Fascism: Left Until It's Right
They can be heard asserting that the university is the "creation and expansion of a revolutionary movement," an incubator of revolutionaries first, and place of learning only thereafter. They demand emphasis on increased student participation in university governance. The importance of activism is an essential part of higher education, they shout, and the voices of the students must be heard. They howl at the decadence of society in rhythms reminiscent of Ginsberg, commune with the forests and mountains and rivers, and read to each other from Nietzsche and Hegel and poets of current high regard. Those born of the middle class find themselves disgusted with middle-class liberalism, seeking to establish a culture to fight the bourgeoisie. Family life and the whole of conservative politics, to them, is repressive and insincere, hypocritical through and through.
While it might sound as though I'm describing the current culture of university students, this was the culture of students in 1920's Germany.
Mark Twain said it best; "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
There is a rhythm that goes often overlooked, if not completely obscured by the journalists and historians incapable of accepting their role in promoting mass-murdering dictators before their crimes are committed. This rhythm is often described as history repeating itself, but this hardly does justice to the subtlety with which the repetition arrives; because it is only after those whose praise allowed villainy to go un-investigated until its very last moments have completely whitewashed their complacency that a generation is raised, ignorant of the details which could protect them from making the very same mistakes. Mark Twain said it best; "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
There is no contentiousness to stating Germany's Depression following World War I laid the groundwork necessary for Nazism to succeed. But few seem willing to address the details of the youthful revolution taking place amidst the impoverished and college-aged Germans, who wished nothing more than to cast out the "old ways" and establish an "authentic" new order. Idealism, environmentalism, mysticism, paganism, unrestrained sexuality and rebelliousness, pure and simple, were the natures that made a twice-rejected art student such as Adolf Hitler so appealing when his political action came.
After all, fascism is by its very nature a movement of the young, exalting passion and action over reason and discussion. The opinions of the inexperienced and unknowledgeable, presented as pure for their innocence, must be made equal — even more equal than the opinions of others — to bring about the best of a new age. The old dogmas can only be defeated, they would have you believe, by idealistic action uninhibited by the cowardice which comes with age.
The same idealistic passion of activism could be seen in the 1960's, a time equally whitewashed of its terrorism enacted for the best of intentions. Self-styled revolutionaries under the banner of the Afro-American Society at Cornell University threatened death to any who opposed them; roaming gangs of racial segregationists asserted their righteousness through violence and pastoral speeches. University administrators were terrified to punish the Paramilitary Black Nationalists for fear of the judgement of courts of public opinion. These revolutionaries saw themselves as the opposite of fascists, and yet when one of their professors read aloud one of the speeches of Mussolini, they cheered enthusiastically. And one day, armed with rifles, shotguns, and baseball bats, they took over the Willard Straight Hall Student Union to demand ethnically-pure educational institutions, staffed and run by members of their own race. They said it was in response to finding a cross burning outside their dorm, but it was later revealed that they themselves had built and set fire to that cross -- a Reichstag Fire for a new generation.
With every other generation we see it, and fascism rears its ugly head in America, in the most American ways possible. But just as in Germany, and Italy, it does not rear from the right; it is only in the aftermath that those who supported it so strongly in the media and academia attempt to wash their hands of the crimes, and lay the blame at the feet of their political opposition. It is only fortune that the United States has no feudal past from which class struggles can evolve into something far more sinister. The darknesses of our past pale in comparison to those of Germany and Italy, and likewise the darknesses which spring forth from the soul of our nation are more easily defeated by the aspect of our national soul which distinguishes us from Europe.
American exceptionalism, for its best and worst qualities, always wins out against the forces which seek to destroy it. And it will again, and again after. Democracy and liberty is in our blood. We must only remember to disassemble the infrastructure which this liberal fascism puts in place, lest our acceptance be our downfall in a battle of attrition against us. And we must report and document all of history, even the parts which we might regret, lest our grandchildren are forced to learn the same lessons again.
This article was originally published at: https://sevvie.ltd/essays/fascism-left-until-its-right/
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I've read a number of your posts and I typically enjoy them, though I don't agree with a good deal of your assertions; which is fine. It's what it's all about. And this post is no different. While I can appreciate the connection between radical youngsters raising hell in the Weimar Republic and the American movements in the '60s, there's a also a number of disconnects.
Firstly, the Weimar Republic's situation was the result of the Entente's short-sighted and disastrous retribution against Germany. The destruction of the war and the resulting economic hardship was unprecedented on such a scale. While it stands to reason that the following generation of German youth might gravitate toward radial ideas after reading Teutonic philosophy, I hardly think that can be blamed for Nationalist Socialism taking root. No. It was Anti-Liberal ideals that birthed and fostered the Nazi party's ascent. This isn't revisionism.
A movement rooted in nationalistic pride, xenophobic fear, Christian relativism, and bigoted culture hardly exemplifies the Liberal mindset, regardless of what Age you pluck it from for inspection.
'After all, fascism is by its very nature a movement of the young, exalting passion and action over reason and discussion.'
This statement is only half right. Fascism does indeed thrive on irrational action, but it's not born of just the young. Fascism is reactionary. When societies feel threatened, they contract to ultranationalistic impulses. Mussolini's power didn't derive from university students. It came from the mercantile and land owning classes fearful of unions and other workers' efforts to better their lot. When it was Hitler's time, he didn't rely on university students for his base of support. Again, it was the established class, reacting to the economic hardships and fear of the masses that provided Hitler the opening he needed to instill fear and reactionist sentiment throughout entire population.
The '60s radical movements in the United States is another disingenuous connection to fascism. These radical groups, while certainly operating outside the bounds of law, were small and essentially ineffective - it's misleading and erroneous to compare them to the political factions that eventually thrived in Italy and Germany. Also, the groups, as misguided as their actions were, had no other recourse in an America that systematically oppressed them after the abolishment of slavery. Jim Crow, among other policies derived from 'divine' right of white Christian America, was a conservative notion alongside the Dixiecrats - now notoriously regarded as Liberal in name only.
I understand the impulse to label university students as a hotbed of fascist tendency, especially with the screeching that occurs on today's campuses. It's true, many campuses across the country have shamelessly resorted to the silencing of ideas and voices these activists groups deemed offensive (and on my behalf, no less); but to compare that to symptoms of fascism? No. I'll agree that it's an ingredient for the recipe as America's 'Old Guard' has embraced xenophobic immigration policies and the Religious Right has convinced each other that they are the oppressed. Trump's base has rejected intellectualism for cultism. The Far Right has embraced economic isolationism and nativism in an increasingly globalized world. These are the acts of an irrational society.
My two cents.
Thank you very much for your well-considered response. It means a lot to me that you'd take the time.
You make some very salient points, many of which I can't present immediate disagreement. I meant not to imply that the radical response to the Entente's unparalleled destruction of Germany is directly responsible for Nazism, for example, but rather as a presentation of parallel occurances. But their place in history goes oft ignored, and those parallel occurances were something I deemed important to share at a time where certain elements of fascism are taken out of context or blown out of proportion, while others are outright ignored.
I also think it's extremely important to consider the core elements of fascism alongside the elements which presented themselves in specific cases. You address xenophobia, for example, but Italian Fascism had no xenophobia to speak of until Hitler made Mussolini little more than a figurehead. Also, you attempt to conflate Jim Crow with Christian America, when at that time there was no such thing as a non-Christian America. In fact, until after World War 2, the two predominant political parties were better predictors of religious factions than anything else -- Catholicism on the Left and Calvinism on the Right could be assured in better than 80% of all State polls.
And to your point of isolationism and nativism being acts of an irrational society, I at the same time agree and disagree. On the one hand, President Trump appears to have a double standard when it comes to his economic policies -- asking Canada to remove sanctions for the better of Canada while asserting sanctions for the better of America -- but there is also a lot of cruft and buildup from decades of political decisions which require an amount of isolation to fix. I also cannot agree that he's nativist; he has not opposed immigration, only illegal immigration. He wants workers coming into the country, not welfare recipients, and as crude as it might make me seem from text alone, I would stand to agree.
Fascism is perhaps the most difficult ideological expression to define; the best historians seem to knowingly contradict themselves when discussing it, and make clear that they're aware of their contradictions of statement. I do not profess to be a master in the study of fascism... I'm just a person on the internet sharing my observations through the art of words.
But regardless, I appreciate you taking the time to offer your perspective on the matter. These are discussions that need to be had, and all perspectives need to be shared. You've also given me a lot to consider in my research.