Fascism can be hard to define, its bigger problem is that its so easy to mis-define & so many people do misdefine it & get away with it. And that is a result of its key features. It not only relies on deconstructionism, moral relativism, priority of subjective truth, dismissing objective truth's existence. rejection of transcendent morals & a determined hope to oppose & destroy facts over feelings in debate.
It gets portrayed as Right Wing Extremism as a natural result of capitalism or the natural destination of Conservativism...when it's the polar opposite of Conservativism, capitalism and many things of "the West".
On the internet Antifa portray themselves as Anti Fascism, Anti Fascists and yet because many of the Antifa crowd & their underlying doctrine is communist centred, they actually hold many of the very traits that are the bed rock & foundation of Fascism.
It is why many people consider Fascism to be a yet another Marxist offshoot & point to Mussolini's offsider & socialist philosopher Giovanni Gentile as being one of the father's of Fascism. People, intentionally or not, tend to wash over the fact that Conservativism, Western Civilisation were the arch enemies & the deliberate targets of all the Marxist offshoots in Pre World War 2.
Below is a short essay by Chris Rosebrough back in 2009-10 on Post Modernism & Fascism. It points out the history of both very easily, how its interweaved and how it pops its ugly head out in world politics, respective countries domestic politics, in science, faith, economics to swerve away from transcendent truth & more to some kind of magic where your chosen truth is the truth to you & therefore real. It's helped fuel a number of bizarre ideologies and has & will continue to run good running societies off the rails and a faster decline into hell on earth.
Now its splitting hairs to define whether an anti truth, anti moral, anti the West, anti capitalism person is Socialist, Communist, Marxist or Fascist but quite often on the internet the way some people shut down and arguement is to stop any reasoned debate and attack the person, call them a Nazi, Fascist, RWNJ etc.
THAT is a classic tell of a Post Modernist. Get away from calm rational debate where bias is lessened & both sides put forward calm reasoned debate so hopefully if one side is wrong, that side can see it, concede it without embarassment or condemnation and the truth triumphs not one person over another.
Post Modernism is often regarded as Fascism rebranded. Personally I think because Post Modernism, Deconstructionism, Fascism, Socialism, Marxism, Communism are all about deleting transcendant morality, objective truth, pushing moral relativism, personal truth, personal feelings over facts, removing individual freedoms, individual responsibility & dehumanising the citizen to merely an autonious measured unit that probably all are just different roots or limbs on a poisonous invasive weed. Indeed whilst Giovanni Gentile was a socialist phiosopher & is called the "father of fascism" its worth remembering that whilst Nazism was Fascist, not all Fascists were Nazis or followed everything the Nazis followed. For the most part Italian thinkers during the Nazi era that were fascist thinkers, many were not anti Jew & many opposed the death camps of Hitlers Germany when they learned of them. During the dangerous times of that era I suspect more were opposed but stayed silent as a matter of their own survival.
Germany did enter into a pact with Mussolini but they proudly stayed their own mob under their own national flags. I think as we saw how Hitler marched across Europe & was indeed keen on world domination, if Germany had defeated the Allies the Germany front would have been against its other competitor. Communism. Italy would have fallen to Hitler by force or by concession had that tide gone that way.
Anyway, below is the essay & its worth remembering that the words of Peter Drucker aren't the ramblings of some right wing nut job. He was there, in the pre WW2 era when Fascism was a strongly discussed new idea to replace what the masses thought was failing them and had pushed them into WW1 and the subsequent economic hell on earth that followed. The rise of Deconstructionists in the era, the rise of Fascism & all the Marxist offshoots was not falling on deaf ears. Out of desperation (& for some survival, to actually stay alive) it was heard, embraced & welcomed as a bright new hope. Whilst anti Semitism has been alive and sadly rampant since the days of Moses, the majority of post WW1 Germans were keen to kill anyone let alone Jews. Jews along with many other stripes of Germans helped to begin to rebuild an almost economically dead Germany in the depression deep Europe. The levels of unemployment, the deep angry scars of the war and not only the desperation but the nation wide feeling of dispair & hopelessness across the nation meant not only did Fascism amongst the interllectuals of the time get noticed, it took hold. And when someone like Hitler risen to a certain point, there was really only one form of fascism that the masses were going to flock to. Hitler's Nazism.
But remember, all true Nazis might have been fascists, not all fascists were Nazis.
You have to look at Nazism & Fascism as 2 different things that became one.
And today we still have Fascism but it's not of the Nazi ilk.
Its closer to what the earlier types were. Anti Objective Truth, Anti Transcendent Morals, Anti Individual Rights, Fuller or Complete State Control, and a desire for legislated over reach & one day Authoratarian Control.
Thats Post Modernism, Marxism, Post Modernist Marxism, Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Fascism, New Age, Deconstructionism. All are anti The West. All are anti Objective Truth, All are anti Capitalism, All are anti Conservatives.
And were any of those vile offshoots to ever go to their fullest destination the working man who's traditionally been in union, pushing for a fair days pay for a fair days work would see that Union need to be anti these vile strains & that over the many decades the rise of socialism within Unions has been very much against the working man or woman. The socialist or Union leaders (gangsters) have used pretend left wing prose to rouse the workers to decline whilst they become millionaires. The worker has generally become slowly worse off. Don't believe me. How's manufacturing in the West going?
If I were a working man I'd want to be in a Union of Conservatives that keep industry (and therefore my job) going whilst pushing for safer conditions & fair pay for fair work.
If you're a union leader, you need war & battles with lots of angry members who listen to you say how under attack they are. You need to rouse fools almost to slaughter.
You do not need calm rational discussions with share positive outcomes & those people that did enter the unions never rose. Their place was never at the back of the bus where they might be happy if that got an equal say. The ruthless found a new place for them. Under the bus.
Unions & Universities have been over run and near on taken over by Post Modernism.
The essay by Chris Rosebrough is here & below it is a boradcast podcast where he goes into deeper detail.
The podcast is listed below it. Its quite long and covers other theology related matters. The deeper part on just Post Modernism & Fascism Reborn goes from time markers 14 mins 15 sec to 37mins 15 sec
The essay is from 2010 & still resonates today.
Fascism Reborn
“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.” [1]
Sixty-seven years ago, the combined blood, treasure and matériel of the free nations of Western Civilization defeated the most horrifically evil regime to ever arise in the known history of the sons of men, Nazi Germany.
Since the defeat of Hitler and the Axis powers, scholars have been looking for an answer—an answer to a vexing and perplexing question, “How does a society comprised of reasonably well educated citizens, modern technology and an affluent culture turn into a collective pack of murderous thugs devoid of a moral compass or conscience?”
The standard schoolbook answer put forward by historians talks about the political and economic hardship and unrest in Germany in the wake of her defeat in World War I and the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles as the primary reasons for the rise of the Nazi party.
On the surface this answer seems reasonable enough but when you study the writings of those who fled Nazi Germany shortly after the rise of Adolf Hitler you discover that economics and wounded national pride are not considered to be the core explanations given for the rise of the Nazis. Those who lived through those turbulent years instead point to the spiritual break down of Europe and the rise of irrational philosophy as the primary forces that breathed life into the Fascist regimes of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler.
Many people today have a woefully limited understanding of the philosophical and political ideas that gave rise to Hitler. Most give little or no thought to the subject. It’s as if Hitler fell out of the sky or was a fluke of nature. Many simply dismiss the subject and think that Hitler was “just a madman” who hated Jews and thought the Aryan race was superior to every other race on the planet and he was tragically in a position that allowed him to act on those beliefs. But, few understand or remember that Hitler was a Fascist and that in the 1930’s, prior to World War II and the establishment of the concentration camps, the word “Fascism” had a definition and a meaning. Rather than being a fluke, Hitler was instead a true product of his time and his political ideas were the direct result of the philosophical, political, religious and economic ideas of the Völkish period.[2]
Said Mussolini, “If each age has its doctrine, the innumerable symptoms indicated that the doctrine of our age is the Fascist one.”[3] When Mussolini penned this sentence he did not have in mind the currently popular and historically ignorant definitions of Fascism that most people possess today, definitions like:
Fascism = Arizona’s 2010 immigration bill.[4]
Fascism = The Conservative Political Platform of Ronald Reagan.
Fascism = Anti-Semitism
The phrase “Epic Fail” comes to mind when I read such ignorant and uninformed definitions of Fascism. Anyone who truly understands Fascism understands that it is notoriously difficult to define precisely because it CANNOT be primarily defined by means of a positive ideology.
Here is how the late Peter Drucker, who grew up within the philosophical conversation of the Völkish milieu of Austria and Germany and who later fled the Third Reich in 1934, described Fascism:
“Fascist totalitarianism has no positive theology, but confines itself to refuting, fighting and denying all traditional ideas and ideologies...Fascism not only refutes all old ideas but denies, for the first time in European history, the foundation on which all former political and social systems had been built...”[5]
A good illustration would be to liken Fascism to antimatter. Physicists tell us that matter has an evil twin called antimatter and when matter and antimatter come in contact with each other they are both destroyed. Antimatter is difficult for us to comprehend because of the fact that we have only experienced matter. Its difficult to imagine a substance that is the exact opposite of matter. Fascism is equally difficult to understand because its hallmark is NOT that it affirms anything but that it denies practically everything. Fascism is ANTI transcendent truth. Fascism is ANTI individual rights. Fascism is ANTI rational thought. Fascism is man taking his God-given gift of reason and using that reason to deconstruct and debunk reason itself and all societal and religious institutions that rely upon reason.
Said Peter Drucker, “I...realized that the new totalitarianisms, especially Nazism in Germany, were indeed a genuine revolution, aiming at the overthrow of something much more fundamental than economic organization: values, beliefs, and basic morality. It was a revolution which replaced hope by despair, [and] reason by magic...”[6]
Drucker further goes on to state that, “Nazi leaders have prided themselves publicly on their disregard for truth...”[7]
If Drucker is correct, then the very first blitzkrieg of the German Fascists was not waged against Poland, Belgium nor the Netherlands. The very first victims of the Fascist revolution were values, beliefs and basic morality. Once these citadels fell then there were no moral, philosophical or rational obstacles left to stop the Fascists from committing the most unthinkable crimes.
What is historically vital to note about Drucker's description of Fascism is that it was published in 1939 and predates the wartime atrocities committed by the Nazis. Drucker's definition was constructed from his firsthand experiences while living and breathing and conversing with Fascism in the years prior to Hitler's rise to power. Drucker's definition demonstrates that Fascism should not be defined by the brutality that it ultimately engaged in. Instead, it should be defined by the irrational, deconstructive philosophy that it embraced. The logical consequences of this anti-rational philosophy were the unspeakable evils committed by the men who, having been stripped of transcendent truth and morals had no checks upon their sinful human nature. One could argue that the day the Fascists succeeded in deconstructing values, beliefs, basic morality and reason itself was also the day when the foundations were poured for Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen.
Ernst Nolte, in his book Three Faces of Fascism said, “Georg Lukács in his book, Die Zerstörung der Vernuft... attempts to describe philosophical irrationalism as an essential component of and background to National Socialism, as the ‘reactionary answer to the great problems of the past hundred and fifty years.’ On Germany’s path ‘from Schelling to Hitler’ is to be found practically every name of any stature in German philosophy after Hegel’s death: Schopenhauer and Nietzche, Dilthey and Simmel, Scheler and Heidegger, Jaspers and Max Weber.”[8]
This reaction against rational thought and its corresponding blatant disregard for transcendent truth is precisely what is at the heart of the oft quoted Fascist maxim, “a lie becomes accepted as the truth if it is only repeated often enough”.
Said Drucker, “Fascism, however, goes much further in its negation of the past than any earlier political movement, because it makes this negation its main platform. What is even more important, it denies simultaneously ideas and tendencies which are in themselves antithetic. It is antiliberal, but also anticonservative; antireligious and antiatheist, anticapitalist and antisocialist...—the list could be continued indefinitely.”[9]
Today, Fascism has a new name. Even though the name has changed, the exact same irrational philosophies that helped give rise to the 20th Century totalitarian Fascist regimes of Italy, Spain and Germany are alive and well today. The new name that Fascism has taken for itself is Postmodernity.[10]
From Foucault to Derrida, John Franke to Leonard Sweet, Brian McLaren to Doug Pagitt, Pete Rollins to Tony Jones all of these men are disciples of and dealers in the irrational philosophies of such men as Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
Just like their 20th Century counterparts these philosophers and theologians are characterized not by their positive ideologies and theologies but by their strident attacks against rational thought, knowable transcendent truth, individual rights, individual salvation, transcendent morals, systematic theology, and the bedrock reasoning upon which all of the societal structures of Western Civilization are built, including Constitutional Republicanism, the free market and the Church.
Fascism was not defeated on the battlefields of Western Europe. Their armies were defeated. But, Fascism lived on. It lurked in the shadows for decades and was ultimately imported to the United States and the European democracies through universities and institutions of higher education. Fascism took a new shape in the field of literary criticism through the postmodern deconstructionism of Derrida and has now grown like a cancer that has spread from literary criticism to philosophy to politics to economics to religion. Once again the very foundations of thought are under assault. Once again the rights of the individual are being deconstructed and the idea of the primacy of the community (Gemeinschaft) is being exalted. Once again all transcendent truths and morals are being deconstructed and attacked. They are being replaced with an irrational epistemology founded upon subjective feelings (authenticity) with a hatred for so-called meta-narratives. Once again free market capitalism is under assault and being accused of causing the oppression of the poor and creating an unfair system that creates haves and have-nots. Once again there is talk of ‘creating the millennial Kingdom of God’ here on earth by destroying or ‘redeeming’ all the political and economic structures of society.
The Postmodern conversation has taken place before. It was the philosophical conversation of the 20th Century European Fascists. Its a conversation that had no answers but only deconstructing questions. The same is true today. But the big difference between 20th Century Fascism and 21st Century Postmodernity is that this time the conversation is global.
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1 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Dir. Peter Jackson. 2001. DVD. Taken from the narration in the prologue to the film.
2 See Poewe, Karla, and Irving Hexham. "The Völkisch Modernist Beginnings of National Socialism: Its Intrusion into the Church and Its Antisemitic Consequence." Religion Compass 3.4 (2009): 676-96. Print.
3 Mussolini, Benito. Fascism; Doctrine and Institutions. New York: H. Fertig, 1968. Print. see 31.34.n2
4 "Ellison: Arizona Immigration Law ‘fascist, Racist’ «." Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. Web. 3 May 2010.
5 Drucker, Peter F. The End of Economic Man: the Origins of Totalitarianism. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A.: Transaction, 1995. 11. Print.
6 Ibid. xxii
7 Ibid. 19
8 Nolte, Ernst. Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. 22. Print. emphasis added
9 Drucker, 13
10 Veith, Gene Edward. Modern Fascism: the Threat to the Judeo-Christian Worldview. St. Louis: Concordia, 1993. Print.
The podcast is quite long and covers other matters so be aware the deeper part on just Post Modernism & Fascism Reborn goes from time markers 14 mins 15 sec to 37mins 15 sec
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/fighting-for-the-faith/id268985402?i=1000387854486
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