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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
The ultimate political insult is making a comeback. But does anyone know what it really means?
Apr 19, 2004 | "Fascism": No word has been used more freely by people who have so little idea what it means -- and that includes "postmodernism." "Fascist!" was for years the preferred epithet hurled at anyone engaged in authoritarian behavior, racial stereotyping or even certain kinds of design. Then, for a while, the insult, suffering from a kind of rhetorical inflation, lost its bite; if used at all, it made the person using it seem like a hysteric, and it was exiled to the shadowy edges of extremism, where conspiracy theorists and other Cassandras shriek their prophecies and tote up their lists of correspondences too terrifying to be ignored.
In today's ever more polarized political climate, "fascist," the accusation, is making a comeback. Plug the word into Google and the first item you get is an essay by Anis Shivani titled "Is America Becoming Fascist?" in which the chief argument seems to be that if "left-liberals" don't take the question very seriously, the answer must be yes. Two entries submitted to a MoveOn contest seeking ads that "tell the truth" about George W. Bush compared the president to Adolf Hitler, providing right-wing pundits with another luscious opportunity to play martyr to a gang of slanderous leftist know-nothings. How could anyone reasonably propose such a comparison, the right demands; how can anyone not, cries Shivani with equal fervor, since the "similarities" are so "remarkable"?
Neither side sheds very much light on exactly what a fascist is and how such a person or regime might be identified; it's assumed everyone already knows. In truth, the introduction of Hitler into most conversations is a sign that passions have flared to a point that civility has become impossible. (Hence, Godwin's famous Law of Nazi Analogies, formulated by Internet free-speech advocate Mike Godwin to describe particularly heated exchanges: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one" -- that is, becomes inevitable.) "Hitler was a vegetarian!" is only the most gratuitous example of this sort of gambit.
It turns out, though, that even those who have devoted themselves to studying fascism can't quite agree on what it is. Robert O. Paxton, a former professor of social sciences at Columbia University and longtime historian of the political movement, sets out to formulate a working definition in his new book, "The Anatomy of Fascism." According to Paxton, there have only been two true fascist regimes, Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini, the man who gave fascism its name. And some of what you think you know about them is wrong.
Paxton argues that most theories about fascism focus on what the leaders of "the major political innovation of the 20th century" said or wrote, rather than on what they actually did. Big difference. For example, in their early stages (and most fascist movements never make it out of those early stages), fascist leaders and thinkers attacked "international finance capitalists" and the "soft" bourgeoisie, promising to defend the rights of workers, artisans and peasants. Once in power, if they got that far, they jettisoned such plans, except for a few strategic concessions.
"The Anatomy of Fascism" takes readers step by step through the budding, flowering and withering of these two nightmare states, in the process comparing them with other less successful efforts to set up similar governments in Spain, France and some non-European nations. Only at the end does Paxton reveal what he's settled on as an acceptable definition. Here it is:
"... 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."
You don't have to build concentration camps to be a fascist (Mussolini didn't) by this definition, but you do need to come from somewhere outside the hallways of established power, as both Mussolini (a former teacher) and Hitler (a failed artist) did. George W. Bush, for example, belongs to what Paxton would call America's "traditional elite," the part of society that grudgingly collaborated with fascist parties rather than founding them.
Paxton lays out the generally accepted sociopolitical cocktail that provided Europe's fascist regimes with fuel to grow. Take one nation demoralized and economically devastated by a massive war. Add two political forces that have failed to offer a solution to this mess: conservatism and liberalism. (Paxton uses the classic definition of "liberalism," meaning an outlook favoring a free-market economy and a vision of citizenship based on individual rights with minimal state interference in most aspects of life.) Add to that the threat of revolution from the left. "It is essential to recall how real the possibility of communist revolution seemed in Italy in 1921 and German in 1932," Paxton writes. The mostly liberal parliamentary governments running Europe at the time seemed impotent in the face of the Red Menace, and the conservatives, believers in old-fashioned hierarchies, didn't have the constituency to fight back.
Into this situation introduce a white-hot political party that can mobilize lots of people from all classes and that fiercely opposes communism. Fill it with young, angry men more than willing to show up and bust a few heads if necessary. Conservatives didn't like a lot of things about the coarse, violent, riffraffish fascists, but if teaming up with Hitler or Mussolini was the only way to protect their property and station in life from the Bolsheviks, they were willing to cut a deal or two. Plus, they believed they could control their wild-eyed new friends, who had so little savoir faire and experience in the subtle arts of governance. This, to put it mildly, was a big mistake.
