Order from Chaos

When you say "the Liberal perspective", it begs the question of if you're speaking of the American idea of a liberal, or the European ideals of Liberalism.

Nazism is interesting to me as an American, mostly because Americans have a pretty skewed vision of Nazis--we generally see them all as faceless, cold blooded killers, or, alternatively (and in parallel) as a 'worthy foe'. This is without a doubt because WW2 was our last good war, which means that we must simultaneously lionize and dehumanize our Great Enemy.

I'd be a little careful basing your entire work upon this belief.

Perhaps my background as being somewhat of a WWII buff gives me a unique perspective, but on the whole, I only view a small percentage of the Germans who fought in WWII as this description (leadership, such as Hitler/Goering/etc who actively participated in the genocidal tendencies performed in WWII).

I'd be a little careful basing your entire work upon this belief.

Perhaps my background as being somewhat of a WWII buff gives me a unique perspective, but on the whole, I only view a small percentage of the Germans who fought in WWII as this description (leadership, such as Hitler/Goering/etc who actively participated in the genocidal tendencies performed in WWII).

Well that's dumb.

/history buff

Also, are you really going to tie libertarianism in with Nazism Ethan? Really?

A shame that you're skipping the Marxist perspective, since it has so much to add both analytically and normatively -- it's a lot more complex than 'the end of capitalism as we know it'. You might also find that it ties in nicely to your hypothesis on the parallels of libertarianism, since both ideologies derive primarily from the petit-bourgeoisie. And of course, it's important for practical reasons too, given the role that anti-communism and the German Communist Party (KPD) played in allowing them to gain power.

Depending on how deeply you go into it there were also some fascinating debates going on at the time. The Comintern, for example, effectively took the position that all capitalists were fascists, so the whole phenomena could just be ignored (something they continued arguing even after Hitler had liquidated the KPD and sent its leader off to die in a concentration camp).

In any case, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

When will anglo-yankees stop talking about Nazism as a Fascist ideology? There's always been just one true Fascism, the Italian Fascism, because Fascism is the son of political, social ed economic circumstances only typically Italian. Fascism is spiritually revolutionary, ideologically positive, economically corporate; Nazism is rather spiritually traditional, ideologically destructive and apocalyptic, economically central planning-capitalist. Fascism would want to be an oligarchic-one party dictatorship ( Grand Council of Fascism led by the Duce ) and to bring the light of Roman civilization to the "barbarian peoples", the Nazism is a one-person ( the Fuhrer ) dictatorship and want the supreme submission of all human beings, considered almost as slaves. Fascism has a spiritual, bloodless conception of racism based on culture and civilization, the Nazism has a material conception of racism based on biological diversity, which implies the existence of some races deserving to exist and rule and others deserving to be harassed and exterminated. These are a few, overly simplified examples, but sufficient to clarify the point. The only similarities are the cult of personality, the one-party system, the anti-democratic and anti-communism violence. Nazism is son of Fascism, but it is not Fascist as no other political phenomenon in the recent history is.

Fascism did equally great, good and terrible things for the Italian People, so still we look at the past with a strange mix of disdain and admiration, because we had a Civil War, brothers against brothers, a conflict actually never-ended...the winners of that Civil War built the current Republic in which we live in and dictated us ( without completely reaching the desired results ) to think about that period as our darkest one.

My apology for the digression. However, very interesting thread

If you are looking for a good starting point on seeing the transformation of regular German citizens into cold blooded murderers during the Second World War I would suggest you start with "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning. It is considered one of the premier texts on the societal impact of Nazism.

This has been done and re-done so many times that I can't possibly see how you will add anything new or relevant to the subject.

Do you speak the languages of the nations you intend to study? Without those, you will be relying on others' translations and thus their interpretations.

At the end of the day, you'll end up re-making the wheel.

Finally, your characterization of Libertarians shows that you have no interest in scholarship, but rather in axe-grinding. That's all well and good, but don't expect the product to be taken seriously by anyone looking for serious research.

Garbage in, garbage out.

You could start by calling it National Socialism.

A shame that you're skipping the Marxist perspective, since it has so much to add both analytically and normatively -- it's a lot more complex than 'the end of capitalism as we know it'. You might also find that it ties in nicely to your hypothesis on the parallels of libertarianism, since both ideologies derive primarily from the petit-bourgeoisie. And of course, it's important for practical reasons too, given the role that anti-communism and the German Communist Party (KPD) played in allowing them to gain power.

Depending on how deeply you go into it there were also some fascinating debates going on at the time. The Comintern, for example, effectively took the position that all capitalists were fascists, so the whole phenomena could just be ignored (something they continued arguing even after Hitler had liquidated the KPD and sent its leader off to die in a concentration camp).

In any case, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

If only one of the most well-regarded Marxist theorists had written something about Fascism, eh? Something that explained what Fascism is, and how to fight it?

I echo comrade Vladimir's sentiments that this preview of your analysis seems to be woefully lacking in a perspective that had a unique take on the rise of fascism and indeed, spilled quite a bit of ink (and more of their blood) figuring it out.

The only good point to be found in Trotsky is at the business end of an icepick.

It appears that anger is coming at me from across the s

@ Libertarians who are angry at me--I used perhaps too strong an example, but the attack wasn't against libertarianism en masse (just as an attack on Stalinism isn't nesessarily an attack on socialism en masse). The point I was making was that we generally think of fascism as a highly anti-individualistic ideology, partially because it's so hierarchical and partially because we see Nazis as the guys we shoot in movies/video games. This isn't really that true--Nazism is highly individualistic, not because it's affirming the importance of the individual, but because it tells you that everyone else not in the hierarchy is an Other. In the same vein, the fringe group of apocalyptic libertarians (who I wrote about in another blog post, they're the group of people preparing for the apocalypse because on some level they want it to happen because then they wouldn't have to deal with people) play precisely into Milosz's writings.

@ Guy who knows about fascism--From the perspective of the writers I'm looking at the difference between the different national forms of fascism is academic. Similar to how the multitude of liberal parties in the world have a similar ideological starting point, Milosz would say that the same Legends of Modernity are the starting point for all of fascist thought (though he also connects a lot of other ideas that we would generally not regard as autocratic to it, but in an interesting way).

@ Marxists who are angry at me--I apologize. There's this saying about how a wise man knows what he doesn't know, and in that regard I totally dropped the ball. Most of my readings about fascism from the time come from the Soviet Union and so my thinking of the whole area is skewed by that. I may add Marxist thinking at the end because (rather clearly) I know the least about it.

@ guy asking about European or US Liberalism--I'm talking Academic liberalism, which kinda borrows stuff from both social liberalism and right liberalism. But mostly European liberalism, as the book I'm specifically looking at is by a Spaniard.

@ Moldavi--I know about Ordinary Men, and something that's amazing about it is that the group of men who were in that squad were people who you would normally think wouldn't be indoctrinated--they were Socialists, Liberals, Christian Democrats who'd abstained for political or religious reasons. The hierarchy, however, creates its own logic, one stronger than the individual wills of most of these men.

@ Ashoka--Considering that I'm a college student I'm not really planning on breaking totally new ground on the subject of fascism. As I said in the first paragraph, the problem with writing on fascism isn't that there's too little writing on it, it's that fascism and Nazism are universal boogeymen and because of that there is too much writing on it that has too little substance. Milosz only translated Legends of Modernity into English recently (IE in the last 20 years), so I'll have that going for me. Also it's telling that you're the only guy who insulted me.

@ Quigon Jinn--Even with most history buffs, a lot of the assumptions come up in other forms.

This isn't really that true--Nazism is highly individualistic ... because it tells you that everyone else not in the hierarchy is an Other.

How is that "individualistic"? If a commune says everyone outside the commune is an "Other" does that make a commune individualistic?

To the trotskyists ranting, remember that the popular front strategy did more to fight fascism worldwide than anything else. It was adopted after the comintern decided to abandon ultra-leftist puritanism and decided to make concessions to fight a bigger enemy.

Nazifascism is basically an ideological soup. It's propaganda-oriented, and hasn't got a core belief other than power. Fascism had a lot of anarchist influences, they took their black shirts from anarchists because it was popular in italy, even though they were diametrically opposite movements. I blame nazism's antisemitism on their bid to get the army to side with them. They incorporated a lot of social democratic ideas, and for some time even had their cooperation (freikorps, which were the target recruiting basis for nazis assassinated communists under a social-democratic government and orders). Goebbels himself was a socialist in his early age, and almost broke with the movement once hitler made his opinion concerning the bolsheviks public (goebbels went as far as calling hitler a reactionary), but hitler sweet talked him onto giving up his individuality and embracing the blessing of the fuhrer. Nazifascist parties were usually made of ambitious lower/middle class men without room or capacity to integrate themselves in traditional elites and a willingness to do unspeakable things (read, criminal intent). I don't see much difference between a fascist party and a mafia organization. That and an intensified fear of some sectors of society of a communist revolution led to the establishment of fascism, you're trying to make sense out of barbarism.

How is that "individualistic"? If a commune says everyone outside the commune is an "Other" does that make a commune individualistic?

No because a commune is a community. Milosz said that basically, fascism actually created atomized beings. De Souza was, in a sense right--Fascism is all about power. It attempts to create a situation where everyone's atomized to the degree that only the power of the hierarchy continues to exist.