Hitchens/ Rush/ Milosevic/Adolph/ Bush/ Vond ?charm?

[Joseph Tracy]

Michael, that is a  great answer  and hard to see any promise in it  
in terms of defusing this attraction/charm  apart from the majority  
( or the actively involved) having the kind of historic, economic,  
ethical  and cultural  knowledge/ education / sense of  justice to  
see the dangers and say this sounds like fascism or dangerously  
authoritarian and is anti democratic , immoral and a threat to the  
rule of law.

Defining fascism does have the difficulty of connecting  a general  
pattern to the  specific alliance of nations who were the aggressors  
in WW2, but they modeled themselves after the Roman Empire and I see  
a pretty repetitive cluster of qualities that make it a more useful  
and clearly sinister than  "authoritarian strongman". Nationalism,  
racism or some similar notion of inheritable purity, culture of  
bullying/authoritarianism, integration of militarism/repressive  
government/business , reliance on either scapegoats or subhumans to  
blame and use, aspiration to empire with anticipated golden age of  
full spectrum dominance. Come to think of it either term does pretty  
well except that the words strong and authority have such positive  
and reassuring connotations for many and fascism doesn't, but maybe  
fascism is too loaded, to connected to anti-semitism and the holocaust.
?
What is most likely to change a fascist's mind? calm reason and  
facts? labeling and mocking and critiquing the ugly bullying nature  
of it? creating out of our lives an alternative model?. Can a nation  
ever get to a point where the entire culture rejects the picture of  
soldier as automatically hero? I guess I know there are no easy  
answers to these questions . I just don't think its normal or  
fundamental to human nature to want to bully. In my personal  
experience its a boys with boys phenomena in competition for  
attention and status having to do with no accountability for cruelty,  
but there is a point where most people outgrow it. At the moment it  
is the nations which once embraced fascism and followed it into  
devastation Japan and Germany that seem most immune to its allure.  
Why is that? Most people , most of the time live peaceably with one  
another , want to live peaceably with one another. I know I'm  
wandering.  Back to VL on next post.

I would like to read that Jung piece but the only local collection of  
Jung is missing that volume. Will have to do an interlibrary loan.


>> that is a whole group of questions...
> a) maybe to broaden "fascist" to "authoritarian leader" would make  
> sense.
>
> b) cutting the Gordian knot of bureaucratic procedures (such as the
> rule of law, minority rights, contracts, representative government,
> parliamentary procedure, for instance) with the Alexandrian sword of
> dictatorial power is the chief attraction of the "strongman" type of
> leader.  And if you find yourself a beneficiary of this, what's not to
> like?  "We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you"
>
> c) the suggestion that being loyal to an individual will save you from
> having to learn all those nasty business/survival/human relations
> skills - so much easier to just lean on Big Daddy
>
>
> -- 
>  - "Be groovy or B movie" - the old 24fps signoff