The Death Wish of Fascism - in Pynchon and other faces of real life

[Mark Kohut]

You still do not know what you are talking about in real life therefore I
won't go on.

On Fri, Nov 18, 2022 at 12:11 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Does the bizarre enthusiasm for a nuclear WW3 emerging from prominent
> members of  team Biden,  of Johnson/Truss/ Sunak , Zelensky, US neo cons
> and generals,  and right leaning Poland invite comparisons to the death
> wish of the Axis leaders?  What is a death wish and how do you get one?
>
>  One of the themes explored primarily in Gravity’s Rainbow but in other
> Pynchon writing is the idea that there is an inherent death wish built into
> Fascism. The core idea is that fascism is channeling the rage of an
> increasingly abused, deceived, exploited, population toward a reclamation
> of an empowering divine order where the state( and its noble leader/s) will
> become the strong father who will restore the abused and divided people
> into a great imperial unity where all will know and enjoy their proper
> inheritance as something great and powerful: the ruling aryans, the white
> race, The royal British Empire,  the chosen of God, the masters of nature,
> technology and science....
>
> To achieve this goal  sacrifice is required. Starting with the enemy
> within and moving to the external forces who might prevent this grand
> project. It is a powerful organizing pattern that has models even in
> non-violent monasticism, and may at its best be a way of ritualizing the
> deep changes of assuming adult responsibilities, of marriage, choosing a
> discipline, of renunciation, of facing death by identifying with the larger
> spiritual and biological patterns one believes to give meaning to life, to
> community, to one's brief time on earth. This cocoon shedding process can
> be a natural part of life.   But as a means of socail control this
> organizing pattern is all too frequently a political tool for military and
> economic  organization reliant on armed aggression and exploitation,
> reliant on scapegoats and enemies, reliant on the loss of empathy and
> reliant on self righteous exaltation.
>
>     As the enthusiast identifies with party or religion he or she must
> abandon the self and in many cases offer the self in eternal battle for the
> greater cause. The reward is a new identity that feels invincible and self
> evidently right.  Past violence of the nation/ religion/party… becomes
> heroic and inevitable, and future violence holds the promise of heroic
> fulfillment. Death is required and becomes eroticized either as direct
> experience or vicarious thrill *. Warnings and inonvenient truths are
> shunned, mocked and silenced like a sensitive and obsevant child who
> questions the brutality of an angry abusive father figure.
>
>     Thus when the empire loses wars,  when large lies are exposed as
> fantasies,when armies get bogged and beaten and frozen, when inflation or
> military losses trigger rebellions, when corruption and hypocrisy make a
> mockery of stated ideals, then the leaders face a choice, a  no-win choice
> to cut losses and accept a more modest narrative, but  they rarely pull
> back into a reform process. The taste of great power and the hunger for
> glory has posessed them deeply and they  tend to double down on the pursuit
> of no longer achievable power. The losses become inevitable,  and death
> prevails.
>
> So back to my original question, until a few days ago when  Biden finally
> put some mild damper on the growing bipartisan neocon enthusiasm for ww3
> with nukes by asserting no nuclear war with Xi Xinping, what in the fuck
> was that rhetoric all about?... and what does it say about  mainstream
> western culture?
>
>     Obviously I think it says plenty and could have more to say about how
> I see it showing up in Pynchon’s writing from the worship of the mechanical
> vagina, to the death ray of ATD, to the  time delayed nuclear revenge of
> GR, to the cyber totalitarianism of Gabriel Ice.  For now, signing off from
> Vermont, white with our first snowfall after another record breaking hot
> summer, I bid you adieu.
>
> P.S. Perhaps the scariest incident so far revealing the insane hair
> trigger danger of the current mania for nucear war was the AP story citing
> a top level intelligence source falsely claiming that Russia was
> responsible for the missiles that struck in Poland.  Within 2 days  the US,
> Poland, and NATO and others agree that photos show that it was a Ukrainian
> missile and it was made clear that NATO would not be invoking article 4.
> Ukraine is still in denial and Zelensky has lost some cred which is good,
> but holy shit… So far the high level intelligence source has not been named
> and revealed as an unreliable source despite the extreme world-threatening
> seriousness of the lie.
>
> *  on vicarious erotic thrills) When the mafia clown president ordered the
> massive missile attack in Syria  a great many corporate reporters, even
> the TV media hosts that hated him, got spontaeous erections and
> enthusiastically spilled their seed on the air.
> A truly weird and frightening thing to behold.
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> --
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>