Fascism Is as Fascism Does

[Discombobulated]

And your point is...what?

That it was not resurrected as a modernRoman Empire by Mussolini and the Fascists, and has become a symbol of fascism?

Let's give you a bit of history that you seem to have missed.


1. Sometime after the First World War, the Babylon-Armageddon made its way into political theory. Each version had a people of God, under attack. There was the proletariat for the Bolsheviks and Stalinists; the children of the Roman wolf for Mussolini’s Fascists; the Warriors of Christ the King for Franco’s Phalange, and the Aryan race for the Nazis.


2. Mussolini incorporated the ideas of Georges Sorel’s syndicalism to create his brand of fascism.

a. Syndicalism is similar to socialism but included violent, direction action.

b. Syndicalists believed in rule by revolutionary trade unions, from the French word ‘syndicat.’ The Italian word ‘fascio’ means bundle, but was commonly used as a synonym for unions.

c. Syndicalism proposed that society could be divided by professional sectors of the economy; this idea influenced FDR’s New Deal.

And since the Fasces is also the symbol of the US Senate that must mean our elected representatives are all Fascists........right professor?

Not necessarily.....but your post means you're a dope.

Not much of a historian.......are you professor.

 

[Discombobulated]

Fascism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

FDR and Obama are only one step away from being literal fascists. I don't believe they "forcibly suppressed" their opposition but someone may be able to provide examples to the contrary.

Not even close. You guys are just tossing the word 'fascism' around as a pejorative. The meaning seems to be completely lost on you. Read the Manifesto of Racial Scientists to get the real feel of state sanctioned racism. Its nothing we have.

Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections.

And the forcible suppression practiced in actual fascism is systematic and regular beatings of the opposition, mutilation, murder, kidnapping and mass imprisonment. Same with the press. We do not have this.

Belligerent nationalism is like American Exceptionalism on insane, heart shredding steroids. Where the racial and social superiority of the society justifies its dominance of the lesser peoples and nations. We don't have that either.

These terms have meanings. You can imagine new ones if you'd like. But they don't really have much relevance to what the words actually mean.

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....




1. The latest variation of totalitarianism is neither religious, nor even political: it is cultural. “Totalitarian democracy” is a term made famous by J. L. Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.

a. Cultural totalitarianism is rule by the individual freed from all external authority or constraints, morality fully privatized with Judeo-Christian traditions under attack.

b. Moral and cultural relativism are predominant; no lifestyle is better than any other.

c. Paradoxically, relativist doctrine becomes absolutely unassailable: it brooks no challenges or deviations.



2. Mr. Talmon is concerned with drawing a distinction between “liberal democracy” and “totalitarian democracy,” both of which he sees as arising in the 18th century and coming into collision in the 20th. “Liberal democracy” regards politics as a matter of trial and error, and political systems as pragmatic contrivances; it is solicitous of individualism and recognizes that there are legitimate areas of human activity outside the realm of the political.

“Totalitarian democracy” preaches absolute truth and a messianic vision of a “pre-ordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive”; its politics is but one aspect of an all-embracing philosophy. Both “liberal” and “totalitarian” democracy affirm the value of liberty; but for the first, liberty means individual spontaneity, for the second, reconciliation to an absolute, collective purpose—a kind of self-willed slavery, in fact. Both versions of “democracy” arose in the thinking of the 18th-century philosophes, but “liberal democracy” retreated before the bloody attempt to establish the City of God on earth and took refuge in the matter-of-factness of Anglo-American practice, while “totalitarian democracy” culminated eventually in Stalinism.

There are, according to Talmon, three stages in the development of “totalitarian democracy” in the French Revolution. First, there was the Rousseauist intellectual background, which rejected all existing institutions as relics of despotism and clerical obscurantism, and which demanded a complete renovation of society so that it would be an expression of the General Will—this last being no mere consensus but an objective standard of virtue and reason that imperfect humanity must be coerced into obeying in order to enjoy a bonheur de médiocrité for which it was as yet ill-prepared.
Second, there was the Reign of Terror, when an “enlightened” vanguard of Jacobins undertook to impose the General Will—when Robespierre acted out his role as “the bloody hand of Rousseau,” as Heine called him.
Third, there was the post-Thermidorean conspiracy of Babeuf and his associates, which added to political messianism the doctrine of economic communism, thereby pointing the way to Marx.
« The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon Commentary Magazine

Always entertaining to watch people make up their own definitions.

 

[bripat9643]

Fascism:

often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Fascism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

FDR and Obama are only one step away from being literal fascists. I don't believe they "forcibly suppressed" their opposition but someone may be able to provide examples to the contrary.

Not even close. You guys are just tossing the word 'fascism' around as a pejorative. The meaning seems to be completely lost on you. Read the Manifesto of Racial Scientists to get the real feel of state sanctioned racism. Its nothing we have.

Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections.

And the forcible suppression practiced in actual fascism is systematic and regular beatings of the opposition, mutilation, murder, kidnapping and mass imprisonment. Same with the press. We do not have this.

Belligerent nationalism is like American Exceptionalism on insane, heart shredding steroids. Where the racial and social superiority of the society justifies its dominance of the lesser peoples and nations. We don't have that either.

These terms have meanings. You can imagine new ones if you'd like. But they don't really have much relevance to what the words actually mean.

Nothing could be more obvious than that fact that racism isn't an intrinsic feature of fascism. Mussolini wasn't a racist, and he didn't persecute Jews or any other minority. Neither did Franco's Spain.

Fascism is an economic system. The economics of fascism are identical to the economic policies of liberals and the Democrat party. To obscure this irrefutable fact, left wingers are always inventing definitions of fascism that bring all other manner of irrelevant characteristics.

 

[bripat9643]

Not even close. You guys are just tossing the word 'fascism' around as a pejorative. The meaning seems to be completely lost on you. Read the Manifesto of Racial Scientists to get the real feel of state sanctioned racism. Its nothing we have.

Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections.

And the forcible suppression practiced in actual fascism is systematic and regular beatings of the opposition, mutilation, murder, kidnapping and mass imprisonment. Same with the press. We do not have this.

Belligerent nationalism is like American Exceptionalism on insane, heart shredding steroids. Where the racial and social superiority of the society justifies its dominance of the lesser peoples and nations. We don't have that either.

These terms have meanings. You can imagine new ones if you'd like. But they don't really have much relevance to what the words actually mean.

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....




1. The latest variation of totalitarianism is neither religious, nor even political: it is cultural. “Totalitarian democracy” is a term made famous by J. L. Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.

a. Cultural totalitarianism is rule by the individual freed from all external authority or constraints, morality fully privatized with Judeo-Christian traditions under attack.

b. Moral and cultural relativism are predominant; no lifestyle is better than any other.

c. Paradoxically, relativist doctrine becomes absolutely unassailable: it brooks no challenges or deviations.



2. Mr. Talmon is concerned with drawing a distinction between “liberal democracy” and “totalitarian democracy,” both of which he sees as arising in the 18th century and coming into collision in the 20th. “Liberal democracy” regards politics as a matter of trial and error, and political systems as pragmatic contrivances; it is solicitous of individualism and recognizes that there are legitimate areas of human activity outside the realm of the political.

“Totalitarian democracy” preaches absolute truth and a messianic vision of a “pre-ordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive”; its politics is but one aspect of an all-embracing philosophy. Both “liberal” and “totalitarian” democracy affirm the value of liberty; but for the first, liberty means individual spontaneity, for the second, reconciliation to an absolute, collective purpose—a kind of self-willed slavery, in fact. Both versions of “democracy” arose in the thinking of the 18th-century philosophes, but “liberal democracy” retreated before the bloody attempt to establish the City of God on earth and took refuge in the matter-of-factness of Anglo-American practice, while “totalitarian democracy” culminated eventually in Stalinism.

There are, according to Talmon, three stages in the development of “totalitarian democracy” in the French Revolution. First, there was the Rousseauist intellectual background, which rejected all existing institutions as relics of despotism and clerical obscurantism, and which demanded a complete renovation of society so that it would be an expression of the General Will—this last being no mere consensus but an objective standard of virtue and reason that imperfect humanity must be coerced into obeying in order to enjoy a bonheur de médiocrité for which it was as yet ill-prepared.
Second, there was the Reign of Terror, when an “enlightened” vanguard of Jacobins undertook to impose the General Will—when Robespierre acted out his role as “the bloody hand of Rousseau,” as Heine called him.
Third, there was the post-Thermidorean conspiracy of Babeuf and his associates, which added to political messianism the doctrine of economic communism, thereby pointing the way to Marx.
« The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon Commentary Magazine

Always entertaining to watch people make up their own definitions.

Yeah, just like you did, moron.

 

[Discombobulated]

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....




1. The latest variation of totalitarianism is neither religious, nor even political: it is cultural. “Totalitarian democracy” is a term made famous by J. L. Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.

a. Cultural totalitarianism is rule by the individual freed from all external authority or constraints, morality fully privatized with Judeo-Christian traditions under attack.

b. Moral and cultural relativism are predominant; no lifestyle is better than any other.

c. Paradoxically, relativist doctrine becomes absolutely unassailable: it brooks no challenges or deviations.



2. Mr. Talmon is concerned with drawing a distinction between “liberal democracy” and “totalitarian democracy,” both of which he sees as arising in the 18th century and coming into collision in the 20th. “Liberal democracy” regards politics as a matter of trial and error, and political systems as pragmatic contrivances; it is solicitous of individualism and recognizes that there are legitimate areas of human activity outside the realm of the political.

“Totalitarian democracy” preaches absolute truth and a messianic vision of a “pre-ordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive”; its politics is but one aspect of an all-embracing philosophy. Both “liberal” and “totalitarian” democracy affirm the value of liberty; but for the first, liberty means individual spontaneity, for the second, reconciliation to an absolute, collective purpose—a kind of self-willed slavery, in fact. Both versions of “democracy” arose in the thinking of the 18th-century philosophes, but “liberal democracy” retreated before the bloody attempt to establish the City of God on earth and took refuge in the matter-of-factness of Anglo-American practice, while “totalitarian democracy” culminated eventually in Stalinism.

There are, according to Talmon, three stages in the development of “totalitarian democracy” in the French Revolution. First, there was the Rousseauist intellectual background, which rejected all existing institutions as relics of despotism and clerical obscurantism, and which demanded a complete renovation of society so that it would be an expression of the General Will—this last being no mere consensus but an objective standard of virtue and reason that imperfect humanity must be coerced into obeying in order to enjoy a bonheur de médiocrité for which it was as yet ill-prepared.
Second, there was the Reign of Terror, when an “enlightened” vanguard of Jacobins undertook to impose the General Will—when Robespierre acted out his role as “the bloody hand of Rousseau,” as Heine called him.
Third, there was the post-Thermidorean conspiracy of Babeuf and his associates, which added to political messianism the doctrine of economic communism, thereby pointing the way to Marx.
« The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon Commentary Magazine

Always entertaining to watch people make up their own definitions.

Yeah, just like you did, moron.

The professors assistant weighs in. As her assistant perhaps you'd like to point out the operative phrase.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Does the effort to demonize President Roosevelt, eighty some years after the fact, strike anyone as,

if nothing else,

a bit untimely? PoliticalChic has that wife-in-a-bad-marriage quality, you know, how the old lady wants to start arguments with you about shit that happened years ago...

Give. it. a. rest. Go watch your stories or something...

There were plenty of people who despised Roosevelt while he was in often. If you don't believe it, then you should read anything that H.L. Mencken had to say about him. After the war he became virtually a god, so it was difficult to make any of your ilk see the truth about him. It's only now that scholars have started seriously examining his record rather than engage in pure worship.

Rightwingers hate FDR for the same reasons they hate all liberals. Rightwingers hate FDR not because he once said something favorable about something about Mussolini;

they hate him because he irreversibly advanced liberalism. Rightwingers hate FDR because he won,

and they lost.

 

[NYcarbineer]

"...internet inspired paranoia plus half wit conspiracy theories...

Ignoring facts is what is giving your problem.....either that or the inability to process same.

I see your brain is giving you the silent treatment today.




OK....let's call you out, moron.....

I've constructed what...six panels in this thread, so far......


....find any errors in 'em.

Go ahead....find any.


But....be careful....if this is the first time you've tried to think you could wind up with an aneurysm!





Number seven coming right up, dope.

I found the one relevant error in your opening rant.

FDR did not construct buildings in the 30's that were meant to copy Mussolini.

That is crackpottery.

Nah.....it was simply an accident.

And his forgetting to complain about the symbolism of fascism.....he just forgot.




Remind me to never have you on my side of a debate.


Dunce.

If I was on your side of a debate, I'd be wrong. I'm almost never wrong, and I'm never that wrong.

 

[DriftingSand]

Does the effort to demonize President Roosevelt, eighty some years after the fact, strike anyone as,

if nothing else,

a bit untimely? PoliticalChic has that wife-in-a-bad-marriage quality, you know, how the old lady wants to start arguments with you about shit that happened years ago...

Give. it. a. rest. Go watch your stories or something...

There were plenty of people who despised Roosevelt while he was in often. If you don't believe it, then you should read anything that H.L. Mencken had to say about him. After the war he became virtually a god, so it was difficult to make any of your ilk see the truth about him. It's only now that scholars have started seriously examining his record rather than engage in pure worship.

Rightwingers hate FDR for the same reasons they hate all liberals. Rightwingers hate FDR not because he once said something favorable about something about Mussolini;

they hate him because he irreversibly advanced liberalism. Rightwingers hate FDR because he won,

and they lost.

Constitutionalists/Conservatives don't like FDR because he expanded the scope and power of government thus reducing "The People's" power and scope of self-determination. It's the same reason that the Founding Fathers didn't like King George.

 

[Skylar]

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....

You're offering us these enormous block quotes with almost no commentary....and you don't seem to understand what you're posting. Talmon is explicitly attacking the positions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the 1750s to 1770s. Rousseau espoused the doctrine of the 'Natural Human', a philosophy of the base human as a savage at odds with the civilized man.

None of which has a thing to do with Fascism. Nor does Talmon even mention fascism in the quotes you offered. You're cherry picking ONE aspect of fascism, ignoring all others....and then offering us the opinion of a 1950s historian attacking the philosophy of a 1750s philosopher that makes no mention of the terms you're trying to redefine to fit your argument.

Fascism is a pretty specific doctrine and a rather modern one. And what we have isn't it. You can continue to ignore what fascism actually is......but you can't make us ignore it.

 

[DriftingSand]

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....

You're offering us these enormous block quotes with almost no commentary....and you don't seem to understand what you're posting. Talmon is explicitly attacking the positions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the 1750s to 1770s. Rousseau espoused the doctrine of the 'Natural Human', a philosophy of the base human as a savage at odds with the civilized man.

None of which has a thing to do with Fascism. Nor does Talmon even mention fascism in the quotes you offered. You're cherry picking ONE aspect of fascism, ignoring all others....and then offering us the opinion of a 1950s historian attacking the philosophy of a 1750s philosopher that makes no mention of the terms you're trying to redefine to fit your argument.

Fascism is a pretty specific doctrine and a rather modern one. And what we have isn't it. You can continue to ignore what fascism actually is......but you can't make us ignore it.

Our current governmental system is closer to a Fascist State than the government system erected by the Founding Fathers. Lobsters are boiled gradually and Fabian Socialism is patient but persistent.

 

[bripat9643]

Does the effort to demonize President Roosevelt, eighty some years after the fact, strike anyone as,

if nothing else,

a bit untimely? PoliticalChic has that wife-in-a-bad-marriage quality, you know, how the old lady wants to start arguments with you about shit that happened years ago...

Give. it. a. rest. Go watch your stories or something...

There were plenty of people who despised Roosevelt while he was in often. If you don't believe it, then you should read anything that H.L. Mencken had to say about him. After the war he became virtually a god, so it was difficult to make any of your ilk see the truth about him. It's only now that scholars have started seriously examining his record rather than engage in pure worship.

Rightwingers hate FDR for the same reasons they hate all liberals. Rightwingers hate FDR not because he once said something favorable about something about Mussolini;

they hate him because he irreversibly advanced liberalism. Rightwingers hate FDR because he won,

and they lost.

Liberalism is just another name for fascism, so, yes, Rightwingers do hate him for advancing liberalism. When has any right winger ever denied that?

Why do liberals hate Reagan?

 

[Discombobulated]

There were plenty of people who despised Roosevelt while he was in often. If you don't believe it, then you should read anything that H.L. Mencken had to say about him. After the war he became virtually a god, so it was difficult to make any of your ilk see the truth about him. It's only now that scholars have started seriously examining his record rather than engage in pure worship.

Rightwingers hate FDR for the same reasons they hate all liberals. Rightwingers hate FDR not because he once said something favorable about something about Mussolini;

they hate him because he irreversibly advanced liberalism. Rightwingers hate FDR because he won,

and they lost.

Liberalism is just another name for fascism, so, yes, Rightwingers do hate him for advancing liberalism. When has any right winger ever denied that?

Why do liberals hate Reagan?

The professors assistant is making up definitions again.

 

[Discombobulated]

I found the one relevant error in your opening rant.

FDR did not construct buildings in the 30's that were meant to copy Mussolini.

That is crackpottery.

Try not to clutter up the thread with true facts.

"...true facts." ????



Moron.

Begs the questions: Are these people embarrassed to be this stupid? Are they smart enough to know that they should be?

 

[Discombobulated]

It seems the professor has nothing to say outside the the small confines of her ideology.

 

[PoliticalChic]

And since the Fasces is also the symbol of the US Senate that must mean our elected representatives are all Fascists........right professor?

Not necessarily.....but your post means you're a dope.

Not much of a historian.......are you professor.

Let's put it this way, in terms of each or our understanding of history and politics......

To compare your work with mine is compare a bamboo hut- simple, but not without some level of charm- to the palace at Versailles.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Not even close. You guys are just tossing the word 'fascism' around as a pejorative. The meaning seems to be completely lost on you. Read the Manifesto of Racial Scientists to get the real feel of state sanctioned racism. Its nothing we have.

Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections.

And the forcible suppression practiced in actual fascism is systematic and regular beatings of the opposition, mutilation, murder, kidnapping and mass imprisonment. Same with the press. We do not have this.

Belligerent nationalism is like American Exceptionalism on insane, heart shredding steroids. Where the racial and social superiority of the society justifies its dominance of the lesser peoples and nations. We don't have that either.

These terms have meanings. You can imagine new ones if you'd like. But they don't really have much relevance to what the words actually mean.

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....




1. The latest variation of totalitarianism is neither religious, nor even political: it is cultural. “Totalitarian democracy” is a term made famous by J. L. Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.

a. Cultural totalitarianism is rule by the individual freed from all external authority or constraints, morality fully privatized with Judeo-Christian traditions under attack.

b. Moral and cultural relativism are predominant; no lifestyle is better than any other.

c. Paradoxically, relativist doctrine becomes absolutely unassailable: it brooks no challenges or deviations.



2. Mr. Talmon is concerned with drawing a distinction between “liberal democracy” and “totalitarian democracy,” both of which he sees as arising in the 18th century and coming into collision in the 20th. “Liberal democracy” regards politics as a matter of trial and error, and political systems as pragmatic contrivances; it is solicitous of individualism and recognizes that there are legitimate areas of human activity outside the realm of the political.

“Totalitarian democracy” preaches absolute truth and a messianic vision of a “pre-ordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive”; its politics is but one aspect of an all-embracing philosophy. Both “liberal” and “totalitarian” democracy affirm the value of liberty; but for the first, liberty means individual spontaneity, for the second, reconciliation to an absolute, collective purpose—a kind of self-willed slavery, in fact. Both versions of “democracy” arose in the thinking of the 18th-century philosophes, but “liberal democracy” retreated before the bloody attempt to establish the City of God on earth and took refuge in the matter-of-factness of Anglo-American practice, while “totalitarian democracy” culminated eventually in Stalinism.

There are, according to Talmon, three stages in the development of “totalitarian democracy” in the French Revolution. First, there was the Rousseauist intellectual background, which rejected all existing institutions as relics of despotism and clerical obscurantism, and which demanded a complete renovation of society so that it would be an expression of the General Will—this last being no mere consensus but an objective standard of virtue and reason that imperfect humanity must be coerced into obeying in order to enjoy a bonheur de médiocrité for which it was as yet ill-prepared.
Second, there was the Reign of Terror, when an “enlightened” vanguard of Jacobins undertook to impose the General Will—when Robespierre acted out his role as “the bloody hand of Rousseau,” as Heine called him.
Third, there was the post-Thermidorean conspiracy of Babeuf and his associates, which added to political messianism the doctrine of economic communism, thereby pointing the way to Marx.
« The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon Commentary Magazine

Always entertaining to watch people make up their own definitions.

Another lack-of-substance post from a lack-of-substance poster.

 

[Discombobulated]

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....




1. The latest variation of totalitarianism is neither religious, nor even political: it is cultural. “Totalitarian democracy” is a term made famous by J. L. Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.

a. Cultural totalitarianism is rule by the individual freed from all external authority or constraints, morality fully privatized with Judeo-Christian traditions under attack.

b. Moral and cultural relativism are predominant; no lifestyle is better than any other.

c. Paradoxically, relativist doctrine becomes absolutely unassailable: it brooks no challenges or deviations.



2. Mr. Talmon is concerned with drawing a distinction between “liberal democracy” and “totalitarian democracy,” both of which he sees as arising in the 18th century and coming into collision in the 20th. “Liberal democracy” regards politics as a matter of trial and error, and political systems as pragmatic contrivances; it is solicitous of individualism and recognizes that there are legitimate areas of human activity outside the realm of the political.

“Totalitarian democracy” preaches absolute truth and a messianic vision of a “pre-ordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive”; its politics is but one aspect of an all-embracing philosophy. Both “liberal” and “totalitarian” democracy affirm the value of liberty; but for the first, liberty means individual spontaneity, for the second, reconciliation to an absolute, collective purpose—a kind of self-willed slavery, in fact. Both versions of “democracy” arose in the thinking of the 18th-century philosophes, but “liberal democracy” retreated before the bloody attempt to establish the City of God on earth and took refuge in the matter-of-factness of Anglo-American practice, while “totalitarian democracy” culminated eventually in Stalinism.

There are, according to Talmon, three stages in the development of “totalitarian democracy” in the French Revolution. First, there was the Rousseauist intellectual background, which rejected all existing institutions as relics of despotism and clerical obscurantism, and which demanded a complete renovation of society so that it would be an expression of the General Will—this last being no mere consensus but an objective standard of virtue and reason that imperfect humanity must be coerced into obeying in order to enjoy a bonheur de médiocrité for which it was as yet ill-prepared.
Second, there was the Reign of Terror, when an “enlightened” vanguard of Jacobins undertook to impose the General Will—when Robespierre acted out his role as “the bloody hand of Rousseau,” as Heine called him.
Third, there was the post-Thermidorean conspiracy of Babeuf and his associates, which added to political messianism the doctrine of economic communism, thereby pointing the way to Marx.
« The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon Commentary Magazine

Always entertaining to watch people make up their own definitions.

Another lack-of-substance post from a lack-of-substance poster.

Droning on with mindless nonsense is not substance.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Does the effort to demonize President Roosevelt, eighty some years after the fact, strike anyone as,

if nothing else,

a bit untimely? PoliticalChic has that wife-in-a-bad-marriage quality, you know, how the old lady wants to start arguments with you about shit that happened years ago...

Give. it. a. rest. Go watch your stories or something...

There were plenty of people who despised Roosevelt while he was in often. If you don't believe it, then you should read anything that H.L. Mencken had to say about him. After the war he became virtually a god, so it was difficult to make any of your ilk see the truth about him. It's only now that scholars have started seriously examining his record rather than engage in pure worship.

Rightwingers hate FDR for the same reasons they hate all liberals. Rightwingers hate FDR not because he once said something favorable about something about Mussolini;

they hate him because he irreversibly advanced liberalism. Rightwingers hate FDR because he won,

and they lost.

"....he once said something favorable about something about Mussolini;..."


Not just once.



BTW....he had the same view of Hitler's economic policies until the ovens were revealed.



" Fascism did not acquire an evil name in Washington until Hitler became a menace to•the Soviet Union."
Manly, "The Twenty Year Revolution," p. 48

 

[Discombobulated]

Not necessarily.....but your post means you're a dope.

Not much of a historian.......are you professor.

Let's put it this way, in terms of each or our understanding of history and politics......

To compare your work with mine is compare a bamboo hut- simple, but not without some level of charm- to the palace at Versailles.

You have yet to establish your historic expertise.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"Dictatorship is not what we have, or anything close to it. You don't have to worry about the courts overruling a favored law under a dictatorship. You don't have to worry about votes. You don't have to worry about elections."


How about you pick up the works of J.L. Talmon.....

You're offering us these enormous block quotes with almost no commentary....and you don't seem to understand what you're posting. Talmon is explicitly attacking the positions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the 1750s to 1770s. Rousseau espoused the doctrine of the 'Natural Human', a philosophy of the base human as a savage at odds with the civilized man.

None of which has a thing to do with Fascism. Nor does Talmon even mention fascism in the quotes you offered. You're cherry picking ONE aspect of fascism, ignoring all others....and then offering us the opinion of a 1950s historian attacking the philosophy of a 1750s philosopher that makes no mention of the terms you're trying to redefine to fit your argument.

Fascism is a pretty specific doctrine and a rather modern one. And what we have isn't it. You can continue to ignore what fascism actually is......but you can't make us ignore it.

It's your understanding of 'democracy' that needs work.