Category Archives: Politics

Wondering About Fascism

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Observing the political scene, you might sometimes wonder whether America could ever turn into a fascist state. But aside from identifying Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany as its prime examples, not everyone agrees what fascism is.

In The Anatomy of Fascism, political scientist and historian Robert O. Paxton offers his answer. Published in 2004, it’s a book that’s worth reading. Here are some of his conclusions:

“The moment has come to give fascism a usable short handle, even though we know that it encompasses its subject no better than a snapshot encompasses a person.

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence, and without ethical or legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

“The ideas that underlie fascist actions are best deduced from those actions, for some of them remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language. Many of them belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions:

  • A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
  • The primacy of the group … and the subordination of the individual to it;
  • The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
  • The need for authority by natural chiefs … culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;
  • The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;
  • The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success
  • The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint … right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.”

“Today a ‘politics of resentment’ rooted in authentic American piety and nativism sometimes leads to violence against some of the very same ‘internal enemies’ once targeted by the Nazis, such as homosexuals and defenders of abortion rights. (But) the United States would have to suffer catastrophic setbacks and polarization for these fringe groups to find powerful allies and enter the mainstream….No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance….An American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy…. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State, … controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.

We can find … (the most) ominous warning signals in situations of political deadlock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for tougher allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery.”

Paxton repeatedly emphasizes that fascism has always arisen in response to the perceived failure of democratic systems to deal with some crisis or other, and that its ascension to power has always required the support of existing right-wing elites, such as leading politicians, senior military officers and wealthy individuals who see fascism as a counterweight to socialism or communism.

Given the historical record, it seems doubtful that America will one day adopt fascism as its political system. For one thing, Americans tend to be individualists, which conflicts with being good fascists. Secondly, despite what some right-wingers claim, there are remarkably few socialist tendencies in our politics for fascists to define themselves against. Furthermore, as Paxton points out, a government can become authoritarian (for example, by spying on everyone and locking people up without trials) without becoming fascist.

On the other hand, given a sufficiently serious crisis and a sufficiently charismatic demagogue, it could happen anywhere. 

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton

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Even though everyone agrees that fascism in its most significant form began in Mussolini’s Italy and reached its peak in Hitler’s Germany, it’s hard to say exactly what fascism is. In The Anatomy of Fascism, historian and political scientist Robert Paxton probably does as well as anyone could.

After a wide-ranging, sometimes repetitious discussion of fascism’s historical roots, its small-scale presence in many countries, and its brief success in Italy and Germany, Paxton offers a definition in the final pages of his book:

The moment has come to give fascism a usable short handle, even though we know that it encompasses its subject no better than a snapshot encompasses a person.

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence, and without ethical or legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Paxton offers this definition almost against his will, since he believes that the best way to understand fascism is to study its history and compare it with other political systems, especially other authoritarian (or “totalitarian”) systems. He argues that “the ideas that underlie fascist actions are best deduced” not from what fascists say but from what they do. Nevertheless, he lists some “visceral feelings” or “mobilizing passions” that animate fascism, including (in his words):

  • A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
  • The primacy of the group … and the subordination of the individual to it;
  • The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
  • The need for authority by natural chiefs … culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;
  • The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;
  • The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;
  • The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint … right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

Paxton repeatedly emphasizes that fascism has always arisen in response to the perceived failure of democratic systems to deal with some crisis or other, and that its ascension to power has always required the support of existing right-wing elites who see fascism as a counterweight to socialism or communism. Given this historical record, it’s natural to wonder whether America might one day adopt fascism:

Today a “politics of resentment” rooted in authentic American piety and nativism sometimes leads to violence against some of the very same “internal enemies” once targeted by the Nazis, such as homosexuals and defenders of abortion rights. (But) the United States would have to suffer catastrophic setbacks and polarization for these fringe groups to find powerful allies and enter the mainstream….No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance….An American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy…. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State, … controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.

We can find … (the most) ominous warning signals in situations of political deadlock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for tougher allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery.

Americans tend to be individualists, which conflicts with being good fascists. But given a sufficiently serious crisis and a sufficiently charismatic demagogue, it could happen anywhere. 

Give the Nobel Peace Prize to Manning and Snowden

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I don’t have anything to add to what other people have written about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. They both leaked important information that our government desperately wanted to keep secret. Both of these young men put their own freedom at risk in order to help preserve ours. Neither one deserves the long prison sentence that Manning will receive and Snowden will apparently avoid (thanks to Vladimir Putin, of all people). Listening to Democrats, who should know better, defending our government’s bad behavior in these two cases has been sickening.

Meanwhile, an Irish woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 is nominating Private Manning for the same honor. She explains her thinking here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/30/bradley-manning-nobel-peace-prize-candidate

Likewise, a Swedish professor is nominating Edward Snowden:

http://rt.com/news/snowden-nominated-nobel-peace-099/

I learned about these efforts in this article by columnist Andrew O’Hehir. He thinks both whistleblowers deserve the prize, but doubts that the Nobel Prize committee has the courage to give it to them:

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/03/give_manning_and_snowden_the_nobel_peace_prize/

Let’s hope they do.

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Postscript:

The Guardian reports on whether there were reprisals against anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan after Private Manning’s leaks:

The US counter-intelligence official who led the Pentagon’s review into the fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures of state secrets told the Bradley Manning sentencing hearing on Wednesday that no instances were ever found of any individual killed by enemy forces as a result of having been named in the releases.

Brigadier general Robert Carr, a senior counter-intelligence officer who headed the Information Review Task Force that investigated the impact of WikiLeaks disclosures on behalf of the Defense Department, told a court at Fort Meade, Maryland, that they had uncovered no specific examples of anyone who had lost his or her life in reprisals that followed the publication of the disclosures on the internet. “I don’t have a specific example,” he said.

It has been one of the main criticisms of the WikiLeaks publications that they put lives at risk, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan. The admission by the Pentagon’s chief investigator into the fallout from WikiLeaks that no such casualties were identified marks a significant undermining of such arguments.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-manning-sentencing-hearing-pentagon

And they summarize what was learned from those leaks:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/30/bradley-manning-wikileaks-revelations

Surely, You Must Pay Your Debts!

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Not necessarily, and don’t call me Shirley!

Below is a link to a fairly long review by journalist Robert Kuttner of a book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I’ll summarize:

People, especially poor people, have been borrowing from other people, especially rich people, for thousands of years.

As long as people have borrowed, lenders (not all of them, but some of them) have accepted partial payment, especially in difficult economic times. Sometimes it makes economic sense for lenders to suffer a loss, if that’s what’s required to make the economy as a whole (and possibly the lenders themselves) more prosperous. It isn’t mentioned in the review, but Babylonian kinds periodically canceled debts so their wealthy subjects didn’t end up owning all the land. 

The modern form of bankruptcy was invented 300 years ago in England. The idea was that both creditors and debtors would be better off if debtors were allowed to start over, repaying what they could instead of wasting away in debtor’s prison.

Our current laws are tilted in favor of banks and the people who run corporations. Corporations are allowed to declare bankruptcy, sometimes more than once. Corporate officers generally remain in control of their bankrupt companies. On the other hand, countries like Greece can’t declare bankruptcy, although this has been proposed. Homeowners can’t use bankruptcy to deal with their mortgages. Students can’t even refinance their student loans at lower rates. In Kuttner’s words: “The obligations of a student loan follow a borrower to the grave”.

The Germans use the same word for “debt” and “guilt” (Schuld). They’re strongly in favor of other countries paying everything they owe, but seem to have forgotten that, after World War II, the Allies forgave almost all of Germany’s debts and allowed the Germans to postpone their remaining payments for 50 years, helping Germany rebuild and eventually become a creditor to other nations: “Germany, whose debt-to-GDP ratio in 1939 was [a whopping] 675 percent, had a debt load of about 12 percent in the early 1950s—far less than that of the victorious Allies”.

Most of us believe there is a moral aspect to paying our debts, but that’s not the way it’s generally thought of in the business world:

The double standard in debt relief that favored large merchants, present at the creation of bankruptcy law in 1706, persists today in many different forms. It gets surprisingly little attention in the debt debates. Despite the tacit assumption that “surely one has to pay one’s debts,” the evasion of repayment is both widespread and selective. Corporate executives routinely walk away from their debts via Chapter 11 of the national bankruptcy law when that seems expedient. Morality scarcely enters the conversation—this is strictly business.

It’s an excellent, eye-opening article. It even includes some recommendations for changing how various kinds of debt are handled today.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/09/debt-we-shouldnt-pay/?page=1

Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton

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The only Marx I’ve ever read is The Communist Manifesto. Given capitalism’s recent problems, I thought it might be a good idea to learn more about him. This book by English academic and literary critic Terry Eagleton was probably a good place to start.

Why Marx Was Right is a chapter by chapter set of responses to common objections to Marx’s thought. In each case, Marx seems to come out on top: “This book had its origin in a single, striking thought: What if all the most familiar objections to Marx’s work are mistaken? Or at least, if not totally wrongheaded, mostly so?” It’s a well-written, rather breezy book. Eagleton suggests that Karl Marx was a brilliant social theorist, far ahead of his time, although I’m not sure how accurate Eagleton’s portrayal of Marx is. 

The Marx described by Eagleton sounds like a democratic socialist, a 19th century progressive and proto-environmentalist who understood the world more clearly and was a better person than the Communists who achieved power in the 20th century, claiming to be “Marxists” or “Marxist-Leninists”.

The biggest question I had after reading Why Marx Was Right is how Marx’s ideas would work out in practice. At one point, Eagleton describes what would apparently be a Marxist form of government:

It is not a state we ourselves would easily recognize as such. It is as though someone were to point to a decentralised network of self-governing communities, flexibly regulated by a democratically elected central administration, and announce “There is the state!”, when we were expecting something altogether more inspiring and monumental.

That is the clearest description of a Marxist state in the book (as best I remember). According to Eagleton, Marx “defended the great bourgeois ideals of freedom, reason and progress, but wanted to know why they tended to betray themselves whenever they were put into practice”. Likewise, once socialism takes advantage of the infrastructure created by capitalism and evolves into communism, would that infrastructure tend to wither away, since the profit motive would no longer be in full force?

Eagleton argues that Marx would not eliminate the profit motive entirely, but it’s not clear how a truly Marxist state would function. Communism as instituted in the real world has never resembled the seriously democratic system Marx apparently proposed. Nor have communist governments been established in countries with advanced capitalist infrastructure. Marxism is one of those social experiments that have never been performed.

Yet some of what Marx argued for, especially as expressed by Eagleton, would be desirable correctives to the system we’ve got now. In particular, we in America would benefit from more democracy, more socialism and more environmentalism. In Eagleton’s words: 

Capitalism is the sorcerer’s apprentice: it has summoned up powers which have spun wildly out of control and now threaten to destroy us. The task of socialism is not to spur on those powers but to bring them under rational human control.

Not complete control, but certainly more control.