Eddins on Blicero

[Dave Monroe]

On the one hand, Mr. jbor here has a point.  Kautsky,
in particular, does not quite fit in with the rest of
the lot, D'Annunzio, "his supreme moment, his peak of
virtu: Fiume" (V., p. 248), who, in the climate of 
"Italia irrendenta" (note, by the way, p. 414, "Rumor
had it that a week or so later the lady V. ran off
with one Sgherraccio, a mad Irredentist" ["sgherro" =
"hired thug"]), "Italy unredeemed" (and I'm glossing
largely from J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to V. here),
that is, "those portions of Italian-speaking Europe
under foreign rule during the period 1861-1920"
(Grant, p. 124), inpired Mussolini and his fascisti,
who were ultimately to ally with Hitler and his NSDAP,
well, you can see where THAT line is heading ... 

But Karl Kautsky, his Independents (the USPD? 
Unabhangige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands?),
who split from the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands, vs. the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei, the NSDAP, the Nazi Party) ...

http://www.bartleby.com/65/ka/Kautsky.html

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=45927

http://www.britannica.com/eb/print?eu=70222

Kautsky fled Austria after the Anschluss, and died
soon after.  Sometime in 1922, however, and after
quitting his "Independents" in 1921, he did rejoin a
reunited SPD ... 

http://www.iisg.nl/archives/gias/k/10754000.html

By which time, however, he had lost much of his
influence, so by the time Lieutenant Weissmann
mentions him here, even if "only" (aesthetics 'n'
politics, and there's a caveat therein ...)
fashionably, "as if ... an avant-garde play" (V., p.
242), Kautsky and his Independents are pretty much a
spent and/or recuperated force.  Again, note where
that line is heading ...

By the way, what of the Schwabing quarter, Brennessel
cabaret?  From, of all people, Bruce Sterling ...

"We need a fellow at the head who can stand the sound
of a machine gun. The rabble need to get fear into
their pants. We can't use an officer, because the
people don't respect them any more. The best would be
a worker who knows how to talk.... He doesn't need
much brains, because politics is the stupidest
business in the world, and every marketwoman in Munich
knows more than the people in Weimar. I'd rather have
a vain monkey who can give the Reds a juicy answer,
and doesn't run away when people begin swinging table
legs, than a dozen learned professors. He must be a
bachelor, then we'll get the women."

Dietrich Eckart, Nazi prophet, Brennessel Cabaret,
Schwabing, Munich, 1919

http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/notes/126-150/00150_aphorisms.html

Hitler, apparently, was a habitue of the Brennessel
cabaret, and mentions Eckart in Mein Kampf (Vol. 2,
Ch. 15, from what I can make of the now inactive link
Grant provides).  Die Brennessel ("The Nettle") was
also a Nazi humor (...) magazine (1931-8).  Grant
calls the Scwabing quarter "the Munich equivalent of
Paris's bohemian Left Bank" (Grant, p. 123).  "As if
... an avant-garde play" ...

"The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of
aesthetics into political life. The violation of the
masses, whom Fascism, with its Fuhrer cult, forces to
their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of
an 
apparatus which is pressed into the production of
ritual values."

http://www.ipdg.org/museum/collage/benjamin.htm

http://pages.emerson.edu/Courses/spring00/in123/workofart/benjamin.htm

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations: Essay and
Refelctions (Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. 
New York: Schocken, 1969 [1937]), p. 241 ...


--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> >
> 
> > And it is
> > Weissmann who asks Mondaugen if he has heard of
> Hitler &
> > Co.,
> 
> I don't think that "d'Annunzio" and "Italia
> Irredentia" or "Kautsky's
> Independents" fit so neatly into your construction
> of "Hitler & co." What
> they do comprise, along with Hitler and NSDAP, are a
> group of significant
> political opponents of the Treaty, the League, and
> Weimar Germany, who were
> rumbling around the traps in 1922. These things
> (Versailles, the League, the
> siege at Fiume, the Weimar Rep. and the Inflation)
> are also foregrounded in
> the chapter.


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