Broomstick wrote:The old suburbs aren't that problematic - they had smaller homes on smaller lots, sidewalks for walking/biking/skating, and not a lot of space for vehicles which tends to limit the number of same. It's the newer suburbs with sprawling mansions on little mini-estates with multi-car garages that are the worst offenders, and I'd like to see them plowed under first.
I was just writing those off- they're going to die anyway as gas prices go up and relative per capita income goes down. The people who live there are going to move into the territory now occupied by the old suburbs... which means, more or less by default, higher density and thus more apartment buildings.
Which doesn't necessarily mean high-rise apartments, either- it can easily mean two to three story buildings that just
use the space more efficiently and don't give as many square feet per person as a suburban home.
And, as promised...
Simon_Jester wrote:evilsoup wrote:To me, this seems to be suggesting that fascism is a wholly modern, post-enlightenment idea (also communism ... again, depending on how precisely you define these terms, there have always been some socialists and communists knocking around). Maybe modern technology makes fascism possible, but I'm not sure. Please define what you mean by fascism in this context.
Time prevents me from getting back to you at length until later tonight, but as a short answer:
Authoritarianism is not at all new; as far as I know it predates recorded history.
Socialism, in the sense that society should be organized to serve the public interest, is arguably not new- although I'm having a hard time thinking of examples of proto-socialism on a large scale, as opposed to the tribal quasi-communism that exists in small communities, before the Industrial Revolution
Communism, a particular subspecies of socialism, is definitely post-Enlightenment and new- look at the history of communist philosophy and it is, by golly, directly descended from the Enlightenment.
Violent, revolutionary communism with vanguard parties and the other trappings of the 20th century communist states is newer still- it's not even Marxism, it's Marxism-Leninism or Maoism. The fact that all those names in the 'isms' are from the 1800s or later should tip you off.
Fascism is a particular brand of authoritarianism, distinguished by a number of traits I'll go into in more depth when I have more than ten minutes to work on this. Many of those traits did not or could not emerge in a mature form until fairly recently. While authoritarianism is old,
not all fascism is authoritarian.
The underlined passage at the end was my brain hiccuping- that should read "not all authoritarianism is fascist."
Beyond that, to define my terms, fascism is a type of authoritarianism where the power of the leader and the party machine which supports him flows from "The People." But "The People" is conceived in a nationalist, racist, mystical sense of the word; it does not refer to any specific person but to the collective aspirations of the spirit of the race. A fascist does not need to carry out a poll to know that The People demand war, and if the irony of that isn't lost on you, it shows that you are sane.
Tactically, fascism makes heavy use of manipulation and propaganda, a secret police force to ensure ideological purity, a powerful conscript military, and other tactics to turn the country into a garrison state, with all aspects of the economy and cultural life aimed at creating a politically unified People who will obey the leader and party unthinkingly and enforce the will of The People by force.
Alliances with powerful corporate, religious, or aristocratic blocs in society are common among fascists, but this is a side-trait. Fascists do it because they need those tools to manipulate the economy and culture, not because they prefer to, or because they feel beholden to hereditary nobles, corporate executives, or religious leaders.
What else can we look to, for commentary on fascism and insight into its thought processes?
Let us refer to Umberto Eco's characterization of fascism; Eco was born in a fascist country, lived among people with intimate memories of adult life in a fascist regime, and is himself an intellectual of no small caliber. He lists fourteen traits of the "eternal fascist," the archetypal specimen of the breed. Let me first list them, then describe my views on why fascism, as distinct from authoritarianism, is
new, a perversion of modern ideas rather than a throwback to ancient ones. Anything directly quoted from Eco is in quotation marks.
1)
The cult of tradition- not the tradition itself, but the idea that all wisdom comes from the past
and that this wisdom can be mixed and matched arbitrarily even when different bits of it are mutually exclusive. This is where you get things like Hitler mixing Roman salutes, dreams of a pseudo-Viking racial past, and orientalist mysticism.
2)
The reaction against modernism- fascism is strongly technophilic, but at the same time rejects modern values.
3)
The cult of action for action's sake- "Thinking is a form of emasculation," intellectuals are inherently untrustworthy, and any ideal of high 'culture' is a sign that you should reach for your Browning. Conversely, it's inherently right to get people busy doing labor, physical activities, or military activities.
4)
The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.- "In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism,
disagreement is treason."
5)
Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.- Fascism is opposed to all forms of diversity, and is driven by the fear of difference and the desire to remake society into a place where the Other is removed.
6)
Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.- "That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups."
7)
To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.- Fascism finds its roots in nationalism, and defines the nation in terms of its enemies, even if it must fabricate those enemies' existence from scratch. It encourages its people to feel besieged by foreign conspiracies.
8 )
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.- Fascism is based on appeal to the masses. "When I [Eco] was a boy [in fascist Italy] I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."
9)
For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.- "Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex."
10)
Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.- "Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party..." and so, the fascist party rules in the name of The People, while as a rule holding them in contempt and manipulating them through propaganda.
11)
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.- Heroic death is embraced as the lot of the party man, the proper "reward for a heroic life."
12)
Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.- Machismo runs wild, although the sex drive can be sublimated back into a drive to martial success as soon as war breaks out, which the fascist is likely to embrace eagerly.
13)
Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.- "In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction."
14)
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.- "Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning."
Now, what am I to make of all this?
First off, we do see that fascism appeals to tradition. I make no bones about that- I admit it and embrace the fact, because it's true. My argument is that while fascism appeals to tradition, it is not
traditional in character. It is revolutionary. Fascists will try to co-opt and supersede any 'traditional' centers of power in their society, given time; we can see this plainly enough in Nazi Germany.
This is where (1) comes in. Fascist society is not usually 'traditional' for the country the fascists take over, but it has a
cult of tradition. Tradition is revered, but not for its own sake; value attaches to it because it provides a founding myth for the idea of the race. This is why Mussolini kept invoking the legacy of Rome but would never have considered instituting something like the Plebeian tribunes of the Roman republic as part of his own government, or why Hitler and the Nazis were obsessed with 'Aryan' racial identity and appearance-based racism and eugenics.
In many cases, the 'traditions' a fascist wishes to uphold are fabrications, created to justify the onset of fascism. I do not consider this to be traditionalist. It's not entirely new, either, but the idea of radically re-imagining your society's traditions as part of a general rewriting of the past and remaking of the future, as fascists do, isn't something you can easily find in the pre-modern past.
Then we look at (2) through (6)- the
reaction against modernism, its implications, and its basis. Again, what are we to make of this? Is this a sign that the fascists are merely the old school conservatives, rebelling once again against the way the world is changing?
I disagree. I don't think fascism represents a bypassed tradition. I think it's something that emerges like a callus where people's lives chafe against modernity, but which cannot exist without modernity any more than calluses can exist without pressure. I'm not a great dialectician, but the best way I can think of to put it is that fascism is the
antithesis of modernity, something that can only exist in response to the modern world as we know it.
So far as I know, there weren't any recognizably fascist regimes
before the Enlightenment concept of individual rights and universal democracy,
before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class, and the economic turmoil that came with those things,
before the rise of extensive, constant international commerce that brings nations of millions into constant contact and rivalry. Without those things to react against, to define itself in opposition to, could fascism exist at all? I'm skeptical.
There were tyrants in those days, often brutal ones, but the tyrants didn't use the rhetoric and techniques of mass action to mobilize entire ethnic groups into giant armed camps that would try and conquer the world for the greater glory of the Race.
(7) through (14) address another point that is, to me, very new in 'modern' authoritarianism: the use of propaganda. Ancient rulers might make up boastful lies about their actions, claim to be representatives of the gods and so on, but they didn't try to make up productions and presentations and constantly beam them into the minds of every citizen of the state. Their legitimacy was a top-down thing, established by force and the will of the gods, not by a claim to be doing The People's will.
Whereas in fascism, the effort to re-educate and persuade the public, and to force the public to act as if they're persuaded, is never-ending. I would argue that this is characteristically modern- like most modern social organizations, fascism's power hinges on the ability to
make the people care, rather than leaving them behind as uninvolved peasants while the nobles engage in affairs of state.
