Comments on Dorf on Law: The Republican Party as Pakistan

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2010-11-10T09:25:25.548-05:00

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2009-12-14T01:53:22.315-05:00

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Thanks again, Patrick and Michael L, what terrific...

2009-11-15T12:46:01.590-05:00

Thanks again, Patrick and Michael L, what terrific comments! I'll reply fully a bit later. All best,
Bob

Well it would be comforting if only the rabble sup...

2009-11-11T13:13:03.255-05:00

Well it would be comforting if only the rabble supported fascism or communism, but unfortunately each movement commanded rather solid intellectual, and respectable nonintellectual support. If you ever want a talk on fascism BTW I'm your guy. And I won't even mention Cornell's refusal to boycott the Heidelberg anniversary in 1930s!

I don't think it is at all accurate to charact...

2009-11-10T20:57:15.568-05:00

I don't think it is at all accurate to characterize fascism as "originating on the intellectual left," even if fascists made pretense to borrow leftist ideas, proposals, and slogans.

Rather, I think Roger Griffin has proffered the most sound if not persuasive theory of fascism, an account in which fascism is "best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one which sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the 'people' into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with new heroic values."

Notice here the singular focus on NATIONALISM, something theoretically anathema to the Left even if it allows for national variants on socialism. As to methods or means, its "revolutionary" character is superfically in common with Marxism-Leninism, Maoism and other fairly dogmatic and ideologically simplistic variants of Marxism, but the nature of this revolutionary character or the dynamics of revolution are far more vague if not simplistic in fascism and closer to a Sorelian-like celebration of the absolute necessity of revolutionary violence. And while fascism's reliance on revolutionary violence lacks Sorel's theoretical sophistication, it subscribes in practice if not theory to his conception of the irrational and essentially mythic nature of politics, hence Griffin's remark that "the core myth which inspires [the fascist] project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence." This differs in significant respects from Marxist-inspired theories of revolution. Moreover, the Left was hardly prone to moralistic denunciations of "decadence."

Griffin elaborates upon his definition:

"[T]he whole thrust of the fascist revolutionary programme is anti-conservative [where 'conservative' calls to mind a Burke or Oakeshott], though not in the same way it is anti-liberal or anti-Marxist. Like modern conservatives (and here I am referring to illiberal conservatives [think de Maistre, for instance] rather than liberal ones), many fascists celebrate the virtues of nation, the family, hierarchy, (state) law, and (natural) order, discipline and patriotism."

There is simply no way one can plausibly construe this ideology as having emerged from or begun in dependence upon, the intellectual Left.

Griffin further describes fascist ultra-nationalism or "illiberal nationalism" as a "force which always has recourse to some mythical component to create an artificial sense of common destiny and identity, and... [Nazi] 'purity of blood' [or biological racism] is simply one of them [cf. Hindutva ideology as a species of contemporary fascism in India]."

Anyway, please see Griffin's The Nature of Fascism (1993 [1991]) for the full argument.

[Bob: comments forthcoming tomorrow]

Many thanks, Michael L, Yes, that's my unders...

2009-11-10T13:34:33.665-05:00

Many thanks, Michael L,

Yes, that's my understanding as well. There's a reason, I suppose, after all for the term 'socialism''s occurrence in the phrase 'national socialism.' And my understanding is, moreover, that the German fascists took much of their playbook from Stalin.

My own tendency in the face of these facts and others is to see the extremes at both left and right as effectively converging much of the time, such that the spectrum is less linear than it is U-shaped curvilinear.

I do also think, however, that whether the leaders of fascist movements think themselves unambiguously left or right, they very often find it helpful and feasible to manipulate rabble who think themselves unambiguously the opposite -- right or left. The rabble whom Mussolini and his understudy Hitler found easily dupable we often call reactionary 'Lumpenproletariat,' and the more innocuous left-leaning sorts whom Lenin and Stalin manipulated they often called 'useful idiots,' if I correctly recall my past reading on these subjects.

Thanks again,
Bob

Bob, I should let you know that many of the more...

2009-11-10T12:58:03.799-05:00

Bob,

I should let you know that many of the more sophisticated students of fascism (Ze'ev Sternhell, etc.) see it as originating on the intellectual left. Of course, this did not keep the Israeli right from trying to kill him! As I say, some very strange bedfellows . . .

Thank you to John and Eric. John, use of locution...

2009-11-10T11:11:48.086-05:00

Thank you to John and Eric.

John, use of locutions like "voters' wrath" and "will come for you" exhibits the very phenomenon I have in mind here. Wrath is an "angry God" category.

Accusations of "pushing your totalitarian, statist agenda" also exhibit the phenomenon in question -- in this case, its paranoic hysteria. If appointing Larry Summers your chief economic advisor, and Robert Gates your defense secretary, and so on and so forth count as "totalitarian and statist" in somebody's estimation, then the somebody in question cannot have read anything about 20th Century Russia -- or even, for that matter, about today's China or even Bush II's America.

Eric, I see no marginalization of Blue Dogs. Indeed, I find myself wondering how it can be that the Party which has majorities in both houses of Congress is so eager to accommodate the demands of this strange minority. Were the Blue Dogs not in fact anti-democratically calling the shots, we wouldn't be wasting our time with symbolic "public options." We'd be talking single-payer or publicly provided health care of the kind provided in "totalitarian" Canada and Great Britain.

How do you explain the Democrats treatment of the ...

2009-11-10T01:01:20.198-05:00

How do you explain the Democrats treatment of the Blue Dog Dems during the Health Care debate? The coordinated effort to marginalize their views seems to be utterly at odds with any notion that the Democrats are more inclusive than the Republicans.

Also I could point to what the Democratic party has done to Senator Joe Lieberman as another example. Both parties engage in this kind of behavior.

The fact of the matter is that one job of political party leadership is to maintain a coalition and get others to fall in line. It seems like that is fundamental to any party system.

2009-11-10T00:59:07.311-05:00

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2009-11-09T15:17:55.934-05:00

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PS, Michael L, I meant to add before: It's ve...

2009-11-09T13:56:57.638-05:00

PS, Michael L,

I meant to add before: It's very good to have someone studying fascism right now. I've been worried since the Republican convention in 2008 that at least one major political party and one major television network are lurching dangerously close!

Cheers,
Bob

Thanks again, Michael L, Certainly I agree there ...

2009-11-09T13:50:55.232-05:00

Thanks again, Michael L,

Certainly I agree there are degrees of reactionariness and progressiveness. Indeed I find the last several Democratic administrations scarcely progressive at all by my own lights. The teabag bunch, on the other hand, strike me as being as reactionary as we've seen in American politics since Father Coughlin and Co., and every bit as foolish.

Cheers,
Bob

Well I think it depends a little bit on what you c...

2009-11-09T12:54:25.899-05:00

Well I think it depends a little bit on what you call "progress." As Michael Dorf suggests, there is another side to this, where the established GOP has an elitist edge and many of the Tea Party types see themselves, however improbably, as the vanguard of change in a way not entirely different from the Obama people in 2008. Perhaps I've been studying fascism too long, but I think it's very difficult to divide people into "progressive" and "reactionary" sides: it's rather more complicated than that. Thanks for a provocative piece, anyway.

Thanks, Michael Livingston, I hope I've not b...

2009-11-09T10:44:02.705-05:00

Thanks, Michael Livingston,

I hope I've not blithely assumed what you say that I seem to have done. But as it happens, I do believe these people will lose. This might stem partly from a metabolic sort of optimism I seem to live with, and partly from some sort of Kantian tendency to presume what one must presume to get on. But I think it stems also from observation. While progress is often a two steps forward, one step back sort of affair, the steps forward do generally seem to outnumber those backward in the medium to long term. Bigots don't generally win out for long.

Thanks again,
Bob

There was a column by Paul Krugman in today's ...

2009-11-09T10:08:59.611-05:00

There was a column by Paul Krugman in today's NY Times saying--more eloquently, of course--more or less what I tried to say above.

The interesting thing about all of your comments i...

2009-11-08T15:54:29.673-05:00

The interesting thing about all of your comments is that you seem to assume, rather blithely, that both the Pakistani militants and the more radical wing of the Republican Party will lose. This seems far from clear to me in either case.

Thanks a million for the comforting observations h...

2009-11-08T10:22:23.302-05:00

Thanks a million for the comforting observations here, Mike. I definitely take your point. Possibly my distress in the face of what's happening these days in the political shpere is the product of some sort of stuffy Burkean-style conservatism of my own. For it seems a hallmark of folk with this temperament that they view the pathological eruptions of their own day as somehow worse than the counterpart events of previous days. Didn't Aristotle at some point complain that the adolescents of his era were so much more scatterbrained and irresponsible and disrespectful of elders than those of previous times that civilization itself was about to end? Perhaps I am Aristotle with none of the wisdom and all of the Cassandra-ism!

Cheers!,
Bob

Many thanks for your thoughts here, Western Coalit...

2009-11-08T10:16:25.569-05:00

Many thanks for your thoughts here, Western Coalition.

Were "conservatives" monolithic, I'd take your point. Certainly there are, for example, what Mike would insightfully call "Burkean" conservatives who, if American, would shy away from forcing their views upon others as distinguished from appealing to reason in seeking to persuad others. The reason is that view-forcing as distinguished from reasoning is not of the mainstream American tradition; and that which Burkean conservatives conserve is, of course, mainstream tradition.

But you must admit there are many others who nowadays attempt to cash in on the cachet that attends true conservatism, while in fact being profoundly -- indeed pathologically -- radical. Those who routinely at this point abuse language and history by suggesting that cautious middle-of-the-road almost boring Obama is simultaneously Hitler, Stalin, Mao, a Martian, and a Vampire seem to me about as fanatical -- if not ill -- as one can get before commitment to an asylum. You're clearly not of that camp, but you surely see there are all too many right now who are.

Thanks again,
Bob

Thanks for the elegant post, Bob. It has been sug...

2009-11-07T21:39:31.852-05:00

Thanks for the elegant post, Bob. It has been suggested that Hamas is another example of this phenomenon: Israel originally supported Hamas to weaken the rival PLO/Fatah--a tactic that succeeded but only after Israel had decided to try to deal with the latter. The blowback has been severe.

On the analogy to the Republican Party, I'm not so sure that things are so dire for the GOP. For a few years now, moderate Republicans have been complaining that the social conservatives have were elbowing them out (see, e.g., Christine Todd Whitman's It's My Party Too), just as, for a longer period, the social conservatives have been complaining about exactly what you observe: That the elite Republicans care more about Wall Street than the social conservative to which they pay lip service. I think it's not all that surprising that during a period in which the party is out of power nationally, the coalition would fray even more. They're likely to patch things up--and if they don't, if the Palin wing really takes over the Republican Party to the exclusion of the likes of Dick Cheney as too liberal, then the Republican Party will likely go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs. Such are the operations of Duverger's Law.

Look, I'm a conservative, and I don't beli...

2009-11-07T20:47:59.100-05:00

Look, I'm a conservative, and I don't believe in pushing my views on others. Comparing conservatives to religious fanatics is way off the mark. How can you make such a comparison? Are you watching the debate in Congress tonight? Let them decide, the people have been heard from. And God help us all.