W(h)ither Fascism?

If one were to continue to propose entries for Milan Kundera’s “A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words”, certainly, today, one would need to add FASCISM. It seems to me there must be at least two components in place to have a genuinely fascist government, party, organization or movement. First, and probably most importantly, there must be a desire to rally the citizenry and organize the political realm around the idea of the nation-family: some common racial, or ethnic heritage, some common, natural, language, possibly, within which the cultural inheritance is passed down across the generations. There must be, then, a very rigorous form of nationalism, where the idea of the nation is taken quite literally: nation as a reference to our natus, or birth.

Secondly, fascism relates to the economic reorganization of the nation along the lines of a state capitalism in order to revitalize the productivity of the worker, but also to provide security for that same worker. Ernst Jünger, one of the economic theorists of fascism, argued in ¬The Worker (1932), for instance, that the revitalization of German industry was linked to the revitalization of German men, warrior-men, and thus the strength of Germany itself.

In both cases, what one sees is the nostalgia for roots in the midst of an uncertain, and economically unstable world, where one found one’s identity through conformity to one’s nature, one’s nation, one’s natus. Oswald Spengler’s “conservative revolution” was premised on the politics of natus, against the internationalism of liberalism and Marxism, and for Jünger, freedom was only found in giving oneself over in obedience to serving and protecting one’s natus. In both cases there was a longing for a strong leader who would rally and lead the people in this new nationalism.

From this it ought to be immediately clear that Islam is stridently anti-fascist. The Ummah, the unity of those who submit to God, is a unity of all peoples without regards to race, nation, or ethnicity. Politically speaking mainstream Islam has taken a variety of political forms, but none of them have been fascist: one could point to imperial or monarchical (with roots in the tribal organization) as perhaps the most common.

But of course this is not the way fascism is being used; instead it has been used to focus attention on elements at the Right extreme of Islam: Al-Qaeda, etc. Islamo-fascism: the enemies of liberalism. Now it is true, as already mentioned, that fascism was anti-liberal. Rightists from Spengler to Heidegger saw liberalism as decadent, promoting mediocrity and weakness. But this in and of itself is hardly fascist, it is a position shared by many Rightists. There is an abiding emphasis on the Ummah within Al-Qaeda, bringing together Arabs and Pakistanis and Afghanis and Southeast Asians in a way that is not always seen due to racial tensions that do persist among the various groups. Moreover the criticism of Anglo and Continental governments, the criticism of their decadence, is entirely religious in its basis, not nationalistic, and the same could be said for the criticism that one sees from the militant parties within Islam against certain Middle Eastern governments themselves, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Finally one must say that there is nearly no economic component to the critique or the ideological thrust of the militants.

The Islamists seem to have two basic goals: the re-establishment of the caliphate and the universal extension of shariah law. With that in mind, one is left to wonder why we do not call them what they are, virulently anti-liberal, imperialistic theocrats, instead of the terribly inaccurate “fascists”.

Is there, then, a rise of fascism today? If so, it must certainly not be where the Anglo and Continental governments have wanted to identify it. There has also been a tendency amongst the Left, following the initial impulses of persons like Michel Foucault, to identify the universal penetration of Anglo and Continental life by the forces of Late Capital, what Adorno would have called the Culture Industry, as fascist because of the surreptitious conformity it evokes in its citizenry, its ability to extend control. But again one must point out the antithetical nature of Late Capitalism, and really one should say Capitalism generally, and fascism, due to its universal aims and its reliance, in cohort with political liberalism, on universal ideas of nature and human nature that unite everyone of all races and creeds under the natural law of rights (and thus competition). Indeed one would have to say that those who oppose the globalizing impulse behind Late Capitalism are indeed the more significant regressive forces, and insofar as those concerned with distributive justice, whether liberal or Leftist, have been willing to accept such arguments within their ranks, they undermine the cause of freedom and equity which they pursue.

Likewise there is a tendency on the Right to identify, rather haphazardly, all liberalism as socialism and all socialism as fascism. One must say, within the American context at any rate, there seems to be no real socialism and certainly no Marxism that is politically effective. No one in the mainstream of American political life is engaged in a critique that points the historicity of the liberal-capitalist complex, nor possesses any sense that Capitalism might collapse under its own success. There is nothing in American politics that suggests that the dominance of Late-Capital and the accumulation of private property ought to be or can be disturbed. There is simply a preservation and management of what is apparently seen as the natural order. Moreover, even if there were a genuine Marxism in this country, one would be forced to point out that no two groups hated each other more than the Marxists and the fascists: Marxism insisted on a universal conception of freedom in which no one could be free unless all were free, while fascist nationalism sought only a local definition of freedom and believed that Marxism undermined the natural order of things. This is why Marxism was able to make common cause with liberalism against fascism in the form of the Popular Front: both Marxism and liberalism, in different ways supported a universal conception of freedom and equity.

One should grant, in passing, one significant point here, to the Right. The economic reforms of the post-depression era, not only in America, but throughout the liberal world, were largely inspired by fascism’s economic success. But one also has to say, knocking on wood, that fascism has no real soil in which to take root in America, as it might in Europe. America for Americans is almost laughable, compared to France for the French, or Germany for Germans. Who would those Americans be? There is no common natus, no common language or culture, around which Americans would be able to rally. This is the cause of Heidegger’s judgment that American’s could never be authentic: they are, by definition, a people without roots. And indeed fascism had far less success and support in the United States than it ever did in Europe.


One might ask then, one last time, whither fascism? Is there any sort of fascist revival going on in the contemporary world? I would suggest that there is though neither in the United States nor in the Islamic world, but once again on the Continent of Europe where it had its appeal to begin with. For many years countries like France and the Netherlands have prided themselves on being bastions of liberalism with a very generous immigration policy built around the Enlightenment ideal of cosmopolitanism. Yet in the wake of the instability in the Middle East and threats of terrorism primarily from Muslim groups and several incidents of violence, one has seen nationalism reasserting itself on the Continent.

The re-emergence of the Right, in the personage of the late Pim Fortuyn, for instance, was a clear sign of tidal change on the once liberal Continent. This was followed in France by the restriction of immigration, vigorous debate on the standards of citizenship, and a highly controversial law which banned religious attire in schools and government offices (while it affected many different groups in minor ways, it was aimed primarily at the elimination of girls wearing hijab to school). Finally, there are new and recent incidents in Germany, which has been suffering under a well publicized resurgence of Neo-Nazism in the public arena. Using a law dating which dated back to the Nazi regime itself, German law enforcement made the decision to arrest a Baptist woman for the crime of home-schooling her children. The mother, who remains under arrest, is now separated from her family; the father took the children and fled to Austria. Nor is the mother's case unique as the German government seems intent to crack down on home-schoolers, many of which are Christian. Meanwhile there was the infamous case of the Moroccan woman who was told that since she was from Morocco she should expect subhuman treatment at the hands of her husband and that German government would not get involved in any extraordinary way.

I would suggest that the real place we need to fear the resurgence of fascism is among our N.A.T.O. neighbors. The debates over immigration, citizenship and identity, the legal decisions that have been made recently in Germany and France are disturbing signs. The motivation in all cases has been a renunciation of liberal values and the demand that the people of the nation conform to some idea of the natural cultural identity of the nation-family and that all forces that run counter to that ideal must be suppressed in this time of crisis. Crisis was always the excuse of Rightists from the time of Oswald Spengler forward.

The mis-identification of fascism does not help us to understand the extreme problems and challenges that are faced in the Islamic world, while at the same time it blinds us to the regressive threats to liberalism much closer to home.

height, part 2 (concerning destiny)

Morteza Katouzian, "Destiny" (xxxx)

destiny is the comforting weight of one's being, and resists the grasp of height. it asks that one give oneself over to the rootedness of what one is and find the full meaning of one's existence in that and in those, who like oneself, grow from the same root. it allows one to keep one's feet and know who one is. to resist even the staggering vertigo that one might feel at the realization of one's own inexplicable weightlessness, the feared-inability to keep one's grip. in destiny, one asserts, against the spinning vertigo, that one belongs to the earth: to blood, soil, culture; one is purely organic. one is thus assured of the solidity of one's life and its purpose; there are roots to provide one a destinal site in which to unfold. but this is little more than to glorify one's animality, which in a rational being is barbarity, as utopia.

the grasp of height is indeed a call, but it does not comfort one in the naturalness of one's humanity. it does not allow one solace in the organic nature of blood or language; there is not the peace of having a destinal space or a fate. the grasp of height uproots and calls us to be more and other than we are, to be more than our being would allow. height rips us away from everything comfortable to our nature and leaves us weightless: in an ek-static nothing beyond all being.


-LoA

the virtue of being broken (a brief reflection on heidegger's being and time, §16)

Evelyn deMorgan, "Cassandra" (1898)

in moments of harmony and peace, we are actually quite blind to the Real. there is nothing that would disrupt our efforts and our immersion in the habits and traditions of the culturally inherited world by which we are. precisely because reality is harmonious, one is led even deeper into harmony itself, lost in its seeming obviousness and inevitability. everything we are is given in that harmony and nothing seems external or limited by the Real which benevolently shelters us from the need for thought or introspection.

knowledge arises precisely as things break down, in dischord and disharmony. at the point where one becomes disjointed and pulled out of the comfort of oblivious obviousness. suddenly the world appears in its objectivity; the world appears as something fashioned and made and thus susceptible to fracture. after the appearance of the first false note, even if the harmony is regained it can never again be the same, since now even the harmony itself is revealed to be an artifact: something crafted by human pursuits and practices. harmony and disharmony become thematic concerns for the self as one struggles to make sense. and the natural-harmony shows itself false insofar as it blinded its inhabitants to their rational and free natures.

this is why the prophet can never have a home, because the prophet is the one who stands in the moment of freedom and reveals the naturalness of the harmony, upon which They so strongly insist, to be nothing more than the blindness of animal instinct and barbarism. even harmony, insists the prophet, must be made one's own in a moment of lucid rationality that sees through to the Truth-in-which-humanity-itself-is-a-participant: a moment that will transform oneself and the Real to its core. broken, the prophet will be hated by those who think themselves healthy; and the one who is sighted will be despised by the blind.

-LoA

reflections on being lost

[dedicated to alaleh, baraka, koonj, path2hope and all those others who have that feeling of homelessness]


Umm Aisha, "Grief, Anxiety and Sadness" (2005)


On 20 December 1983 my family was on vacation. It was, in a sense, an odd vacation, and no doubt my parents did not think of it as such, but for me...well, I am a victim of that uniquely modern, liberal and capitalistic phenomenon which Heidegger identifies as homelessness – a failure indicative of a spreading Americanism as far as he was concerned. Homelessness: to be without roots, and thus lost. We had gone home for Christmas after spending the better part of the year abroad in Saudi Arabia. I slept on my grandmother's couch and read Cosmo in the dim light of an old lamp while others slept: issue after issue with absolute fascination: an exposure to something exotic and new.

My parents have always been sure where home was. And they returned there as quickly as possible. Trips there were not vacations, they were returns from exile. But for me, it was never so.

But one wonders if there is not a virtue to homelessness, despite what Heidegger might say. On 20 December 1983 Donald Rumsfeld was shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein. Despite my most cynical moments I do not truly operate under the illusion that Mr. Rumsfeld thought of Hussein as a real ally. I doubt anyone was under any misperception of how reprehensible the leader of the Iraqi Ba'ath party was. But Mr. Rumsfeld knew quite clearly where home was, and this was not it. But he could use Iraq to the interests of his home. When you know where home is, everything outside the door becomes "barbarian" to a greater or lesser degree, and what more can you expect of barbarians than brutality and violence. If Mr. Rumsfeld could, by shaking this hand, aim this particular barbarian at Iran, then that would, by the basic calculus performed by those back at home, be useful. 'Let them kill themselves and we will gladly give them the encouragement and means to do it.' And when the barbarian lord became unruly and was no longer able to be controlled or directed at the right enemy, no longer killed the right people, he could be removed.

I am homeless to Heidegger because I do not unequivocally know where home is. I failed to fully develop the appropriate loyalties; I was not able to draw the distinction, so important to Mr. Rumsfeld's little outing on 20 December 1983, between we-who-are-civilized and they-who-are-barbarians, and so instead I found myself a guest in my grandmother's house no less than I was a guest in Saudi Arabia. I was invited to share Christmas with her much as I had been invited to share in the wonderful nights of Ramadan with my friends in Saudi. There would no longer be a cultural door which I could step through and be finally and decisively at home, though I found myself warmly embraced by many as their guest and neighbor. I have committed that sin, so unforgivable, not only to Rumsfeld but also to Heidegger, of being at home with my homelessness.

-LoA