Jason Stanley erasing History

 Authoritarian regimes kill or incarcerate opponents or those whom they deem to be disobedient or not conducive to the aims of the Government. An authoritarian regime may have an 'ideology'- i.e. a 'party line'- and those who are deemed to have made an ideological mistake may be punished. However, it is equally likely that the autocrat has no ideology and doesn't care what people read or write. 

Jason Stanley, in his new book 'Erasing History; How Fascists rewrite the Past to control the future', commences with a  quotation about how the Soviets 'erased' the history of the Holocaust. The silly man doesn't seem to realize that the Soviets were Communists, not Fascists. Moreover plenty of countries, including Liberal Democracies, erased all sorts of histories- e.g. that of the role of sodomy in the Royal Navy with highly detailed illustrations featuring Admiral Nelson getting more than a kiss from his pal, Hardy.

If an autocrat wants to control the future, he needs to beef up his security forces and be pro-active in sending potential rivals to the Gulag. History does not matter. What threatens autocracy is rebellion or defeat in war. Economic collapse- e.g. that of North Korea in the Nineties or, more recently, Venezuela- may not be an existential threat unless money for the security services runs out. 

Any economic or political or social regime requires a 'shared reality'. It isn't the case that Stalin thought he was a mermaid while Zhukov thought he was a giraffe on the Serengeti plain. Plenty of Democracies have 'erased history'. After India became independent, the history books were re-written. If you wanted to get into the IAS, you could not use the essays written by your father which got him into the ICS. Instead of saying 'Curzon was a lovely bloke', you had to write 'Curzon was an evil bastard.' True, rising affluence meant history ceased to matter. An Indian who becomes as rich as a British Lord and who buys himself a Mayfair mansion- may look upon his aristocratic neighbours with a kinder eye. Mrs. Gandhi, it is said, was a great admirer of the British Royal family. She was miffed when the President, whom she hated, got to go to London for the Royal Wedding, while she, as Head of Government, had to stay behind in rotten old Delhi. 

History in an affluent multi-party democracy is a subject taught by low IQ people to lower IQ people. It does not matter in the slightest. What does matter is whether 'Pirates of the Caribbean' makes a shit ton of money. A narrative is just a story. Guys in the entertainment industry can tell better stories than academics who teach morons. 

True, there was a time when 'Grievance Studies' and things like BLM seemed politically important. But, those nutters shat the bed. Why? There was little point banging on about slavery when 'Bridgerton' depicted the English Queen as Black. 

History- as a bunch of stupid lies told by guys with sheepskins- had to compete with the History Channel and 'Pirates' and 'Bridgerton'. Also, Trump showed you didn't need a PhD to tell stupid lies. Anyone can do it. If they are as rich as fuck and have a gorgeous wife, they your complaining about them just makes you look like a loser. 

Stanley mentions his grand-mother- a talented actress in a Germany which was already anti-Semitic and which already had a highly nationalistic school of historiography. What was lacking was a Bolshevik threat. Only after that arose did Germany turn to the little Corporal. Had Ludendorff not been as crazy as a bed-bug, then by 1926, he would have been Hindenburg's Chancellor. Both hated Jews. Yet, Stanley is puzzled as to why his people had to run away from a shithole country where Jews were bound to get in the neck sooner or later. Smart people ran away to Jim Crow America which was much better at keeping inferior races on their knees. 

The answer is obvious. There was a 'Great Depression'. Jobs were scarce. Ejecting 'non-Aryans' from good jobs or successful enterprises, helped Germans- more particularly those who had joined the Nazi Party. But, when a country gets rid of Kings or Emperors and turns democratic, minorities may lose official protection and have to flee. After all, when America became independent, Loyalists had to flee and indigenous peoples were put in greater peril of genocide and expropriation. That was the land to which Stanley's family fled. 

When did the German people adopt the 'Aryan' theory of racial superiority? Was it when Hitler came to power? No. The two most prominent academic sponsors of this theory- Kossinna and Reinerth were drawing on ideas popularized by Gobineau, Wagner & Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the mid-Nineteenth Century. One motivation was to divide the Catholic portions of Germans from their coreligionists in Italy. Another, was that 'eugenics' appeared Scientific. 

Hitler himself absorbed the slightly different anti-Semitism of Vienna's Karl Leuger. That's one reason some Jews thought he might go easy on wealthy Jews who lavished gifts on him. Sadly, the man was almost as crazy as Ludendorff- who hated Catholics just as much as he hated Jews. 

It must be said that the Weimar Republic wasn't doomed to fail. The big mistake was to get Professors to write its Constitution. Academics are as stupid as shit. They ensured that Germany would turn into a Dictatorship one way or another.

Stanley is foolish enough to think that it wasn't the Universities which, from the late Eighteenth Century onward, had been feeding Germany's paranoid chauvinism.

At the very least, Stanley must know that Frege- in his last days- was a raving anti-Semite and proto-Nazi. 

In Germany, there was severe competition to get tenure. Getting rid of the Jews- who, let's face it, tend to be brainy buggers- was what the vast majority of students, not to mention faculty, wanted. Indeed, this is the reason anti-Semitism was more virulent on campus than off it.  Anyway, the genuinely smart could always fuck off to Jim Crow America- which is what Einstein did- and get paid lots of lovely dollars. 

It is bad for a country to have too many adolescents warehoused on campuses or in prisons. They become disaffected because they fear that opportunities are few and they will find themselves on the scrapheap. This fuels a spirit of rebellion. Consider the Paris student uprising of 1968 from which De Gaulle initially fled. The motivation was economic and sociological- students wanted to be able to sleep with their girl friends and were worried they wouldn't get good jobs. They didn't really care about 'gooks' in Vietnam. 

In an affluent country where young people can make good money if they are willing to work hard, there is less sympathy for students going stir crazy while studying stupid shite. What's more, 'virulent wokeness' creates a backlash. Look at Vivek Ramaswamy. He has done better out of anti-wokeness than Stanley has out of gassing on about how Trump is Hitler and Orban is Hitler and Modi is Hitler. 

Stanley is not a historian and may not be aware that the cause of a thing precedes that thing. Changes in what is written and taught precede the gaining of power by people who affirm what they had read or been taught. In early twentieth century India, Hindus started writing and teaching a Hindu-centric view of History while Sikhs wrote and taught a Sikh-centric view of History while the Muslims pretended that prior to the advent of Islam, there was nothing but 'jahilliat' even in Arabia- not to speak of India. However, what split up the country so that Muslims got Pakistan and Hindus the rest of the country was an election conducted in 1946. 

Both India and Pakistan actively pursued ethnic cleansing though, no doubt, the Muslims were better at this. The education system can't place anybody above anybody else, which is why teachers and Professors earn much less than people who can actually do useful stuff. 

Oppression may be organized and involve a 'chain of command' in which case there is a hierarchy. But it can also be wholly unorganized. If European settlers made a habit of killing indigenous people and grabbing their land, then 'oppression' existed without any hierarchy. The same may be said of the salutary practice of cooking and eating White Missionaries. 

The purpose of a prison or concentration camp is to oppress the fuck out of the inmates. Those with more knowledge of how to do this profitably may hold a higher position in the hierarchy. Equally, the more expert assassin may be a 'made man' in the Mafia. There is no hierarchy- including that of aristocratic England- of which we can't say that it is knowledge based. I may think such and such Prince or Duke is a nincompoop, but what is undeniable is that he knows better than me how to be a Prince or a Duke. Indeed, appearing a  nincompoop may well be part and parcel of noblesse oblige. 

Jason seeks to distinguish epistemic hierarchies which, he says guide but do not dominate, from hierarchies of values. Yet, a guide- like Iran's Supreme Guide- can and does dominate the fuck out of his Head of Government. Moreover, all countries have a 'hierarchy of values' including the notion that citizens have superior rights to non-citizens or that a pregnant woman has a right superior to terminate  the life of the foetus she carrying because wimmin iz oppressed byPatriarchy and neo-Liberalism and having to sit down to pee.

Domination is a function of power which itself may be linked to wealth. Values don't come into the picture. You dominate me because you can beat the shit out of me. I buy a gun and the tables are turned. 

The fundamental idea of liberal democracy is that Justice is an independent value which may, at least for a time, block what the majority wants to see happen. No liberal democracy accords the same rights- e.g. the right to vote in general elections- to foreigners as it does to its own citizens. Even there, convicted felons may be denied the vote. 

The plain fact is, anything a Fascist country can do or has done can be better done and has been better done by 'liberal democracies'. The Concentration Camp was invented by the Brits and the Americans in South Africa and the Philippines respectively. Hitler was just trying to catch up with Jim Crow America. Sweden, however, had compulsory sterilization till 2013.

Jason does not seem to understand that if you show a Democratic country is doing something which you claim only authoritarian countries do, then you have defeated your own argument. Thus if you say 'China erased the history of the Tianmen Square protests' you are on safe ground because China is authoritarian. But if you then say something similar happened in America, they you have proved that 'erasing history' isn't something only Fascists or Totalitarians do.

It is obvious that some people, for a partisan political reason, put BLM on the curriculum. Sadly, the voters had put into office a guy who, for a partisan political reason, wanted that hateful nonsense to be removed. As for students, they may become as stupid as Stanley but only if they study nonsense under Tim Williamson. It is fucking obvious that Trump challenged the status quo and then took down its pants and made fun of its puny genitals. 

Stanley appears to have zero knowledge of African American intellectual history. Toni Morrison, on the other hand, knew that Lawrence Dennis, whom Life magazine once described as "America's number one intellectual fascist", was 'Black' under the one-drop rule. Back then, 'outing' a person who 'passed' as White was considered unethical by Howard University students. But, her generation were well versed in the writings of their own people.  She knew there were a number of African-American intellectuals who had been sympathetic to the Il Duce and the Fuhrer. Worse, the great Marcus Garvey had been pals with the Ku Klux Klan. 

Black separatism was one such fascist movement. Eldridge Cleaver, very thoughtfully, explained that he raped Black women so as to gain practice for raping white women. The position of women in his great struggle was 'prone'. Toni Morrison, who became politicized around the time Lawerence Dennis died, knew a little to well that African American politics contained plenty of nutters. Did her audience at Howard University share this knowledge? No. The thing was old hat. 

What was the 'Fascist solution' to 'National Problems'? The answer is 'Corporatism' which would give organized Labour a seat at the table. Sadly, it would also mean 'Corporate Welfare'- i.e. the tax payer funding the deficits of Enterprises while Management concentrated on three Martini lunches and sexually harassing anything in a skirt. Why was Toni babbling nonsense? The answer is that is what Pulitzer prize winners are meant to do- unless they have also won the Nobel, in which case they are required to soil themselves in public and then eat their own shit while being applauded for their courage in 'speaking truth to power'. 

Incidentally, thinking and doing stuff involves 'representations' and 'practices'. This shows that people who think and do- as opposed to those that teach shite- are totes Fascist. 

A State can wield power in the realm of education by setting a common curriculum, licensing pedagogues, inspecting schools, and requiring teachers to teach some things- e.g. Arithmetic- but not others- e.g. Masturbation. I suppose one could say 'the State wants representations and practices which impart skill in Arithmetic but not Masturbation'. The State may also require the teaching of a particular ideology. Jason and his ilk wanted to shove their shite down the necks of students. Trump is pushing back on this enterprise which is why they hate him and consider him to be totes Fascist. 

Schmitt was wrong because he was as stupid as shit. In politics, your friend is your enemy and your enemy is the friend who can rid you of your pal. All alliances are strategic. Why did Hugenberg, who thought Hitler a psychopath, join his Cabinet? His motive was the same as that of the Communists who considered their real enemy to be the Social Democrats. In their case, they were right. Hitler cleared the path for their ruling the roost in East Germany. 

America, of course, only granted citizenship to all indigenous people around 1922 but lots of Black were disenfranchised till 1965. This proves guys like Taft and Teddy Roosevelt were actually Dictators. The plain fact is that in Germany citizenship meant an obligation to serve the State. That's why Einstein took such pains to divest himself of that noxious thing (which he had by virtue of being a Professor in Berlin and thus a 'beamten') 

Fascism and Nazism and Franco's Phalange were based on the supposedly superior governance that an Il Duce, or Fuhrer or El Caudillo could provide. Stanley is too stupid to understand this. He thinks Fascism can be leaderless. In that case the Humans who displaced Neanderthals and Denisovans fifty thousand years ago were Fascists. Why stop there? Why not suggest that the first vertebrates were disciples of Heidegger or Carl Schmitt? 

This is historically false. Jim Crow laws were passed by legislatures. In 1896, SCOTUS upheld them (Plessy v. Ferguson). 

If you are going to write a book on 'erasing History' it might be helpful to actually know some History. You may say 'Grievance Studies nutters don't know shit. If public schools won't pay them to teach Woke garbage, they may try to bite their own heads off. Anyway, kids at public schools need to practice their stabbing technique on teachers. Otherwise, in their later years, they may begin to brood and then return to their alma maters to shoot as many kids as they can.' 

This may be true, but if you are an American tax-payer, you may not want to pay for Woke nutters trying and failing to brainwash homicidal youth. 

German academics, like Max Weber, were aware that America had a 'spoils system'- i.e. the party which won the election appointed its loyalists so that they gained all the spoils of office. It was only after a disappointed job-seeker shot the President that this system changed. Still, the bureaucracy was subordinated in every way to the Executive till, as budget's grew and 'mission creep' became embedded, politicians found they had less and less power. There was bound to be a backlash against the 'Deep State'. Whether Trump will succeed is an open question. 

This was based on a series of laws. It must be said the legal position of the German 'beamten', to this day, remains above- or different- from the general laws regarding employment. In America or England there is no such distinction. We don't need a special word to designate the termination of any type of employment- even that of civil servants. 

The plain fact is, stupid Professors like Stanley wrote and talked such hateful nonsense that there was a backlash. Seeking to politicize the curriculum to promote a crazy 'Woke' agenda, created a greater and opposite reaction. In a Democracy, that's how things work. An administration which does stupid shit gets the order of the boot. The next administration, too, may do stupid shit. Then, it gets the boot. It is this aspect of Democracy that Stanley finds 'Fascist'. He wants to erase the history of actual Fascism (which only existed when there was a Bolshevik thereat which the police or the Army were too cowardly to deal with) so as to rant and rave about how, some day soon, he himself will be herded on to a cattle truck and sent to a Gas Chamber. Sadly, Gas costs money. It is cheaper to let these stupid academics suffocate on their own hot air.