Left wing writers like to point out that Fascism is a right wing phenomenon. Never mind the fact that a study of of the origin of Fascism shows a remarkable overlap in both ideology and participants with Socialism. Even the term Nazi is an abbreviation of the term National Socialist, so it somewhat of a mystery to me why Fascism is considered right wing.
It is the position of this blog that the social conditions in Europe in the late 19th Century gave rise to a situation which traditionalist thinking was unable to solve. The enormous increase in population, industrialisation and lassiez faire capitalism produced a disaffected populace which sought some redress from the resultant social inequities. Most people thought the existing order wrong and there was a need to change it. Traditionalist attempts were made but ideology which gained the most traction amongst the masses was the socialistic one. Amongst the socialists themselves, three main streams of thought emerged on how to address the social injustices. Firstly, Parliamentary Socialism, which sought to change society through democratic takeover of state power, and secondly, Communism and Fascism, which sought to change it through violent struggle. So, just as Protestantism and Catholicism can be thought of as two different strains of Christian thought, both Communism and Fascism need to be seen as two sects of a common underlying ideology; an ideology of the left.
The two ideologies had a lot of similarities. Both saw the group as more important than the individual, with the state being supreme. Both hated the bourgeois. Both sought the destruction of class enemies. Both saw violence as a legitimate means of social engineering and both seemed to revel in the cult of the leader. Both claimed their legitimacy as arising from acting in the interests of the people and both seemed to revel in the cult of the all powerful leader.
However, it's the differences which have always caused the most confusion, and it's a confusion which may lay in the fact that it is difficult to separate the two along the traditional right/left axis because of the common ideology of origin. But the perhaps the best way to explain the differences is not along a spectrum of "Right and Left" but along the lines of sexual hierarchy; "Alpha and Beta". While I'm not the type of man to see everything through the prism of sexual biomechanics, once you start looking at things this way a lot of the pieces seem to fit quite nicely.
The Fascists were outright thugs and saw a glory in violence. They were concerned not about saving the world but about saving their own tribe. They worshiped military valour, manly struggle, competition and emphasised sexual polarity. They didn't mind a bit of inequality if it bought out the best in the tribe. Think of it like being a member in a football team. Each member wants to be a star player but the group psychology is it's us against them. We train hard, elimate the weaklings and conquer the field as brothers. It's a tailor made ideology for jocks. It's no surprise then that businessmen, soldiers, farmers and others with a strong degree of masculine autonomy would find sympathy with the cause.
Communism, on the other hand, wanted to save the world. It wanted to include everyone into the project. It tended to avoided the direct conflict of the thug. Instead it chose the methods of "the bitch" working to sneakily undermine it opponents through the tried techniques of rumor, misinformation and innuendo, directly attacking them when they were isolated and weak. It valued co-operation, equality and demphasised sexual polarity. It hated competition since no one was allowed any superiority over the other. It promised a utopian future where society would ensure that everyone is a winner. It was an escape from the the Darwinian struggle of life and the natural pecking order. One can quite easily imagine writers, artists, public servants and others who lacked a large degree of autonomy choosing the communism/socialism cause.
And it appears that there is some scientific data showing a correlation with social conservatism and the dark triad. Though the study has its faults, I think it has a large degree of intuitive credibility. Interestingly the study study shows a far weaker link between the dark triad and economic conservatism which also fits nicely with our hypothesis*. The fact that economic values are poorly correlated with the dark triad will mean that the individuals who possess the dark triad are not necessarily to be associated with any economic position.
Therefore, if an man is an alpha male but an economic idiot, and sees the socialistic worldview as the solution to society's problems, he will find Fascism an appealing ideology. The lower down the sexual hierarchy he goes the more Communism, and then Socialism appeal. Even today the Neo Nazi's tend to be tough skinheads whilst the socialist men...... well....... you know what I mean.
In other words. Fascism is alpha socialism. Whilst communist/parliamentary socialism is the ideology that appeals to the beta male economic illiterate.
Manboobz of the world unite!
*Arvan did a follow up study and found that liberalism is associated with antisocial personality traits on issues such as climate change and environmentalism. With Fascism now being totally discredited perhaps those alpha individuals who would have naturally drifted to Nazism are now finding a home in the environmental movement.
** Note for those who are totally retarded and think this post is some crypto support for the Fascists, you can go to Hell. I regard Nazism and Communism as evils and a pox a both their houses.
OT, but I'd be interested in your take on this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2013/02/13/rand-pauls-state-of-the-union-response-its-time-for-radicaltarianism/
I think Poulos is onto something important with his transactional versus transformational dichotomy. Life is more than a market. We can be Austrians without ignoring humanity.
It should be no mystery at all why the Left insists that Fascism is a right wing philosophy. The only people who buy into that commonly believed misinformation are Leftists, who think any opposition is Fascist, and all other useful idiots who just believe and repeat every Leftist meme they hear, without criticism or internal analysis. I wish I had a dollar for every argument I've had about this subject. I'd be rich.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, some Leftists can make a reasonable sounding case, when they argue that Fascism is nationalistic and extols suprematist ideals. But even that fails to answer all things.
I think the best definition of Fascism is this:
ReplyDeleteFascism is what results when Socialism leads to the perfectly predictable economic results, and socialists need to resort to "desperate measures" to stay in power.
The Social Pathologist:
ReplyDeleteEven the term Nazi is an abbreviation of the term National Socialist, so it somewhat of a mystery to me why Fascism is considered a right wing.
Much like North Korea is a Democratic People's Republic and not an autocratic monarchy.
I think the left/right paradigm is best understood as being about equality/hierarchy. This is why anarcho-communists and Stalinists are considered left-wing, while anarcho-capitalists and Hitlerists are considered right-wing. The anarchist and statist variants of left-wing and right-wing ideologies have different means for achieving their goals, but they both espouse a common under-lying ideological commitment to values of either equality and hierarchy.
B.B.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation
ReplyDeleteThe Fox News view of Communism. Ironically it was the violent thugs (alphas, by the logic here) who transformed communism into a despotic murderous system, to secure their own positions at the top of the heap. Fascism just legitimizes the same behavviour through the tropes you list here, I.e "natural law", survival of the fittest, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe early Nazi party intellectuals were well aware of the convertability between Nazism and Communism. Closely competitive memes. This is why some of the Nazi officials wanted to kill all of the communists. Hitler said "no". Kill only the leaders. The followers will join the Nazi movement.
ReplyDeleteI would go a step further and say that any meme that does not recognize individual self-ownership in the Rothbard/Rand sense contains within it the intellectual basis of totalitarianism.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Monopoly-authoritarianism in any form is inherently evil and is never to be trusted.
I dunno, a significant number of Nazis at the top were homosexuals and communists were not short on the brutality side.
ReplyDeleteMy brief brush with fascists was that they were loser types who couldn't fit in, blamed others for their plight and were susceptible to illogical thinking.
Might explain the Nazis fascination with Blavatsky, the Vril society and Hyperborea.
To me Sodini and Brevik are the nationalist socialist archetype.
@Hiddenleaves
ReplyDeleteI'll look into it and post something up.
@Johnny, Fascism and Communism do differ, in the same way that Catholicism and Protestantism do. But to outsider there is more commonality between the two than there are differences.
@Chris
Thanks.
@Anon
Any facts to back up your assertions? Some data perhaps?
Everywhere communism has been implemented it always turns out the same. Are you a Trotskyist by any chance? The only good thing stalin ever did was put an icepick through his head.
I don't buy it— Nazi voters seem to have split almost equally between men and women, but communist voters in Germany skewed heavily male. Going just by voting patters, communism was the more masculine ideology. Maybe the Nazis voters were alphas and the commies were betas, but that would be impossible to prove and it seems like other factors (urban vs. rural, employed vs. unemployed, etc.) were more important.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.johndclare.net/Weimar6_Geary.htm
Fascinating analysis.
ReplyDeleteThis could also explain why the anti-male left despises fascism so much, even though they agree with a massive chunk of its program.
Brilliant.
ReplyDelete@Johnnycomelately
ReplyDeleteToday's Fascists are definitely loser types. But Fascism in the 20's and 30's was a respectable intellectual position. Post WW1 the Trad right had died and in the cultural vacuum that ensued, Fascism provided a venue where those who couldn't stomach the left could go to.
The Nazi fascination with the occult was inherent in their ideology. There was always a "vague spiritual" dimension to their ideology. It is akin to the "Moral righteousness" that the left had during the Vietnam war. More vague "romantic" feeling than conscious theology.
@Kurt9
There is a dynamic tension between total autonomy and community living. Community living does impose some obligations and hence some autonomy must be sacrificed if we are to live in a common community. I'm not a big fan or Rands/Rotharbard's radical individualism since it leads to social atomisation. The underlying problem with the libertarian thinking is the assumption that everyone will be happy if they live according to their own whims. Come into my consulting rooms and you will see just how easily "free people" can make their own life a misery while being totally clueless about their own faults.
Socialism is tailor fit for these individuals. It gives them an ideology to explain away their own happiness. Look at the current financial mess the West is in. Everyone loves to blame the bankers, no one ever says, "Hey, maybe I took out too big a bank loan". Believing that all your troubles are someone else's fault is an opium the libertarian is prone to take.
@Martel
ReplyDeleteCorrect. It socialism minus the feminism.
@James
Thanks for the fascinating link. But I think it proves my point more than yours.
Firstly, from the article, it appears that the occupation types that voted Nazi would strongly support my hyptothesis as the Nazi vote seemed to be strongest amongst the self-acutualising professions. Farmers, lower middle class trades, small businessmen and the upper professional classes. "Small town" type of guys, guys without too much sophistication but a lot of self-reliance and self capability seemed to be type attracted to Nazism.
Interestingly, the only Catholics that seemed to vote strongly for the Nazis were those who fighting against the Poles in Silesia. In other words, martial type of men fighting for their own identity.
The Socialist seemed to appeal to the office drones and factory fodder, people with a low degree of self-actuation.
But I digress. It appears that we are using different definitions of alpha here, the definition I'm using here is Roissy's i.e. alpha males are males which women find sexually attractive. To quote your article:
A further difference resides in the gender of support. The NSDAP, at least in the Depression of the early 1930s, was much more attractive to female voters than the German Left in general, and the KPD(Ed:Communists) in particular. For most of the Weimar Republic women voted less frequently than men, especially in rural areas. When they did vote, wives often followed their husbands; and daughters and sisters, the head of the household; or so many have claimed. It is also not unreasonable to believe that the female vote divided along the same lines of class, confession and region as that of men. Yet there existed significant differences between male and female voting patterns.
Women were less likely to vote for left-wing parties than their menfolk, though there was an increase in the percentage of female votes that went to the SPD in the 1920s. In fact around 3.5 million women cast their votes for Social Democracy by 1930; and far fewer female than male SPD voters deserted to the Communists in the Depression. In the Berlin Reichstag election of 1930, 27.1 per cent of male and 28.8 per cent of female votes went to the Social Democrats; but in the case of the KPD the gender difference was more marked, with the party picking up 37 per cent of the male but only 29.8 per cent of the female vote. In the Cologne-Aachen district in 1930, 20 per cent of male and 17.2 per cent of female voters gave their support to the SPD; but for the KPD the voting percentages were 21.4 and 13.4 respectively.
The relative unattractiveness of the Left to female voters was compensated by a propensity to support those parties close to the churches, such as the nationalist DNVP in the case of Protestants and, to a much greater extent, the Centre Party or BVP in the case of Catholics. ......
Until 1930 women remained unlikely to vote for the Nazi Party. Moreover, in the presidential election of 1932 a clear majority of women preferred Hindenburg to Hitler. However, the early 1930s did see a narrowing of the gap between male and female voting patterns, especially in Protestant areas. Indeed, in some of these by July 1932 the NSDAP was winning a higher percentage of the female to male vote. In that month some 6.5 million women voted Nazi, many of them probably with few or no previous political ties.
QED.
Firstly, from the article, it appears that the occupation types that voted Nazi would strongly support my hyptothesis as the Nazi vote seemed to be strongest amongst the self-acutualising professions.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, although it says that the Nazis also got a lot of support from agricultural laborers.
It appears that we are using different definitions of alpha here, the definition I'm using here is Roissy's i.e. alpha males are males which women find sexually attractive. To quote your article:
I think this was less about alpha vs. beta than German women being more conservative than German men. As the parties became more radical ideologically, their appeal to women declined— Traditionalist center-right parties, especially parties with religious affiliations, had disproportionate female support. The Nazis, with a mix of traditionalism and radicalism, had somewhat less female support. The communists, as pure radicals, fared even worse.
@ James
ReplyDeleteAgricultural laborers tend to be pretty socially conservative. Think of the rednecks. I imagine that the Nazi party would have been quite appealing to them. Akin to the way that Reagan reached out to the Southern Democrats.
Still, I feel you have missed the point.
The point being that if a woman wanted to vote socialist then the three options to her were the National Socialists, the German Socialists or the Communists. It seems like the Nazis got most of the the socialist women's vote.
Let's look at this another way though. Porn is frequently a reflection of peoples deepest (and darkest) desires. How much socialist/communist fetish porn is there? There is tons of Nazi fetish porn out there. How much soviet flavoured porn is out there? Not much. So it would appear by this basic commonsense test that Nazism is more sexually charged than the other socialist variants.
I'm not a big fan or Rands/Rotharbard's radical individualism since it leads to social atomization.
ReplyDeleteI think social atomization is an overhyped problem, similar to that of peak oil and global warming. Most people I know personal, as well as myself, live what you would describe as socially atomized lives. Yet we get along fine.
I agree with you that some people cannot handle autonomy and require some sort of externally created social structure. However, there is nothing in a libertarian society that prevents such people from creating the social structure they need. All Randian/Rothbardian worldview does is preclude coercing those of us who have no need for such structures into participating in such.
kurt9,
ReplyDeleteSaying social atomization is not a problem is like saying 50% illegitimacy rates aren't a problem. One causes the other.
The most fundamental "collective" is the family. People are expected to give up all sorts of autonomy for other people within the family. The current divorce/childless culture we've developed is people trying to say that their "freedom" is more important then their family.
It's not even a matter of choice really. We don't choose our families. We can choose our spouse but usually on very limited information and for life. And only in rare and desperate cases do we even grudgingly "not judge" people who abandon their families. We never celebrate it. Seems incredibly non-voluntary and freedom reducing, and yet its the bedrock of civilization.
asdf,
ReplyDeleteI stand by my point. Well accepted metrics of social decay: crime, drug addiction, teen pregancy; have all declined profoundly over the past 20 years. Despite the worst recession since the 1930's, crime rates have hardly budged.
Scientific discovery and technological innovation, another metric of civilizational efficacy, appear to continue unabated. The fundamental biotechnology necessary for effective anti-aging medicine is being developed as a "Carlson's Curve" like rate and it actually looks like we will get commercial fusion by the end of the decade (Not ITER, but privately financed efforts like Tri-Alpha). Additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) may result in another manufacturing revolution by the end of the decade as well.
All of the problems we face in the U.S. are exclusively economic, mainly excessive government involvement in the private economy (e.g. regulation and "crony" state-sanctioned capitalism) not social.
Interesting article. I too pondered why fascists were labeled as being right wing. I came to a similar conclusion, that it lay in using the left/right spectrum for something that didn't fit.
ReplyDeleteMany on the right in my country (United States) are socialist in the sense that they believe in freedom, but only because freedom is beneficial to the collective.
On a side note, I've pondered what a society would look like if it continued on this trend where private contracts are not enforced. What if governments refused to enforce contracts? I think how governments came to enforce contracts is part of the honor system. Like forcing a man to keep his word. Without government filling this role, only honorable men would be able to do business with each other. Dishonorable men would become impoverished. But in a frontier society, the dishonorable man would wind up dead instead. Perhaps an honorable government decided that it's better to make someone pay, than to have them wind up dead?
-Hendrick