There are a few nuggets of useful insight scattered amongst the flat caricatures here, but the reason this not a useful guide to our modern affliction of growing fascism is it frames Nazism as a foreign invading ideology with the subtext of “who among us will bend the knee if those monsters invade and win” rather than an organically homegrown response to certain conditions of our societies.
Fascism is a cancer of the body politic. The ideas that form its foundation as a philosophy are there in every society, and each culture manages them the way most bodies contain pre-cancerous cells that will never metastasize because the body is healthy enough to maintain itself despite its underlying flaws. The far more interesting question than “who”, for me, is “what”? What are the conditions and triggers that cause the cancer of fascism to overwhelm the counterbalancing philosophies. To fester, grow, and ultimately become terminal to a healthy society.
Fascists are lesser faction but if the society is bitterly splintered, they maneuver their way to power. For example, if a certain country has 2 major parties each supported by ~50% of population and no voter of one party can ever muster to vote for another for any reason, including to protect their future voting itself, then fascists do not need to metastasize to 51% of population, they just need to metastasize to 26%. Adjust to the number of parties as needed.
> What are the conditions and triggers that cause the cancer of fascism to overwhelm the counterbalancing philosophies. To fester, grow, and ultimately become terminal to a healthy society.
Probably many of the things the fascists complain about?
Fascists are famously unreliable narrators. Scapegoating is core to the philosophy and fascists are typically entirely focused on winning power and asserting dominance over competing factions rather than understanding, explaining and fixing underlying societal ills.
Scapegoating isn't just spouting "redheads are horrible" it's identifying some common problem and giving that fake but easier outlet for it "the only reason you don't all have jobs is because the damn redheads came here and took them". The more apt the problem is to people the more likely they will go along with blaming a group for it.
After a good long while of deep acceptance of fascism this can start to evolve into an ever wonkier list of reasons as ever more wood is needed to stoke the fire but at the core it's usually built around a very apt summary of the biggest unsolved problems of the time.
Fair point. I don’t mean to downplay the very real pain that creates fertile soil for fascism to grow in the first place, just to point out that you can’t take the narrative about that pain at face value, since it tends to rapidly evolve into a tool for manipulation. Other tools are needed to get to the bottom of it, though the stated grievance can point you to the start of the thread.
I said “many” instead of “all” because I agree with you. But I think like your other post acknowledges is that there is real pain they experience that is driving them to fascism. What creates the pain is a lot of the things they complain about (loss of identify, worsening job outlook, worsening social standing/status, crime, not being heard by the majority).
I saw this years ago. What strikes me is even though the author tries, it seems to me it has many stereotypes in it. Probably due to the year it was published (1941). So back then it probably got its point across fine.
Is this nazism or simply extreme ideologies in general? I think more people than we would like to admit will rally behind whatever they're compelled to by authority or culture.
I don't know if I agree with the thesis, but that's bloody good writing, of the kind it's hard to find anywhere today. I think in the past the people who took writing jobs where those who had a certain natural inclination to education and culture, whereas today it's the people who have nothing better to do with their lives.
... oh dear. That's a bit mean. I'm sorry about that.
Any implication that external forces put people in positions that cause them to be 'more susceptible to Nazism' ignores the certainty that for every 1,000 people in the exact same position, some become Nazis while others do not.
The external conditions are irrelevant. No matter how you change the conditions, there will always be a portion that 'become Nazis'.
It is my belief that is because there is something inside them that makes them Nazis to begin with. The external conditions simply present the opportunity for their inner Nazis to express itself.
I don't have time right now to go pull the multiple books on this topic I have sitting on my bookshelf, but the scholarly work has been fairly consistent that there are two main demographic groups easily exploited into authoritarian ideas. First, you've got an entrepreneurial / business owner crowd that are often the backbone of their communities. They are drawn to authoritarianism because they feel like they've worked hard and have earned their place and more or less want to protect it from "those" people, whoever they might be. They are your civics committee members, your civics club members, not necessarily "the elite" but the people with means who want to pull up the ladder and protect their status. The second group is the disenfranchised and undereducated. They see a family they've never had, acceptance, opportunity, and a way to rise above people they feel have wrong them or looked down on them. Over the past few years as I revisited a lot of the scholarly material, what struck me is how easy it is to look around your own community and how these demographics resonate regardless of era and location. For example, I've got a retired banker friend who is very active in the community. She describes herself as a moderate, but when you actually hear her talk, it might as well be out of the Nazi playbook - and she has no ideas she's doing it or how easily she's manipulated by modern political propaganda. And that's the insidious part that Ahrendt talked about - how mundane evil really can be.
EDIT: Reading the article now, these archetypes line up perfectly with many other post-war research sources.
Mr. C is a counter-example to all of what you just said. Mr. C is an otherwise successful and intelligent person embittered by society doing him wrong. In literature Mr. C would probably be the anti-hero of an acclaimed revenge movie. He should be secure but he isn't because humiliation is a wound that doesnt heal.
I think the statement "secure people..." is a really broad generalization that misses the point being made here. It does not take much to make someone insecure. There are thousands of examples: food, money, romance, work, housing, etc. Every person effected by one or more of these is a Mr. C. They simply just need the right catalyst to fully realize it.
One may wonder if society in general wasn't so cruel to certain people would Mr. C even exist. To quote the article:
> He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.
I think I take your point, though that just sounds like another type of insecurity to me. I meant to turn what I took as the original meaning (personal insecurity as a character trait associated with goodness, kindness, happiness, etc.) around on itself by implying exactly what you seem to be saying about the point I missed.
If you mean what I think you mean, well, we probably don't disagree so much at that. How to make society less cruel, eh? There's the rub.
It seems that with that last quote you're agreeing with my point that people who have lost hope in achieving food, money, romance, work, housing, etc. (becoming insecure), would reach for tools in the authoritarian toolkit.
I had been surprised by Ezra Pound going (not Nazi but) Fascist, because I had thought he had translated chinese poetry in his youth. Then, when I recently discovered his "translation" process was to start from someone else's prose translation and re-poetise from there, it started to make more sense.
(well, that and Il Duce pretty much said that he needed a poet who could rail against the global financial establishment, which is a line I could see many conspiracy-minded artists falling for)
It’s probably inefficient to deduce an author’s actual position from their [non-autobiographical] work. The more they think of themselves as artists, the more one has to try and read from their comparatively banal actions.
I currently have Yarvin in the "inconsistent" bucket (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41228601 ) so if you think he actually has a line, I'd appreciate learning what it may be.
Having just bounced off of three posts there, maybe it's just that I'm too "normie" to get whatever he wishes to communicate, but I find de Maistre (1753-1821) argues conservatism and monarchism far more lucidly.
I just wanted to riffle on the ‘River’*, it was no indication I cared about the reasoning there, seized the oppo you provided though (with an epsilon of contrition)
If it’s any consolation to “us” [:)], here Nate Silver
In an America where fascism seems to be on the rise, we must understand history so to avoid repeating it.
Adolf Hitler FULL SPEECH in ENGLISH AI Reconstructed Audio 'Freedom or Slavery' (No Music)
https://odysee.com/@SpAIke:9/Adolf-Hitler-FULL-SPEECH-in-ENGLISH-AI-Reconstructed-Audio-'Freedom-or-Slavery'--(No-Music)-(1080p):e
I reckon that's a good tell, even today.