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Yup. Fascism, like all ideologies isn't completely neat. It contains those reactionary conservative elements (organic community, national tradition, criticism

by conatus 11y ago

Yup. Fascism, like all ideologies isn't completely neat. It contains those reactionary conservative elements (organic community, national tradition, criticism of modernity as shallow - i.e. very Tolkein but found in many fascist and even Nazi authors - i.e. Junger, Schmitt) alongside hyper modernist ones (eugenics, mass industry). Fascism contains criticisms of capitalism alongside praise for the most aggressive market competition. See Ishay Landa's work on this. Proto-fascism is probably the best term.

ajuc 11y ago
I should know better than argue about definitions, but can't help myself :) How is proto-fascism different from conservatism?
- mhd 11y ago
  Define "conservatism" first ;) That's usually a "I know it when I see it" thing, and there's a whole load of different strains when you look at the politicians espousing it as their primary value. Even within a single country, and once you cross borders it gets seriously confusing. We can go the lazy route and say that if you're "conservative" and your current system isn't fascist, than you can't really promote or encourage fascism, because that would by definition be a change and change is bad. But I thin we can agree that this would be a type of conservatism that could only exist in a Moorcock novel about other planes, the Lords of Order or such things... Also, one might not want to go too far back in the "inheritance" chain of fascism. I mean, to stay within the core topic, the Italian and German fascists certainly were quite "romantic" in the literary sense (a main point of Epic Poo), but I don't think we'd call Schiller or Byron proto-fascists... So it probably comes down to having views who would touch fascist views in a big blurry Venn diagram, whereas crypto-fascists actually overlap in a more significant way. But, again, this might be a fun topic for abstract discussion, but when it's tied to something more concrete it'll just prove to be needlessly divisive and incisive. I mean, just look up who popularized the term "crypto-fascist"... This seems a very common British trait, by the way. Plenty of movies, books etc. about how nationalist and authoritarian you can get before you cross over into straight-forward 20th century fascism. Starting with the post-WW2 era and achieving a new high during the reign of the Wicked Witch.

by conatus 11y ago

ajuc 11y ago

I should know better than argue about definitions, but can't help myself :) How is proto-fascism different from conservatism?

mhd 11y ago
Define "conservatism" first ;) That's usually a "I know it when I see it" thing, and there's a whole load of different strains when you look at the politicians espousing it as their primary value. Even within a single country, and once you cross borders it gets seriously confusing. We can go the lazy route and say that if you're "conservative" and your current system isn't fascist, than you can't really promote or encourage fascism, because that would by definition be a change and change is bad. But I thin we can agree that this would be a type of conservatism that could only exist in a Moorcock novel about other planes, the Lords of Order or such things... Also, one might not want to go too far back in the "inheritance" chain of fascism. I mean, to stay within the core topic, the Italian and German fascists certainly were quite "romantic" in the literary sense (a main point of Epic Poo), but I don't think we'd call Schiller or Byron proto-fascists... So it probably comes down to having views who would touch fascist views in a big blurry Venn diagram, whereas crypto-fascists actually overlap in a more significant way. But, again, this might be a fun topic for abstract discussion, but when it's tied to something more concrete it'll just prove to be needlessly divisive and incisive. I mean, just look up who popularized the term "crypto-fascist"... This seems a very common British trait, by the way. Plenty of movies, books etc. about how nationalist and authoritarian you can get before you cross over into straight-forward 20th century fascism. Starting with the post-WW2 era and achieving a new high during the reign of the Wicked Witch.