Fascism and Human Nature
by Steve ThomasReverend Davidson Loehr has written an extremely important article documenting the fact that the political and economic system of the United States is, at present, best described as fascism. I reccomend everyone check it out. You can find it at Information Clearing House: here.
However.
This is a very important article, but it contains ideas which are both extremely false and extremely dangerous. In particular, Reverend Loehr says:
“They [the qualities of fascism] both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again. “
Fascism no more arises from the “default settings� of our species than any other sort of government type. The fact is, government itself is the exact opposite of the “default setting� of the species. We did not spend the 2.5 million years of our evolution as Homo growing up as fascists, any more than we spent that time as Communists or Liberal Democrats or followers of Sharia law.
Every one of those government types is new to our species. Every one of them manipulates those human traits which actually did arise during our evolution, for good or for ill. Traits which in the past were adaptive under humanity’s primordial condition become maladaptive under the state, and vice versa.
And a very wide set of traits that is. “Deference to alpha males� can be found in humanity, even in stateless societies. However in all sorts of human societies we find many other behaviors relating to alpha-male types as well. In Hierarchy in the Forest Christopher Boehm documented how proactive suppression—rather than subordination to—alpha males is nearly universal in stateless, tribal cultures living at every mode of subsistence. However, the fact that alpha males had to be suppressed shows us that they can arise, and that alpha-male supremacy—and male supremacy/patriarchy generally—is one possible mode of behavior for our species.
Fascism absolutely does prey upon that mode of behavior. But there is no factual basis whatsoever for declaring that particular mode the “defaultâ€? human behavior. Sometimes humans act that way. Sometimes a mass-media assault backed by the power of state and corporate entities can force them to act that way. That doesn’t mean that, left to their own devices, people naturally will act that way. Nothing could be further from the truth, and to believe this is to lend an incredible amount of credence to two very terrible, dangerous ideas. The first, of course, is fascism itself: it is now upheld as the “naturalâ€? state of humanity. The second is the anti-fascism that necessarily results from this line of thinking. Finding fascism to be humanity’s natural place in the world, this anti-fascism must necessarily rest upon creating living environments completely alien to what humanity is “naturallyâ€? disposed to. It is a prescription for a religious, governmental (”educational”) and/or technological assault upon the human condition that is every bit as terrible as fascism itself. And in fact, this is exactly what Loehr proposes later in the article.
One can look at the other issues Reverend Loehr addresses in a similar light. Territoriality, for instance, is also not humanity’s “default� setting. Sometimes it makes sense for humans to be very territorial. In “the wild� it rarely does; hunter-gatherer bands do best when their membership is fluid, which necessitates minimal territoriality. Indeed it is agriculture—also very new to the species—which most encourages territoriality. As for amity toward the in-group enmity toward out-groups, this is something which during the course of our evolution made a lot of sense. It allowed for the preservation of distinct cultures, the desirability for which I don’t think I need to address in this setting. Ethnocentrism is a cultural universal, and is, in fact, a positive thing, encouraging diversity—
Until cultures appear whose economies depend upon expansion. Such economies are limited to intensive agriculture and pastoralism, both of which appeared only in the past 7,000 years. In these cases ethnocentrism ceases to be a force for cultural preservation, and becomes a tool by which the agriculturalist’s need to expand into his neighbor’s land is psychologically reinforced and validated. Agriculture and pastoralism are far from the default settings of our species.
Loehr and others, including Lawrence Britt, whose article Loehr cites extensively, have done an extremely good job documenting the nature of the regime currently in place in the United States and the individuals who have brought us to this point.. But if we are to replace the current system with a better one, we need to understand the reality of human nature, which is not the brutal savagery envisioned by Hobbes; the far-seeing nobility envisioned by some of the Rosseauian camp; or the fallen life of suffering envisioned by Christianity–but which is capable of being all those things, and more. Anything less will lead to nothing but “meet the new tyranny, same as the old tyranny.â€?
While your treatment of fascism’s place within “human nature” (a red flag should go up any time you see those two words together–or, for that matter, “nature,” all by itself) is dead on, the topic of fascism itself is usually over-simplified. Britt’s famous “14 Characteristics” spread memetically across the internet in conjunction with the Iraq war, but they are academically lacking.
– Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis, “III. The Core of Fascism” (30 August 2003)
There are several disturbing common denominators between the Bush regime and past fascist regimes, but this does not necessarily mean they are the same. While I do believe that the current regime has definite fascist tendencies–and perhaps even ambitions–I do not think it is accurate to call it “fascist” just yet. To paraphrase Mike, “it has fascist-like qualities.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 August 2005 @ 4:11 PM
Hmm….
I tend to disagree. The Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act; the power of the corporations and the rampant cronyism (a defining trait of this administration); and less publicized bad-things like the use of the commerce clause to crack down on medical marijuana and the ruling on emminent domain tell me that the United States of today is, if not precisely “fascist,” then something similar and also very unpleasant—and capable, without modification of existing laws, of becoming much, much, more unpleasant.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 24 August 2005 @ 6:03 PM
How is that fascist? Wouldn’t that be more of a trait of an oligarchy?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 8:55 AM
… infringe seriously on civil liberties, and could, all by themselves, be used to set up a fascist government. But … they haven’t. G-d only knows why, but they haven’t used either to their full extent.
Mussolini defined “fascism” as “corporatism,” but this alone does not a fascist make. Oligarchy, as Mike pointed out, is just as likely.
Such “bad things” are hardly the sole province of fascist regimes, no?
Every government is unpleasant, and every government can always be made even more unpleasant. There are many types of regimes that are unpleasant, besides the fascist; there are Stalinist, totalitarian, oligarchic, plutocratic and all manner of other tyrannies and dictatorships. The term “fascism” has lost its meaning, and become nothing more than “things we don’t like.” There are defining characteristics of fascism (though I think Britt’s 14 are too motivated by the current situation in the U.S., thus emphasizing tenuous points while neglecting important ones) that are being neglected in all this. This imprecise use of the term–by both the Left and the Right (just what the hell is an “Islamo-fascist”?)–dilutes its meaning, so that no one takes me seriously when I say, for instance, that neoconservatism really is a fascist philosophy.
The United States has long history as an oligarchy, stretching back easily to the 1900s, if not before. The neoconservative vision is most definitely a fascist one, but their influence over the current regime is tempered by the theocratic ambitions of the much larger, but less sophisticated, Christian conservative contingent. As such, the current regime is caught between the three points of a triangle formed by oligarchy, theocracy, and fascism. Sure, there are elements of fascism, just as there are elements of theocracy and oligarchy. But if I had to pick one to describe the current state of affairs, I would easily pick oligarchy. I think to call it “fascism,” as it stands today, is an exaggeration that dilutes the meaning of the term.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 9:27 AM
Benito Mussolini’s definition of “Fascism,” with a capital “F”: the Italian political party….
Both points are near and dear to the neoconservative heart, but while Bush often flaunts the will of the majority in practice, he has never stood by that idea in principle. In the first paragraph, we see Mussolini connecting fascism to Romanticism. This is definitely true. Yet, unlike previous fascist regimes, the current regime does not embrace Romanticism so much as it rejects the Enlightenment on its own terms.
It’s something very, very bad, but it isn’t fascism.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 9:33 AM
Mike: I don’t think “oligarchy” works to describe a type of government. Most governments are oligarchical. The US state-corporate system of rule is oligarchical and plutocratic, and we could add other qualities as well. “Fascistic” for instance.
The romanticism involved in Bush’s regime is obvious. He specifically uses the two biggest American hero archetypes–the cowboy and the fighter pilot, much as Hitler called up images of the Germanic past and Mussolini invoked the glory of Rome.
If you’re point is, it’s not exactly like the fascism of the past–well, surely. This is a new sort of authoritarianism, one which hides its autocratic behavior behind constant appeals to democracy.
It will become fully autocratic as soon as this becomes politically expedient. In the event of another terrorist attack; or an oil shock; or any number of contrivable incidents, the full scope of the powers the administration possesses will be implemented. And regardless of whether they are implemented over night, we see year after year a “creeping fascism.” State and corporate power are being expanded and consolidated. Ubiquitous surveillance is on its way.
To describe the current state as “fascist” allows us to link it to the succession of authoritarian governments, from Franco to Pinochet, to which succession it surely belongs and from which it is surely derived. There are as I said earlier other qualities we could assign to the Bush administration in particular and the US corporate-government system more generally, but “fascistic” is certainly one of them (particularly in the Bushist’s case). Perhaps Bush’s successor will represent a different straight of autocratic thought. But at the present the link to fascism in both 1) law and public policy in general and 2) the modus operandi of the Bush administration cannot be denied.
That’s my case, and I stand by it.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 25 August 2005 @ 9:57 AM
There’s a Romantic element to that, but he lacks many critical elements of Romantic thinking in general. Ein Volk, ein Land, for example, is markedly absent. Or the “Noble Savage.”
No, my point is that fascism is only one specific form of authoritarianism. There are many other forms, and the Bush regime lacks many of the defining points that make fascism unique.
Wikipedia offers three defining points of fascism which seem fairly accurate to me, and I suggest we accept simply for this debate. I’m well aware that this is quite a fractious issue, so I’m sure we’re all aware that this is not complete….
There is a very strong case for points #2 and #3. I do not think we can make similar claims to #1. While Bush has consolidated all government power within the executive, he has done so with a consistent philosophy that exalts the individual over the state. Remember: this is a matter of political philosophy. What he does is not as important as what he says in this regard. The fact that he does such terrible things makes him, at worst, oppressive. But political philosophy–and that’s what fascism is–is matter of what the man says.
This is why the current regime makes for such a rough fit with other fascist regimes. Mussolini’s slogan for fascism–”Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”–is nearly the opposite of the philosophy Bush espouses.
It would be like calling me a liberal. Yes, I hold many points in common with liberals, but I also disagree with them on many of the defining issues of liberalism, like the role of the government. This makes me very much not a liberal. In the same way, Hugo Chavez is not a Communist.
That’s precisely why I don’t like it! Fascism arose in a given time and place, from a set of specific influences. The current regime shares none of them. They have no shared genealogy with Hitler; they come from a lethal combination of Trotsky, Strauss, Machievelli and Hobbes. A who’s who of Western philosophy’s worst. Hitler arose out of Romantic thought. Bush is not the continuing, dark legacy of Rousseau; he is the shadow of Hobbes.
I don’t think there’s any question that Bush is authoritarian. The question is whether his particular brand of authoritarianism is fascism. I don’t think so. Orwell’s 1984, similarly, did not depict fascism, but it did depict totalitarianism.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 10:57 AM
You don’t think that point #1 is occurring??? I don’t know how to argue with that. Have you been in the United States for the past 4 years (you know, where the stars and stripes, and the eagles fly…).
It’s also worth noting that Hitler and Mussolini are the only examples of fascists opposed by the United States we can come up with. The rest were either supported or directly put into place by us.
If you don’t want to call this “fascist” that’s fine. I understand the Hobbesian, etc, influences on neoconservative philosophy. Neoconservatism is only one of the schools of thought active in the Bush administration. The Pat Robertson gang is not neoconservative, and they wield tremendous influence with this administration. The elements of Romantic Nationalism are present both 1) in the Bush administration and 2) are ambient in the country in general, tacitly supported by the regime.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 25 August 2005 @ 11:45 AM
That’s all #2, the nationalism, jingoism and such. Point #1 would be proven if you could find a lot of Bush material saying stuff like, “The federal government is the arbiter of all good in this world,” and “The most important virtue for the individual citizen is obedience to our glorious federal government.” No, instead you get him talking about individual freedom and states’ rights. On the individual freedom he’s lying through his teeth, but those lies still prop up the idea that the power of the state exists to serve the individual. Fascism believes the opposite.
We didn’t support Franco, either. Vargas in Brazil teetered between siding with the Allies or Axis in WW2, and the Kuomintang never recieved much real help from us until they had retreated to Taiwan. But Burma, Pinochet, the Shah, the Ba’athists, South Vietnam, South Korea … all have enjoyed U.S. aid. I cited Italy and Germany not because of their peculiarity in not being our protectorates, but for their visibility. Italy invented Fascism–with a capital “F”–and the Nazis provide our most lurid example.
The U.S. since WW2 has been a constant friend to dictators, fascists and totalitarians the world over. The U.S. way of life is not possible at fair market prices. Local strong men make sure we pay less than we would otherwise, making our way of life possible. In short, the subsidy of our “non-negotiable” way of life (as Dick put it) is paid in the oppression of the rest of the world.
Not that we limit our support only to fascists, mind you. We’ve backed up strong men, dictators and authoritarians of all stripes, from fascist to authoritarian to totalitarian. There are differences–just like there are differences between Communists, socialists, Marxists, Stalinists and Maoists. A libertarian may not care much about such “hair-splitting,” but go ahead and call a socialist a Maoist and see how mad they get.
Elements of it, yes. But they’re not consistent. It’s hung like window dressing. Pat Robertson is not cut from the same cloth as Haeckel. He represents an even older line of thought, so old it lacks any name. It’s the same worldview the Enlightenment rebelled against. Their agenda is not to correct the Enlightenment’s exuberance, as the Romantics did; their agenda is to overturn it in an entirely different way. It is not nationalistic nearly so much as it is theocratic. Theirs is not a love of their nation-state simply on its own merits, but a love for America-as-Christian-nation.
The neoconservatives are fascist. The Christian crowd is larger, but less sophisticated, so their influence ends up being about the same as the neocons’, and their influence is theocratic. Our pre-existing regime was oligarchic. The combination of fascism, theocracy and oligarchy is most definitely authoritarian, but fascism is just one of the elements at play here, and can no more accurately describe the whole than oligarchy or theocracy.
One of Britt’s 14 points I disagree with most strongly is his conflation with theocracy. Fascist regimes are not just secular, they are anti-religious. They often seek to uproot the local religion and replace it with their own belief system. There has been some measure of debate as to whether or not the Nazis were fascists, or represented a different form of totalitarianism, but they made great strides in uprooting Christianity and replacing it with a bizarre amalgam of Teutonic paganism. Saddam persecuted Shi’ites and had a Qur’an written in blood, but towards the end of his reign–when the impossibility of the task of ripping Islam out of Iraq became evident–tried to instead coopt Islam, referring to himself as a lineal descendent of Mohammed.
I would say the current regime’s embrace of the standing religion all by itself would make this not fascism, but some other form of authoritarianism–a mix of fascism, theocracy, and oligarchy.
Nor has the Bush regime united all power into a single, iconic leader. Bush doesn’t have the kind of charisma necessary for that, but they haven’t even made much of an attempt. Besides the lack of five-story-tall murals of Bush’s smirking face, the consolidation of power into the executive that has most marked this regime has not been leveraged the way one would expect of fascists. They have everything they need, but they refuse to use it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 12:17 PM
“fascism is just one of the elements at play here, and can no more accurately describe the whole than oligarchy or theocracy.”
Yes. That’s my point. You are saying, “We shouldn’t call this fascism, because fascism is only one of the elements at play.” I am saying, “One of the elements at play in the US government is FASCISM!”
“They have everything they need, but they refuse to use it.”
Yet.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 25 August 2005 @ 1:50 PM
Well, they’re not the same statement. “Bush is a fascist!” That’s not a true statement. “Bush is heavily influenced by a group of fascists, who have gained a disturbing amount of power and influence in the past five years.” That statement is all too true.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 3:18 PM
And yes, I have a hard-on for precision in language, particularly where philosophies are involved.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 3:19 PM
Well, it’s an important distinction. Bush himself is not a fascist. Nor is the U.S. government in its current state fascist.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 25 August 2005 @ 3:23 PM
Well, it may not be fascism, but I figure it’s interesting to link here. Here’s Executive Order 13303 that, basically, forbids U.S. prosecution for any crimes committed in Iraq.
From the White House’s Own Website.
I found out about this little gem while talking about the unreleased photos and videos with a friend. For all practical purposes, if the White House decides the folks involved shouldn’t be prosecuted, they won’t be.
Ugh. I feel slimy just reading this crap.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 27 August 2005 @ 4:30 AM
I’m not quite sure which Anthropik essay this is in response to, but I feel it’s important:
from
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
a very persuasive, informed, and intelligent lady:
(sorry - maybe the links haven’t translated the copying process - so you’ll have to go to her original article to find them)
Sunday, August 28, 2005
The problem of excessive inequality
From a review by Polly Toynbee of “The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier” by Richard G. Wilkinson:
“Equality has gone out of fashion. Social justice under Labour means heaving the poorest over the poverty threshold and lifting the life chances of children from lower social classes. Tony Blair said early on that he was not bothered about wealth, only about abolishing poverty. Talk of inequality sounds like the old politics of envy. Equality of opportunity, yes, but equality for its own sake, why?
Here is the answer. Richard Wilkinson is a professor of social epidemiology, an expert in public health. From that vantage point he sees the world in terms of its physical and psychological wellbeing, surveying great sweeps of health statistics through sociological eyes. He has assembled a mountain of irrefutable evidence from all over the world showing the damage done by extreme inequality. However rich a country is, it will still be more dysfunctional, violent, sick and sad if the gap between social classes grows too wide. Poorer countries with fairer wealth distribution are healthier and happier than richer, more unequal nations.”
and:
“Life expectancy in rich nations correlates precisely with levels of equality. So Greece, with half the GDP per head, has longer life expectancy than the US, the richest and most unequal country with the lowest life expectancy in the developed world. The people of Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh. When you take out the violence and drugs, two-thirds of the reason is heart disease. Is that bad diet? No, says Wilkinson, it is mainly stress, the stress of living at the bottom of the pecking order, on the lowest rung, the stress of disrespect and lack of esteem. Bad nutrition does less harm than depression.”
This runs exactly counter to the praises of excessive capitalism that is all we hear churned out by the usual propaganda machines that seem to be run by the corpse of Ayn Rand. From a discussion of Wilkinson’s work by James Lardner (and see here):
“If inequality damages health, it probably operates through a variety of pathways. As George Kaplan and John Lynch at the University of Michigan point out, low income (even if it isn’t low enough to meet the official definition of poverty) means limited access to education, health care, and other services, with long-term consequences for health. At the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Clyde Hertzman has done extensive work on the latent effects of socioeconomically influenced differences in prenatal care and early childhood development. In the June 3rd issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, Paula Lantz and James House, who work with Kaplan and Lynch at the University of Michigan, analyze the link between income and such forms of self-destructive behavior as smoking, alcohol abuse, and over-eating.
But as Lantz and House point out, these specific risk factors explain only a comparatively small part of the socioeconomic gradient in health, which Wilkinson himself believes may, at bottom, have more to do with psychosocial factors - with what inequality does, for example, to friendship and the will to take part in social and community activities. ‘I think that social relations -friendships and alliances - should be seen as horizontal relations between equals in contrast to the vertical hierarchy of power relations,’ he says. ‘Friendship and hierarchy are opposite principles of social organization. In friendship one is talking about mutuality and reciprocity - your needs being my needs. Hierarchy is about power, coercion, and access to resources regardless of other people’s needs . . It’s strength and power that determine who gets what, and I think that’s the fundamental reason why as inequality increases the social environment deteriorates.’ We have much to learn, he says, from the ‘vigilant sharing’ of hunter-gatherer societies, where people ‘don’t compete for the essentials of life.’”
In the current climate of the dog-eat-dog world it is like farting in church to even mention it, but the single most important thing that those who set public policy can do to improve the health and happiness of society is to reduce inequality. The two ways to do this are through income redistribution through tax policy, and the public funding of education and health care (and in particular an early childhood development strategy). In the current political climate of the United States it is impossible to conceive of how these type of policies would be possible, but all those countries not suffering from the current American political malaise should be hopping to it. This issue is directly connected to the issue of social mobility.
Comment by Richard Parker — 29 August 2005 @ 9:50 AM