Doug Henwood wrote:
>Insofar as fascism is a brutal variant of nationalism, are you disagreeing
>with Balibar's argument that nationalism & racism are inseparable?
>
>Doug
god doug, i'm falling in love with you all over again. i love it when you misunderstand me. where's max? he'd better get back here or you're going to steal me away again.
i typed: "all political regimes associated with the modern nation-state are ab initio founded on racism, in any event."
so, ok. nationalism, the rise of the nation-state is fundamentally bound up with racism. it follows, then, that you need a more nuanced analysis than to simply say fascism and racism are constantly conjoined. no kidding. it's very true that nazism was clearly racist/anti-semitic --a clear cut example of racializing a group of people who, today, we don't define or see as a race. [though it wasn't too long ago that it was actually something ppl debated] in other words, it is an example of the social construction of race. (no chaz i'm not saying that this means that race and racism doesn't exist and have real consequences. you already know this about my position, but like to suggest that i don't. sillyness)
perhaps some revelation will help. i worked with two men intimately connected to the rise of fascism in germany. one narrowly escaped the death camps, the other actually a communist fighting the nazi regime -- a close associate of isidor wallimann. i studied the intricacies of the rise of nazism for two semesters with this fellah, focusing largely on the debates over whether fascism was the result of irreconcilable structural deficiencies in the economy or was an independent force asserting its influence on the course of capitalist dev. in germany. oh i'm sure you know the rave on that one. the point: basically these two felt it very important to emphasize the capitalist bases of fascism, not by belittling the anti-semitism of nazism, not by denying that some fascist regimes have been racist in a conventional sense by targeting groups readily understood as a 'race.' and singling them out for violent, sometimes genocidal treatment. instead, they sought to examine the politcal and economic conflicts at the micro-level of historical analysis where the *real* battles had little to do with anti-semitic hatred. the various politcal parties, kpd, spd, ddp, dvp, dnvp, nsdap didn't focus their energies on debating the merits of anit-semitism as a plank in their political platforms. [btw chaz, the vote that brought nazi's into power was hardly legitimatee--see David Abraham _the collapse of the weimar republic_]
finally, my grandfather was jewish. never learned that til after he died. why? cause he hid it from everyone out of fear. when people use racism, they really mean a specific thing: racism is about blacks. our own email pal lehman scratched his head over the possibility that there could be racism in the balkan regions. they're white, he said. this is just thrilling that someone exposed to the arguments about the social construction of race could be so blind. so maybe what we need when talking about fascism is a different term. i don't know. balibar offers one and ange has written about it before. finally, chaz: no, i'm not claiming some identity to legitimate what i say or authorize it as right. i'm simply explaining, chaz, why i have more than an intellectual investment in this debate.
kelley
Q: Are you an academic? Q: Who says? Q: And that's enough for you, is it?