NP Berlusconi's political base

[Phil Wise]

Hi Terence

It's funny what turns up in discussion when you get home from work and read
the mails accumulating from across the other side of the world.  Fascism
seems irresistably attractive as a concept, and I agree with you that with
this particular term it is helpful to define what you are talking about
before deploying it.  Too often in public debate it become a pejorative for
any sort of over-zealous anti-authoritarianism, which sometimes deserves the
title and sometimes doesn't.

Reading between the lines, you prefer a historically-based understanding of
fascism, although you are not saying that, properly formulated and
accurately used, it couldn't be applicable to some political conditions
today or foreseeable.  Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

My understanding of fascism derives partly from Klaus Theweleit's Male
Fantasies, and partly from Walter Benjamin and some inheritors of his
intellectual tradition.  It is less historical and more psychological.
Benjamin, you may know, defined it as the "aestheticization of politics".
By this he was almost certainly referring to both the "mass ornament" that
the Nazi Party created and played out as politics during the political
rallies at Nuremberg, and the organisation of the German republic as a pure
and organised, organic society.  His deployment of the term "aesthetic" also
has a relation to the idea of sense perception.  There are some very good
academic studies of this aspect of fascism; two of my favourites are
"Aesthetics and Anaesthetics" by Susan Buck-Morss (she describes the
"phantasmagoria" that allowed the participants of the rallies and the nation
to see themselves both as individual and as components in a larger social
machine at the same time) and "The Fascist Longings in Our Midst" by Rey
Chow.

Rey Chow, toward the end of her article, which makes an analogy between
fascist perception and cinematographic projection that strikes me as fairly
Benjaminian, says about the fascist myths under discussion: "what remains
constant is the belief that 'we' are not 'them', and that 'white' is not
'other'.  This belief, which can be further encapsulated as 'we are not
other' is fascism par excellence".

What Theweleit achieves is to show that this "other" is not in the first
instance racially based, although as we all know racism is one of the most
significant end products of fascism.  Theweleit studies the memiors of the
proto fascist "freikorps" who put a worker's rebellion down in Germany in
the 1920s (someone may be able to help with historical detail ablout these
events).  What he discovers, broadly, is that the psyches of these soldiers
define their identities by their otherness to and resistence to "realities"
they perceive as "feminine".  (Proletarian and ultimately Jewish masses were
associated with various forms of infirmity ranging from "pulp" to water.
Theweleit shows how these categories represent categories of sexually
threatening femininity to them - it is complicated and if I try to go into
too much detail I'll make a hash of it).  Anyway, the image of the (proto)
fascist I am left with is that of a "social totality" (the unit, the nation)
which functions as a male society dedicated to keeping out the "feminised"
other elements.  In terms of aesthetics, I believe it is the desire to see
their society as a pure space, an orderly shape.

This may be relevant for at least two reasons: firstly, if my memory serves
me correctly, Molly Hite's article on Vineland suggests that Theweleit's
"soldier male" is a model for Brock Vond.  Secondly, it may be possible to
show that the police in Genoa function very much as the sort of social
totality that Theweleit describes.  Faced with a proletarian rabble
spitting, throwing stones, organised "behind the scenes" but not in step
like an army would be, the soldier begins to lose his solid feeling of
autonomy, becomes disoriented, and feels like he's going to be engulfed by
the forces facing him that he percieves as a kind of pulsating mass.  In the
face of this, he explodes outward with his weapons, blacked out temporarily,
and comes to himself having cleared the space (usually someone has been shot
and everyone else has fled) and re-formed his boundaries.

I don't know if that's how members of the Italian police recently
experienced the world, but Theweleit is able to suggest that all "masculine"
behaviour bears some resemblances to this schema (right down to the "verbal
machine gunning" that some people are able to cut peoples' opinions down
with).  He also suggests that the sort of militarised organisation that
imposes stringent "disciplines" on its members are very likely to produce
personalities of this type.

My only personal experience, being young enough and from New Zealand, is
that I'm male, and I have read a lot, but I find Theweleit's study explains
to me a lot about masculinity as it is culturally defined (NZ is known as a
sports-mad, macho kind of society - I'm a big sports watcher myself), and
nobody I've read has seriously challenged his study.

Anyway, one possible way to understand the perseverence of fascism.

Phil

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 7:37 PM
Subject: Re: NP Berlusconi's political base


>
>
> Doug Millison wrote:
>
> linked.
>
> The intimations, no facts, no definitions, no substance,
> sorry Doug, but those links simply don't convince me of
> anything, is that the recent violence in Italy is proof that
> Fascism is on the march again. I have tried to get people to
> spell it out in words, with some definitions and facts. It's
> obvious, if only because posters are mixing up all sorts of
> terms that the Neo or Post or New style of Fascism is
> thought, at least in terminology, to have some connection to
> the old style, but is it in fact different. Maybe it's not
> Fascism at all. It seems that one of the connections is that
> what is going on in Italy is the product of an ideology that
> places little emphasis on constitutions and rights, and much
> on elite-inspired manipulation. But is it Fascism? Much of
> the linked material is  partisan tirade disguised as
> "anti-fascism," by which I mean, the sort of Marxist
> analysis that assumes the whole political spectrum beyond
> the radical left is fascist in some imprecise but
> irredeemable way.
>
> The personality bashing, not that some of these characters
> should not be
> exposed for their corruption, their politics examined, often
> ignores the  ideological component in favor of
> psychohistories. This is understandable, since one of the
> defining features of fascism is a powerful personality.
> Some say that Fascism would not have been possible without
> Friedrich Nietzsche. This ties into our Perspectivism thread
> and may even knot into a Pynchon novel. Who knows? And,
> speaking of conspiracy, doesn't Fascism promote ruthlessness
> for the same reason that it promotes conspiracy theories:
> for a fascist, nothing is going to happen unless some will
> makes it happen. And isn't this one of the reasons fascists
> are  suspicious of free markets?
>