Fascism and the Future, Part Two: The Totalitarian Center | John Michael Greer

[Tace]

Feb. 19, 2014 (Archdruid Report) -- As the first part of this series pointed out last week, there’s an odd mismatch between the modern use of “fascism” as an all-purpose political snarl word, on the one hand, and the mediocrity of the regime that put the term into general use, on the other.

All things considered, as tyrants go, Benito Mussolini simply wasn’t that impressive, and while the regime he cobbled together out of a bucket of spare ideological parts had many objectionable features, it cuts a pretty poor figure in the rogue’s gallery of authoritarian states. Let’s face it, as an archetype of tyranny, Italian Fascismo just doesn’t cut it.

For that matter, it’s far from obvious that there’s enough common ground among the various European totalitarian movements between the wars to justify the use of a single label for them -- much less to make that label apply to tyrants and tyrannies around the world and throughout time. Historians in Europe and elsewhere thus spent a good deal of time in recent decades arguing about whether there’s any such thing as fascism in general, and some very thoughtful writers ended up insisting that there isn’t -- that more general words such as “dictatorship” cover the ground quite adequately, and the word “fascism” properly belongs to Mussolini’s regime and that alone.

On the other side of the equation were those who argued that a certain kind of authoritarian movement in Europe between the wars was sufficiently distinct from other kinds of tyranny that it deserves its own label. One of those was Ernst Nolte, whose 1968 book Die Krise des liberalen Systems und die faschistischen Bewegungen (The Crisis of the Liberal System and the Fascist Movements) played a central role in launching the debate just mentioned. Nolte was careful enough not to propose a hard and fast definition of fascism, and offered instead a list of six features that any movement had to have to count as fascist. The first three of them are organizational features: a cult of charismatic leadership, a uniformed Party militia, and the goal of totalitarianism.

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[AverageJoe90]

1. I wish I could rec this.

Unfortunately, there is a quite a bit of incorrect information in this article.

The two biggest problems are, he is too nice to conservatives.....the other is, he claims that *all* fascism was neither left nor right. While it might have been partially true for Italian fascism, this was not true for Hitler's Nazis; Hitler's Nazis were *very* far right-wing overall, despite the early influence of the Strasser Bros. Make NO mistake about that.

While it may be true that some more moderate conservatives in Germany were indeed quite concerned about the rise of Hitler, the more extreme and more hardcore traditionalist conservatives were not, by and large; and in fact, the latter wholeheartedly supported the Nazis almost to a man. And those businessmen who did oppose Hitler (quite of few of them Jewish, mind you!), found themselves in very hot water very quickly.
He also insists that the most diehard resistance to Hitler's regime came from the hardline aristocrats in German society; apart from von Stauffenberg(who may not have even been hardcore then but was originally so and a former Hitlerite himself), the most spirited resistance actually came from the leftist groups, particularly those like the White Rose Society.....and we all know what the Nazis did to them!

And then what bothers me, personally, is that he seems almost desperate in places, to try to absolve conservatives in general of their sins, even while (barely) acknowledging their dark side, while also employing the "The other side was just as bad!" fallacy popular with today's hardcore conservatives.

It’s conveniently forgotten, however, that well into the 20th century, the labor movement in the United States was as heavily committed to racial exclusion as any collection of Southern good ol’ boys -- keeping African-Americans out of the skilled trades, for example, was seen by many labor activists as essential to boosting the wages of white laborers. With embarrassingly few exceptions, racial prejudice was widely accepted straight across the American political scene until the convulsions of the 1960s finally pushed it into its present state of slow disintegration.

This is simply not quite the case. Yes, even the left had a few problems with racism in America. But the problem with actual racism on the left was actually miniscule(maybe not so much with basic prejudice, but even that holds true to a good degree) compared to what the right was up to.

I guess I could try to go on, but to be honest, I tend to be rather unskilled at explanations even if I know a lot about the subject at hand(which is true here). Even though there may have been a few nuggets of truth, it's still of mediocre quality and Johnny is probably better off pontificating about how he thinks the world is inevitably doomed to permanent decline, etc.(yes, he IS a climate doomer, btw)

[Tace]

2. AverageJoe90: Thanks for the comment

I find Greer to be interesting, in part, because of his unique take on current events. I don't always agree with him.

I very much appreciate your comment, as I want to have a better understanding about things in general and I try to keep an open mind.

Greer is, indeed, a Peak Oiler. However, I want to point out that he regularly bashes his more-shrill Peak Oil colleagues, and is known in particular for his theory on "Catabolic Collapse," which describes a gradual, step-by-step, decline into a deindustrialized future. --Tace