Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
>
> Chris is saying, let's try to analyze fascism as history, with a
> dispassion that wasn't possible in 1936. Your response seems to be - no,
> let's talk about that history with all the blinding passion of 1936, as
> if what we say now could still weaken the struggle against the
> encroaching brownshirts. Is it the job of a left intellectual to fife
> and drum for 60 year old battles and never try to see things more
> clearly than was possible for those who found themselves in the thick of
> the fight?
This is a pretty lax conception of historical analysis, giving a random & pointless list of "bad states," the apparent substance of which is that we shouldn't bad mouth fascism because so&so is bad too. Real analysis.
What did or did not happen in China or Iraq or 5th-century Persia throws no light at all on what happened in Germany in the 1920s. It destroys historical analysis by replacing it with random assessments of "good" or "bad."
By all means we need historical analysis of fascism (as is available in many varities), but to provide such analysis you need to have more than an infantile conception of what "analysis" and what "historical" are. Marvin & Chuck attempted such analysis, and whether correct or incorrect, what they offered is analysis while Chris's response is a nullity.
Carrol