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craner

Beast of Burden
I mean, I don't like to dismiss Hobsbawm out of hand, but his point seems to be, "Fascist Revolution? Well it was Nationalist but it wasn't all that Socialist, so it was certainly Fascist but it definitely wasn't revolutionary!"

But that wasn't what Mosse was talking about at all!
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Thanks for the above, Craner. I couldn't even be called a dilettante re: politics and history, so I tend to read such things uncritically!

Another fantastic Orwell essay that I read yesterday: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws

'Wells, Hitler and the World State'

Hitler is a criminal lunatic, and Hitler has an army of millions of men, aeroplanes in thousands, tanks in tens of thousands. For his sake a great nation has been willing to overwork itself for six years and then to fight for two years more, whereas for the common-sense, essentially hedonistic world-view which Mr. Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood...

What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners. For the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the S.S. men patrolling the London streets at this moment. Similarly, why are the Russians fighting like tigers against the German invasion? In part, perhaps, for some half-remembered ideal of Utopian Socialism, but chiefly in defence of Holy Russia (the ‘sacred soil of the Fatherland’, etc. etc.), which Stalin has revived in an only slightly altered from. The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.

History as [Wells] sees it is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man. Now, he is probably right in assuming that a ‘reasonable,’ planned form of society, with scientists rather than witch-doctors in control, will prevail sooner or later, but that is a different matter from assuming that it is just round the corner. There survives somewhere or other an interesting controversy which took place between Wells and Churchill at the time of the Russian Revolution. Wells accuses Churchill of not really believing his own propaganda about the Bolsheviks being monsters dripping with blood, etc., but of merely fearing that they were going to introduce an era of common sense and scientific control, in which flag-wavers like Churchill himself would have no place. Churchill's estimate of the Bolsheviks, however, was nearer the mark than Wells's. The early Bolsheviks may have been angels or demons, according as one chooses to regard them, but at any rate they were not sensible men.

But because [Wells] belonged to the nineteenth century and to a non-military nation and class, he could not grasp the tremendous strength of the old world which was symbolised in his mind by fox-hunting Tories. He was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.

All seems extremely relevant in this age of profound technological and scientific progress on the one hand, and Trump and ISIS on the other.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I just watched Vittorio de Sica's film 'The Garden of the Finzi Contini', which is a beautiful and chilling piece about the Jews in Fascist Italy. It's the most intelligent film about Italian Fascism I've ever seen, certainly superior to Bertolucci's 'The Conformist' which, while being a Masterpiece in many ways, is ultimately undermined by the directors absurd theory that Fascism, at root, is a psychological phenomenon of repressed homosexuality.

It made me think of writing a comparative essay of de Sica's film and Renzo de Felice's classic tome 'The Jews in Fascist Italy', to compare historiography against aesthetics in the context of contemporary political debates about democracy, anti-Semitism and fascism. But now I've typed out the idea in that exhausting sentence, I probably won't bother.

I wrote this post in response to my own droning monologue above.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The ultimate Orwell book is the Everyman collected essays. All of his most relevant work is in there.
 

luka

Well-known member
I just watched Vittorio de Sica's film 'The Garden of the Finzi Contini', which is a beautiful and chilling piece about the Jews in Fascist Italy. It's the most intelligent film about Italian Fascism I've ever seen, certainly superior to Bertolucci's 'The Conformist' which, while being a Masterpiece in many ways, is ultimately undermined by the directors absurd theory that Fascism, at root, is a psychological phenomenon of repressed homosexuality.

It made me think of writing a comparative essay of de Sica's film and Renzo de Felice's classic tome 'The Jews in Fascist Italy', to compare historiography against aesthetics in the context of contemporary political debates about democracy, anti-Semitism and fascism. But now I've typed out the idea in that exhausting sentence, I probably won't bother.

I wrote this post in response to my own droning monologue above.


It's a silly film but isn't the idea reichs? That unsatisfactory orgasms lead to fascism?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/howard-jacobson-is-the-worst-living-writer/

Extraordinarily amusing and brutal takedown of Howard Jacobson, which I found while looking for articles BY Howard Jacobson, who I've read a few pieces by recently which I liked.

Stuff like this always makes me wonder if I have any critical thinking skills whatsoever, or any opinion of my own. Because as soon as I read such a coruscating attack on somebody I've previously respected, I feel as if the attack at worst is aimed at me, and at best suggests I've really not got much of a mind at all.
 

luka

Well-known member
Charlie Brooker was better at that sort of hyperbolic hatred. Howard Jacobsen and ADB are wretched cunts though
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
You're right, stuff like this:

Alain de Botton would see the seas turned to acid slime and the sky filled with iron and smoke. He is directly responsible for every evil act in the world today. He wants us to kill our young.

Is very Brookerish, and - as with Brooker - you can't help but feel the author doesn't feel THAT strongly about De Botton, but it's fun both to write and read bitter invective. Actually, reading this stuff is a bit like eating junk food, insofar as it's extremely flavourful but afterwards leaves you feeling rather nauseous and numb.

I mean, shortly after praising this guy to the hilt I started thinking that I may have swallowed HIS line of reasoning rather too easily... I'm so fucking GULLIBLE and credulous, it's a real handicap. Again, I think it's down to mental laziness, but also a lack of self-esteem which manifests itself in being extremely easily persuaded into believing things, particularly by people with strident voices.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Frankie Boyle writes like this for the Gruniad now, too: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/frankie-boyle

This stuff is sort of the left's equivalent of Katie Hopkins, isn't it? Very OTT and replete with ugly imagery; only, being aimed at left-wing liberals/socialists, it also finds room for lots of high-brow references.

I find it all very easy and fun to swallow cos it chimes in with my own anti-Tory prejudices. If I read a column arguing that Corbyn was an evil, hideous-looking cunt I'd probably consider it a form of facist propaganda, but as far as David Cameron goes, let the pig-fucking ham-faced nazi have it!
 

luka

Well-known member
Hahaha you're funny but yeah it's a template and no one writing from a template is a 'writer' Brooker bought more flair to it but after you've read a few articles like that you start feeling a computer program could produce a Brooker cos it's so formulaic.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think there's a skill in coming up with funny comparisons to things, but I reckon that's what makes it feel flavourful but empty. It's not substantive. It dazzles and disarms credulous yokels like me and doesn't make you think and therefore isn't half as clever as it flatters itself, and its readers, as being.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm very much concerned with how clever I am because that's always been the thing I've been praised for being, alongside funny, and to think that there are others out there cleverer than me is liable to drag me into a pit of despair. Stupid, isn't it?

Also as I become more and more of a failure in most areas of life such as relationships and sex etc I'm pinning more and more hopes on being clever, and simultaneously realising more and more how clever I'm not. This must be what it feels like to be a great beauty detecting the first crows-foot in the mirror.
 

luka

Well-known member
That's where you have to start drawing distinctions. Like, well they're very clever in a mechanical rational way but they've got no wit which is indicative of a lack of perspective. Or, yeah they're brilliantly instinctively funny but they don't take anything seriously indicating a superficiality which reflects poorly on them.
Or yeah they're clever but they're nerds and they don't take drugs or listen to rap music.

Always safeguard your sense of superiority. Its all we have.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Just had a podcast (with video) released from JournoDAO, where we talk about web3 journalism and how open source protocols may help us construct healthier media economies.

 
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