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I mean aesthetically, not in reality!
Of course I am not a fascist nor have any sympathies towards it as a political ideology whatsoever. I am pretty unsure where I am politically but definitely towards the left with Marxist tendencies and a firm believer in democracy (though still unsure as to where I lean on individualism and classical liberalism, particularly the imposition of such ideologies on other countries). So I'm pretty much the opposite. The other thing is that when I refer to fascism I'm definitely not referring to the German brand in the form of Nascism either, an ideology based on racial supremacy and ethnic cleansing.
I'm referring more to the Italian brand of fascism, or the Austrian or Romanian brands, which champion the nation and its culture above all with strong militaristic tendencies. It opposes the dissolution of the community and the nation's culture as well as decadence within society (which are understandable contentions in some ways) and fascism arises in many places as a reaction against liberalism and particularly communism.
Having taken care of that, not sure I'm making any sense at all in explaining what I'm thinking right now at 9.15am in my current state of mind of not having gone to bed yet (though I've had these thoughts before), that though it is obviously a horrible ideology that has resulting in great pain and suffering for people all over the world (and the death of millions in the most brutal acts in human history in the German form), I think that there is something beautiful about it on a purely aesthetic, theoretical level. The first time I thought about this was when watching Pan's Labyrinth when the general destroys that innocent guy's skill with a wine bottle. Since the Enlightenment and rise of Secularism and Modernism we began to think of societal, economic, power, and later cultural structures on a rational, systematic, scientific manner with the goal of understanding them and creating the best possible system. The assumptions behind these resulting philosophies were taken to be universal and scientific, and the answers were absolute and discoverable through rational thought. Especially as a poli sci major, I think about systems of power in a very rational, scientific manner.
Fascism to me seems the opposite. While watching that movie, the political system in Spain seemed to be an outgrowth of its culture, a traditionalist, patriarchal society. The ruler was the strong, fatherly, patriarchal male leader, who was head of the army and state in the same way he was the head of his family. The system of power was a natural outgrowth of the culture, the state a representaion of the family and traditional culture. Perhaps another reason I find this interesting is that I am bothered by the lack of importance the discipline of political science (and economics is even more guilty of this) gives to culture. I also enjoy history, religion, and anthropology and try to think in a very interdisciplinary manner. Anyways, seeing a political system as an organic outgrowth of the given nation's culture to me is just aesthetically beautiful.
The other thing aesthetically pleasing about is its "primitiveness." Europeans have always loved to think of themselves as more advanced than primitive people and that someone growing up in such a society is more cultured and complex and not the type to simply give in to instinct. But fascism is the expression of such old behaviors and attitudes, the kind we would characterize with "primitive peoples." It is the modern form of warriorism, which has existed since the beginning. You'd think by the 20th century we would have gotten over misogyny and certainly warriorism, but we hadn't. The "primitive" instincts of male dominance and combat were still alive and well, and these men wanted to dominate and fight the same way as say a Barbarian tribe wanted to pillage the Romans. Supposedly refined men with education and 'culture.' I was blown away when I watched The Downfall (amazing movie by the way, you have to see it), seeing the intelligent German leaders and generals talking the same way a warrior from centuries ago would, only with better vocabulary and a more developed ideology.
And of course I find something aesthetically pleasing about the modern state championing traditional culture. The fact that the Catholics were on the side of the Fascists during the Spanish civil war, that it gains a moral dimension. Or the championing of the community against the rise of individualism--they fight against the cultural changes brought about by individualism, secularism, and capitalism. This is something that at times I do have sympathy for, particularly in countries where they native culture is greatly changed with the entrance of modern western culture, with its belief in the individual (we are the most individualistic country in the culturally and historically individualistic west; it is psychologically proven that our beliefs affect the way we look at the world and its people, for example we attribute behavior much more to the individual than to the societal conditions that caused he/she to act that way than people from the East) and capitalism along with our own subjective attitudes of the maximization of profit and our consumer behavior that we consider universal, originating from the resulting soft power given to every aspect of our culture and its values.
And of course there is the badassery factor of power and militarism. Come on, don't tell me you've never daydreamed about being a powerful leader, maybe one who fights for good, but at least what it would feel like to be incredibly powerful and perhaps militarily dominated. I think we're biologically and/or culturally inclined to feel that way.
Similar attitudes still exist today in our country, in the form of neo-conservatism. Though they're not as extreme as the Fascists (yet), it's the same type of thing. Neo-conservatives are bothered by the moral decay of society, the lack of community, and the decadence of our era. Of course since we come from the most individualistic culture on the planet, they do not see that these changes are brought by capitalism and liberalism, which are central parts of their ideology (particularly the former). I think they see capitalism as in integral part of their masculine ideology, that those who do not succeed within our economic system are weak and lazy, thus they are always fighting to reduce welfare and other government social programs. This of course does make them different than Fascism, which champions the society and community over the individual (individualism is seen as something that erodes culture, which the rise of secularism and individualism did do in Catholic countries such as Spain, it greatly changed the culture and diminished the importance of the church, but for us it is an integral part of our culture).
But the ideas are similar. They both believe in the superiority of the nation and its culture, traditional values (religious and family), they are bothered by secularism and the resulting erosion of morals in society, they both are authoritarian (by our standards neo-conservatism is authoritarian and) and most importantly, they are both militaristic. Neo-cons believe in the American empire and military dominance, though the mainstream conservative public is too ignorant to see it and wouldn't explicitly state they want this, they clearly are in the same ideological ballpark as they buy into the rhetoric and feel that they share the same values. And of course they both are the political manifestations of misoginist culture. American conservatives are very threatened by feminism and tend to believe that the man is the head of the family. The militaristic tendencies are also very masculine. Read Bill Kristol or Robert Kagan or perhaps one of its founders, Leo Strauss. Ironically many of the founders of neo-conservatism were leftists first.
Though not as extreme, we see a similarity with neo-cons and the Nazis in racial attitudes. The neo-conservatives are greatly bothered by immigration and what they believe to be a cultural invasion. Their belief in the superiority of American culture leads them to be highly bothered by the wave of immigrants and the expression of their native culture. They are deeply bothered by things like soccer and Spanish and all Mexican areas, because they feel that this culture may replace the one they believe in so much. Even in academia this exists. Read Who Are We by Samuel Huntington, a very famous and popular academic. In that book he contends that American democracy is an outgrowth of the dissenting Protestant culture that this country was founded upon, and that the large amount of Latino immigrants do not share this culture and thus will weaken our society.
In order to understand an ideology, you have to be able to empathize with the people who believe in it and see why they think the way they do. Though I completely disagree with them politically in every way, I can understand why conservatives feel the way they do. If you grow up religious in this country (or say Catholic in Spain or Italy prior to WWII), your faith and tradition are very important to you. Understandably you are disgusted by how immoral and sick human beings are. The religious community you affiliate with is an important part of your life, as I believe it is human nature to desire a sense of community (for most of our existence we lived in small groups that we stayed with for our entire lives), so you desire these values that hold it together to belong to our society as a whole. You see things like secularism and liberalism as eroding the values that hold your community together, denying many the opportunity to be raised in such an environment.
I think this is an understandable human reaction, and I too am bothered by how immoral people are and the lack of community that will result from such an individualistic society (of course they don't understand that the individualism and capitalism that they champion results in the erosion of the sense of community they yearn form, that these values and the resulting consumerism destroys the sense of morals held by a society). What we have to understand is that their political beliefs are about morals, beliefs they shape their lives around that determine whether or not they are going to heaven or hell. For us seculars it's just a question of efficiency, a question of our government working well and efficiently to provide the greatest amount of good while not harming the individual. For economic policies it's simply a matter of utilitarianism, if the standard of living raises or lowers a bit, and on social policies, we react against the conservatives trying to make their moral beliefs law by upholding the indivual and his/her freedom as well as the secularness of the government, since our political ideologies tells us to respond that way. But it's not a question of eternal life or death, something on the mind of religious conservatives. Of course I don't agree with the poltical manifestation of these sentiments, and I get so frustrated listening to conservatives speak their stupid opions, I can sympathize with the people who hold them.
Fascism is the greatest example of the horrors of masculinity, when it is produced at a mass scale resulting in the death and suffering of tens of millions of people. We respond to this by condemning masculine attitudes, and we justifiably champion feminism and the desire for equality between the sexes. But do we throw out the baby with the bath water? Perhaps we don't need to completely condemn masculinity just because terrible things happened because of it. Not all masculine values are evil. Strength, self-reliance, drive, are not bad things, we want to feel them and they can be great character qualities. Perhaps it is natural biologically and/or culturally for men to desire to be masculine. Maybe we need to allow men to value and express masculinity as opposed to suppress and condemn it, and simply keep a careful eye that it does not cause any harm. Maybe we need to champion a new form of masculinity. One that encourages us to be men, to value strength, self-reliance, drive, and other positive masculine values, but have intelligent political beliefs not tied to such emotions and based on rationality, that believes in peaceful negotiation as opposed to violence, the equality of women and the respect for their desires and attitudes without imposing our own on them nor discriminate against them in any way, that understands the patriarchal history to our culture and tries to avoid it, that does not believe in authoritarianism or misogyny or tries to dominate others.
Of course I am not a fascist nor have any sympathies towards it as a political ideology whatsoever. I am pretty unsure where I am politically but definitely towards the left with Marxist tendencies and a firm believer in democracy (though still unsure as to where I lean on individualism and classical liberalism, particularly the imposition of such ideologies on other countries). So I'm pretty much the opposite. The other thing is that when I refer to fascism I'm definitely not referring to the German brand in the form of Nascism either, an ideology based on racial supremacy and ethnic cleansing.
I'm referring more to the Italian brand of fascism, or the Austrian or Romanian brands, which champion the nation and its culture above all with strong militaristic tendencies. It opposes the dissolution of the community and the nation's culture as well as decadence within society (which are understandable contentions in some ways) and fascism arises in many places as a reaction against liberalism and particularly communism.
Having taken care of that, not sure I'm making any sense at all in explaining what I'm thinking right now at 9.15am in my current state of mind of not having gone to bed yet (though I've had these thoughts before), that though it is obviously a horrible ideology that has resulting in great pain and suffering for people all over the world (and the death of millions in the most brutal acts in human history in the German form), I think that there is something beautiful about it on a purely aesthetic, theoretical level. The first time I thought about this was when watching Pan's Labyrinth when the general destroys that innocent guy's skill with a wine bottle. Since the Enlightenment and rise of Secularism and Modernism we began to think of societal, economic, power, and later cultural structures on a rational, systematic, scientific manner with the goal of understanding them and creating the best possible system. The assumptions behind these resulting philosophies were taken to be universal and scientific, and the answers were absolute and discoverable through rational thought. Especially as a poli sci major, I think about systems of power in a very rational, scientific manner.
Fascism to me seems the opposite. While watching that movie, the political system in Spain seemed to be an outgrowth of its culture, a traditionalist, patriarchal society. The ruler was the strong, fatherly, patriarchal male leader, who was head of the army and state in the same way he was the head of his family. The system of power was a natural outgrowth of the culture, the state a representaion of the family and traditional culture. Perhaps another reason I find this interesting is that I am bothered by the lack of importance the discipline of political science (and economics is even more guilty of this) gives to culture. I also enjoy history, religion, and anthropology and try to think in a very interdisciplinary manner. Anyways, seeing a political system as an organic outgrowth of the given nation's culture to me is just aesthetically beautiful.
The other thing aesthetically pleasing about is its "primitiveness." Europeans have always loved to think of themselves as more advanced than primitive people and that someone growing up in such a society is more cultured and complex and not the type to simply give in to instinct. But fascism is the expression of such old behaviors and attitudes, the kind we would characterize with "primitive peoples." It is the modern form of warriorism, which has existed since the beginning. You'd think by the 20th century we would have gotten over misogyny and certainly warriorism, but we hadn't. The "primitive" instincts of male dominance and combat were still alive and well, and these men wanted to dominate and fight the same way as say a Barbarian tribe wanted to pillage the Romans. Supposedly refined men with education and 'culture.' I was blown away when I watched The Downfall (amazing movie by the way, you have to see it), seeing the intelligent German leaders and generals talking the same way a warrior from centuries ago would, only with better vocabulary and a more developed ideology.
And of course I find something aesthetically pleasing about the modern state championing traditional culture. The fact that the Catholics were on the side of the Fascists during the Spanish civil war, that it gains a moral dimension. Or the championing of the community against the rise of individualism--they fight against the cultural changes brought about by individualism, secularism, and capitalism. This is something that at times I do have sympathy for, particularly in countries where they native culture is greatly changed with the entrance of modern western culture, with its belief in the individual (we are the most individualistic country in the culturally and historically individualistic west; it is psychologically proven that our beliefs affect the way we look at the world and its people, for example we attribute behavior much more to the individual than to the societal conditions that caused he/she to act that way than people from the East) and capitalism along with our own subjective attitudes of the maximization of profit and our consumer behavior that we consider universal, originating from the resulting soft power given to every aspect of our culture and its values.
And of course there is the badassery factor of power and militarism. Come on, don't tell me you've never daydreamed about being a powerful leader, maybe one who fights for good, but at least what it would feel like to be incredibly powerful and perhaps militarily dominated. I think we're biologically and/or culturally inclined to feel that way.
Similar attitudes still exist today in our country, in the form of neo-conservatism. Though they're not as extreme as the Fascists (yet), it's the same type of thing. Neo-conservatives are bothered by the moral decay of society, the lack of community, and the decadence of our era. Of course since we come from the most individualistic culture on the planet, they do not see that these changes are brought by capitalism and liberalism, which are central parts of their ideology (particularly the former). I think they see capitalism as in integral part of their masculine ideology, that those who do not succeed within our economic system are weak and lazy, thus they are always fighting to reduce welfare and other government social programs. This of course does make them different than Fascism, which champions the society and community over the individual (individualism is seen as something that erodes culture, which the rise of secularism and individualism did do in Catholic countries such as Spain, it greatly changed the culture and diminished the importance of the church, but for us it is an integral part of our culture).
But the ideas are similar. They both believe in the superiority of the nation and its culture, traditional values (religious and family), they are bothered by secularism and the resulting erosion of morals in society, they both are authoritarian (by our standards neo-conservatism is authoritarian and) and most importantly, they are both militaristic. Neo-cons believe in the American empire and military dominance, though the mainstream conservative public is too ignorant to see it and wouldn't explicitly state they want this, they clearly are in the same ideological ballpark as they buy into the rhetoric and feel that they share the same values. And of course they both are the political manifestations of misoginist culture. American conservatives are very threatened by feminism and tend to believe that the man is the head of the family. The militaristic tendencies are also very masculine. Read Bill Kristol or Robert Kagan or perhaps one of its founders, Leo Strauss. Ironically many of the founders of neo-conservatism were leftists first.
Though not as extreme, we see a similarity with neo-cons and the Nazis in racial attitudes. The neo-conservatives are greatly bothered by immigration and what they believe to be a cultural invasion. Their belief in the superiority of American culture leads them to be highly bothered by the wave of immigrants and the expression of their native culture. They are deeply bothered by things like soccer and Spanish and all Mexican areas, because they feel that this culture may replace the one they believe in so much. Even in academia this exists. Read Who Are We by Samuel Huntington, a very famous and popular academic. In that book he contends that American democracy is an outgrowth of the dissenting Protestant culture that this country was founded upon, and that the large amount of Latino immigrants do not share this culture and thus will weaken our society.
In order to understand an ideology, you have to be able to empathize with the people who believe in it and see why they think the way they do. Though I completely disagree with them politically in every way, I can understand why conservatives feel the way they do. If you grow up religious in this country (or say Catholic in Spain or Italy prior to WWII), your faith and tradition are very important to you. Understandably you are disgusted by how immoral and sick human beings are. The religious community you affiliate with is an important part of your life, as I believe it is human nature to desire a sense of community (for most of our existence we lived in small groups that we stayed with for our entire lives), so you desire these values that hold it together to belong to our society as a whole. You see things like secularism and liberalism as eroding the values that hold your community together, denying many the opportunity to be raised in such an environment.
I think this is an understandable human reaction, and I too am bothered by how immoral people are and the lack of community that will result from such an individualistic society (of course they don't understand that the individualism and capitalism that they champion results in the erosion of the sense of community they yearn form, that these values and the resulting consumerism destroys the sense of morals held by a society). What we have to understand is that their political beliefs are about morals, beliefs they shape their lives around that determine whether or not they are going to heaven or hell. For us seculars it's just a question of efficiency, a question of our government working well and efficiently to provide the greatest amount of good while not harming the individual. For economic policies it's simply a matter of utilitarianism, if the standard of living raises or lowers a bit, and on social policies, we react against the conservatives trying to make their moral beliefs law by upholding the indivual and his/her freedom as well as the secularness of the government, since our political ideologies tells us to respond that way. But it's not a question of eternal life or death, something on the mind of religious conservatives. Of course I don't agree with the poltical manifestation of these sentiments, and I get so frustrated listening to conservatives speak their stupid opions, I can sympathize with the people who hold them.
Fascism is the greatest example of the horrors of masculinity, when it is produced at a mass scale resulting in the death and suffering of tens of millions of people. We respond to this by condemning masculine attitudes, and we justifiably champion feminism and the desire for equality between the sexes. But do we throw out the baby with the bath water? Perhaps we don't need to completely condemn masculinity just because terrible things happened because of it. Not all masculine values are evil. Strength, self-reliance, drive, are not bad things, we want to feel them and they can be great character qualities. Perhaps it is natural biologically and/or culturally for men to desire to be masculine. Maybe we need to allow men to value and express masculinity as opposed to suppress and condemn it, and simply keep a careful eye that it does not cause any harm. Maybe we need to champion a new form of masculinity. One that encourages us to be men, to value strength, self-reliance, drive, and other positive masculine values, but have intelligent political beliefs not tied to such emotions and based on rationality, that believes in peaceful negotiation as opposed to violence, the equality of women and the respect for their desires and attitudes without imposing our own on them nor discriminate against them in any way, that understands the patriarchal history to our culture and tries to avoid it, that does not believe in authoritarianism or misogyny or tries to dominate others.
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