In the back-and-forth with the readers, she defends her use of the term "Christofascist," which she considers an acceptable example of satirical rhetoric. One reader suggests that the term can be used non-satirically, and offers this definition: Christofascism is the view that "the laws of the state should be dictated by Christian belief, as described by a minority of Christian believers."
I have no problem with this term.
Unlike many others on the left, I also have no problem accepting the terms Islamofascist and Judeofascist. Obvious example of a Christofascist: Gerald L.K. Smith. Obvious example of an Islamofascist: The Grand Mufti. Obvious example of a Judeofascist: David Raziel.
Alas, I'm not sure I have a workable definition of fascism.
That word, like "pornography," eludes a precise classification, although most of us claim to know it when we see it. In common speech, we conflate rather too easily the concepts of fascism and compulsion. Anthony Burgess used to joke that his students would call him a "fascist" every time he assigned a little reading.
Benito Mussolini once famously defined fascism as "corporatism." But this does not explain the mystical element which is almost always present in fascism; one may call (say) Julius Evola a fascist sympathizer without accusing him of worshiping at the altar of corporatism. Neither does this definition offer any explanation for the anti-capitalist strain found in such fascist writers as Feder, Strasser and Pound.
Geroge Orwell -- who may still be the best guide for all who venture into this territory -- here discusses the problem of summarizing what we mean by "fascism," and offers a potential solution:
When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings.If you think you can add to Orwell's words, I'm all ears.
8 comments:
"... a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
--the anatomy of fascism, robert o. paxton, quoted in salon
Some months back Lewis H. Lapham made an interesting case that the present Bush regime is fascist, using the essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt by Umberto Eco. It can be found online at:
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html
You can also Google the words fascism and Umberto Eco, if the link is not working for you.
I think it's a pretty good definition. I particularly like its reference to four apparently diverse regimse that most people would say are "fascist:" Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin. I would also point out that it predates (1995) the current American administration.
Christofascist?
Cult of tradition: check.
Rejection of modernism: check.
Action for action's sake: Not sure.
Disagreement is treason: check.
Fear of difference: check.
Appeal to a frustrated middle class: check.
Obsession with a plot (War on Christmas, anyone?): Check.
Humiliation by ostentatious wealth of the enemy (Hollywood?): check.
Life is permanent warfare: not sure.
Contempt for the weak: not sure.
Cult of heroic death: not sure.
Obsession with sexual matters: check.
Selective populism: check.
Newspeak: check.
Not as compelling as the case Lapham made for GWB, but not far off the definition.
anon beat me to the eco punch. christopher hedges actually made mention of the same article just this morning on democracynow (www.democracynow.org), where he discussed his new book on 'american fascists: the christian right and the war on america'.
eco's is the best analysis of ur-fascism going, and i think that, moreover, it's highly important to recognize that this is a force in human nature that emerges whenever it can, from the gengis khan's of the world to the plantation mentality that persists in this country over blacks, and in the way the west has subjugated africa, and all humans of darker skin, really.
this force requires persistant and dedicated resistance from each and every individual, but as individuals, not as a movement, per se. the more this force is resisted by individuals, the less power it has over those who resist it, even unto death.
because death only really horrifies these people, who are so consumed with fear and hatred they must constantly externalize their internal nightmares. not so those who can face death with a clear conscience, those who know in their own hearts they do not hate.
or, as gandhi and several other wise ones have noted, there will never be world peace until we are each at peace within ourselves.
dr elsewhere comment makes me think of the conservatives's all consuming hatred of homosexuals. Could it be that their hatred is rooted in their own tendencies toward homosexuality?
Not that I think conservatives tend to have more homosexual tendencies, but rather if they do, they are in a constant war with themselves and it shows in transference of that self hatred.
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/franklin_d_roosevelt.html
I sure am glad that fascism if finally being discussed in the open market. Until the last couple years that F word was only spoken with a "catch in the throat"..sound like fas..glug..apologize..glug again..choke cough. Only the extremists..anarchists and neo communists dared sling it around..and were condemned for doing it.
Now we all (or almost all) have discovered what a few were saying for the last thirty years or more. We have made progress.
Now I will sling another word with some of the same characteristics as that one (that one is a clinical or intellectual definition..and economic and utilitarian word which essentially means the state and the corporations form a partnership and the rationale that Mussolini used was that the corporations control the means of production and employ their working class..so they deserve to be privileged and to rule)
The new word that I will toss in the lexicon that needs to be understood and looked at "objectively" is Naziism because that is precisely where the already fascist structure (military industrial comp[ex et al) wants to take us all together.
We have been ruled for a long time by a fascist system..especially since JFK was eliminated from the equation, so that the military industrial complex (fascists), could posh their avaracious and gluttonous cravings to the max..like today in Iraq. He had to be extinguished because he was determined to dismantle the core corps of corporate bodyguards of fascism, the CIA.
Without the CIA there would not be American fascism, mostly because they operate outside the mechanism that regulates (or used to before Reagen), and deters monopoly capitalism.
Oh yes I forgot "monoply"capitalism is a more refined definition of fascism.
Fascism in and of itself does not require the racist elements or the cult of the personality..it just requires the corporations to work together for the good of the state, and the means of production. Naziism as an add on supercharges the fascist system because it plays on ancient taboos, prejudices, superstions, religious fervor, and scapegoating to fuel the system.
So, now that is is politically correct to use the word fascism, let's hear it for Naziism..it is just around the corner.
If I may help You :
Google for :
Fraenkel, Ernst "The Dual State"
- answers in english only-
Fraenkel provided the definition of fascism to the supreme german court, at a time of the first German Governement after WWII. as the fundamental definition of fascism, which is still officially valid.
At the time of that ruling, many in Germany considered the Adenauer regime as "kleriko-fascism."
Fraenkel was a German socialdemokrat jew, who survived part of the nazi-era as a lawyer inside the system, before emigrating to the US.
He is very much recognised there.
Studies of the beginnings of German
totalitarian regime that, when superimposed upon the old state, was
able to substitute its anti-constitutionalist decrees for the
traditional constitutional law, rendering the latter unable to
forestall the spread of Nazi terror. [see Ernest Frankel, The Dual State, E. Shills, E. Lowenstein & K. Knorr trans., 1941; and
Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, 1973; 1992; Inst for Hist Review;
Costa Mesa, CA]
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