Thursday, January 3, 2008

reading fascism

If you're looking for new stuff for the reading list, here's a review of three books (.pdf) on fascism from Sheri Berman. She writes:
Recognizing fascism’s tripartite nature is crucial for assessing not only its historical significance but also its continuing relevance.
To Berman, that tripartite structure includes political, social, and ideological factors - so that even people like Jean-Marie Le Pen aren't rightly considered fascist since they don't command the same social movements. Today then, only radical Islamism, then, is fascist. I think she fails to consider that individual components of fascism might still be worth highlighting with comparisons to fascism, so that Le Pen can be described as a fascist without enough other fascists around him. But it's also important to consider that fascism consists of each dimension. There are social and ideological elements to fascism that are different from the mere political. With fascism having been so abused in the popular discourse, I think some left-leaning people have attempted to reapply a more rigorous definition that includes Bush but doesn't include radical Islamists. Berman's description of fascism help me to understand why I see things differently than they do. (In part - part of it is that they're just inane.) I'm more focused - and I need to think about whether this is excessively so - on some of the social dynamics and ideological components than on the political.

Bush's black-and-white/with-us-or-against-us thinking and disrespect for limits on his power certainly should be compared to fascism, but there is a limited social movement supportive of his fascist tendencies. And while his folsky charm (at least people once thought he had that) appeals to a broad, popular impulse, his ideology doesn't appeal to those who see themselves as losing their jobs to foreign workers. On the other hand, some of his nastiest detractors show the same black-and-white/with-us-or-against-us thinking and a coalition-populism together with a willingness to scapegoat neocons (sometimes read as Zionists or Jews) that I find far more disturbing. This is the social dynamic of a fascist movement. What they lack is the power to really challenge Bush, much like Le Pen lacks the power to challenge the governing French powers at the moment. Instead, they plan to vote for Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, one of whom shows all the same signs of absolutist thinking as Bush.

You can read a bit more about Berman's views on fascism here.

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