The Anatomy of Facism — darthbarracuda

Said to be the best available book on fascism. Someone (can't remember, might have been Paxton) noted that fascism is as much method as content. In other words, it isn't just what it attempts to achieve, but it's also its method.

What seems like a fascistic tendency in the Trump / Republican / right wing method is to blur certainty over what has been said (Trump says something quite objectionable, then a day later says the opposite). So then, what does the president mean? It's open ended. Years of this degrade political discourse to the point of meaninglessness.

Disregard for time-honored procedure, such as the Republican refusal to confirm Obama's last Supreme Court Nominee Garland, when 9 months remained in the year, then the rushed confirmation of nominee Barrett with 3 months remaining in the year. That alone isn't fascism, but it's part of a trend.

At the early end of Reconstruction (which had scarcely progressed towards completion) the newly elected Rutherford B. Hayes acquiesced to the former Confederate states becoming "the solid south" a one-party region of white oligarchic terroristic rule over blacks, poor whites, and hispanics (in Texas and the SW territories). Nobody called it fascism (the term hadn't been invented yet) but it was a variety of American fascism in place for about a century - 1877 to 1977, give or take a few years.

The Democratic Party in the south held a tight grip on the Senate and was able to impose it's preferred CIVIL ILLIBERTIES on the rest of the nation. For instance, blacks (mostly agricultural workers and domestics in the south) were initially left out of the social security, unemployment, and disability programs instituted in the New Deal. That was corrected fairly soon, but blacks were excluded from the federal housing program beginning in the 1930s and going forward (well into the 1970s). After courts and legislation remedied the exclusion, other mechanisms of discrimination were in place. The overall effect of the solid south strategy was a permanent marginalization of the black population. That 140 years after the fascist take-over of the south.

Fascism (in effect, if not in name) was established in the south through violence -- and flagrant violation of voting rights and constitutional protections.

I've tried to read Celine and haven't had much luck getting into Journey to the End of the Night. I should check out Becker and Horney. It's been... 50 years? since I last read about them.

:up: Good topic. Will add a quick & dirty dozen of my own in a day or three.

:100:

• The Fascism This Time, Theo Horesh
• Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton
• On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder

For "mercifully short" reads that pack enough punch to recall again and again on their own merit, to help unravel other passages in Nietzsche's writings, and as much for references to them by later philosophers:
"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense"
"On the Abuse and Disuse of History For Life"

The Color of Law by Rothstein and A Peculiar Indifference by Elliott Currie provide a solid understanding of how housing segregation was engineered in the 20th century, and how the black population has been subjected to high levels of violence, both from within and without its communities.

Michael Bellesiles' 1877: America's Year of Living Violently [2010) and C. Vann Woodward's Strange History of Jim Crow (first published in 1955) describe how the black, hispanic, and Chinese populations were marginalized in the 19th century.

The lesson I take away from these books is that the elite moved deliberately and strategically to keep the majority white working class and minorities physically apart, and socially distanced as well -- by a lot more than 6 feet.

These and similar books explain much more than a BLM protest can. For one, they show how CLASS figures into systematic oppression in a way that a focus on RACE alone can not.

I recommend:

African Politics: A Very Short Introduction - Ian Taylor

Short but dense, basically explaining the big picture of why "Africa is poor" Also has an extensive bibliography in the back. I recommend looking up Ian Taylor's papers which are also good, he's the only one I know in english that explains thoroughly how modern French Imperialism in West Africa through CFA Franc works.

Also watch:

Fire in the Blood, a documentary of how the big pharmaceutical companies caused the death of millions in Africa through blocking access to AIDS medicine.

How is On Tyranny? I read Snyder's Blood Lands and I thought it was excellently presented and researched, although I didn't finish it (I had just finished Evans' Third Reich trilogy, and didn't have the stamina for more.) I'd seen articles by him on contemporary issues and wondered what a book would be like.

For me, I'd say in terms of "explaining it all," vis-a-vis political order, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate and Francis Fukayama's Origins of Political Order are both masterpieces.

The first looks at neuroscience and evolutionary psychology through the lens of Locke and Rousseau as the inspiration for contemporary liberal and conservative traditions. The second is an excellent primer on theories of "why states succeed." Fukayama gives you a good overview of the field. Blows similar works such as Why Nations Fail (IMO, "selecting on the dependant variable, the book"), and Guns, Germs, and Steel out of the water.

Final nomination is William Durrant's Story of Civilization as an excellent overview of Western history from almost every angle. Cheating a bit because it's several volumes. Great prose and political philosophy musings. I might skip the first volume early and go back to it. Unfortunately he dies at Napoleon, but fortunately Richard Evans' The Pursuit of Power is a worthy successor that brings you up to 1914.

I would recommend Plato's Meno, the text in which he went from being an author of manners and committing suicide to the skeptic he had been until then. Or The Sophist, where he dismisses almost everything that he previously thought, including the positive assessment of Socrates.
The second book that attracts me the most is Categories by Aristotle. I had the opportunity to have an old teacher of mine use it as a text to teach us how to translate Greek. It was an exciting experience, although it emptied the classroom.
A third text is Kant's Critique of Judgment, where he tries to correct himself. It is a text in which I always discover something new and it makes me feel quite an idiot. It is good for me to remember that I am not as smart as I am sometimes led to believe.

BLUEPRINT FOR DISASTER by D. Bradford Hunt, part of the series Historical Studies of Urban America, University of Chicago Press is about the successful and unsuccessful efforts of the Chicago Housing Authority to house the poor. The period covered runs from roughly 1935 to 1985. It sounds like a very wonky book, but it is really quite accessible. If you want WONK, the extensive notes section provides that.

How did it all turn out? Starting around 2000, Chicago began leveling the vast housing projects they had built 40 and 50 years earlier for many thousands of poor blacks. By itself, Robert Taylor Homes at its peak housed 27,000 people. 15,000 lived in Cabrini Green, and in many other larger and small Chicago projects.

If you don't want to read about it, This PBS documentary about Robert Taylor Homes is 56 minutes long--well worth an hour on YouTube. (Note: the program is mislabeled "Cabrini Green". CG is another can of worms.)

Dan Rather Reports - A Public Disgrace [there are so many] is about the bad bad very bad Detroit Public School System and what seems to be their marinated-in-slime and fried-in-corruption school board. (aired in 2011)

Great observations.
In regards to the Critique of Judgement, I still wonder like I did when first encountered: "who is this person and what is he saying?"

Don't know where to put this, so here will do. I have just discovered Remi Brague, who is a French scholar, philosopher and historian of ideas, 'specializing in the Arabic, Jewish, and Christian thought of the Middle Ages. He is professor emeritus of Arabic and religious philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Romano Guardini chair of philosophy (emeritus) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich'. He publishes in French but many of his books have been translated. He seems an exceptionally interesting cultural analyst.

His Wikipedia entry.

An interview.

Review of one of his recent books The Kingdom of Man.

If not sending straight from a publisher, I use abebooks.co.uk . I like using overlapping secondary sources to build up my own "pictures" of what various writers produced and what In think its uses for me might be, instead of just swallowing an official line or splashing out money on "masters" devoid of context.

1. Phenomenology, a contemporary introduction by Walter Hopp, 2020

A fairly clear survey of Husserl's scheme, touching on idealism, realism, knowledge, perception, meaning - I have especially learned a lot about the last two. Discusses suggestions by commentators for improvements to the concept and presentation.

2. The disappearance of moral knowledge started by Dallas Willard and added to by Porter, Preston and ten Elshof, 2018.

Covers the period Spencer-Green-Moore-Ayer-Rawls and others in regard to diverse attempts to rediscover sources of moral knowledge. I in fact found it a wide ranging guide to approaches to epistemology generally.

3. The evolution of modern metaphysics: making sense of things, by A W Moore, 2012.

A remarkable book and a favourite of mine to dip into serendipitously and take copious notes. Selects a limited number of source personalities' works but is structured ultra helpfully and the argument is extremely clear about the issues so that I can make up my own mind (Heidegger has shown himself up). Exceptionally well cross referenced between sections. Wonderful footnotes where they should be - at foot! Modular but easily interlinked structure.

4. Philosophy, discipline of disciplines, by D F M Strauss, 2009.

A tour de force across all sciences and fields of knowledge including maths, and various philosophical approaches to them. Very detailed contents list: I dip in as I please and it is well enough indexed. Besides a good range of "standards" (including rather recent ones), also contains trenchant enough critiques of some early 20 th century Dutch thinkers which is a bonus for me because I often encounter people for whom those were important. Footnotes are at the foot and Strauss draws out concrete examples to illustrate what is discussed.

5. Cassirer by Samantha Matherne, 2021.

Helpfully surveys the very wide and to my mind deep insights of this underestimated and unusually well balanced, soundly methodical figure: we would do well to build on him more than the famous trolls and saboteurs. Good reference features.

Nos. 3 and 4 are exceptionally well adapted to dipping in, but quite honestly I am adopting the same method with 1 and 2 as well with no problems (other than affecting the sequence of points in my notes :rofl: ) I was that rivetted by 5 I just went from beginning to end.

Lastly free PDFs for us all:

a. Grammar of assent by J H Newman.

His point that most appeals to me is the appeal to individual initiative and discretion, and the stress on knowledge as based on cumulative individual inference. This he calls "assent to degrees of inference". I call Newman "apostle of grey areas" because reality is to my mind "nice and nuanced". Newman offers an additional layer regarding religious belief which one can "slot out" if that's what ones version of agnosticism calls one to. Thus any examples given are merely what Newman and his readers would know, but the principles can be applied to anything. My assent, my inference in my degrees, my kind of belief, my knowledge. This accords to life because we tentatively and provisionally infer and critique in regard to the big picture as we go - or we should have been doing.

b. Anti-duhring by Friedrich Engels.

I don't agree much with Duhring or Engels but especially in the first third (on general sciences) a marvellously witty review of the former's work. One can in fact ignore the remainder if one wishes.

1) For understanding how power works generally, I don't think it's possible to beat Understanding Power by Chomsky. Not much more to say here.

2) To understand the Middle East, Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization is second to none. Connected with this would be the Israel topic, of which Avi Shalaim's The Iron Wall is very comprehensive. Lots of propaganda is generally involved in this topic, I think these cut through the bs.

3) For neoliberalism Slobodian's Globalists, Jessica Whyte's Morals of the Market and Mirowski's Never Let A Serious Crisis go to Waste are eye opening. An honorary mention should be given to Joel Balkan's The New Corporation as well as to Stewart Ewen's PR!: A Social History of Spin, both books don't deal directly with this topic, but are connected with it in fundamental ways.

4) For quantum mechanics, I think Art Hobson's Tales of the Quantum is quite lucid and confident. A close second would be Rovelli's Helgoland, which is quite philosophical too. These are the least confusing books on a confusing topic that I've been able to find.

5) For a general overview of science in general and problems with almost all fields of contemporary research, John Hands' Cosmosapiens is criminally underrated. A more popular approach, less ambitious but still fun would be Sean Carrol's The Big Picture.

6) To understand the European Union Varoufakis' The Global Minotaur and Ashoka Mody's Euro Tragedy is fantastic and exasperating. The EU can be very disorienting, but these can help you get a little less lost in the topic.

7) For a very important part of the history of philosophy, often not known or ignored, Chomsky (again) points out surprising facts in his What Kind of Creatures Are We? I can't praise this small book enough, specifically the first and last essays.

8) As far as neuroscience goes, a lot of it is pretty meh, but Adam Zeman's Consciousness: A Users Guide is quite solid and level headed, whereas Stanislas Dehaene's Consciousness and The Brain is convincing. Metzinger's The Ego Tunnel is also good.

9) In terms of philosophical literature, Jim Gauer's Novel Explosives is essentially an exhilarating though challenging romp through all topics in the field, with emphasis on identity and word use. A second one, much less philosophical but still wide ranging would be A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. I prefer contemporary stuff and these stand out to me, specifically NE.

10) For philosophy in general, it's hard to point to books without one's personal bias, but, I think that Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Russell's Analysis of Matter and his An Outline of Philosophy, C.I. Lewis' Mind and World Order and Raymond Tallis' The Knowing Animal are all quite important, I think.

Of course, there is much I can add to this list, on different topics too. But one has to choose and these came to mind at this moment in time. I'm confident that I left out a few which I'll have to edit in later.

As far as philosophy goes-

Plato's Republic. Aristotle's Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics. Descartes Meditations. Kant's CPR (or better yet, a summary or exegesis since Kant is painful to read). Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. Russell's Problems of Philosophy. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

a few non-philosophy ones I'd recommend to virtually anyone/everyone-

Hawking's Brief History of the Universe. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. Really any of Bart Ehrman's NT scholarship (Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, the Triumph of Christianity, etc). Am also a big fan of Sean Carroll and Lee Smolin's popular works on cosmology/astrophysics/quantum mechanics/etc.

And as a fantasy/sci-fi nerd I'd recommend fiction-lovers to check out Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos, Joe Abercrombie's First Law series, and the (ongoing) Expanse series.

As far as philosophy goes-

You forgot important books about existentialism. For example, the concept of anxiety by Kierkegaard or studies in pessimism by Schopenhauer.

Sure, I figured I'd leave areas where I'm less familiar/well-read to others, and existentialism is definitely one of those areas. But definitely read Kierkegaard, Sartre, etc. I'll just leave it to others to recommend specific works.

All writings of Paul Feyerabend. Especially "Science in a Free Society" and "Conquest of Abundance". Wilhelm Reich has written a fascinating analysis of fascism and Nazism.

Can't believe I forgot Hume. I am embarrass. Read Hume. Read either of his Enquiries. Read his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The man was brilliant, and some of his critiques and arguments remain definitive today (his refutation of the teleological/design argument, for instance).