> I have no theory* as to what attracted so many intellectuals to fascism,
> though all did not go so far (or at least expose themselves as
> blatantly) ad did Pound.
>
> Carrol
>
> *Well, a crude and undeveloped one: the lust for community within a mode
> of production which made community an artificial plant. Margaret
> Thatcher (and libertarians) bite the bullet: there is no such thing as
> community except the private household based on marriage.
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There have always been conservative intellectuals distressed by the social
and economic levelling impulses of the so-called culturally impoverished
lower classes. The mid 19th to mid 20th century labour and socialist
movement, asserting the claims of workers and secular society and the
equality of women and oppressed nations and races - all anathema to
conservatives - was by far the most advanced historical expression of this
tendency.
Fascism was a militant reaction on the right to the threat to the established order represented by the militant movement of the left in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Frustrated by the failure of conservative autocracies and parliamentary regimes to contain the "bacillus", where Jews were conspicuous, it was as natural for conservative intellectuals to embrace fascism as it was for liberal intellectuals to move towards communism in these highly polarized circumstances. The "lust for community" became a vicarious identification with "The Class" in the one instance and with "The Nation" in the other. Heidegger's and Pound's political evolution can't be understood outside this context. Thought is shaped by social context, and is not independent of it - a truism maybe, but one which is sometimes curiously overlooked in our own understanding of the various currents in cultural and intellectual history.