--- On Wed, 7/9/08, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>
> Apart from a few die-hards, which ex-Nazis didn't
> "repudiate" Hitler's
> "errors"? It's the price of readmission to
> society, a common ritual demanded
> of losers by victors. You won't have too search far in
> Iraq today for old
> Saddam sycophants more than willing to repudiate their
> Ba'athist past in
> order to pursue their careers.
We do not know Heidegger's motivation, which is irrelevant to my point. Contrary to andie's statement, Heidegger did in fact repudiate them. (By the way, what is the evidence that everybody in Iraq who repudiates his Ba'athist past must be a sycophantic careerist?)
>
> Trade unionists, socialists, democrats, ethnic minorities,
> gays, and
> independent women who experienced fascist regimes in
> Spain, Italy, Central
> Europe and elsewhere would not be comforted by the
> distinction you draw
> between a genocidal Naziism and what you characterize as a
> relatively benign
> fascism.
The great majority of these trade unionists, socialists, democrats, ethnic minorities, gays, and independent women would have been alive in Italy, as opposed to dead in Germany. German Nazis kill all Jews. Italian Fascists have Jews in Fascist Party. 'Tis an obvious difference.
I'm hesitant to use a term which is much
> abused, but in your case a
> curious "softness" towards
> "run-of-the-mill" fascism doesn't seem to be
> out
> of order.
I suppose so, if pointing out the obvious fact that Hitler's ideology was a few orders of magnitude worse than Mussolini's means being soft on Mussolini. Actually, contemporary China, not to mention Stalin's USSR, is more repressive than Mussolini's Italy.