the conventional
> definitions of the movement which he calls "the major political innovation
> of the 20th century". He doesn't like the casual way in which
authoritarian
> and military dictatorships are routinely labelled "fascist". Indeed, he
> controversially denies that the Spanish dictator, Franco, or Vichy France,
> were fascist. Victims of those regimes, and their families, might take
some
> persuading. He dismisses the old Marxist claim that fascism is a militant
> wing of international finance capital, and he rejects the common
> misconception that fascism was anti-Semitism writ large. Mussolini had
> Jewish backers and many leading figures in his movement, including his
> mistress, were Jewish.
>
> Nor does Paxton have much time for the theory, originally put forward by
the
> psycho analyst, Wilhelm Reich, that fascism is a psychological disorder -
> though he accepts that many of its leaders were fruitcakes. He also
> dismisses Bertolt Brecht's Arturo Ui image of fascists as capitalism's
> bouncers.
>
> Indeed, Paxton is so preoccupied with what fascism is not that he fails to
> make clear what it actually is. His own definition is so broad and all
> encompassing that it is largely useless. But along the way, in this
anatomy
> of the far right, he offers fascinating insights into the phenomenon.
> "Fascism, like religion, mobilised believers around sacred rites and
words,
> excited them to self-denying fervour, and preached a revealed truth that
> admitted no dissidence".
>
> But is the bitch that bore it in heat again? Surveying the recent
> manifestations of far right European politics - Pim Fortuyn, Jorge Haidar,
> Jean Marie Le Pen - Paxton is satisfied that they offer no immediate
threat
> to democracy in western Europe. However, he isn't so sure about the east.
> Paxton argues that the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, can reasonably
be
> called fascist. The national decomposition of the former Yugoslavia
created
> fertile ground for extreme, emotional, anti-democratic nationalism. The
> economic and social disintegration of the ex-Warsaw Pact is similarly
> fertile.
>
> I don't entirely buy Paxton's optimism about western Europe's immunity to
> fascist extremism. It may be difficult to give a precise definition of
> fascism. But you know when you've been beaten up by it. Paxton's book is
> elegantly written, learned and exhaustive. But he has let his scholarship
> obscure his vision.
>
> The key, it seems to me, is the attitude of the people at large. Fascism
is
> about exploiting the irrational prejudices of ordinary people. Wherever it
> has been successful, fascism has mobilised the masses against another
race,
> creed, nation or institution like the League of Nations. Nowadays we have
> asylum seekers, migrants and the EU.
>
> The cult of leadership requires that the movement is fronted by a
> charismatic individual who embodies the national will. Fascism thrives in
> cultures where civil society has been eroded, parliamentary democracy
> discredited and where the mass media has colonised and debased political
> debate.
>
> Sound familiar? Almost all of our "advanced" industrial democracies have
> some of the symptoms. All it might take is an economic crisis, or a lost
> foreign war, and you could have a brand new 21st century version of a
> political vice which is as old as democracy itself.
>
>
>