Not too far back in the discussion I wrote:
> > I'm not sure what to think of the Taliban. I will say that they seemed
to> > have gunned and whipped their way to the top of a failed nation state
that
> > is set to give new meaning to the term 'failed nation state'.
And Chip replied:
> How does this change or challenge an analysis that they are fascistic?
And I reply:
Well the Camus quote further down was supposed to support that. I'm coming at this 'fascism' thing from at least three perspectives. First, historical, so if this is fascism it doesn't fit in the historical timeframe . Second, philosophical, and again it doesn't fit.
I want to hold out other ways to interpret what this man and this movement is all about. What if OBL thinks he is a revolutionary fighting something like western and secular arab fascism?
Third, far too many on the left have pushed the 'fascism' button to the point that it basically means in the popular lexicon, anyone you disagree with is a fascist because they lack 'leftist authenticity'. It also has the popular meaning of the use of force to achieve political ends or even just the use of force (e.g., 'the police are fascist pigs'). Now, I'm not saying that you are arguing or believe that or don't use your terms in a sociologically correct way. But I was at least implying that Hitchens was sloppy, and probably that his argument was one I wasn't yet willing to accept.
Chip also wrote, in reply to my remarks about Camus being dead and not maintaining a homepage :
> Thanks for slipping in a snidly remark implying I don't read books. Jeez.
And I come back with:
Actually I was implying that I didn't need your citations because I read books and web sites, too. But let me retract that and thank you for the bibliography.
And Chip again:
The
> fact is that most of the recent scholarship on fascism and right-wing
populism
> disputes your position.
And me:
The fact is most everything I read disputes my position on anything. I mean, either it disputes my position and causes me to revise my beliefs or I reject it (and may even revise my beliefs in the process of refuting it).
And Chip:
> I write them, and in
> co-writing "Right-Wing Populism in America" I read over the course of
eight
> years about forty books on fascism and populism. There is some terrrific
new
> scholarship in this area.
And me:
I know. Would you care to to sign my copy?
And Chip:
>Nothing I am saying would be considered that
> controversial among sociologists who study right-wing movements. Even
those who
> disagree with me would admit that I am not taking an idiosyncratic
position.
And me:
No, but many would rip Hitchens a new one. And many would dispute whether or not to call OBL an Islamic fascist. He is not an Islamic scholar or cleric, unless I missed something on his re'sume'. And he doesn't run a secular nationalist party or a state like Baathist Syria or Baathist Iraq.
And finally Chip on this:
> And you conveniently leave out the fact of the smaller clerical fascists
> movement during WWII. Especially the Arrow Cross which the German Nazis
> installed in Hungary so that Eichmann could round up and kill more Jews.
Or the
> Iron Guard, or the Grey Wolves, or the Ustashi.
And my last go at it (and guaranteed the best for last):
Well, I do read history, but if I had got around to these points, I suppose some would think I was incorrigibly prolix and orotund. That would mean starting from Hitchens shooting off at the keyboard to discussing European social history during the phase when fascist movements challenged bourgeois democracy and Stalinism, or how the Nazis re-defined their racist ideology everytime they needed more slaves to carry out their programs of extermination.
There is, btw, a very interesting discussion of fascism in Guattari's 'The Micro-Politics of Fascism', which comes from a speech he gave in 1973 at a pyschoanalysis and politics conference in Milan.
Another interesting thing [EMPIRE READERS TAKE NOTE!] about Guattari (without Deleuze) from the 1970s is that he completely anticipates the thesis of 'Empire' (the book LBO listers are buzzing about) on totalitarian, monopolistic, global capitalism and tries to differentiate its path of development from earlier forms of fascism and liberal, bourgeois capitalism (the type that allied itself with Stalinist Russia to fight fascism). There is also an interesting discussion of Stalinism's failures and coming collapse in the face of globalization's challenge and supremacy--again, this, coming from the left and written in the 1970s. I wonder, if Camus were alive in the 70s, what he would have made of it.
Charles Jannuzi