At 12:44 AM 6/9/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote: [A whole bunch of totally irrelevant boring distractions, amongst them]:

The Encyclopedia Brittanica says of Mussolini:

He read widely and voraciously, if not deeply, plunging into the philosophers and theorists Immanuel Kant and Benedict de Spinoza, Peter Kropotkin and Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Kautsky, and Georges Sorel, picking out what appealed to him and discarding the rest, forming no coherent political philosophy of his own

To argue that fascism has no philosophy without mentioning Maurice Barres is nearly as silly as arguing that communism has no philosophy without mentioning Marx. If you delete all reference to Fascist philosophers, you will of course come to the conclusion that fascism has no coherent philosophy. Fascism got its epistemology from Barres, and its economic theory from Sorel. Your argument is analogous to someone who argues that communism had no coherent philosophy by talking about Mao as if he had popped out of nowhere, and failing to mention Marx and Lenin. In my opinion the most coherent fascist philosopher that preceded the fascist rise to power was Maurice Barres. (Of course once fascism was on the rise, you got a bunch more fascist philosophers, most of them way to the left of Barres.) This thread in philosophy has continued to the present day, though it was abruptly renamed after the defeat of Hitler. Barres's arguments are logically and philosophically coherent, and are clearly and unambiguously recognizable as the epistemology, and much of the claptrap and rhetoric of fascism, and as the epistemology, and much of the claptrap and rhetoric of modern PC, and we can trace the philosophical thread connecting modern PC to Barres through known Nazi philosophers who not merely philosophized, but also participated actively in Hitler's regime, and to direct and immediate disciples of those philosophers, such as Derrida.

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Many of my readers will think I am excessively harsh, calling Rich Graves a liar rather than a fool, but I hear the above story (that fascism is not a coherent ideology or philosophy) primarily from those whose interests this story serves, and if they genuinely thought this story was true, they would not know that it is in their interests to push it.

Huh? In English, please.

Perhaps I was elliptical in the above. I will restate: The claim that fascism lacks an economic program and/or a philosophy comes primarily from those whose economic program and/or philosophy bears a marked resemblance to fascism. If they were not aware of this resemblance they would not so vigorously seek to redefine fascism as military dictatorship, racism, etc. This leads me to doubt the basic human honesty of those who push this line, and their concern for human lives.

Anyway, I never suggested that there was no such thing as fascist philosophy; just that fascism was not rooted in a well-developed ECONOMIC ideology,

Revisionism alert: I just deleted vast chunks of text from your message above where you presented negative evidence that fascism had no philosophy, and I was just thinking that maybe I had overdone it and would get flamed for deleting arguments rather than answering them.

and that Tim's definition of corporatism is incorrect both in the abstract and in the cases of Italian fascism and Nazism.

Revisionism alert: Tim gave a perfectly correct definition of corporatism, and you then proceeded to give a very similar definition, and you then proceeded to smear Tim by falsely implying that he gave a silly ignorant definition, radically different to the one he did in fact give. You also have carefully avoided mentioning Sorel, who of course advocated roughly the economic problem that Mussolini attempted to implement, that Hitler did implement, and that Timothy May condemned, long before Mussolini got of the ground. Sure sounds like an economic ideology to me.

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Not only do such concepts as feminist science, phallocentric science, etc, strongly resemble such concepts as aryan science, jewish science, etc, but they are justified using the same arguments from the same philosophers. Indeed Heidegger was not only a philosopher of fascism, but he personally participated in Hitler's terror, terrorizing his academic colleagues, and Paul De Man of Yale University worked directly for the Nazis as a propagandist in occupied Belgium.

Here James demonstrates his absolute mastery of the subject.

Heidegger only really supported Nazism from 1933-34; in the 40's and thereafter, he referred to Nazism as a disease.

Yeah, right, And the only fifty thousand jews were murdered. :-) Historical Revisionism alert: The above is wildly implausible: You do not call Nazism a disease in Nazi Germany and live to tell of it, let alone call Nazism a disease and get appointed to the important and well paid job of terrorizing your academic colleagues. The above is also infamously false: As rector, Heidegger denounced those of his colleagues he wished murdered as jews, including his own teacher, and he organized paramilitary camps for his students, spouting martial rhetoric about the "inner truth and greatness of National Socialism," see citation below.

He is remembered as an existentialist, not a Nazi,

Historical Revisionism alert: See http://www.inlink.com/~dhchase/heidig.htm for how he is REALLY remembered. Heidegger himself claimed at the time, his political activities grew out of his philosophy, and this claim seems to me to be very obviously true. Indeed what he claimed then is equivalent to what I have been telling you in public and private email: That your ideas lead to people being murdered by the state, and therefore you should consider them more carefully.

though he did join the party when he became the rector of Freiburg.

Historical revisionism alert: His most infamous work was his laudatory speech on Hitler given when he was appointed rector of Freiburg. In addition he never disowned his works on the "jewish problem". As rector he imposed Nazism on his colleagues by the usual means.

The fact that Paul de Man, in his early years in Nazi-occupied Belgium, wrote antisemitic propaganda for a number of local collaborationist journals was not discovered until four years after his death (by Ortwin de Graef).

The fact that Paul de Man's philosophy had a very strong resemblance to fascist philosophy was discovered considerably earlier. The fact that he also wrote the kinds of racist propaganda that are no longer politically correct was merely the icing on the cake.

By the way, I voted for Bush, and no matter how many times you contradict me, I know I don't support the government's actions at Ruby Ridge.

Revisionism alert (or perhaps in this case merely a reinterpretation alert): In previous mail you claimed it was not a government action, it was just a few FBI guys running amuck entirely on their own initiative. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com