Ideologically speaking, Fascism is as double-visaged as the Modernism with which it was sometimes involved, casting a backward glance to the primitive and primordial while steaming dynamically ahead into the gleaming technological future. Like Modernism, it is both archaic and avant-garde, sifting pre-modern mythologies for precious seeds of the post-modern future. Politically speaking, however, Fascism, like all nationalism, is a thoroughly modern invention. Its aim is to crush beneath its boot the traditions of high civility that Eliot revered, placing an outsized granite model of a spade and sten gun in the spaces where Virgil and Milton once stood.
Fascism is statist rather than royalist, revolutionary rather than traditionalist, petty-bourgeois rather than patrician, pagan rather than Christian (though Iberian Fascism proved an exception). In its brutal cult of power and contempt for pedigree and civility, it has little in common with Eliot’s benignly landowning, regionalist, Morris-dancing, church-centred social ideal. Even so, there are affinities as well as contrasts between Fascism and conservative reaction. If the former touts a demonic version of blood and soil, the latter promotes an angelic one. Both are elitist, authoritarian creeds that sacrifice freedom to organic order; both are hostile to liberal democracy and unbridled market-place economics; both invoke myth and symbol, elevating intuition over analytical reason.
The problem with all such political strictures, however, is that conservatives do not regard their beliefs as political. Politics is the sphere of utility, and therefore inimical to conservative values. It is what other people rattle on about, whereas one’s own commitments are a matter of custom, instinct, practicality, common sense.
On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about the common Marxist (really Marxist-Leninist, not
> Marxist) definition of Fascism as (paraphrasing) "the last defense of the
> big bourgeousie." This isn't really a definition of Fascism. This is what an
> Aristotelian would call a moving or an efficient cause, that is, the cause
> of Fascism, not what Fascism is. It's akin to defining Maexism as "a
> combination of German Idealism, British economics, and French socialism,"
> without actually mentioning any of Marx's beliefs. Certainly defending the
> big bourgeoisie was not a part of Fascist ideology -- I don't think it makes
> an appearance anywhere in the Fascist ideological or philosophical documents
> that I have read. Just the opposite.
>
>
>
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>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319