The Deception of the Thrush

Mussolini, who, along with Gentile, wrote the "Doctrine of Fascism", describes fascism as any non-communistic authoritarian action, movement, government, or ideology. Mussolini particularly stresses the fascist conception of "totalitarianism" - summed up best by the motto: "everything for the state; nothing against the state; nothing outside the state". It is really this conception of a "fascist mindset" that moves fascism away from simple tyrannical rule and into the rhetorical realm many of us are familiar with. The doctrine, as a document, is worth reading, if only for its blatant shock-value, including a cringe-inducing epistemological argument against "happiness".

Spooky.

Weird. Do you have a link to the document?

Are you interested in Umberto Eco's thoughts on this? Try "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" at www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html.

Dad needs some time to think of a worthy answer.

That link is actually quite a good read--and ever-so tempting are the analogies to several current situations, both at home and abroad. Since when did you start reading Eco?

Hope you are not looking for a 14 point breakdown of Fascism, as well as its historical origins, manifestations, etc., even though Umberto Eco will lend himself, literally, to those pursuits. More on that later.

If you want a feel for Fascism (and an easy cop out on my part) think of Hitler and the Nazis, Mussolini's Blackshirts, and Franco's Falangists.

If one of your Jewish neighbors then was to call someone a Fascist pig, it would be equivalent to saying they were in league with the Devil.

When someone uses it, as you said "colloquially"--and say, they are closer to your age than mine, I think that it's more like calling them (maybe) control freaks, or chauvinist pigs; something implying sexism, or elitism, or authoritarianism. Chauvinism (after Nicholas Chauvin, a blindly devoted follower of Napoleon and French Imperialism was, originally, the equivalent of "jingoism"--or extreme nationalism without the racial or sexual connotations it later acquired.)

Fascist pig has evolved in a somewhat similar fashion, taking its current usage during the protest movements of the 60's. What's missing from contemporary usage essentially is: a worship of technology, a belief in action for action's sake, that life is lived for struggle and other elements--that while important to understanding Fascism, are not important to understanding the visceral reaction to it.

Fascism still exists, e.g. in Latin American nations, though under less noxious titles, or in the person say of a police chief, a political commentator, etal.

What remains is the Fascistic fear of difference (leading to racism); appeals to the frustrated middle class (fear of the lower classes), nationalism, contempt for pacifism, elitism, sexism, leadership which pretends to be the interpreter of the popular will, and distrust of the intellectual world. (This last paragraph is essentially paraphrasing Eco.)

Hmm, we just posted comments 1 minute apart from each other. Did you notice that?

Hey Karin, I couldn't resist throwing you a little Rey Chow from her chapter "The Fascist Longings in Our Midst" (1998). She's a feminist anthropologist who theorizes the academy, and I like her a lot. Drawing on Foucault (but in an accessible way), she suggests viewing fascism as a floating signifier, which may help to understand why its meanings seem to shift so often and easily:

'Fascism' is a banal term. It is used most often not simply to refer to the historical events that took place in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Itality, but also to condemn attitudes or behavior that we consider to be excessively autocratic or domineering. Speaking in the mid-1970s, Michel Foucault referred to the popularized use of the term 'fascism' as a 'general complicity in the refusal to decipher what fascism really was.' The non-analysis of fascism, Foucault goes on, is 'one of the important political facts of the past 30 years. It enables fascism to be used as a floating signifier, whose function is essentially that of denunciation'... In my argument, fascism is not simply the disguised or naturalized 'ideology' that is examined by Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes; rather it is a term that indicates the production and consumption of a glossy surface image, a crude style, for purposes of social identification even among intellectuals."

:) Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Wow, that was great, and very pertinent to my own revelation that I had heard the word all the time but didn't really know what it was. Thanks. Good to hear from you!

Actually, Jessi, someone last night asked me if you knew some anthropologist at Michigan...but now I can't remember her name. I have a vague feeling her first name may be Jennifer but that's about it.

Anyways, I was doing the natural election-obsessed thing of relating all this fascism stuff to Bush (it's so easy and fun to do!) and other regimes throughout the world, but I never thought of it in terms of cultures that aren't necessarily associated with an organized nation--Such as academia. That's a little creepy. Maybe the discipline of psychology is turning into a fascist regime. ;-) but that will have to be another day's discussion...

But really, I'm surprised at how this topic has really taken off and inspired comments. Maybe this should change from "The Deception of the Thrush" to "Critical Commentary on Fascism." Hmmm....

Here's the link to the English translation of Mussolini's source document:

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm

Arguably, Foucault's (and subsequent paratextual) comments on the banality of fascism (note the little "f") stray as equally far from Althusser and Barthes (and, for that matter, Deleuze, Gayatri Spivak and the whole of the Subaltern Studies crowd) as they do from the methodologies set forth by totalitarian (or Fascist with the big "F") regimes of days gone by. The big "F", as it were, lingers just as any ideology does, through endless mutation and permutation, and can be evidenced as much in the neo-conservatism of Leo Strauss so enamored by our current Administration as it was in the Putsches and pulls of post-Weimar Germany. The little "f" of fascism, the once-floating, now bloated, signifier, has collapsed with the weight of a multiplicity of meanings, the war against its implied perception as much a part of current academic intellectualization as "terrorism" has become to Straussian Cheneyites. It is the in(di)visible enemy, which has, over the years, like the saying goes, truly done the work of the Devil - the ultimate trick, as it were - by convincing us that it doesn't exist, just as we “see” (and “say”) it everywhere.