Tag Archives: Fascism

He’s Really Taking This FĂŒhrer Thing Too Far

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Breaking news:

It appears that the leading Republican Presidential candidate is growing a mustache that, aside from its brilliant orange color, bears a striking resemblance to that worn by an infamous historical figure. These are actual images from a video filmed yesterday in Dayton, Ohio:

 

Observers are divided over whether this surprising development will help or hurt his campaign for the Republican nomination.

The video and a description of events at the rally are available here. Viewer discretion is advised.

At Least the Cop Wasn’t Thinking At the Time

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A high school student in South Carolina disrupted a class by talking on her phone. The teacher and a school administrator demanded that she leave the room. She refused. A police officer assigned to the school was summoned. He told her again to get out of her chair and leave the room. She was now sitting quietly and no longer using her phone. She said she had done nothing wrong and wanted to stay.

He reacted by flipping her and her chair upside down and dragging her across the floor. The white police officer, who is also one of the school’s assistant football coaches, did not break the black girl’s neck.

From the New York Times article, which includes a link to the video:

Witnesses to Monday’s incident said that in an Algebra 1 class, the girl, a sophomore, was on her phone, and the teacher told her to put it away. The teacher summoned an administrator, who brought in the deputy. The adults repeatedly asked the student to get up and leave the class, but she refused.

When the altercation occurred, students stood up, confused about what was happening, but the deputy told them, “Sit down, or you all will be next,” said one student, Charles Scarborough, 16. Adding to the surprise and confusion, several students said the girl was usually quiet and not a troublemaker.

The deputy also detained a second student, Niya Kenny, 18, who told a local television station that her only offense was objecting to his treatment of the other girl.

“I was crying, like literally screaming, crying like a baby,” Ms. Kenny told WLTX. “I’d never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl.”

As she protested, she said, “he said, ‘Since you’ve got so much to say, you’re coming, too.’ ”

I can almost understand the cop’s reaction. He got frustrated and gave in to his worst impulses. He didn’t de-escalate the situation. He treated the girl as if she were a dangerous criminal. He treated her worse than he’d treat a dog. But I presume he wasn’t using all his mental faculties at the time. His lizard brain, his adrenaline and his racism took over.

What I can’t understand at all is that people read the article and watched the video and then composed a comment to the Times suggesting that the girl was responsible in any way whatsoever for what happened to her. She disrupted the class. She refused to get out of her chair. She wasn’t respectful of authority. Maybe she provoked the cop’s reaction. We should wait for all the facts before passing judgment.

What total bullshit. Let’s face it. Many of our fellow citizens here in the United States would make good Nazis and there doesn’t seem to be much the rest of us can do about it. (All right, I do understand it.)

There’s more here, including how a police officer using more of his brain could have handled the situation.

Smarter Works Better Than Tougher – Stairway Postscript

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The French phrase “l’esprit de l’escalier” refers to that unpleasant moment when you realize what you should have said. According to the usual source, Denis Diderot originated the expression:

During a dinner at the home of the statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, “a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument leveled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again [when he reaches] the bottom of the stairs” (“l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier Ă  ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tĂȘte et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier“).

Hence, the wit (not the spirit) of the stairs.

The phrase doesn’t quite apply to what happened this afternoon, but it’s close enough. I was driving to the grocery store when I realized what I should have included in my previous post. I should have mentioned Greece’s ongoing financial crisis. Sensible people understand that Greece will never be able to pay back everything it owes, partly because the economic austerity demanded by its creditors has slowed the Greek economy, making Greece poorer and even less able to pay off its debts. Even the International Monetary Fund, one of Greece’s creditors, understands this. The Greeks need debt relief, like the Germans received after World War 2.

The Germans, however, believe they and the other creditors need to get tougher with Greece. More austerity and more pain will eventually convince the Greeks to get their fiscal house in order or drive Greece out of the eurozone, leading to who knows what consequences for the Greeks, Europe and the rest of the world. In this case, the Germans, like the Republicans, prefer tougher over smarter.

But how was I going to get Germany’s bad behavior into a post about the Republicans? (Believe it or not, I’ve got literary standards.) Then it hit me, probably when I was making a right turn. Remember that rabid speech given by arch-right winger, modern-day fascist Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention? The late Molly Ivins said “it probably sounded better in the original German”.

See, it fits together after all. It’s what I should have said.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

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If you enjoy a good crime movie, you might consider watching The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. It’s in German and was directed by Fritz Lang, who made Metropolis and M and later emigrated to the U.S. It’s old-fashioned in some ways, which is understandable, since it was completed in 1933. 

But there are many aspects of it that feel current. A criminal mastermind, Dr. Mabuse (in German, that’s pronounced “Mah-boo-zeh”) has lost his mind and is locked up in an insane aslyum. He spends his days and nights writing perfectly conceived plans for various crimes.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mabuse is being cared for by a physician, Professor Baum, who is almost as crazy as he is. Professor Baum collects the plans Dr. Mabuse tosses on the floor and uses them to build a criminal empire.

Professor Baum eventually directs his criminal minions to launch a crime wave like no other. He orders them to blow up a chemical plant, destroy food supplies, poison the water, create epidemics and debase the currency, all with the intention of terrorizing the population:

When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.

There is a quirky but clever police inspector leading the investigation and a disgraced detective who tries to redeem himself. A suspect is interrogated. Ballistic evidence is considered. A strange message is decoded. An early version of a SWAT team is summoned to deal with barricaded criminals. A couple is locked in a room and told they only have three hours to live. There are explosions and a car chase. There are jokes and special effects.

Aside from the crisp black and white photography, the dated decor and the subtitles, this movie could be playing at a multiplex near you!

On top of that, the movie has political overtones. Fritz Lang was seriously concerned about the Nazis taking power. When the crazy Professor Baum issues his commands, he sounds like a dictator giving threatening orders to his subordinates. It’s said that Lang used actual quotations from the Nazis in the movie’s script.

Before The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was released, the German minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, ordered it banned. He claimed that it would incite public disorder and decrease the public’s confidence in the government. He may have had a point, considering that the film is about an extraordinary criminal organization and the government in question was run by Adolph Hitler.

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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.Â