Nineteenth Blog

            I probably owe an explanation of why I wrote about Fascism in my previous posts. After all, this is not a political blog. I really have to say that I am not much of an enthusiast for technology – I am quite the caveman, honestly. Politics, meanwhile, is something in which I have always had a passionate interest. For the longest time, I have had so much to say and almost no opportunities to express myself – by now, just on this blog, I wrote very little. For the sake of appropriateness, of course, I have always tried to make my posts somewhat relevant to technology and modernism.

            Fascism is inextricably related to both of those. Harking back to a point I made earlier, it can be thought of as similar to the progressive movement of the early 20^th century United States, both of them influencing each other and sharing common roots in modernism. Fascism in particular was influenced by Futurism, an artistic and social movement of Italian origin prominent throughout the early 20^th century, glorifying speed, technology, youth, and violence. The major turning point for the Fascists was World War I – they saw the practice of total warfare, as well as mass social mobilization and coordination, as revolutionary. To them, it dissolved the barriers between all spheres of life, public and private, integrating those into a cohesive organic unity. Technology would expedite and facilitate this, while democracy and classical liberalism were to be done away with as relics of a bygone age.

            Historian Jeffrey Herf described Fascism as Reactionary Modernism. Abandoning Enlightenment thought, the Fascists embarked on a return to a much older political philosophy. It is a relatively new phenomenon, courtesy of Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, to think of society as divisible into public and private. Greek philosopher Aristotle (c. 4^th century BC) defined the state not as a separate ruling entity, but as the culmination of several communities into a single cohesive one capable of operating self-sufficiently. Nothing in a civilization was outside the state. Aristotle and Plato conceptualized society – fronting an idea known as corporatism – as hierarchical and divisible into parts, based on similar interest and function, that interact with each other to achieve collective, as opposed to individual, interests. (Aristotle today would shun anybody who buys a piano for his or her house yet does not or cannot use it.) Further, Aristotle valued moral education – the process of tuning a youth’s “nature, habit, and reason” to agree with each other so the youth can be prepared for productive citizenship (a concept our Founding Fathers rejected). This mentality continually lasted through the Roman Empire and feudal Europe, and it resurged in 19^th and 20^th century progressivism.

            These are among the crucial hallmarks of Fascism. Classical liberalism, as I previously stated, was to be discarded – Mussolini hoped to rid society of its “unnecessary freedom” in the vein of achieving progress; Hitler valued the common good over individual liberty in Mein Kampf. Palingenesis and Sorelianism are also key tenets to Fascism. In the eyes of a Fascist: the status quo is degenerate and society must undergo an all-encompassing rebirth to combat this; society, furthermore, needed a common mythos to unite and mobilize it, a concept the Axis leaders were more than eager to exploit. Fascism romanticizes the notion of a civilization reconnecting itself with its ancient lineage – Mussolini saw himself as reviving the Roman Empire; Hitler had similar ambition, reflected in how standards of the Nazi party resembled those of the Roman Legionaries, but also named the Third Reich as a successor to the Holy Roman and German Empires; the Empire of Japan seemed to make a return to feudalism by restoring the Emperor and military leadership to power. Furthermore, the major totalitarian regimes in 20^th century Europe all seemed to share a fascination with imposing and classical Greco-Roman architecture.

            A matter of great historical and philosophical interest is why Fascism of all ideologies was so popular in the 20^th century. An important aspect was dissatisfaction – the people of Germany and Italy were torn from World War I and bitter toward their establishment politicians. Fascism, accordingly, was populist in nature and provided an enticing alternative to the mundaneness of a bleak contemporary dystopia. Likewise, neo-Nazi parties Jobbik and Golden Dawn have been gaining political support respectively in Hungary and Greece in light of the Great Recession as well as the current European financial and migrant crises.

            One though may argue that the reasoning behind Fascism is more natural (however not at all to say better) than that behind the Enlightenment. It is in fact alive and well here and now – in the United States Supreme Court rulings Lynch v. Donnelly, the justices ruled it legal for a municipality to display a Nativity scene; and Lemon v. Kurtzman, the justices set the currently precedent “Lemon test,” holding that a law “must not result in an excessive [emphasis added] entanglement of government and religion.” – implying that social spheres such as religion and state ultimately cannot be kept completely separate from each other. Human nature, after all, tends toward organization and interconnectedness. With this in mind, one may say that social integration over cyberspace is a natural consequence of the advanced technology here to permit it. As Albert Speer, key Nazi architect and Minister of Armaments and War Production, said, civil liberty and human individuality stand “as a counterpoise to technology.”