> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 4:22 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Clerical Fascism & Totalitarianism
>
>
> Chip, Perhaps what bothers me in your take on fascism can be expressed
> in the old formal terms of genus & species. First at the merely verbal
> level: your term "clerical fascism" in effect treats fascism
> as a genus,
> _clerical_ fasicism as a species distinct from _______ fascism
> (Mussolini, Hitler). Fascism for you is a generic term. But
Yup, that's an accurate summary. I think that in the interwar period there were three species of fascism: Italian Corporatism, German Racial Nationalism, and Clerical Fascist movements like the Croatian Ustashi and Rumanian Iron Guard.
But in the post WWII era there have been a number of new innovations as well, such as the revival of Third Position Strasserism, neonazi skinheads, etc.
>
> In several of your posts you focus (and this sounds right to me) on
> organicism as a generic trait of (your) fascism: it is shared by
> Mussolini & bin Laden but not by Ben Bella. So far, so good.
> That is, I
> would agree that an organic conception of the state is indeed vicious,
> and (not really having extensive empirical knowledge of my own here)
> I'll accept your argument that bin Laden's politics manifest
> an organic
> view of the state. So, incidentally, does Plato -- and in
> fact Bertrand
> Russell called Plato a fascist. But I think we would both
> agree that it
> is not too useful to hall Plato into our taxonomy of fascism.
Well, we can forgive Plato, but yes, organicism/integralism is part of the totalitarian aspect of fascist movements that lead to brutal suppression of dissent. Osama bin Laden envisions independent organicist theocracies across the Muslim world. Just like the fascist Third Position wants independent organicist racially-pure nation states.
>
> But Mussolini's fascism came to power under quite specific historical
> conditions. And though those conditions could be described in a number
> of quite different ways, I don't think those descriptions would apply,
> without great stress, to the conditions in which bin Laden's "fascism"
> emerged. I'm not drawing any particular conclusion here, just
> pulling on
> some loose strings (or what appear to me to be possible loose
> strings).
I totally agree with you. Different conditions produce different species of fascism.
> Both Hitler's and Mussolini's movements emerged, and seized power, in
> nations that were essentially modern capitalist states but
> with varying
> [I don't know the accurate phrase] ?remnants of feudal attitudes?; and
> both states had in addition been defeated in a great war. (Italy was
> only nominally among the victors.) And in addition both states had
> large and active communist parties, with significant support from the
> new communist power to the east. And that war, moreover, had emerged
> from a period of nearly half a century which had seen the last great
> competitive drive among European powers to stake out their
> claims to the
> colonized or subordinated worlds of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
>
> Fascism was one of several different political responses to
> that complex
> of conditions. Roosevelt's New Deal was another response. Japan's
> Co-Prosperity Sphere was a third. In other words, we _could_
> have as our
> genus (though we don't have a name for it)
> political-response-to-capitalist-crisis), and note that one of those
> specific responses _also_ belonged to the genus of organicist theories
> or practices. (This is pretty clumsy, but I hope makes some sense.)
Not clumsy, and in this pen I would toss a number of right-wing populist responses to the capitalist crisis, some of which are repressive and authoritarian, but not all of which are fascist, much less clerical fascist.
>
> Now, shifting from history to politics, I would presume our primary
> concern here in 21st c. U.S. is the question, Can It Happen Here, the
> "It" being something like "organicist response to capitalist crisis"?
Well, if you mean seizure of state power, probably not in the US, but repressive right-wing populist movements, including the most extreme variant--fascist movements such as the National Alliance, can influence people like McVeigh who killed a bunch of people in a terrorist attack. McVeigh was closer to the fascist National Alliance than the right-wing populist militias. Both are bad. One is worse. Even small fascist movements and groups can cause havoc on the community level.
But if we are talking about Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, then fascist movements might actually threaten state power in some places, and in the case of the Taliban, I would argue have seized state power. And it is pretty easy to call the BJP party in India at least quasi-fascist, or ethnonationalists heading down that road.
>
> And for me there is another worry behind or beside that question: does
> there exist some _other_ route to the suppression of
> bourgeois democracy
> and the working class, not "organicist," differing as much from either
> Hitler or bin Laden as they differ from Napoleon III or from the
> Japanese ruling class that built the Coprosperity Sphere?
>
> I've never given this a lot of thought, so I'm not claiming to have
> provided any particular argument, but perhaps I have muddied
> the pool a
> bit.
>
> Carrol
The argument of Robert Antonio is that there is just such a new type of right-wing anti-capitalist movement which he calls Reactionary Tribalism. I am discussing with him whether reactionary movements emerging from semi-feudalist societies fit under that umbrella or not. Maybe they are just plain reactionary and not modernist. Also if Islamic clerical fascism is a subset of reactionary tribalism or a different critter.
It's complicated, and there is little agreement at this stage. Sigh...
But all the points you raise are totally valid. More sighs...
-Chip