Authoritarianism and Fascism Revisited

[AGBF]

I didn't know where to put this and I didn't want to lose it. I did a search for "fascism", but the Pricescope "search" function has been limited for me lately. I know we have discussed it many times, but it didn't come up in a regular search. To make a long story short, I started a new thread, although we have many political threads. Madeline Albright discusses the global trend towards authoritarianism and also discusses her own personal history in her new book Fascism: A Warning. The article itself is tasty for people who like inside anecdotes about world leaders. I thought some readers here (Matata, ksinger?) would enjoy it if they hadn't already seen it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...logy-its-a-method-interview-fascism-a-warning

 

[ksinger]

Nice read, thanks Deb!

Two things that struck me reading - one is the reference to Albright's "there's a special hell" comment and all the criticism she got for it. I know I spoke with several young women before the election who disavowed any special need for women to support women, who basically were rejecting feminism. Given the massive attack that women are now under in the US - and the way that "special hell" seems to be manifesting before our eyes, I wonder if those women are rethinking their stance that feminism (or at least the need for women to support each other politically) is hopelessly out of date. I know one thing, the attempts to roll back the world to the 1950s or earlier, make me glad that I'm old now. This is primarily a young woman's concern now, for herself and her daughters.

The other thing that struck me was her comment “Most of us are beneficiaries of globalisation, but a lot of people were not prepared for it in terms of their skill-set and we didn’t consider that enough.” That seems particularly tonedeaf to me. Many people out in the real world IN the US, have been aware of the slow motion consequences of the loss of jobs offshore for a long long time. I believe that those people don't go deep enough in their analysis of who to blame for that, but that's another topic. The point is those people who were "not prepared in terms of their skill-set" should never have been expected to have to play some sort of catch-up when politicians changed the rules. I've said it many times - we are at the highest level of higher education (that thing we're all told is now necessary to have a decent job) in our history - it's around 30% who have a bachelor's or more. In previous decades that 30% has been MUCH lower, meaning we've never had a large percentage of people with the proper "skill-set", and I believe it is disingenuous of Albright and others to think that just because they pushed for globalization, that somehow everyone should have been thrilled and able to just "step up".

As far as fascism goes, I still think Eco has the best and most flexible description of what it looks like. With his 14 points in mind, we're definitely on that precipice with a toe over the edge.

And here's what I'm reading at the moment - an interview and a good student paper, meaning I am still reading it and learning new stuff. I'm learning about Human Rights Discourse.

http://patricklawrence.us/scholar-r...he-past-is-evil-doesnt-mean-the-evil-is-past/

http://www.e-ir.info/2013/10/27/use-and-abuse-of-human-rights-discourse/

 

[ksinger]

Hey Deb, since it appears to just be me and thee in here, or heck, maybe just me? I'm giving you the link to the second half of the interview I linked above. And an Amazon link to the book upon which those interviews are based. I ordered it and it should be here by the end of this week. Fortunately for my impatience, once you buy a book on Amazon, it often comes with an electronic excerpt (I guess they would prefer that you be enticed to buy e-versions of everything, but not happening) that you can read before the actual book gets to you. I took a risk ordering on the basis of the interviews, but the intro and first few pages are very good. I have great hopes for it being very thought-provoking. I really think it's something you might enjoy too.

http://patricklawrence.us/scholar-r...financial-markets-to-fuel-historical-justice/

https://www.amazon.com/After-Evil-P...1531305476&sr=8-1&keywords=after+evil+meister

 

[AGBF]

I am here, k, but having a terribly busy week. I am posting only enough to let off steam about Trump (I hope enough so that I do not have a stroke). I am not posting anything that requires thought. That is because our dog comes on Saturday (in less than three days) and I am trying to get the house ready for him and his supplies in. My downstairs bathroom also happens to be somewhat torn apart because I decided to fix a leaky faucet and did not realize that that the shower head and both faucets would need to be replaced, necessitating the removal of most of a wall! Now I am re-tiling and then the plumber returns! I am also paying town taxes on the property and the car and having people in and out for various reasons (one for computer repair, one my brother) and going to doctors and taking my daughter to doctors. I don't know how it all fell this week, but maybe because I didn't want anything scheduled for the first week the new dog was here! I hope I can become part of this discussion again eventually!

I love it that you are here to talk with (dropping my preposition).

Deb

 

[ksinger]

I am here, k, but having a terribly busy week. I am posting only enough to let off steam about Trump (I hope enough so that I do not have a stroke). I am not posting anything that requires thought. That is because our dog comes on Saturday (in less than three days) and I am trying to get the house ready for him and his supplies in. My downstairs bathroom also happens to be somewhat torn apart because I decided to fix a leaky faucet and did not realize that that the shower head and both faucets would need to be replaced, necessitating the removal of most of a wall! Now I am re-tiling and then the plumber returns! I am also paying town taxes on the property and the car and having people in and out for various reasons (one for computer repair, one my brother) and going to doctors and taking my daughter to doctors. I don't know how it all fell this week, but maybe because I didn't want anything scheduled for the first week the new dog was here! I hope I can become part of this discussion again eventually!

I love it that you are here to talk with (dropping my preposition).

Deb

Wow Deb, you sound crazy busy! It wore me out just reading all that.

A new dog, huh? I hear ya: I'm getting a new cat sometime after the 20th. I'm pretty excited, and also need to "supply up" pretty quickly. I haven't had a cat in many years, and I know litter box filler has changed a LOT, so I need to get going on that.

So, no worries, this thread will be here and probably un-viewed and gathering dust when you get around to coming back. We should know by now that talking about fascism here gives people the heebie jeebies. Heck, it gives ME the heebie jeebies. All the stuff I posted is tangential to that discussion I realize, but like I said, I think you will find it worth mulling over.

 

[AGBF]

I don't want you to think I did any reading, ksinger. No worry that I did that. Way too radical. But I did spot this in today's on-line version of "The New York Times". I thought I'd post the link first, then go read the article. There's a new book out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/jason-stanley-how-fascism-works.html

Deb

 

[ksinger]

Deb, I address this to you since the only ones who find this stuff the least bit interesting seem to be thee and me. Anyway, I find I need to put this here, our default fascism thread. It's an article from the New Yorker. It is long but worth the read. And don't let the title fool you, it's mostly about us, the US. I knew some of this, but tidbits abound. It's a very well-written piece.

How American Racism Influenced Hitler
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

Here is a (short, believe it or not - I said it was long and it is) excerpt:

As for Hitler and America, the issue goes beyond such obvious suspects as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. Whitman’s “Hitler’s American Model,” with its comparative analysis of American and Nazi race law, joins such previous studies as Carroll Kakel’s “The American West and the Nazi East,” a side-by-side discussion of Manifest Destiny and Lebensraum; and Stefan Kühl’s “The Nazi Connection,” which describes the impact of the American eugenics movement on Nazi thinking. This literature is provocative in tone and, at times, tendentious, but it engages in a necessary act of self-examination, of a kind that modern Germany has exemplified.

The Nazis were not wrong to cite American precedents. Enslavement of African-Americans was written into the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson spoke of the need to “eliminate” or “extirpate” Native Americans. In 1856, an Oregonian settler wrote, “Extermination, however unchristianlike it may appear, seems to be the only resort left for the protection of life and property.” General Philip Sheridan spoke of “annihilation, obliteration, and complete destruction.” To be sure, others promoted more peaceful—albeit still repressive—policies. The historian Edward B. Westermann, in “Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars” (Oklahoma), concludes that, because federal policy never officially mandated the “physical annihilation of the Native populations on racial grounds or characteristics,” this was not a genocide on the order of the Shoah. The fact remains that between 1500 and 1900 the Native population of U.S. territories dropped from many millions to around two hundred thousand.

America’s knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence (I confess this phrase is a favorite, and still true, although fraying these days. K) in the wake of mass death struck Hitler as an example to be emulated. He made frequent mention of the American West in the early months of the Soviet invasion. The Volga would be “our Mississippi,” he said. “Europe—and not America—will be the land of unlimited possibilities.” Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine would be populated by pioneer farmer-soldier families. Autobahns would cut through fields of grain. The present occupants of those lands—tens of millions of them—would be starved to death. At the same time, and with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticization of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’s less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors.

Jim Crow laws in the American South served as a precedent in a stricter legal sense. Scholars have long been aware that Hitler’s regime expressed admiration for American race law, but they have tended to see this as a public-relations strategy—an “everybody does it” justification for Nazi policies. Whitman, however, points out that if these comparisons had been intended solely for a foreign audience they would not have been buried in hefty tomes in Fraktur type. “Race Law in the United States,” a 1936 study by the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger, attempts to sort out inconsistencies in the legal status of nonwhite Americans. Krieger concludes that the entire apparatus is hopelessly opaque, concealing racist aims behind contorted justifications. Why not simply say what one means? This was a major difference between American and German racism.

 

[AGBF]

Deb, I address this to you since the only ones who find this stuff the least bit interesting seem to be thee and me. Anyway, I find I need to put this here, our default fascism thread. It's an article from the New Yorker. It is long but worth the read. And don't let the title fool you, it's mostly about us, the US. I knew some of this, but tidbits abound. It's a very well-written piece.

That excerpt is fascinating, k. Thank you so much for reprinting it here. I have become almost Donald Trumpish in my ability to read anything long lately, but I was able to read that little bite-sized morsel!

I have to confess, also, that I did not recognize the names of the scholars whose work was quoted. I think I have been out of the field for far too long. Nazi Germany wasn't even your main field of interest. You are an amazing woman to be able to keep up to date so well. I thought your husband was the historian in the family!

The argument that American racism affected Hitler's view of race is interesting. If I knew that the Nazis had granted Aryan status to native American, I had forgotten it as I have forgotten so many other things. I guess the only point I do not see made in this excerpt (which does not mean it is not made in the entire article) is how it is demonstrated that Hitler was personally, viscerally affected by US racial policy.

I know that Hitler attempted to destroy everything he could about his youth, but the book I bought, that my husband swiped from me, is about his youth*. I wonder if it shows any fascination with the American West when he was young. I may have to move it to the top of my stack.

The United States certainly provides an excellent example of genocide with how the white "settlers" handled the Native Americans once push cane to shove and the settlers wanted more land. I am not sure how much race was the motive for the genocide; it was probably more likely greed with the convenient ability to discard the humanity of the people being disposed of because of race. Which is what the Germans were willing to do with the Slavs for Lebensraum. Only the Slavs looked like the Germans and in actuality were the same race: Caucasian.

Thanks for the talk.

Deb



*Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man

 

[ksinger]

I have become almost Donald Trumpish in my ability to read anything long lately

I have to confess, also, that I did not recognize the names of the scholars whose work was quoted. I think I have been out of the field for far too long. Nazi Germany wasn't even your main field of interest. You are an amazing woman to be able to keep up to date so well. I thought your husband was the historian in the family!

The argument that American racism affected Hitler's view of race is interesting. If I knew that the Nazis had granted Aryan status to native American, I had forgotten it as I have forgotten so many other things. I guess the only point I do not see made in this excerpt (which does not mean it is not made in the entire article) is how it is demonstrated that Hitler was personally, viscerally affected by US racial policy.

I know that Hitler attempted to destroy everything he could about his youth, but the book I bought, that my husband swiped from me, is about his youth*. I wonder if it shows any fascination with the American West when he was young. I may have to move it to the top of my stack.

The United States certainly provides an excellent example of genocide with how the white "settlers" handled the Native Americans once push cane to shove and the settlers wanted more land. I am not sure how much race was the motive for the genocide; it was probably more likely greed with the convenient ability to discard the humanity of the people being disposed of because of race. Which is what the Germans were willing to do with the Slavs for Lebensraum. Only the Slavs looked like the Germans and in actuality were the same race: Caucasian.

Thanks for the talk.

Deb
*Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man

That first thing? Oh YEAH. I get it. I have the attention span of a gnat. Thank you interwebs and MS.

The reason you may not have heard about those authors is because they may be more recent ones. Apparently the Hitler/Nazi scholarship continues. I recently read one entitled "Hitler's Furies - German Women in The Nazi Killing Fields", published in 2013. A truly gruesome and sobering read. Basically, the ladies most definitely were not. Which leads me to the one on my reading list currently, a much older one (1967) that I got to probably from poking around after one of our exchanges. It is entitled "Backing Hitler", and is about what ordinary Germans knew about what the Nazis were really doing, and how much they actually supported it. The idea I'm getting so far, is they knew a LOT, and supported the killing in many ways. They were NOT duped, they were tacit supporters at the very least, and active supporters more often than they would like to admit. (See "Hitler's Furies", for instance)

No, I assure you, he's still the historian. But there's plenty of history for all - not even he can know it all. Besides, he and I tend to have interests in different facets of history, so it works out pretty well.

Here's a small reference from the article about how Hitler was influenced by American racism:

Among recent books on Nazism, the one that may prove most disquieting for American readers is James Q. Whitman’s “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law” (Princeton). On the cover, the inevitable swastika is flanked by two red stars. Whitman methodically explores how the Nazis took inspiration from American racism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He notes that, in “Mein Kampf,” Hitler praises America as the one state that has made progress toward a primarily racial conception of citizenship, by “excluding certain races from naturalization.” Whitman writes that the discussion of such influences is almost taboo, because the crimes of the Third Reich are commonly defined as “the nefandum, the unspeakable descent into what we often call ‘radical evil.’ ” But the kind of genocidal hatred that erupted in Germany had been seen before and has been seen since. Only by stripping away its national regalia and comprehending its essential human form do we have any hope of vanquishing it.