Wednesday, June 08, 2022

I made a comment a few days ago and again tonight and I've realized it's the best definition of fascism I know.

Individualism and authoritarianism are in conflict, but each taken to the extreme they unite in an unstable antinomy, like a knot pulled tighter and tighter. Individualists become willing servants, and servitude becomes the end of individuality: the worship of the master they can never be, and the hatred of those maintaining their own individuality, who refuse to serve. I've said similar things dozens of times, but not I think the simple description of the simultaneous imperatives of freedom and its opposite. It doesn't matter if Trump's a fascist. His followers are. In proclaiming their loyalty they declare their own impotence. Political and industrial leaders along for the ride are just that. 

I worked on a job in the mid 90s with a man I only knew as Nitro.  
"Why do they call you Nitro?"
"because sometimes I go off." His voice was flat, descriptive.
I'd worked with him for a few days before I asked, and it was obvious he'd done some serious time, so the answer should have been obvious too, but I still laughed.
He was the sort of man who could side with fascists or republicans, but he wasn't either. He was the sort of man Borges worshipped, but who held Borges in contempt. 
It was a mixed crew, artists and straight tradesmen. A day later at lunch one of the artists made a comment and I chimed in, revealing myself. From that point he hated me.   
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I'd forgotten this:  "It might be worth defining fascism as the rebellion of individualism against itself, since fascists are incapable of functioning within a community." 
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and this, in the manuscript
“Primitives" and “barbarians” are not “reactionary”, a word describing the rebellion of individualism against itself. p 107. 

I added it a couple of years ago.

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