Predictably, it turned out, this 'cure' was worse than the disease. An absolute Leader can be an absolute Idiot and plunge the country into wars it was bound to lose. As Sinclair Lewis said, it made sense to infect a person with malaria to cure syphilis (by driving up the body temperature till the spirochetes all died) but it made no sense to do the opposite. Thankfully, once the Cold War got underway, the US was prepared to fund anti-Communism anywhere in the world. Thus regimes which outdid the Nazis in their obsession with racial purity- countries like apartheid era South Africa- could remain 'liberal democracies' as far as the favored race was concerned. Thus Fascism lost any appeal it might otherwise have had. Yet, for pedagogues in worthless disciplines, it became more and more of an obsession because their students had declined so steeply in quality that it seemed important to warn them against strutting around in jackboots bashing each others' brains out.
This development raises a question- can a Professor of Philosophy write a single sentence about Fascism which is not foolish, disingenuous or downright false?
Let us examine an article published by Prof. Jonathon Wolff in Aeon Magazine in the hope of finding a counter-example.
Ours is the age of the rule by ‘strong men’: leaders who believe that they have been elected to deliver the will of the people.There have never been elected leaders who sought to convince voters that they were weak and that they would not 'deliver the will of the people'. Why? Saying- 'I'm a big sissy. Vote for me and I promise I will do the opposite of whatever it is you want'- is not a good political strategy.
We don't live in the age of 'strong men' who can kill any or all of their own lieutenants if they get out of line. This is because we haven't chosen one bunch of gangsters to protect us from another bunch of psychopaths. However, we do expect our leaders to have strong convictions and to negotiate hard on the nation's behalf.
Woe betide anything that stands in the way, be it the political opposition, the courts, the media or brave individuals.What great woe has betided those who stand in Trump's way? Has the BBC been crushed by BoJo? Has the Supreme Court been disbanded? Have Judges been strung up with piano wire?
While these demonised guardians of freedom are belittled, brushed aside or destroyed, vulnerable groups, such as refugees, immigrants, minorities and those living in poverty, bear the brunt.When has it not been the case that vulnerable groups were...urm..vulnerable? Obama deported more than Trump but Clinton deported more than either Bush or Obama.
What can be done to halt or reverse this process?Faster economic growth- d'uh.
And what will happen if we simply stand by and watch?Professors of Philosophy have been standing by, sure enough, but they haven't been watching properly. That's why they recycle the same nonsense decade after decade. Eight years ago, Prof. Roberto Unger was explaining why he couldn't vote for Obama- that Fascist!- for a second term. Thankfully, he is keeping mum now- or at least no one is paying any attention to him. His native Brazil is now ruled by Bolsanoro thanks to the corruption of the regime in which Unger held a Ministerial Portfolio.
Some commentators see parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930s.But Fascism established itself in the 1920s! What enabled it to do so? The answer is the threat of a Communist insurgency. If there is no Communist threat, there is no Fascist response. However, if the State shows a willingness to beat the Communists with vim and vigor- as McCarthyite America did in the Fifties- then there is no need for Fascism. The same holds if the Communists prefer talking nonsense to actually killing class enemies.
Others agree that democracy is under threat but suggest that the threats are new. A fair point, but with its dangers. Yes, we must attend to new threats, but old ones can reoccur too.Why not simply say let us attend to threats? The trouble is Democracy already does so better than any bunch of cretinous 'commentators'. These guys continually cry wolf, so no one pays them any attention.
Stefan Zweig, the Austrian author of Jewish descent, saw his books burnt in university towns across Germany in 1933.No he didn't. He wasn't crazy enough to go to Germany to enjoy the spectacle. Zweig showed a remarkable survival instinct by emigrating first to England and then America while the going was good.
His memoirs paint a picture in which everything was normal until it wasn’t.But he topped himself, taking his wife with him like the male chauvinistic pig he was, immediately after finishing it. Either the guy wasn't right in the head or he was a narcissistic sociopath who thought suttee better than a life insurance policy when it comes to providing for one's widow.
But it would be wrong to think that we can predict how things will turn out. Who foresaw where we are now? The French philosopher Simone Weil, writing in 1934, probably had it right: ‘We are in a period of transition; but a transition towards what? No one has the slightest idea.’Weil, like Zweig, wasn't exactly a poster child for good mental health. She starved to death. The English coroner reported ' the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed".
Which period has not been a period of transition towards what is not yet known? Crazy people, like Weil and Zweig, might think this is a big deal but nobody else does.
Liberal democratic institutions, such as those we have now, exist only so long as people believe in them.Nonsense! Liberal democratic institutions don't exist. Some people may believe that certain institutions are liberal or illiberal or democratic or elitist or whatever. But what exist are institutions, not the adjectives used to describe them.
When that belief evaporates, change can be rapid.Belief is irrelevant. If a set of Institutions represent incentive compatible mechanisms then they persist over time in a robust, 'anti-fragile', manner. People may no longer believe that those institutions are good but they endure if they are useful. Thus, in 1921, the vast majority of 'thinking' Indians thought that British institutions- e.g. Law Courts, Schools, Universities, etc- were bound to disappear. Yet, a hundred years later they are still with us. A far larger proportion of Indians than ever before in History now use the English language and take these essentially British Institutions for granted.
Beliefs, no matter how widespread, don't matter. Expectations do matter. But Expectations are not Beliefs. They are Bayesian and empirical, not ideological or subjective.
Beware leaders riding a wave of crude nationalism.Beware leaders doing stupid shit. There are no 'waves of crude nationalism or lewd feminism or rude anything else'. Effective propaganda can generate a popular upsurge but it is not the case that the polity is an ocean with tides and currents and big waves which surfers can ride.
Beware democracy submerging into a vague notion of the will of the people.Why not be wary of writing meaningless shite like the above? Democracy is not a submarine which can suddenly 'submerge' into something. What people want is not a 'vague notion'. It is the subject of Social Choice- a branch of an empirical Discipline- viz. Political Economy. Philosophers are too stupid to contribute to it.
But why now?Because you have a worthless book to promote.
In 1920s Germany, it was obvious. The novelist and journalist Joseph Roth remarked: Without the free food [that the unemployed man in Hamburg] gets in assembly halls he would starve to death. And in these assembly halls, where people used to go to smooch and drink, they are now daubing swastikas and Soviet stars on the grimy walls.Roth wasn't German. He didn't understand why the Weimar Republic fucked up- viz. its promoters simply didn't get that Germany's next war would be its last. The country was bound to destroy itself and half of Europe because it did not accept that its Army was as stupid as shit and bound to lose any war it started.
Incidentally, it is completely untrue that 'free food' in 'Assembly Halls' kept the unemployed from starvation. Unemployment relief was consolidated in 1923 and in 1924 a comprehensive Public Assistance program replaced the old Poor Law legislation.
Mass unemployment isn’t what threatens us today.The good Professor speaks too soon.
Instead, we’re facing something closer to the situation observed by Hannah Arendt in 1951:
It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence … and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.This is sheer nonsense. In 1951, the State was mighty, the individual a mere ant. Now everybody has more computing power in their pocket than NASA did when it put men on the Moon. Currently, mankind is divided into those who think philosophers are cretins and those who think they are lazy, lying, cretins.
Or it can lead to attachment. But if it is truly powerless, nobody notices. The thing can be ignored because it can have no effect on anything.
Powerlessness can lead to detachment.
But it can also lead to exuberant support for whomever seems to be on your wavelength.But the support of the powerless is about as much use as the approbation of field mice.
This is what happened in the 1930s. In considering the parallels between then and now, the Irish journalist Emily Lorimer’s book What Hitler Wants (1939) – written in October 1938, a month before Kristallnacht, and just after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia – is a remarkable resource.No it isn't. We now know far more than Lorimer did. The fact is people like Robert Vansittart, Britain's top Diplomat, understood that Hitler would start a war as soon as he was strong enough. British rearmament could have started in 1933 and been well on its way by 1935. As with France, the problem was with the old fogeys on the General Staff. That is why Vansittart had to suggest an accommodation with Hitler. It seems likely that he tipped the wink to Hitler that the UK would cave on the Sudenten issue. But once Britain showed it could rearm properly, Vansittart took a firm line.
The fact is, the American journalist Dorothy Thompson, who interviewed Hitler and was kicked out of Germany for her frank assessment of him, had alerted the English speaking world to the Nazi menace. However, Mein Kampf was taken as asserting a 'drive to the East'- in other words, the West expected Hitler to make terms so as to have a free hand against the Soviets- and thus the full text of that poisonous work contributed to appeasement.
Lorimer realised that the English translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925) was highly censored; for example, it left out Hitler’s detailed plans to invade England.There are no 'detailed plans to invade England' in Mein Kampf. Nor was there any 'censorship' in the Dugdale abridgment- though the Nazis insisted on further abridgement. But, in those days proficiency in German was a requirement for serious scholarship and thus the lack of a full English translation made little difference. Incidentally, Lorimer seems to have been under the impression that the translator was German, not an English officer and gentleman.
Few English people could read German, so Lorimer set out to make an English-language digest and summary of the key elements of the book. She suggested that three key elements drove Hitler’s initial plans: a concern for workers’ rights; a desire to create a purely German state; and violent opposition to social democracy.Lorimer's book came out in January of 1939. By then few English people believed the man was 'concerned with worker's rights' or that his chief grievance was against Left Liberals or Trade Unionists or 'Social Democrats'. Rather, they thought that Hitler wanted nothing less than total war. What came as a surprise was the Hitler-Stalin pact which meant that he struck to the West rather than to the East. Yet, it was Britain's guarantee to Poland- which was never made good- given in March, which drove Hitler into Stalin's arms. I suppose, Franco's victory in Spain and Italy and Japan joining the anti-Comintern pact meant that the British Admiralty saw the writing on the Wall. The 1935 Naval pact with Germany had been a deal with the Devil. Britain had made all the possible mistakes it could make. It needed to prepare itself for one hell of a beating before the other side started to make even bigger mistakes of its own.
The concern for workers’ rights is surely the forgotten element in far-Right ideology.This is utterly bonkers. The far-Right may talk about the dignity of labor but, by that, they mean the dignity the crossing-sweeper attains when he puts on his party uniform and goes out with his mates to bash in the skulls of dem dirty furriners and homos and people wot talk clever.
In the first instance, far-Right ideas can bloom in those who consider themselves wronged or ignored by their political leaders.But so can Centrist or Leftist or sensible ideas. That's the problem with ideas. They can bloom anywhere. What matters is whether there is an incentive and an opportunity to act upon them in a politically meaningful way.
Early fascists latched on to low-paid workers, war veterans and others who felt betrayed by a system that gave them nothing in return for their sacrifices.So did the Salvation Army. So did the Communists. But the Weimar Republic was more successful because it reformed the Social Welfare safety net. Unfortunately, it did some very silly things at the same time- e.g. printing money to support the strikers in French occupied Rhineland.
As historian Samuel Moyn writes in Not Enough (2018): ‘It is no accident that the inventor of the still most widely used measure of national inequality, Italian statistician Corrado Gini, was a Fascist.’But he developed it in 1912 long before there was any Fascism anywhere! How is he to blame if some crazy Serbian shot some Austrian Archduke? Had there been no First World War there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution and no 'March on Rome'. Anyway, if Gini was a Fascist, what about the other inequality indices we use? Was Thiel a Fascist? What about Tony Atkinson- Piketty's mentor? I can name a dozen people doing inequality studies right now. It would be great if I could taunt them as 'Fascists' on the basis of 'Moyn's Law'.
Gini wasn’t just any fascist, either; he was the author of the paper: ‘The Scientific Basis of Fascism’ (1927).So what? The guy came up with a plan for America to take over all the Democracies and run them so as to achieve 'perpetual peace'. Like many people who are good at Statistics, he was as stupid as shit.
Yet, surely, national inequality is an obsession of the Left rather than the Right?It is an obsession of the stupid.
In the end, what is the difference between fascist and Left-wing ideas?None, but you can only teach them at Ivy League if you pretend they are Left-wing.
According to Oswald Mosley – the leader of the British Union of Fascists from 1932 to 1940 – the British Labour Party was pursuing policies of ‘international socialism’, while fascism’s aim was ‘national socialism’.But, according to everybody else, Mosley's aim was the glorification of Mosley. The net result of his antics was that Labour- and Mosley had once been a rising star within that Party- developed a stronger stomach for Laskian Leftism.
Mosley might have been wrong to regard mature fascism as a form of socialism.Might? Mosley was wrong. He is a P.G Woodehouse character, nothing more.
But he was right about its origins. Early Italian fascism broke from socialism only on the grounds of nationalism. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proposed giving women the vote, lowering the voting age to 18, introducing an eight-hour workday, worker participation in industrial management, heavy progressive capital tax and the partial confiscation of war profits. Of course, he also advocated extreme nationalism and Italian expansionism, but the pro-worker aspects of his programme are striking.This was cheap talk. What did Mussolini actually deliver? Women got the vote in national elections only after the scoundrel was hanged. Apparently, they couldn't hold a political office, unless all eligible men turned it down, till 1963. There was no 8 hour day or penal taxes on 'war profits'. 'Corporatism' was no panacea. Fascist controls on emigration depressed real wages and though unemployment did fall towards the end of the regime, real wages fell faster.
In Germany, as early as 1920, Hitler set out his 25-point manifesto for the Nazi Party, of which points 11 to 15 concern workers’ rights:Lorimer makes this point but also tells us that Hitler was paid by the German Army to do all this. Recall, it was the same bunch of geniuses who sent Lenin to St. Petersburg in a sealed train. The thing was purely tactical.
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalisation of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
Connoisseurs will spot the antisemitic notes – ‘unearned income’ and ‘war profits’ – but, on the face of it, these points could have been taken from the manifesto of the German communists.
Mosley, who fell out with the socialists over their compromises with big business and what he perceived as the weakening of their principles, quipped: ‘The Socialists wore red ties until they faded pink after the last Labour Government.’Is the author serious? Does he really expect us to believe that Mosely, backed by Lord Rothermere, was Rosa Luxembourg in disguise? Why stop there? Say- 'Rabbi Mosley fell out with the Board of Deputies of the British Jews because of their compromise with the bacon industry.'
He added, in terms with which it is hard to quibble: ‘Real freedom means good wages, short hours, security in employment, good houses, opportunity for leisure and recreation with family and friends.’It is easy to quibble with nonsense. Real freedom means really being free to do what you want to do. You may find an employer in Saudi Arabia offering you better wages etc. but you may not have the freedom to say what you think- if you think in a certain way. If I were a believer in the ideology of the Caliphate I would not really be free in Europe or America. If I acted on my beliefs I am likely to find myself in prison.
Mussolini and Mosley are a reminder that espousing a concern for workers’ rights is not, in itself, a protection against authoritarianism.They are also a reminder that the fact that your surname begins with M does not necessarily mean you will start wearing Black shirts and giving long boring speeches.
In the United Kingdom today, there is a growing belief that it was the Labour Party’s failure to embrace nationalist policies – thought to be favoured by its traditional voters – that led to its humiliating electoral defeat in 2019.Rubbish! There was a growing belief that Jeremy Corbyn was shite even though he had the strongest credentials as an anti European 'nationalist'. Why did this belief grow? The answer is that Corbyn genuinely was shite. People from Islington generally are.
There’s also the conviction, shared by some of the less thoughtful activists, that as long as they remain supportive of trade unions and retain pro-poor policies, their Left-wing credentials will remain intact, even if they embrace crude nationalism.Only Professors care about credentials. Nobody else does. What matters is utility. Activists are either useful or they are a nuisance. They are welcome to embrace anything they like in a crude or lewd or very very rude manner so long as they do it in privacy.
But this terrain needs to be navigated very carefully indeed.Nonsense! This terrain can be safely ignored. Only if some activist is embracing something very crudely and lewdly on your door-step should you call the police or pour a jug of water on the randy bugger.
In practice, fascism’s initial championing of the rights of workers came to little.Whereas Communism's championing of the right of the peasant to the land he tilled came to much less.
But, especially in Germany, fascists relentlessly pursued their second goal of creating a racially pure state.By importing hordes of slave workers. Also a lot of Indians and so forth were recruited into the Waffen SS. The end result of the Nazi experiment was the rape of Berlin. But for a highly proactive abortion policy, the genetics of the region would have changed quite substantially.
The nation, said the Nazis, was being ruined by traitors and parasites, and it was essential that purity be restored by any means necessary. And, of course, the traitors were the communists and the parasites were the Jews.No doubt, our distinguished author believes he is telling his readers something they had little suspected. Apparently Hitler was against Jews. Who knew?
The idea of the need to restore national purity is common to all fascisms.Nonsense! Italy did not enact racial laws till it allied with Germany. This notion was not in its original program. Franco could be considered a Fascist. National purity wasn't on his agenda. He used Moroccan troops to rape Spanish women so as to crush resistance to his regime. That is why he took such a long time- greatly to the vexation of this Italian and German allies- conquering the country. Rape is a laborious business and Franco was determined that the thing be done properly.
On the other hand, several American States had far more stringent anti-miscegenation rules than Fascist regimes till the 1960's. Incidentally, a Japanese or Han Chinese man (both of whom were considered 'Aryans of the East') could marry a German woman at a time when neither could marry a 'White woman' in parts of America.
Apartheid South Africa was not Fascist but certainly had draconian laws to do with 'national purity'. Salazar's Portuguese Empire, which could be considered Fascist, had a very different moral atmosphere.
As the American political scientist and historian Robert Paxton wrote in The Anatomy of Fascism (2004): ‘Fascisms seek out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilising a mass movement of regeneration, unification, and purity, directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against Leftist class struggle.’Was the Italian Risorgimento a Fascist movement? What about Mahatma Gandhi's Indian National Congress? De Valera's Ireland had more of the rather dour qualities Paxton mentions than Mussolini's Italy- which was a pretty comfortable place for cosmopolitan ex-pats in the Twenties and Thirties. Stalin's Nationalities doctrine meant that the Soviet Union sponsored chauvinist linguistic sub-nationalist ideologies- for e.g. among Tamil language speakers- through Yulian Bromley's Institute of Ethnography till the very end. I remember meeting a gas-station attendant from Sri Lanka who had been brain-washed there. I was astonished at his vitriol against 'Iyers' like myself. He had never himself met one. But he could recite all our misdeeds from the time of the Great Flood downwards.
The truth is Fascism was a fad from long ago. It was like other fads of the period except in one particular. It was supposed to deliver victory in a total war. Instead, it delivered total defeat. So, it died out except in comic books and the vaporings of psilosophers.
This allows a person ‘the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings’.Like what happens when you attend a football match.
In fascist literature, we see repeated a language of enemies, traitors, parasites and foreigners, and the dehumanising metaphors of pigs, dogs, rats and cockroaches, accompanied by the readiness for violent action by paramilitary and extrajudicial forces.But this was equally true of Communist literature from the period. But the Commies won their war and gradually cleaned up their vocabulary as their nomenklatura prospered and aged.
A mob in coloured shirts exudes an aura of organised – yet brutal – force, even when those assembled have no training and little individual muscle.This wasn't what happened in Cable Street. Working class Jews beat the shit out of the Blackshirts. Moseley looked a right dick for wailing about the bruises his Blackshirts received- despite having been accorded police protection. That's what is fatal to Nazi scum- the spectacle of having to hide behind the police like the precious little Mamma's boys that they are.
In the 1930s, nationalist parties around the world dressed not just in black and brown, but also in blue, green, grey, orange, silver and khaki and, not to be forgotten, the more elaborate white outfit of the American white-supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.So, there was nothing special about Fascism. It was imitating American Democracy.
As the British philosopher Brian Barry remarked in the 1980s, Anglo-American academia and liberal intellectual circles have had a difficult time with nationalism, regarding it as ‘inimical to civilised values’.But British people have long thought that Philosophers and Academics and 'liberal intellectual circles' are inimical to being able to think their way out of a paper bag.
Yet, this has left a gap that has been exploited by ruthless opportunists, as made evident in the 2016 Brexit vote.Coz 'liberal intellectuals' have so much power. They aren't as stupid as shit. If they 'leave a gap', ruthless opportunists exploit it. What a self-serving view of the world for a philosopher to have! No doubt this COVID virus is ruthlessly exploiting some gap in the liberal intelligentsia's comprehension of epidemiology. Oh dear. I just farted. My fart must have ruthlessly exploited a gap in my anus left by liberal intellectuals. Fuck you very much liberal intellectuals! But for that gap you so carelessly left I wouldn't have to hold my nose at this moment!
The Leave campaign claimed a monopoly on British values.I claim a monopoly on the carnal attentions of beautiful virgins. Much good this claim has done me.
Fringe elements of the campaign were openly racist.But so were openly racist people who didn't give a toss about the campaign.
Even members of parliament and parts of the press joined in the hostility to immigrants and foreign residents, with all the unpleasant imagery of ‘swarms’ or ‘floods’ of refugees and low-paid workers at the UK’s doors.Yes, yes. But all that unpleasantness, like the fart I just released, was the fault of some gap left by the liberal intelligentsia. Clearly, each and every member of that clique had not spent enough time writing worthless books and articles about Fascism and Nazism and the Spanish Inquisition.
In response, many on the Left have adopted an unashamedly pro-immigrant stance.That is news to me.
But some Left-wing and centre-Right politicians have taken a different tack, attempting to capture nationalist sentiment without resorting to discriminatory or racist language, attitudes or policies.How can a sentiment 'be captured'? I suppose what the Professor means is 'attempting to capture the votes of those who harbor nationalist sentiments'. But, successful politicians need to gain votes from people and thus must try to find out their sentiments and devise means to appeal to them. But everyone knows this already. Why dwell on the matter?
Intellectuals have ignored nationalism at their peril.No. They ignored reality so as to pose as intellectuals. No great peril was involved because they were already as stupid as shit.
Yet they could adopt it at their peril too.Right! It's like if you adopt a Nazi baby you will turn into a Nazi and then you'll discover you are actually of Gypsy heritage and have to put your head in the gas oven. Shit like that goes down all the time.
The terms ‘progressive patriotism’ and ‘liberal nationalism’ have been used to try to capture this type of view.But that type of view had to be released because it was a smelly old fart which had opportunistically escaped from some gap left by the liberal intelligentsia.
But what does it stand for?Who gives a toss?
There are a number of ways to explain a distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ nationalism.But all those ways are as stupid as shit.
Bad nationalism, in the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s words, is ‘a mindless loyalty to one’s own particular nation’.But loyalty- which is intentional- can't be mindless. Suppose your spouse has her brain removed. She can't be loyal to you anymore than she can beat you for peeing in the sink.
Good nationalism, or what MacIntyre calls patriotism, is a matter of valuing the achievements and merits of one’s country, both because they are achievements and merits, and because they are ours.So, a nation with no achievements or merits can't have 'good nationalism'. Its people should not oppose an invader.
I think a group of people who look at what they could achieve if they worked together and were bound by ties of mutual affection and loyalty may display something good which is describable as 'nationalism'. It is the potential gains from cooperation and fraternity, not past achievements or inherited merits, which are the proper focus of Political Economy.
What keeps this type of more sophisticated nationalism, or patriotism, liberal or progressive is that it is intended to be nonexclusive.In which case it will be neither 'liberal' or 'progressive' because it will correspond to a 'tragedy of the commons'. Economic theory tells us that a good which is non-excludable will be underprovided. This includes Liberal Institutions because they too take up scarce resources.
You take pride in your country’s achievements while recognising that other countries can take pride in theirs.Pride doesn't matter. What does is that your people are working together to provide necessary public goods such that a superior correlated equilibrium can be reached.
It may be that there are very small children who don't get that other kids have Mummies and Daddies whom they think are the bestest Mummies and Daddies in the world. But, by the time kids are able to speak, they understand that this perfectly well. Perhaps, this Professor's students are 'special' and need 'special education' to understand that foreigners love their countries very much same as we love our country very much.
And you don’t exclude or demonise outsiders.You do exclude outsiders from 'club goods'- i.e. stuff insiders have collectively paid for. You may 'demonise' free-riders because what they are doing is tantamount to theft. The incentive compatibility of the mechanism providing the club goods has been compromised. There may be a superior mechanism which is more 'inclusive'- i.e. ladles off the creamy layer- but that is an idiographic matter.
But how easy is it to maintain this position?Very easy indeed unless you are dealing with people who have very special educational needs.
At the very least, it takes work to prevent it from sliding into the dangerous blind loyalty that breeds racism and xenophobia.I picture this Professor struggling to prevent his students from suddenly shouting racial epithets and stabbing each other repeatedly.
The crowd can form too quickly.No doubt, this poor fellow is speaking from experience. He begins his lecture 'Nazism is bad, okay? Don't be a Nazi. Just say no' and then suddenly his T.A jumps up and shouts 'Zieg Heil! Kill all the kikes!' and a crowd forms too quickly and they burn down the library and set up a concentration camp.
Yet some philosophers argue that we have no real choice.Name and shame the buggers, why don't you?
We cannot wish nationalist sentiment away.But, clearly, you guys have tried your level best to do it. Why not choose some other profession? How about wishing away the sentiment that Philosophy Professors are insufferable cretins?
Much of ordinary political and cultural life depends on it.Nonsense! Life evolved under scarcity on an uncertain fitness landscape. Ordinary political life is still about Social Choice under scarcity. Sentiments may have a signalling and screening function. They may aid in solving preference revelation or concurrency problems in ways which are not obvious. Still, they represent coordination and discoordination games between which arbitrage opportunities exist. In other words, the potential exists to move to a superior correlated equilibrium.
Pride in national traditions of food, wine, sport, art, music and literature. Attachment to a particular, bounded, territory. Solidarity with those with a shared history. How else can, for example, the campaign for Scottish independence, supported by many liberals, be understood?The answer is simple. North Sea Oil. Thatcher used it to deindustrialize the country and fuel mass unemployment. She trail-blazed the poll-tax in Scotland. No wonder a generation grew up determined to take back power from Westminster.
No one, since the days of Sir Walter Scott, doubts the strength of Scottish National sentiment but it wasn't till the economic picture changed that the Independence movement took wing. The same thing could be said for Brexit. It has led to a fall in the real exchange rate which is good for young people. Still, the final outcome remains to be seen.
Following the Second World War, intellectuals have ignored nationalism at their peril.But the world's peril has decreased as intellectuals have been increasingly ignored.
Yet they could adopt it at their peril too. As the Israeli political scientist and former politician Yael Tamir writes in Why Nationalism (2019): ‘Without the balancing power of liberalism and democracy [nationalism] can easily turn destructive.’Without democracy, you have Dictatorship. That can turn destructive for obvious reasons. There is no reason to drag in mention of Liberalism or Socialism or anything else. If we can't kick out our leaders every few years, what guarantee do we have that they won't fuck us over?
All the more reason for strengthening liberalism and democracy to keep nationalism in check.Strengthening Liberalism can mean letting the genie of chauvinistic sub-nationalisms of various types out of the bottle. If the organs of the State fail to deal with sedition, they may be disintermediated from a Civil War or a general breakdown of law and order. Look at Venezuela. Had Chavez been executed after leading a failed coup, that country would not be in such a mess right now.
As for 'strengthening Democracy'- that means reducing Judicial checks and balances- again, not a clever thing to do.
How do we keep our country from doing stupid shit? The answer is that we need to ridicule or ignore shitheads.
The third key aspect of the Nazi programme, according to Lorimer – after support for workers’ rights and the creation of a German state – was to defeat social democracy.This was also a key aspect of the German Communist party's platform. The first 'anti-fa' movement was aimed at the Social Democrats, not the Nazis. In the event, the SDs sealed their fate by voting for Hindenberg and letting him rule by decree.
I’m especially interested in this assault on liberal democracy and its institutions.The Weimar Republic was financed by foreign loans. When the money spigot was turned off, it collapsed. The German people voted for the Army- Hindenberg was President but Luddendorf couldn't be Chancellor coz he was batshit crazy. During the Munich putsch he was ranting against Catholics, not just Jews. Anyway, he refused to go to jail so Hitler eclipsed him.
Fascism has the knack of turning democracy against itself.No it doesn't. That's why Mosley's crew failed. Fascism does not have any knack whatsoever.
Democracy has been used as a stepping stone to power, only to be dismantled and replaced by authoritarian rule.But Democracy has been replaced by authoritarian rule without any such rigamarole much more frequently.
Leadership, parades, celebrations and rallies take the place of politics.Is this man crazy? Does he not know that Democracies have 'Leadership, parades etc'? That's part of politics.
With them, a whole host of institutions and safeguards that keep political leaders in check are undermined.Nonsense! You can have loads of parades and rallies but unless the Army and the Judiciary and the Administration are all subverted, no safeguards are undermined.
This process generally has two stages, both of which relate to philosophical debates about democracy.There is no process whatsoever. Philosophical debates are shite.
The first stage concerns the basic question, What is democracy?We know that this basic question basically has no answer. Democracy is a word which some countries use to describe themselves- e.g. the Democratic Republic of Korea.
Naturally, we identify democracy with majority rule.We do this stupidly, not 'naturally'. If the majority are poor and unlettered we don't expect illiterate poor people to rule.
Going back on a decision made by the majority seems to be the epitome of antidemocratic arrogance, often represented as a form of elite capture of the state.What seems to be the case to stupid people is still stupid shite. It doesn't matter whether something is represented as that which it is not because stupidity comes in so many different shades that the thing just cancels out as noise. You may say 'aha! this proves elite capture of the state' but the guy next to you is saying 'aha! this proves Capitalism's final crisis is upon us'.
Yet, the 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill is among many who have warned of the danger of majority rule.Which he didn't live to see. The majority of adults in the UK were women.
Before democracy was established, theorists had assumed that it would solve all our problems.Nonsense! Nobody thought it would cure cancer.
If the people make the laws that bind them, why would they ever choose to oppress themselves?Stupidity.
But Mill points out that democracy exposes us to a new sort of tyranny: the tyranny of the majority.But this was bleeding obvious!
At the heart of democracy is a tension between the rule of the majority and the protection of the rights of the minority.Rubbish! Where is there this tension in the UK or the US or anywhere else Democracy has firm roots?
Protecting minority rights means that, in practice, liberal democracy limits the rule of the majority.Actions have consequences. The likely consequences are the only constraint on what actions are chosen. Protecting rights has costs and benefits. This calculus is what informs decision making.
Many countries have a written constitution, covering issues that are simply too important to be left to ordinary day-to-day politics.But most such countries ignored them or are ignoring them.
They need a special, drawn-out process for change.Which, however, nobody might bother with.
For some matters of even greater importance, change can happen only at the hands of the international community.Till those hands get burned.
And these, of course, are human rights.Which turn out to be meaningless because there is no corresponding obligation holder.
A simple majority should not be enough to overturn constitutional or human rights.Yet both are overturned all the time without any vote or, indeed, any public acknowledgment.
Fascism disagrees.But the thing was kicked to death long ago.
Mosley wrote: ‘The will of the people is greater than the right of the minority.’But Mosley was right as a matter of constitutional law. A minority of British people had a right to a hereditary seat in the House of Lords. Till 1948, they could elect for a 'trial by their peers'. Interestingly, it was a majority in the Lords which abolished this right with the help of the Labour majority in the Commons.
The leader is there to carry out the will of the people, irrespective of the consequences for particular individuals. No one has the right to stand in its way.One merely has to gloss the above by saying 'the Spirit of the Laws is the Will of the People' and substitute 'Chief Magistrate' for 'Leader' and the thing would hold for any country under the Rule of Law.
Liberal democracies have evolved a vast web of institutions that can interfere with an overreaching leader’s plans in different ways, and that collectively protect minority rights.This is not the case. In general, there is something like a 'doctrine of political question' or 'executive privilege' such that the true limits to the Chief Executive's powers remain undefined. Even such checks and balances as do exist are not, speaking generally, about 'minority rights' but rather 'the public interest'. The problem is that even if the Executive, as obligation holder, is ordered to provide a remedy to a minority, it is unclear what sanction can be applied if the Executive drags its feet or subverts that order.
The most visible are the formal mechanisms that limit power or authority. These include the rule of law and law courts. The upper house in parliament keeps watch over executive overreach.But, in the British system, it can always be defeated.
Local government provides an alternative source of concentrated authority.Again, in the British system, this is an ineffective check.
Healthy politics includes a ‘loyal opposition’, supporting the system but opposing the government of the day.An unhealthy politics would boast the same feature.
The test for whether leaders understand this concept is if they dismiss expressed opposition as ‘treason’.If a leader says 'x has committed treason' but doesn't prosecute x, or just kill the fellow, then the leader looks like a blowhard or a liar. So, this is really a test for imbecility or drunkenness.
Weil applies the Bolshevik leader Mikhail Tomsky’s comment on the feudal Russian regime to fascism: ‘One party in power and all the rest in prison.’This is silly. There were factions within Fascism and Stalinism and so forth.
Other institutions publicise and debate government policies and their effects. These include the free press, independent think tanks and universities.But a servile press and dependent think tanks and universities do the same thing.
Museums and archives remind us of our past glories and mistakes.No they don't. They are deeply boring places. Anyway, the only thing matters is whether we are adapting to new circumstances and challenges.
Trade unions provide a collective source of strength.Or a useful revenue stream for the Mafia though occasionally a Jimmy Hoffa may get too big for his boots. Still, his son seems to be doing very well for himself at the moment.
Finally, informal institutions of day-to-day life provide asylums relatively free from state control: think of religious communities; clubs, such as local history societies; adult education and more.What about actual lunatic asylums? And why no mention of crack dens?
Even some form of free economy, allowing diverse ways of making a living, is also a critical component for bolstering minority rights.Livelihoods aren't rights.
Think of the many small businesses run by immigrants.But don't think of types of crime in which immigrants take the lead.
Sometimes this is not a choice, but the only available avenue when the job market closes ranks. A vibrant and free cultural world of art, films, novels, plays and poetry holds more than just intrinsic value; it also acts as a powerful source of critique and resistance. Authoritarian governments detest activities they don’t control.And have no difficulty getting the artists to sing to their choir sheet.
If the first stage of the fascist dismantling of democracy is to prioritise the will of the majority over minority rights,But this wasn't 'the first stage' of what Mussolini did. He was a Fascist but his party had nothing against Jews or other minorities.
Hitler was a Nazi. His 'first stage' was the Reichstag Fire decree and the Enabling Act which concentrated power in his hands. This had nothing to do with 'minority rights'. That came later.
the second is to contest how the will of the majority is made manifest.No. That was what Hitler did first.
Is it by majority vote?Yes. Hitler needed Hugenberg's help to get his 52% majority. Without it, he'd have been a lame duck.
No, said Hitler, in a speech to Dusseldorf industrialists in 1932. In an argument reminiscent of Plato’s Republic, Hitler argued that democratic voting: is not rule of the people, but in reality the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of half-heartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy … Thus democracy will in practice lead to the destruction of a people’s true values.If you are speaking to industrialists scared by the Communist vote share, you say democratic voting is stupid. Then they give you money. However, to consolidate his power, Hitler did hold a plebiscite in 1934 after Hindenberg's death. He purposely allowed Jews, Poles etc to vote so that they could be blamed for lack of patriotism in not endorsing him. It was only in the next year that Hitler stripped them of their citizenship and their votes.
Suspicion of the electorate is as old as democracy.But boundless faith in it may be yet older.
Recently, a new layer of concern has emerged.There is nothing new under this particular Sun.
Social media is manipulated by political parties but, more insidiously, spreads stories on the basis of their commercial value rather than truth.The problem of the yellow press predates the First World War.
Scandalous allegations are much more widely read than their retractions, and the public too often shows its enthusiasm for hounding those who are already vulnerable. Social media, despite the initial promise of the internet, is helping to create a deluded, or at least misinformed, public.While Professors of Philosophy are revealing themselves to be more deluded, or at least more misinformed, than the public.
Something must be done – but what?No. They came together in the project of National enrichment through military conquest. When the outcome was defeat and impoverishment, Fascism and Nazism withered away. Franco suddenly started babbling about all the Jews his country's diplomats had saved. Thankfully, being anti-communist was soon a good enough excuse for even the most hideous, Papa Doc Duvalier type, Dictator and so all was well that ended well.
The concern for workers’ rights, the creation of a pure state and the opposition to social democracy – the three aims of the Nazis, as identified by Lorimer – came together in the development of a majority-pleasing nationalism, in which the will of the people steamrollers anything in its way.
We hope never again to see the extreme form developed by the fascists.But they were soon outdone. We have seen worse and will see worse.
But defeating fascism didn’t destroy its seeds, and some observers think that they can see its shoots once more.Fascism isn't a plant. It does not have seeds. Some observers are paranoid lunatics or hysterical attention seekers. We have grown tired of their crying wolf.
Authoritarian leaders, who believe that they have been elected with a mandate of radical national renewal, can become easily frustrated with the spider’s web of institutions that prevent them from exercising power as they wish.But the same thing is true of authoritarian leaders who believe their people hate them and want to see them strung up with piano wire.
The press is biased; the news is fake; the judges are the enemies of the people; the universities crush free speech and promote subversive ideologies; the trade unions stand in the way of progress; local government is a viper’s nest; and the upper chamber is full of deluded, self-interested fools.Thus has it always been- but since stupidity comes in so many different shades, it cancels itself out as noise.
The protective institutions of liberal democracy are being persistently chipped away.In which case, they can't really protect anything. We need pest control against those persistent varmints doing the chipping.
The task we now face is to restore and renew the vibrant intermediate institutions that can best protect vulnerable groups, and to create the political virtues that make democracy work.Yet, vulnerable groups tell us, they were never protected. No 'vibrant intermediate institutions' existed. A tragedy of the commons is not a story of Eden lost to some Satanic force. It is the story of something ornamental and cosmetic being grasped at as something that could be homesteaded.
I see two particular dangers.Nazis in jackboots or else non-Nazis who for some reason are wearing jackboots and goose-stepping their way to a Nuremberg rally.
The first is the most obvious: the increase in Right-wing authoritarianism. But I’m also worried about a growing tendency on the Left: the idea that, in order to regain majority support, it’s necessary to adopt nationalist polices. This might be true, but it’s also playing with fire. Some, with roots in the traditional Labour movement, seem to think that, as long as they support trade unions and pro-poor policies, they are on the side of the righteous – whatever else they believe – and that this grants them moral immunity from criticism.Alas, how deluded these people are! They don't understand that they will soon be wearing brown shirts and jackboots and be singing the Horst Wessel song.
But we have seen this combination of views before.When? No, don't tell me. It was during the Spanish Inquisition!
It was the starting point for both Mussolini and Mosley, and possibly even for Hitler.Oh. I thought it was a trick question and so the answer would be 'the Spanish Inquisition' because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition whereas you can't crack a political philosophy book nowadays without running into Hitler and Mussolini every second line.
An acceptable nationalism would have to be tempered by liberalism.Thus British nationalism would be acceptable provided everybody agreed to become Polish for at least one day of the week.
It would also need to be held in check by democracy that strongly supports the rights of the minority.Yes. We should have a Caliphate enclave in every large City.
We should never accept the argument that the intermediate institutions of government and civil society are standing in the way of the will of the people.Even if they are sodomizing our children and killing our grandparents.
On the contrary, they must be supported and strengthened. This is our best chance of keeping the unthinkable unthinkable.Talking shite about Fascism is the best way to keep unthinking Professors like our author from ever having to think about anything at all.
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