People who don't know much history,
or are blinded by their ideological preconceptions, have often argued that
Pagan religion has a tendency towards devolving into Fascism. I've encountered such stuff over the
years, and had a debate with Peter Staudenmaier in the journal Pomegranate on this issue with special reference to environmentalism.
Frosting and Cakes
As examples to buttress their case, our critics point to the Nazi use of the swastika an ancient and (before the Nazis) very popular symbol. Some Nazis were also intrigued by the Pagan Germanic deities, with Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, being the most important. There are continual reports of Hitler's being interested in the occult, and while to the best of my knowledge these reports are grotesque exaggerations, to the degree they are true, because many contemporary Pagans (including this one) came to this path by way of the occult, some people claim there is a connection. To these examples we can add some explicitly racist Aasatru groups (NOT all by ANY means) and nationalist Pagan movements in eastern Europe examples where Paganism and fascism might potentially reinforce one another.
But those who point to these factors completely confuse the frosting with the cake. We would make the same mistake today were we to associate Christianity, or even groups like Fundamentalists, with the Fascist rumblings now emerging from the radical right and their many enablers. America's right-wing fascists and proto-fascists are about as Christian in the traditional sense of the term as Heinrich Himmler was a Pagan. Something else is going on.
Ritual, Symbol, and Resentment
There is most definitely a quasi-religious redemptive appeal to fascism for many people, but what this appeal is to is not religious in the Christian sense, and only by a very strange route, in a Pagan sense. Part 2 will explore this issue.
In an earlier post I brought my readers' attention to a post on Alternet by Sara Robinson. I agree with her that Robert Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism, is the best general study of this problem. With her, I quote his brief definition of the thing. Fascism is
Because they are irrational their leaders need other means to instill loyalty, preferably fanatical loyalty. And as any experienced Pagan knows, ritual moves the mind from rational analysis towards other kinds of experience.
Fascist movements of the past have invested heavily in ritual events that give a sense of energetic unity and power that overwhelms people's critical faculties. They make use of symbols for the same reason, especially powerful symbols that do not have to be religious at all. Mussolini's symbol for fascism, the fasces, hearkened back to Roman power, when the Italian peninsula ruled much of the world around it, not to Roman religion. In Romania the fascist party was named the "Legion of the Archangel Michael" and Belgium's fascist movement of the 1930s grew out of an organization of Catholic students and a Catholic publishing house. (Paxton, p. 73).
The contemporary emphasis on flags, crosses, collective prayer, and the Founding Fathers as symbols of a lost American purity and nobility (while ignoring what they actually believed) are a hint of what is to come in pageantry and theater if America's fascist rumblings develop into a full fledged fascist movement. Note that flags, crosses, and collective prayer are not Pagan symbols. Fascism makes use of whatever symbols a society has that elicit unthinking loyalty. So long as American fascists use swastikas, they will be irrelevant except for acts of violence. When they do, as they are now, start using crosses, flags, and public prayers, then they are finally beginning to merge with the elements of American society vulnerable to their appeal.
Who Is Attracted?
Fascism is first and foremost a philosophy of victimization. It's emotional appeal is to victims, and its style of appeal is focused on the powerless, not the powerful. But they are a special kind of victim.
A while ago a very interesting article appeared demonstrating that feelings of powerlessness led to a greater tendency towards superstition, conspiracy theories, and false conclusions. I think these findings shed considerable light on the root causes of America's fascist rumblings.
As our institutions have become increasingly removed from sensitivity towards real people we increasingly feel utterly powerless in society. While often not as powerless as we feel, our actual influence is often indirect and takes a long time to manifest. And often we are as powerless as we feel. The conservative and mainstream media encourage this perception for various reasons. But one result is to gradually build a social powder keg of people who feel powerless and filled with resentment over it. What is especially significant is that they are not the traditionally exploited.
While full of complaints about how they have been mistreated by other groups, almost without exception the people attracted to fascism are not Black, Hispanic, Native American, or non-Christian. And they are disproportionately male. They are part of what had traditionally been considered the mainstream.
The groups they accuse of oppressing them have historically been very weak, and only recently began to achieve greater acceptance. Jews in Germany were such a case, as are Blacks and Hispanics in America. In both countries women were also achieving greater independence, threatening traditional male fantasies. Here is where we as a community need to be very aware. We and other non-Christians are rapidly becoming more accepted and visible, and as we do we can expect similar attention.
The rank and file fascist has been victimized, but does not look very closely at where their oppression is coming from. While fascists make rhetorical flourishes against bankers and big businessmen, no where have fascists ever really taken them on, even when in power. Rather, they focus on groups weaker than they who seem to be gaining strength. Since they are being victimized while some other group is growing in power, obviously the group growing in power is the villain.
With this observation we dig to a deeper level of the fascist appeai.
Future fascists do not so much resent being subordinated by others as from losing their sense that others are subordinated to them, so they are not at the bottom of the pecking order. They accept their place with 'their betters' but resent not being recognized by inferiors who also accept their place.
This gives us a clue to what I believe the real "religion" of fascism is: unity in hierarchy devoted to Power and Domination. Power and Domination are their Gods. Part 2 will explore this issue further.
UPDATE: I have made very small grammatical improvements from when this was first posted.
Frosting and Cakes
As examples to buttress their case, our critics point to the Nazi use of the swastika an ancient and (before the Nazis) very popular symbol. Some Nazis were also intrigued by the Pagan Germanic deities, with Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, being the most important. There are continual reports of Hitler's being interested in the occult, and while to the best of my knowledge these reports are grotesque exaggerations, to the degree they are true, because many contemporary Pagans (including this one) came to this path by way of the occult, some people claim there is a connection. To these examples we can add some explicitly racist Aasatru groups (NOT all by ANY means) and nationalist Pagan movements in eastern Europe examples where Paganism and fascism might potentially reinforce one another.
But those who point to these factors completely confuse the frosting with the cake. We would make the same mistake today were we to associate Christianity, or even groups like Fundamentalists, with the Fascist rumblings now emerging from the radical right and their many enablers. America's right-wing fascists and proto-fascists are about as Christian in the traditional sense of the term as Heinrich Himmler was a Pagan. Something else is going on.
Ritual, Symbol, and Resentment
There is most definitely a quasi-religious redemptive appeal to fascism for many people, but what this appeal is to is not religious in the Christian sense, and only by a very strange route, in a Pagan sense. Part 2 will explore this issue.
In an earlier post I brought my readers' attention to a post on Alternet by Sara Robinson. I agree with her that Robert Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism, is the best general study of this problem. With her, I quote his brief definition of the thing. Fascism is
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandon democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.In this post I want to emphasize this obsession with victimhood, humiliation, and decline of the community. This complex of beliefs provides the emotional basis for fascism. It is the frame of mind able to so fill people with resentment and anger that their reasonable faculties are overwhelmed. All that needs doing then is to push the appropriate buttons. This is why fascist movements are so completely irrational.
Because they are irrational their leaders need other means to instill loyalty, preferably fanatical loyalty. And as any experienced Pagan knows, ritual moves the mind from rational analysis towards other kinds of experience.
Fascist movements of the past have invested heavily in ritual events that give a sense of energetic unity and power that overwhelms people's critical faculties. They make use of symbols for the same reason, especially powerful symbols that do not have to be religious at all. Mussolini's symbol for fascism, the fasces, hearkened back to Roman power, when the Italian peninsula ruled much of the world around it, not to Roman religion. In Romania the fascist party was named the "Legion of the Archangel Michael" and Belgium's fascist movement of the 1930s grew out of an organization of Catholic students and a Catholic publishing house. (Paxton, p. 73).
The contemporary emphasis on flags, crosses, collective prayer, and the Founding Fathers as symbols of a lost American purity and nobility (while ignoring what they actually believed) are a hint of what is to come in pageantry and theater if America's fascist rumblings develop into a full fledged fascist movement. Note that flags, crosses, and collective prayer are not Pagan symbols. Fascism makes use of whatever symbols a society has that elicit unthinking loyalty. So long as American fascists use swastikas, they will be irrelevant except for acts of violence. When they do, as they are now, start using crosses, flags, and public prayers, then they are finally beginning to merge with the elements of American society vulnerable to their appeal.
Who Is Attracted?
Fascism is first and foremost a philosophy of victimization. It's emotional appeal is to victims, and its style of appeal is focused on the powerless, not the powerful. But they are a special kind of victim.
A while ago a very interesting article appeared demonstrating that feelings of powerlessness led to a greater tendency towards superstition, conspiracy theories, and false conclusions. I think these findings shed considerable light on the root causes of America's fascist rumblings.
As our institutions have become increasingly removed from sensitivity towards real people we increasingly feel utterly powerless in society. While often not as powerless as we feel, our actual influence is often indirect and takes a long time to manifest. And often we are as powerless as we feel. The conservative and mainstream media encourage this perception for various reasons. But one result is to gradually build a social powder keg of people who feel powerless and filled with resentment over it. What is especially significant is that they are not the traditionally exploited.
While full of complaints about how they have been mistreated by other groups, almost without exception the people attracted to fascism are not Black, Hispanic, Native American, or non-Christian. And they are disproportionately male. They are part of what had traditionally been considered the mainstream.
The groups they accuse of oppressing them have historically been very weak, and only recently began to achieve greater acceptance. Jews in Germany were such a case, as are Blacks and Hispanics in America. In both countries women were also achieving greater independence, threatening traditional male fantasies. Here is where we as a community need to be very aware. We and other non-Christians are rapidly becoming more accepted and visible, and as we do we can expect similar attention.
The rank and file fascist has been victimized, but does not look very closely at where their oppression is coming from. While fascists make rhetorical flourishes against bankers and big businessmen, no where have fascists ever really taken them on, even when in power. Rather, they focus on groups weaker than they who seem to be gaining strength. Since they are being victimized while some other group is growing in power, obviously the group growing in power is the villain.
With this observation we dig to a deeper level of the fascist appeai.
Future fascists do not so much resent being subordinated by others as from losing their sense that others are subordinated to them, so they are not at the bottom of the pecking order. They accept their place with 'their betters' but resent not being recognized by inferiors who also accept their place.
This gives us a clue to what I believe the real "religion" of fascism is: unity in hierarchy devoted to Power and Domination. Power and Domination are their Gods. Part 2 will explore this issue further.
UPDATE: I have made very small grammatical improvements from when this was first posted.
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I meant the "Bund Deutscher Unitarier" and some parts (declining) of the "Deutsche Unitarer Religionsgemeinschaft" (member of the ICUU and the IARF); two small groups with together ~ 1500-2000 members ... in the period after 1945, a number of nazis, often linked to pre-war nationalistic pantheist/deist currents joined some small churches who defined themselves as "unitarian" and/or "free protestant" effectively taking them over
Very, very astute observation, Gus. I have recently been reading a 2006 paper on tribalism, by David Ronfeldt, of the Rand Corporation. In it, he suggests that:
". . .fascism, which fuses hyper-tribalism and hyper-hierarchy, is due for a resurgence."
The full text of the paper (pdf) can be downloaded at http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR433/
While I agree with the conclusions and definitions you have used, I don't really personally give much weight to the word fascism.
I only use the word because its connotations and denotations work better than trying to explain what is really happening, a drift back into feudalism.
Just as socialism and communism are thinly disguised feudalism unless they are based on total democracy and a powerful common law with a strong line of civil rights, (which as far as I have been able to find out has never happened on a national scale. Sweden comes close but is really a capitalist-Socialist blend.), fascism is just another name for feudalism. It's an interesting adaptation of the old forms, in that it often uses propaganda engines for conquest rather than pure violence, but eventually leads to the same end, wealth in the hands of a tiny minority with everyone else slaving under their yoke. The mid-twentieth century fascisms merely lacked the time required for the underlying royal families to emerge and assasination, family descent, or small warfare to become the principal modes of regime change. When the propaganda engines start spending major portions of their time singing the praises of the current tyrant and his court it marks that phase. The legalization of private armies/security forces confirms it.
Here in the U.S. the feudalism is concealed under a cloak of capitalist rhetoric and terminology. The title C.E.O. in many cases bears far more power over the lives of others than the old titles Duke or Earl, and current corporate executives certainly have proven that they have the legal authority and personal amorality to wreck the lives of the commoners without mercy. In the healthcare insurance industry they can even let people die and still be treated as royalty.
The fascinating thing about the emerging economic feudalism in the U.S. is the way the royalty gets worshipped without being actually identified. Nobody really names the Duke of Exxon, the Earl of Goldman, Sachs, etc. And the whole absurd parasitic nightmare is supported by a giant fiction, that if you're clever enough and work hard enough you may be able to climb up to being one of the royalty. In truth, only the families or those retainers willing to kiss their butts from just the right angle are going to be allowed in.
But the American neofascist movement does have one characteristic feature in common with the older fascisms, powerful, amoral, well-funded propaganda engines.
And for me the real test of whether we have fallen into feudalism is being done right now. If our politicians allow the current economic royalty to take the huge bailout funds they have been given and use them to co-opt the properties, wealth, and companies which their stunningly stupid manipulations drove into collapse in value, instead of shoring them up and leaving them in the hands of those people who actually worked to create or purchase them, then it will be clear that our media, politicians, and political systems are merely their dupes, and we have fallen into full-blown feudalism.
After that, it's not whether, but when, the other trappings of feudalism follow. And the Bush regime has already tried the waters as to whether the people can be propagandized into accepting them.
The fundamental components of a police state, a powerful secret police who can operate without judicial review and ignore civil rights, executive rule through decree, and the ability to inculcate terror through torture, are already in place. And the American people, politicians, and media have sat and went "duh" while they were being put in place.
It seems that there are already enough idiots who can be persuaded, and enough lie-spin charlatans to do the persuading.
But it's fascinating to watch the processes in the evolution of language and ideas, the ability to explain away or glorify the oppression of the majority by a cruel and psychotic minority.
The current healthcare bs superspray is a beautiful example. They've got people who are at great risk of dying or being impoverished for lack of properly administered healthcare fighting savagely against properly administered healthcare so the "leaders" of the capitaist healthcare industry can buy lamborghinis, yachts, and houses in the Hamptons with the money they have stolen from the healthcare industry. (Oh, and they also buy expensive-whore propagandists.)
It's kind of disgusting to watch, but it's the art of the con-man carried to a spectacular level of accomplishment. I must admit I admire their ability even as I hope they step in sh*t.
Thermal
One key element in the development of fascism in Germany was the predominance of corporations without which fascism would never have taken hold, and which benefited mightily by the Nazi regime.
The single biggest danger to American democracy is the doctrine of "Corporate Personhood." The involvement of Corporations in politics will be single biggest reason America becomes a fascist nation.
Facism can be defined quite well as being ; A socioeconomic and political system maitained by force and propaganda in which private enities either capture or form a union with public officials for the purpose of advancing the causes of those private enities.
The primary founders of a facisist system are likely to be persons with significant economic and or political means,while the secondary promoters of facism tend to be persons of limited economic advantage and education.The secondary adherents of facism are often lured towards that system by the primary promoters skillfull use of propaganda,coupled with promises of greater economic succsess and or social stability.
Despite the opinions of some,it is imperitive to understand that virtualy any scociety can succumb to the deadly lure of facism.It is also true that any scociety in which ''public saftey'' takes presidence over the individuals right to choose his or her own course of action in times of danger,''even when the possible choices in no way effect the public directly''is already in essence, a facist scociety.Ironicaly such scocieties nearly always sacrifice public wellbeing as well as individual freedom for the financial benifit of the dominate economic and industrial powers of that scociety.
It is interesting to note that here in the US it is now possible to be forcably removed from ones own home in the event of a crises, while the well heeled media corporations proudly send employees straight into even the most danderous of situations,''for the sake of course of drawing more viewers and thus increasing advertising sales.This unfortunatly, is only one of the examples of how the freedoms of ordinary Americans are curtailed while the rights of the wealthy buisness sector are promoted even to the point of being harmfull to community wellbeing.Consider the fact that here in the US we now have more persons incarcerated per capita than any other nation on earth.Two out of every three prisoners in this country have been denied their liberty due to non-violent drug offences.Thanks to the war on drugs, even a otherwise law abiding ,''productive''citezen can be inprisonend for a full five years for the mere possesion of as little as a sugar packet size quanity of controled substance.The ardent promoters of the drug war use several supposedly justifing arguments in defence of their extream tactics.One of the most common arguments employed by the drug warriors is that drug use decreases individual, ''and by extension''collective productivity.Thus to the drug warriors, the primary reason humans exist,and the only reason we should be free, is in order to economicaly productive ! It is ironic indeed that wealthy mining companies can obtain permits allowing them to poison community water supplies without significant consequence while an individual suffering from cancer can be prosecuted for merly using a plant or a plant deritive in order to alleviate pain !
The facts if ignored or denied will not lead to individual nor collective freedom.Only by knowing and dealing with the reality that our country is well on the way towards the open practice of facism ,can we even hope to ''become ''the land of the free and home of the brave.
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