Observing our presidential election cycle, vulgarly (yet aptly) known as the "horse race", one is struck by the preference, in the general public and in media, for the so-called populist candidates, along with a concomitant distaste for those candidates who are perceived as "professional politicians". These preferences are exploited in different ways by all the candidates, and (perhaps unconsciously) affect commentators on both the left and the right: a recent article in The Nation responded to Mike Huckabee's rising popularity by portraying him as a cynical political player, and one can almost taste the bile rising in Glenn Beck's throat whenever he is forced to pronounce Hillary Clinton's name. This proclivity for the "people's candidate" seems to be confirmed (however unreliably) by recent polls in Iowa that show a "surge" in Edwards's and Huckabee's respective campaigns. Ron Paul's unconventional campaign also seems to be gathering momentum, having achieved remarkable fundraising feats backed by so-called "net-roots" supporters. Reinforcing and perhaps confirming our penchant for populist rhetoric, less homey candidates like Clinton, Obama, Romney, et al. pour on the charm with belly laughs (Clinton), Oprah appearances and self-portrayals as a politico-cultural everyman (Obama), and hunting stories (Romney). Part of all this populism is natural enough and reflects the public's deep-rooted desire for genuine democracy, but when viewed in a broader context (beyond immediate concerns of "electability") it begins to acquire more sinister overtones.
Italian novelist and scholar Umberto Eco once wrote a short article outlining the basic features of Fascism. While we in the United States may not yet have descended into autocratic nationalism, many of its necessary conditions seem to exist in this country. It may be instructive to draw a few parallels between Fascist politics and the current American political climate, focusing on that pool of illustrious statesmen (and woman) who are vying for the presidency. Bracketing, for the moment, the Democratic candidates' intellectual hamartia, it is among the Republicans where one finds the most overt gestures toward what we might, with Eco, term Ur-Fascism. Let us take, in the first instance, Ron Paul. He has perhaps the broadest appeal among conservative voters dissatisfied with the Republican party, an appeal that also reaches into the more liberal, Libertarian portion of the electorate. Paul identifies himself as a "constitutionalist", fetishizing a two-centuries-old piece of parchment as the unassailable foundation of our democracy, created by our now completely mythologized Founding Fathers, who descended from the Sinai-like heights of the Philadelphia Convention to emplace a sacred and eternal "balance of powers" in the halls of government. This hypostasized consensus, the Constitution, serves much the same purpose for constitutionalists and "paleoconservatives" as the Koran does for fundamentalist Islamic sects –dubbed Islamofascist by the George W. Bush administration– like Salafism and Wahhabism: the basis for all law. This constitutional idolatry has the effect of positing a historical consensus as an unchanging model for the present, a situation that evokes Walter Benjamin's image of the Angel of History, propelled inexorably into the future while gazing fixedly on the past. The political ramifications of constitutionalism belie its promise. Since reliance on an idealized historical document necessitates a specialized sort of reader, the Judicial Branch of government has jettisoned its former reliance on English Common Law (that living body of precedent) in favor of a constitutional exegesis which increasingly and inevitably serves the Executive who appoints its Nine practitioners. What this all means is that the Constitution, initially created in an attempt to create public political consensus (whether all sectors of society were ever part of this consensus is another matter), has become the bridle by which the public is led by political elites in the Executive Branch. Hence the recent rollback of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation cases by a Court led by George W. Bush's appointee John Roberts, a decision that reflects the de facto class warfare of this President's economic policies. Returning to Ron Paul, it could be said that his "constitutionalism" meets Eco's first criterion of Ur-Fascism: the "cult of tradition", of universal truth and its interpretation, a cult that plays into the hands of elites, facilitating their concentration of political power.
Eco also points to irrationalism and the cult of "action for action's sake" as hallmarks of the Fascist zeitgeist. One needn't look far for signs of these. John Kerry's failure to unseat Bush in the 2004 election is partly attributable to Kerry's apparent indecisiveness on issues the media presented as weighty (e.g. the Iraq War; Homeland Security). While Kerry didn't do himself any favors, the "Swift Boat" propagandists successfully created dualing images –the Decider vs. the Waverer– out of public personae that could just as easily have been construed as the War Hero and the Draft Dodger. In all this, the idea that Kerry, with his more nuanced views on world politics, might make a better President was lost. A similar preference for "macho", decisive leaders was seen in the 2003 California recall election, which witnessed the meteoric political ascent of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who easily won despite alleged ties to Nazism and accusations of sexual abuse and misogyny. Presumably, to the public, an action hero appeared more capable of governing the Golden State than a pasty-white bureaucrat who received the lion's share of blame (deserved or not) for the California energy crisis. (This crisis was in fact caused in the main by the machinations of the Enron boys, themselves associates of both Bush and Schwarzenegger.) The flip-side to the kind of hero worship that benefited the "Governator" is an anti-intellectual tendency that has been a well-documented characteristic of the Bush II presidency. This anti-intellectualism goes hand-in-hand with populist appeal, in which intellectuals are portrayed as elitist and out-of-touch, and has the pernicious effect of limiting debate to well-defined channels and clichéd catchphrases, distributed ad nauseum by the media and consequently becoming part of "public" jargon. Hence, anyone who challenges the outlines of this "debate" is depicted as either mad or dangerous, or both. David Horowitz writes a book about the menace of radical academics, pundits remind us that "the time for debate has ended", and Bush II constantly excoriates Congress for delaying votes, that is to say, extending deliberations. The point is not to think but to do, "disagreement is treason". The spectre of Hitler is summoned to justify pre-emptive war, and William Kristol patiently explains that doing too little is more dangerous than doing too much. This all sounds rather Nietzschean; indeed, Nazism's overt appropriation of Nietzsche mirrors Facism's hidden debt to the philosopher, and an intellectual genealogy can be traced from Nietzsche to leading neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz.
Ron Paul's recent comments about Huckabee's "floating cross" campaign ad are appropriate, but should be taken with a grain of salt from a candidate who himself exhibits so many proto-fascist tendencies. In addition to his traditionalism, Paul's anti-immigrant stance places him squarely in the xenophobic tradition of Fascism. To be fair, nearly all the Republican candidates have embraced this stance, spearheaded by Tom Tancredo, the erstwhile candidate from my home state of Colorado. Tancredo's rhetoric has been particularly virulent, characterizing Miami as a third-world city, presumably because of its high percentage of Latinos. Perhaps Tancredo has forgotten that his own 6th Congressional District is adjacent to Colfax Avenue, Colorado's most notorious street. It is revealing that Eco's seventh feature of Fascism is a nationalism fomented by fears of international conspiracy. Lou Dobbs reports on Mexicans' desire to reconquer the Southwest, and Al Qaeda's ability to be simultaneously ubiquitous and intangible reminds one of the fantastic qualities attributed to International Jewry prior to the Holocaust.
So, we have our "clash of civilizations", our "culture wars", our demonic Muslim Other to trouble our democratic slumber, and our conservative candidates who are quite willing to echo these ideas in order to mobilize an equally phantasmagorical evangelical Christian constituency. Appeals to the public, viz. George W. Bush's constant evocation of the American people, are really just appeals to an abstract citizenry, one represented by a particular group, certainly not a majority, in what Eco terms "selective populism". The Republicans are outdoing themselves to pander to that "base", which purportedly stands in opposition to that other Base: Al Qaeda. Ron Paul disavows evolution, Mitt Romney cloaks his Mormonism in the language of evangelical Christianity, and Mike Huckabee brandishes his theological credentials, acquired at the reknowned Quachita Baptist University. Meanwhile, the Democrats have their own populist problems, positioning themselves to represent the "average American", whose supposed concerns are corruption in government, jobs, the Iraq War, health care reform, the environment, or education, depending on whose version of the average American is being peddled. These issues, which all appeal in one way or another to the fading "American Dream", also tend toward Fascism, which relies on its attractiveness to what Eco calls the "frustrated middle class".
None of this is to say that our next President will be a Fascist. That is still an unlikely scenario. After all, George W. Bush's bungling makes a Republican victory unlikely. We will be spared the corruption and militarism of a Guiliani regime, the corporate cronyism of a Thompson presidency, the oppressive social policies of a Romney/Huckabee cabal, and the upheavals of Paulite tax reforms. For now. Post election, we will of course be in a self-congratulatory mood, having assuaged our collective guilt vis-à-vis segregation and sexism by designating either the woman or the slave (as an acquaintance of mine crudely puts it) as our next President. Meanwhile, beneath the progressive veneer of a Clinton (or Clintonesque) centrist coalition, more of the same, as we slouch towards an increasingly authoritative executive, broader global military ventures, and greater corporate influence in government (one should remember that the Bill Clinton presidency, despite its populist self-presentation, brought us NAFTA, and prosecuted the Iraq War by the less obvious method of punitive economic sanctions). These are of course symptoms of deeper problems, perhaps inherent in our particular republican (n.b. lower case) formation, perhaps endemic to modernity itself. A search for deeper causes, however, is always inhibited by image-driven campaigns, our culture of instant gratification, our (post)modern superficiality, in sum, what Guy Debord called the Society of the Spectacle. Fascism is not inevitable, but (alluding to those deeper problems I mentioned) it lurks outside our consciousness like the proverbial barbarian at the gates. And I suspect it may have already entered the city under the guise of a protector.
Italian novelist and scholar Umberto Eco once wrote a short article outlining the basic features of Fascism. While we in the United States may not yet have descended into autocratic nationalism, many of its necessary conditions seem to exist in this country. It may be instructive to draw a few parallels between Fascist politics and the current American political climate, focusing on that pool of illustrious statesmen (and woman) who are vying for the presidency. Bracketing, for the moment, the Democratic candidates' intellectual hamartia, it is among the Republicans where one finds the most overt gestures toward what we might, with Eco, term Ur-Fascism. Let us take, in the first instance, Ron Paul. He has perhaps the broadest appeal among conservative voters dissatisfied with the Republican party, an appeal that also reaches into the more liberal, Libertarian portion of the electorate. Paul identifies himself as a "constitutionalist", fetishizing a two-centuries-old piece of parchment as the unassailable foundation of our democracy, created by our now completely mythologized Founding Fathers, who descended from the Sinai-like heights of the Philadelphia Convention to emplace a sacred and eternal "balance of powers" in the halls of government. This hypostasized consensus, the Constitution, serves much the same purpose for constitutionalists and "paleoconservatives" as the Koran does for fundamentalist Islamic sects –dubbed Islamofascist by the George W. Bush administration– like Salafism and Wahhabism: the basis for all law. This constitutional idolatry has the effect of positing a historical consensus as an unchanging model for the present, a situation that evokes Walter Benjamin's image of the Angel of History, propelled inexorably into the future while gazing fixedly on the past. The political ramifications of constitutionalism belie its promise. Since reliance on an idealized historical document necessitates a specialized sort of reader, the Judicial Branch of government has jettisoned its former reliance on English Common Law (that living body of precedent) in favor of a constitutional exegesis which increasingly and inevitably serves the Executive who appoints its Nine practitioners. What this all means is that the Constitution, initially created in an attempt to create public political consensus (whether all sectors of society were ever part of this consensus is another matter), has become the bridle by which the public is led by political elites in the Executive Branch. Hence the recent rollback of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation cases by a Court led by George W. Bush's appointee John Roberts, a decision that reflects the de facto class warfare of this President's economic policies. Returning to Ron Paul, it could be said that his "constitutionalism" meets Eco's first criterion of Ur-Fascism: the "cult of tradition", of universal truth and its interpretation, a cult that plays into the hands of elites, facilitating their concentration of political power.
Eco also points to irrationalism and the cult of "action for action's sake" as hallmarks of the Fascist zeitgeist. One needn't look far for signs of these. John Kerry's failure to unseat Bush in the 2004 election is partly attributable to Kerry's apparent indecisiveness on issues the media presented as weighty (e.g. the Iraq War; Homeland Security). While Kerry didn't do himself any favors, the "Swift Boat" propagandists successfully created dualing images –the Decider vs. the Waverer– out of public personae that could just as easily have been construed as the War Hero and the Draft Dodger. In all this, the idea that Kerry, with his more nuanced views on world politics, might make a better President was lost. A similar preference for "macho", decisive leaders was seen in the 2003 California recall election, which witnessed the meteoric political ascent of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who easily won despite alleged ties to Nazism and accusations of sexual abuse and misogyny. Presumably, to the public, an action hero appeared more capable of governing the Golden State than a pasty-white bureaucrat who received the lion's share of blame (deserved or not) for the California energy crisis. (This crisis was in fact caused in the main by the machinations of the Enron boys, themselves associates of both Bush and Schwarzenegger.) The flip-side to the kind of hero worship that benefited the "Governator" is an anti-intellectual tendency that has been a well-documented characteristic of the Bush II presidency. This anti-intellectualism goes hand-in-hand with populist appeal, in which intellectuals are portrayed as elitist and out-of-touch, and has the pernicious effect of limiting debate to well-defined channels and clichéd catchphrases, distributed ad nauseum by the media and consequently becoming part of "public" jargon. Hence, anyone who challenges the outlines of this "debate" is depicted as either mad or dangerous, or both. David Horowitz writes a book about the menace of radical academics, pundits remind us that "the time for debate has ended", and Bush II constantly excoriates Congress for delaying votes, that is to say, extending deliberations. The point is not to think but to do, "disagreement is treason". The spectre of Hitler is summoned to justify pre-emptive war, and William Kristol patiently explains that doing too little is more dangerous than doing too much. This all sounds rather Nietzschean; indeed, Nazism's overt appropriation of Nietzsche mirrors Facism's hidden debt to the philosopher, and an intellectual genealogy can be traced from Nietzsche to leading neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz.
Ron Paul's recent comments about Huckabee's "floating cross" campaign ad are appropriate, but should be taken with a grain of salt from a candidate who himself exhibits so many proto-fascist tendencies. In addition to his traditionalism, Paul's anti-immigrant stance places him squarely in the xenophobic tradition of Fascism. To be fair, nearly all the Republican candidates have embraced this stance, spearheaded by Tom Tancredo, the erstwhile candidate from my home state of Colorado. Tancredo's rhetoric has been particularly virulent, characterizing Miami as a third-world city, presumably because of its high percentage of Latinos. Perhaps Tancredo has forgotten that his own 6th Congressional District is adjacent to Colfax Avenue, Colorado's most notorious street. It is revealing that Eco's seventh feature of Fascism is a nationalism fomented by fears of international conspiracy. Lou Dobbs reports on Mexicans' desire to reconquer the Southwest, and Al Qaeda's ability to be simultaneously ubiquitous and intangible reminds one of the fantastic qualities attributed to International Jewry prior to the Holocaust.
So, we have our "clash of civilizations", our "culture wars", our demonic Muslim Other to trouble our democratic slumber, and our conservative candidates who are quite willing to echo these ideas in order to mobilize an equally phantasmagorical evangelical Christian constituency. Appeals to the public, viz. George W. Bush's constant evocation of the American people, are really just appeals to an abstract citizenry, one represented by a particular group, certainly not a majority, in what Eco terms "selective populism". The Republicans are outdoing themselves to pander to that "base", which purportedly stands in opposition to that other Base: Al Qaeda. Ron Paul disavows evolution, Mitt Romney cloaks his Mormonism in the language of evangelical Christianity, and Mike Huckabee brandishes his theological credentials, acquired at the reknowned Quachita Baptist University. Meanwhile, the Democrats have their own populist problems, positioning themselves to represent the "average American", whose supposed concerns are corruption in government, jobs, the Iraq War, health care reform, the environment, or education, depending on whose version of the average American is being peddled. These issues, which all appeal in one way or another to the fading "American Dream", also tend toward Fascism, which relies on its attractiveness to what Eco calls the "frustrated middle class".
None of this is to say that our next President will be a Fascist. That is still an unlikely scenario. After all, George W. Bush's bungling makes a Republican victory unlikely. We will be spared the corruption and militarism of a Guiliani regime, the corporate cronyism of a Thompson presidency, the oppressive social policies of a Romney/Huckabee cabal, and the upheavals of Paulite tax reforms. For now. Post election, we will of course be in a self-congratulatory mood, having assuaged our collective guilt vis-à-vis segregation and sexism by designating either the woman or the slave (as an acquaintance of mine crudely puts it) as our next President. Meanwhile, beneath the progressive veneer of a Clinton (or Clintonesque) centrist coalition, more of the same, as we slouch towards an increasingly authoritative executive, broader global military ventures, and greater corporate influence in government (one should remember that the Bill Clinton presidency, despite its populist self-presentation, brought us NAFTA, and prosecuted the Iraq War by the less obvious method of punitive economic sanctions). These are of course symptoms of deeper problems, perhaps inherent in our particular republican (n.b. lower case) formation, perhaps endemic to modernity itself. A search for deeper causes, however, is always inhibited by image-driven campaigns, our culture of instant gratification, our (post)modern superficiality, in sum, what Guy Debord called the Society of the Spectacle. Fascism is not inevitable, but (alluding to those deeper problems I mentioned) it lurks outside our consciousness like the proverbial barbarian at the gates. And I suspect it may have already entered the city under the guise of a protector.
6 comments:
Might it not be a good idea to leave the constitution/BOR/Amendments as are? In my experience (albeit, limited), once changes are made, it never stops for better or worse. The ability to change the constitution could in itself lead to a facist dictatorship in the near future. Yes I know, the right for women to vote etc.. were added well after its inception. But so was prohibition which is a great example of the religious/moral right using a few current events and easily swayed polititions and public sentiment to enforce a "rule of the minority." The question might be, Is it "Good Enough," just to let it be?
What do you think could be the ideal government, if not a "jeffersonian" democracy? Or do you think there even is one?
I think a true democracy would not give such obeisance to a founding document. The constitution was drafted according to Enlightenment ideals. We should remember that these same ideals, at the core of Europe, in Germany (the "land of poets and philosophers"), led directly to the Holocaust. We put our faith in Reason, and it failed us. Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment is perhaps the best-known articulation of the idea that Enlightenment carries a certain savagery in its very concept. As Walter Benjamin put it: "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism". Think of Jefferson's impassioned letter decrying the plight of the poor in France, then juxtapose this image with that of his plantation in Virginia, worked by slaves. An alternative model of democracy would perhaps rely less on a particular set of ideals and would be open, in principle, to everything and everyone. It is fear of chaos that limits democracy, a fear that seems inevitably to give rise to groups like the Falange in Spain, which thought of itself as the defender of civilization.
++++this is my third attempt at a reply, the first was lost, am attempting to recreate it++++++
I dont see how you can feel that the "Enlightenment Ideals" led directly to the Holocaust. Reason didnt fail us. Mankind did, again. The German philosophers who influenced the culture that created and fed Nazi'ism seem to be pretty anti-reason (kant, marx and co.) Must like statistics lie, so can reason. Himmler molded "reason" and "science" to fit what he wanted it too. Thats not true reason, but a means to an end. I agree about Jefferson and that bunch. I still feel that the American Revolution was probably instigated by the "wealthy elite" of the colonists, whome those taxes and tariffs largely affected (which were inacted to pay back debt incurred protecting these same colonists during the French and Indian war.
The same set of rules will play out in different ways in different places. At least for a few generations. Just because is works/ed for us, doesnt mean it will work for them well (just yet) or at all. But so what?
Can fear or Chaos limit democracy, when thats what lets facism or ++++this is my second attempt at a reply, the first was lost, am attempting to recreate it++++++
I dont see how you can feel that the "Enlightenment Ideals" led directly to the Holocaust. Reason didnt fail us. Mankind did, again. The German philosophers who influenced the culture that created and fed Nazi'ism seem to be pretty anti-reason (kant, marx and co.) Must like statistics lie, so can reason. Himmler molded "reason" and "science" to fit what he wanted it too. Thats not true reason, but a means to an end. I agree about Jefferson and that bunch. I still feel that the American Revolution was probably instigated by the "wealthy elite" of the colonists, whome those taxes and tariffs largely affected (which were inacted to pay back debt incurred protecting these same colonists during the French and Indian war).
The same set of rules will play out in different ways in different places. At least for a few generations. Just because is works/ed for us, doesnt mean it will work for them well (just yet) or at all. But so what?
Can fear of Chaos limit democracy, when that is what allows facism and totalitarianism take root?
Also, What do YOU mean by true democracy? Do you mean full participation of the people in governing? Could such a "true democracy function?" Is perhaps TRUE democracy nothing more than any system of government that the people feel represents them or their interests?
Scott, the question about the failure of Reason deserves an extended response. Maybe I'll dedicate a post to it at some point. Let me instead address some of your minor points here.
To link Kant and Marx, as individual philosophers, with Nazism is somewhat dubious. Even though the rhetoric of national "socialism" was nominally socialist and anti-capitalist, it was by no means Marxian. The Nazis were in fact rabidly anti-communist. Neither Kant nor Marx were irrationalist philosophers. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is actually an attempt to rescue Reason from what Kant thought of as brute empiricism. One might make a better case with Heidegger and Nietzsche, although I'm skeptical that their philosophies, understood properly, can really be thought of as precursors of Nazism. Nietzsche's thought has lent itself to this kind of instrumentalism, as my comments about neo-conservative thought were meant to illustrate. I believe this is what you mean as well when you talk about Himmler. The point is that any philosophy can be misunderstood and misread and used for a variety of purposes. However, my comments on Reason go beyond this. I'm not interested as much in tracing philosophical genealogies and influences as I am in the failure of philosophy as a whole. More radically, I'm saying that Reason itself is bound, by its very concept, to serve unreason. I used the example of Germany for obvious reasons, but what I'm really saying is that the kind of barbarism and savagery that occured there could (and do) happen anywhere in the "civilized" world; Reason and madness are inseparable. According to this view (mainly associated with the Frankfurt School for Social Research), the Holocaust was not an aberration, and neither are all the little holocausts that we witness today: Darfur, Rwanda, Serbia, Gaza. This obviously goes beyond a critique of the uses and ends which Reason has been made to serve. But, like I said, it deserves a more extended commentary.
A true democracy may not even be definable because to define it would make it betray its own concept. To clarify: "democracy" implies the collective self-rule by the people. For this to be truly egalitarian, no single person or group would have greater influence than another. When one begins to impose a particular definition or system of democracy, certain individuals or classes are inevitably privileged. My definition of democracy may be quite different than yours, so when my definition becomes a set of procedural rules, things can go awry. Think of the weight of an individual vote compared to the influence wielded by a corporation, a senator, or a superdelegate. A "true" democracy would be all-inclusive in ways we can't even imagine. The difficulty with articulating this or putting it into practice is a real one. How can you implement something without reducing it to a set of procedures or rules? Also, on a philosophical level, defining the concept also limits it, but if no limits are recognized, the utility of the concept becomes void. So the dilemma exists on both levels. The most I can say, perhaps, is that true democracy would exist in the tension between the (necessarily limited) concept and its limitless ideal or, simply, between that which is and that which could be. One might also say between the possible and the impossible, but that's a bit esoteric.
I dont link Marx with National Socialism, just the area of Marxism/Socialism/Communism, which created a whole mess of troubles the last half of the 1900's. Nietzsche, to me could be easily (I feel)be either interpreted or mis-interpreted as having facist-like themes. I agree with what you say about people using idea's for there own purposes. They always have. Perhaps its a failure of modern philosophy, not reason. I would think that philosophy is more a state of mind, or a way of life, and Reason just is.
The last half of the second paragraph I feel is generally accepted. I dont see how one could exist without the other.
I doubt a truely egalitarian democracy could function for long (perhaps if all people acted with logic and reason, and you would still have to have similar goals). It would just to much time. Even the Athenians restricted such things to landowning males.
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