This is an interesting article, and it illuminates some of the things we were discussing in an earlier thread about the transformation of the Republican party after 1964.

Sobran in 2002 came out as a Rothbardian libertarian anarchist, agreeing with his newly adopted mentor, the late Murray Rothbard, that it's not the liberal perversions of the Constitution that are the problem, but the Constitution itself; that the state is "nothing but a criminal gang writ large"

And this:

from the point of view of Antiwar.com, the Clinton administration was imperialistic, therefore it was illegitimate, and therefore it deserved whatever it got. Any crazy charge was ok, so long as it made the U.S. government look bad.

Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com is an admirer of the late Lawrence Dennis. The problem with this is that Dennis was a Fascist - not in the overheated rhetorical sense, but an actual ideological Fascist who believed that Capitalism was doomed and that America was moving towards a totally planned and controlled Fascist state - and he was all for it.

It seems that Dennis, who got himself targeted by the government for his views, moved in the direction of anarchism later in life, and this is the Dennis that Raimondo and others are following now. You see the same tendency everywhere on the supposedly pro-American far right.

I just blogged on Fascism because of a stupid "14 signs of a Fascist Society" that was posted at Daily Kos. Now I'm wondering if I didn't miss something - what's the synergy between Fascism and Anarchism? After all, Mussolini's blackshirts adopted the traditional Anarchist color, and their ugly street tactics, too.

"Fascism for Iditos" is one hell of a post, Glen. Folks, I recommend following the link to Canis Iratus.

The logic of fascism and its rivals is a fascinating topic.

I agree with you Glen that Fascism and Naziism are distinct. Fundamentally Naziism does acknowledge something above the state, and that is the race. It didn't bother Hitler that his plans for expansion, if successful, would lead to the break-up of the German state: the state was a vehicle for something greater than itself, namely a racial movement. (Of course other states, lacking even such an instrumental rationale for their legitimacy, could be altered or abolished forthwith if they got in the way of the Aryan movement that Germany was so militantly advancing.) It also didn't matter from where the SS recruited. What mattered, and what would make it the dominant organisation in the long run, was its principle of racial selection, combined with militant loyalty to the cause the German state (and its allies) served. From a Fascist point of view, this is all crazy - and very dangerous. (Hey, even if a Fascist says the sun rises in the East, it still does.)

One example that stuck in my mind - some German Jews who were veterans of the First World War showed their Nazi captors their (the Jews') medals, earned in the service of the Fatherland. Of course the Nazis just laughed at that and killed them regardless - race is all! But you could be an excellent Fascist (probably Italian or Spanish) and be shocked that military service to the highest good (the state) could be so despised. Other than the needs of the state, which from a Fascist point of view death camps did not serve, there are no higher moral trumps that could have been played. You may even demand that a Fascist superman submit to execution for the good of the state, like the nameless hero of Hero dying for all-under-Heaven, but you can't deny him his honour as a champion of the state, and to say the Nazis did deny Jewish war heroes their honour is putting it very mildly.

Of course, the main trouble with Naziism is that its central and defining figure was Adolf Hitler, who was completely evil, crazy, and not completely consistent (except alas in his hostility to Jews). I'm inclined to think that you could have a racial political philosophy that would look a lot like Naziism that would work better than communism (the economy needn't tank) and would be a real worry. Many Nazis no doubt thought they did belong to such a movement, but they were all of them deceived. Historically, Naziism is completely indivisible from the specific person, ideological confusions and gross military and political blunders of Adolph Hitler. Hey, it sucks to be a Nazi.

I also agree that Islam(ism) isn't any form of Fascism, since the Caliphate appeals to something above the state. And I think Islam is the most successful competitor to all sorts of patriotic, nationalist and fascist appeals in the world today. When I use the phrase "Islamo-fascism" it's really just out of politeness. It implies that Islam becomes dangerous when it is distorted - a false implication that nevertheless may spare people's feelings. The truth is that the bloody horror of Islam comes straight from the Prophet. It is internally generated, essential, unique, not a spin-off of any Western error.

I think you can have a state theocracy that would be fascist though. The problem is that the likeliest cases for discussion are Eastern, and don't quite fit Western categories.

I don't think the idea of applying a Fascist checklist to America is worth discussing. It's a bit like Kevin Drum's demand that he be given reasons why Islamist terrorism is a problem - excluding in effect everything that has already been discussed for the last few years. When the case is open and shut, you can't accept the responsiblity to prove it in a new way - eventually there are no new arguments that prove the same old obvious thing, and then you "lose". The proper answer to someone demanding reasons why Islamic terrorism is an enemy or demanding reasons why American not be considered a Fascist state is to point out that they are being unreasonable to the point of lunacy and stepping onto the wrong side of an important friend-or-foe divide.

(Actually the perfect answer to Kevin Drum, a magnificent screed by Jonah Goldburg, is
here:

Nonsense, Blue. There is a range of views within Islamism; not all Islamists want to restore the Caliphate. For instance, Erdogan is an Islamist.

Why is being anti-war un-American? Is bellicosity and vengence a national virtue now? When the government took pre-emptive action against an ill-perceived threat prior to a broad majority concensus being formed behind the endeavor, it undermined a consciousness that had formed in the disasterous wake of the Vietnam War to excercise forbearance in the use of arms. Forbearance does not mean acting defenseless and weak. It is being patient in considering the use of force and it comes from an inherent position of strength.

The Afghani War, broadly supported, is now hopelessly intertwined with the Iraqi War which is bitterly devisive. The fact that there are anti-war efforts across the spectrum of political thought give evidence to the nature of this devisiveness. Making our leadership justify and be accountable for their war aims is simply good common sense. War is a disease of the human spirit, a possibly fatal drain on the resources of a state, and was much more logically permissable when it was done with sticks and stones. Had the German public not allowed themselves to be swept away by sentimentality and the spectacle of a vigorous Germany leading Europe under a decisive and commanding leader, had they instead been more insistant the new Nazi leadership provide facts to justify the huge cost of mobilizing for conflict, tens of millions of lives could have been spared.

Absent our reliance on foreign oil and the Arabs random good fortune to be sitting atop it, the dim-witted offshoots of Islamic political theology that have taken up arms against the West are still as backward and illigitimate as they have been for hundreds of years. That an ignorant, thuggish faction was able to pull off a successful attack against the U.S. is more a function of our own lack of preparedness than an indicator that an emergent pan-Arab theocracy will sublimate Western Civilization. Arab unity is a myth.

Uh, try reading the linked article.

There's always a range of views, praktike. The range of views in Naziism, let alone Fascism, is wildly under-rated. Yet Naziism had a weight and brutal momentum to it, for all its diversity of faction, interest and opinion. It would be perverse to refrain from making sweeping and decisive judgments on the whole thing, and instead allow oneself to be drawn into a whirlpool of details.

I see no problem with the range of Islamist views.

When we talk about Islamism, we are not talking about Islamo-Facism, as though this was merely a Middle Eastern blend of funky native religion and our historic political/philosophical distortions. The fundamental thing to grasp about Islam is that it is not us. We cannot read our history and concerns (eg. day-care centres) into it. It's message for us as the same as its message for Buddhism, expressed in the doom of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and we'd best never, ever forget that.

"Now, you have people who love death just like you love life. Killing for the sake of God is their best wish, getting to your soldiers and allies are their happiest moments, and cutting the heads of the criminal infidels is implementing the orders of our lord."

I believe our starting point here is the wide range of American views and even Republican views. Yet Americanism on a global scale has a powerful coherence. It stands for a culture and a sense of life with a peculiar flavour. You would not mistake the distinctness of a really Roman (classical Pagan) thought for an American thought, for all that people babble about a new Empire as though Americans thought like Romans.

It often seems to be the case that anti-war movements, in an effort to do anything to avoid a reason for war, become the enemy. For example:

The French anti-war Socialists, prior to WWII, first said that Germany wasn't rearming, because then they would have had to intervene or abandon Versailles. When it became clear that Germany had rearmed, the Versailles Treaty was suddenly unfair and outdated. When Hitler started killing the Jews, the French Socialists first denied it, then excused it, then reluctantly defended it, then began shipping their own Jews (including their own pre-war Prime Minister!) off to the camps quite willingly, while turning in Resistance fighters whenever they could.

A similar thing happened to parts of the extreme Left during the 1960s, first deriding any suggestion that Communist tyrannies were other than utopias, then excusing their behavior, then defending it. (See Noam Chomsky on Cambodia for a stellar example.)

Now, the same thing is happening with the far Left and far Right in the West. First, Islamism was not a threat, then its actions were understandable, then helpful and humane and just (!!!) and there appear to be some on the extremes who are outright colluding with the jihadis.

Our real problem at this point is that there is not a reliably anti-jihadi center-left in the West, outside of Britain. If that doesn't manage to form, we will have a very difficult time winning the Terror Wars, because there is an ideological component that the center-left can be taken credibly on, while the center-right cannot. This is why it is so crucial that the Democrats fall back under the sway of the Marc Danzigers and the Michael Tottens and the Clintons and the Libermans and the Millers, rather than floundering in their Michael Moore/MoveOn/ANSWER pit. And it's why it's crucial that the conservatives disown the far-right idiots who are doing the same things (but who fortunately don't have a large voice in the Republican Party).

Travelling like I do in libertarian circles, I am all too familiar with the Antiwar.com crowd and those of like mind. At least one of Antiwar's editors, Matthew Barganier, is a little brownshirt in disguise. My fellow libertarian hawk Max Borders had an unfortunate run-in with him just recently and has now stopped blogging as a result.

The short version of the story: Max works for the Institute for Humane Studies, and ran his own personal blog on the side. Barganier took one contraversial sentence in Max's personal blog from the middle of a lengthy inter-blog debate about rights and war, posted it up on the AntiWar.com blog completely out of context, then posted a link to the contacts page of his employer and encouraged all his readers to "tell them what you think". Basically he was trying to get him fired. Needless to say this is very dirty pool and revealed more about Barganier than Max.

Jeff: "Our real problem at this point is that there is not a reliably anti-jihadi center-left in the West, outside of Britain."

Arguably there hasn't been a reliable center-left in continental Europe since the Soviets and their Comintern tools attacked and destroyed it eighty years ago.

The Soviet war on social-democratic "traitors" led them to make alliances with the far right in Germany. The Soviets had two important things in common with these people: opposition to the Versailles Treaty, and an undying hatred of the German Social Democratic Party.

The relations between the Soviets and the German right formed something that the Soviet Karl Radek called "National Bolshevism". Three guesses as to what National Bolshevism turned into. (One of its early stars was Josef Goebbels.)

BTW - Auster says that the anti-war right had its beginnings in 1999. I don't agree; there is no new thing under the sun, as they say. Lawrence Dennis was preaching such stuff decades earlier. There was rightest opposition to the first Gulf War, with some of the same low motivations.

Is America the US Government or the US population? Of course being anti-war is anti-USG, since war spectacularly fuels the growth of government power. If the nation and the state are the same thing, than anti-war and anti-American are nearly synonymous. In this sense I'm profoundly anti-American, and proud of it.

If, on the other hand, America is the US population, then I'm pro-American, in that I want to see the population of the US live long and prosper. It's quite possible that some (IMHO misguided) people might think that the current wars are useful for sustaining the US population. These people could be considered pro-war and pro-American.

I consider Fascism to be fundamentally a religion of State worship. This hasn't happened too much here in the US (yet). We'll have a police state long before we have Fascism.

Of course being anti-war is anti-USG, since war spectacularly fuels the growth of government power.

Poverty, racism, unemployment, and crime also fuel the demand for, and growth of, government. So if you are opposed to any of these items, you must be anti-government as well.

>>Poverty, racism, unemployment, and crime also fuel the demand for, and growth of, government.

Indeed. And growth in government, in turn, fuels poverty, racism, unemployment and crime (often through warfare.)

It's a vicious circle. I, for one, want to get off the merry-go-round.

You're right Mr. Madison you are anti-American; given all of the potential causes of all of the ills in the world, you blame the American government first, last and always. But you are consistent.

It's amazing that you people are prattling on about how I'm a "fascist" for even writing about Lawrence Dennis -- as did Ronald Radosh in his book "Prophets on the Right" -- but the author of the screed you're supposedly discussing describes himself as a "white nationalist" and speaks at conferences of the "American Renaissance" newsletter -- an openly white supremacist publication.

What hypocrites!

There's something to be said for the "takes one to know one" principle, Justin...