Nationalism as a Vehicle for Universalism

Nowadays we are not used to thinking of nationalism as being "on the left," but once upon a time that was the case. Not too long ago, there was a vibrant black nationalism on the left (whereas nowadays it is either non-existent or, as with the New Black Panther Party, taken over by reactionary, non-universalist Muslims). I just wrote a blog post about how the Hippie movement could have manifested itself—and in my mind much more successfully so—as a left nationalist movement. There used to be a secular Arab nationalism on the left in the Arab world. There used to be leftist national liberation movements all throughout the 3rd world. Nowadays we only have Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia as the only real outposts of left nationalism remaining (and maybe Uganda and some other countries that don't really show up on our political radar screen).

The mother of all left-nationalisms, though, was once upon a time the French Revolution. The proponents of the French Revolution envisioned the French nation, not as what we would call today a right-wing *ethnic* nation, but as a (what we would call left-wing) universalist *civic* nation that would act as a vehicle for the universalism of the French Revolution (and so, to defend the French nation from the emigré plots and from the alliances of reactionary monarchs was to defend the French Revolution. Think of it as "Bourgeois Liberalism in one Country." Stalin would have understood).

That is, from its very beginning, the French nation was foremost envisioned as a social contract between individuals, and second (or not at all) as a primordial collection of ethnically "French" people (à la German nationalism) that should band together not because of political interest, but because of some shared primordial ethnic destiny.

In contemporary France there is, in fact, an official debate being held over how exactly to define the French nation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/08/france-national-identity-debate-race
Many French on the left view this "debate" as an attempt to redefine French nationalism from being a "nation civique" (that would universally welcome any immigrants who shared the républicain vision) to being a "nation ethnique" (that would not be as welcoming to immigrants, and that would try to (quite ridiculously) redefine the French as the descendants of the Gaulois, as the descendants of those who built Notre Dame—in short, as the French-speaking descendants of anyone who didn't arrive in France within, oh, let's conveniently say, the last 60 years.

The reason why this debate seems so ridiculous to me is that there really didn't exist a French "nation" as recently as 1789. There was, instead, a political entity (that happened to be called "France") being ruled by a monarchical dynasty that happened to contain within it many different nations, but that happened to later come (mostly) under the control of a new political system that transformed all of these different nations into one "French" nation. In a way, a civic nationalism would have been the only nationalism that would have made sense in 1789. Ethnically, in France there were people who spoke Alsatian, Breton, Basque, Gascon, Occitan, Provençal, le Français national (basically the Parisian dialect), etc. The culture of southern France and Northern France was very different. Some regions had had totally different levels of limited self-government before 1789. Some parts of "France" had only been recently acquired (Alsace) and were widely considered to be hardly ethnically French at all as late as 1939.

Rather, the ethnic French nation that nowadays co-exists in a subordinate role to the civic French nation came about precisely thanks to that civic nationalism—the levée en masse, the national education system founded in large part in order to spread republicanism to the whole population of France, etc.

Even with the partial consolidation of the ethnic French nation, though, there still remains a vibrant love of French "provincialism." In France nowadays most people would see no contradiction between celebrating provincial specificities (cheeses, wines, quirks of manner, quirks of speech, etc.) and being a French nationalist, precisely because the French nation is foremost a civic one that does not rely on ethnic commonality in order to define itself.

This is precisely how I envision my "nation of a thousand flags" project—that is, the advent of a nationalism (and I hope eventually a new corresponding nation) that not just tolerates, but simultaneously celebrates and draws inspiration from hip-hop, salsa, mariachi bands, Norse pagan heavy metal, Buddhist chanting, and what have you. This nation would be able to do this, and still stay coherent as a nation, only if it is defined as a civic (and potentially universal) nation.

Even so, France was theoretically supposed to be a "universal nation," but that didn't stop it from using its self-proclaimed universalism to justify imperialism under the banner of a "mission civilatrice." This is where we must supplement the ethnic/civic nationalism distinction with a mutually-exclusive distinction between nationalism and imperialism.

One could make the case that there is nothing contradictory between ethnic nationalism and imperialism, and while this is not quite true, one must admit that imperialism in the service of an ethnique nation has a certain logic. The ethnic nation conquers and subjugates a foreign group of people and exploits them, enriching themselves. Simple enough. But even in such a case as this, problems may arise for the ethnic nation.

We can see this in the case of Nazi German imperialism (which, one may suppose, had these same motives of plunder at heart). For example, whereas Hitler had wanted to rid Germany of foreign populations, in fact the war ended up bringing many more foreigners into the (newly-enlarged) Germany (even if the foreigners were non-citizens or industrial slaves). To a lesser extent, this has been a "problem" that Britain has recently been facing with regards to Afghanistan. It turns out that Britain's participation in the war there has helped to drive many Afghanis out of Afghanistan, and some of them have ended up in Britain, angering British nativists.

In the case of the U.S., we can see how imperialism can actually work antithetical to nationalism by looking at the U.S. military. This military is now a thoroughly non-national institution. It icharacterized by imperial ambition, bureaucracy, professionalism, careerism, and mercenary enticements, rather than the (ethnic or civic) nation patriotically upholding its nationalism. To be sure, the U.S. military often talks about "spreading democracy," (that is, the U.S.'s civic nationalism) to other lands, and soldiers often justify their participation in the military by saying that they just wanted to "serve their country" (ethnic nationalism) or "protect the Constitution" (civic nationalism), in reality I would wager that economic/career motives are by far the strongest factors in a person's decision to join the military nowadays, perhaps in conjunction with a personal penchant for that sort of line of work. In any case, we do not find U.S. soldiers in Iraq regularly singing the American equivalent of the Marseillaise or busying themselves with spreading republican virtues and republican ideas among the Iraqi population. Instead we find mostly a bunch of fratty guys being bros with one another, havin' fun, doing their job, occasionally raping some women or massacreing some Iraqis, or perhaps being thoroughly professional, but in any case not showing any special zeal for spreading the U.S.'s civic nationalism. What we are missing is a military that approaches the task of war not in the professional, non-ideological manner in an imperial army, but in the nationalist manner of citizen's defending the country.

And what is this country that the American military defends? Is it a national territory, or an imperial one? Considering how it includes territories such as Diego Garcia, Qatar, Kuwait, and all of the rest of the U.S.'s 700+ foreign military bases, it is clearly the latter.

There is a more fundamental distinction, though, between nationalism and imperialism other than the effects that the two have on a military. There is also the question of general motivation. An empire seeks only power. It does not care about the nature of its imperial holdings. The local people can believe in this religion or that, can speak this language or that, can hold this ideology or that, the empire doesn't care. It just wants to hold the territory and recieve taxes (or, in the modern version, provide access to that territory for corporations, which in turn will uphold the empire). A nation, by contrast, is an intimate community (whether for ethnic or civic reasons). A nation cares very much about what religions members of the nation hold, or whether the members of the nation can communicate with each other, or whether the members of the nation subscribe to the nation's civic nationalism. Nationalism is, then, by its nature more totalitarian-minded than plain imperialism. I consider this a good thing. To be sure, an empire can be more invasive. It can have more secret police. It can arrest more people. But the motivation is always simply to maintain its power. It is interested in getting rid of, or intimidating, its enemies; it is not interested in winning the allegiance of its internal adversaries (for the sake of national community...that is, unless such efforts can easily profit the empire's power).

Let's look at Nazi Germany, for example. Was Nazi Germany a nation, or an empire? Well, it would depend on the timeframe. One could make the argument that, up until the spring of 1939, Nazi Germany was a nation. But after its takeover of Czechoslovakia, (after its motivation was clearly no longer the reunification, protection, and regeneration of Germans, but the acquisition of imperial power and territory) it became an empire. This was the point, in fact, when many leftists such as Simone Weil decided that Nazi Germany's territorial demands were no longer legitimate. In his "Age of Extremes," British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm makes a comment that when he was in Germany in 1934 and saw French flags flying in the Ruhr, that even someone like him had to feel that there wasn't something quite right about that. If one reads the lyrics from the Horst-Wessel Lied, it almost sounds like Nazi Germany was a national liberation movement. "Die Knechtshaft dauert nur noch kurze Zeit," etc. Well, the point here is that, at the *very least* (i.e. perhaps much earlier), Nazi Germany ceased to be a national liberation movement, and began to be an empire, in the spring of 1939.

And likewise, the moment that France came to rule over people whom it treated as second-class citizens, rather than equal members of the French civic nation, and the moment that it ceased to be concerned with spreading its civic universalism and became focused on acquiring imperial power, that is when its rhetoric about universalism became transformed from a beacon of hope to a cynical excuse for empire. That France's imperial ambitions (under Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, under the 3rd and 4th Republics) had an adverse effect on its original civic nationalism and universalist mission is obvious.

Therefore, any civic nation with universalist pretensions would do well to stay far away from any imperial temptation. It will only corrupt or override the universalist civic nationalism.

The Hippie Movement as a Völkisch Revival

The Hippie movement has long since been canonized in American politics as a left-wing, liberal/radical/libertarian movement, and to a certain extent that is true. But I think what made the Hippie movement so subversive, at least in its initial stages (up until 1969) was what we might call its "right-wing" element—its "völkischness." What we need more than ever in the U.S. today is an emancipatory movement that cannot be easily attacked from the right, and I think that the Hippie movement, in its initial stages, held this promise. If the Hippie movement had gone further with its völkisch element and had drawn some more concrete parallels with other historical manifestations of völkischness, then it might not have become so easy prey for the right-wing critiques along the lines of, "The Hippie movement is just a bunch of irresponsible brats who are weakening morality and society," etc.

For example, what if, instead, the initial Hippies had interpreted their movement precisely as a response to the weakening of morality and society under the capitalist consumerism of their parents' generation? What if the Hippies had said to the parent generation, "It is you who are being irresponsible, with your unhappy marriages, your unsatisfied, desperate wives escaping into painkillers, your sacrificing of real human relationships between husbands and wives for your childish, superficial status symbols that consumerist capitalism spits out at you, your abandonment of the democratic spirit of a free people in lieu of the drone-like spirit of the corporate yes-man...the Communists need not destroy your families, your sacred beliefs, or your democratic society...your cynical pursuit of the status symbols of consumerist capitalism have already accomplished this for you."

In contrast to this portrait of "Leave-it-to-Beaver-America," Hippies could have presented themselves as the responsible alternative, the alternative that would regenerate the American volk, that would regenerate human relationships and root them back into what really mattered—love, shared experiences, and satisfying work (rather than consumerism). The Hippies could have re-framed work as a satisfying communal experience to be accomplished among equals (instead of simply shunning work and "dropping out" and becoming consumers). The Hippies could have appeared as a force possessing more wisdom than the previous generation, as well as a freer, more democratic spirit befitting the United States of America.

In fact, I say, "The Hippies could have done all of this," but the fact is that some initial Hippies *were* doing all of this. What else was signified by the peasant dresses, the talk of "love," the "going back to the land" projects, in which people would theoretically make a living in order to live real human lives (sharing love and meaningful experiences and heartfelt beliefs) rather than work in order to buy pathetic status symbols.

Where it all went wrong, of course, is that the Hippie movement was hijacked by the same consumerist capitalism that it should have been more precisely targeting in the first place. Capitalist consumerism did not need productive workers, it just needed trendy consumers, so it suited capitalist consumerism just fine if the Hippie movement became a vapid, irresponsible movement of trendy consumers spending their middle-class parents' money on stupid status symbols of coolness and supposed "rebellion."

Is it crazy to think that a little bit of anti-capitalism from the right, and perhaps even a little bit more Spartan militarism, could have helped to save the Hippie movement from this awful fate? To be sure, the message would remain that of "love of friends," but it would also include "struggle with enemies," and would transform "love" from a passive emotion to a meaningful and deliberate conveyance towards other comradely human beings.

More thoughts on a new Left-Nationalism

Someone posted this video on the cabot-open list the other day:

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This is a must watch.

Get inspired.

That is all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVoaMlzvGIw&feature=response_watch

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And this was my response:

Yep, it sure is great when they get 'em young...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMoxZeTeRPE

I understand that we are all secretly yearning for a new universalism to bring humanity together out of its anomie and self-slaughter, but it makes my stomach convulse and my heart ache to see the oppressed minorities who have the most reason to resist opt for strands of religious universalism. Being all equal brethren under our common paternalistic authority, the Lord, does not interest me. I have not known self-proclaimed benevolent paternalism to ever be actually benevolent or fitting for adults (or children) who want to retain their dignity to follow.

Where is secular universalism in the Arab world nowadays? Secular Arab nationalism, secular Arab anti-imperialist and human rights groups? Likewise, where is secular Black nationalism in the U.S. today? Where can I find blacks, and whites, coming together on a platform of secular universalism...and, mind you, I'm talking about something much more substantial than the liberal universalism of Obama that guarantees that we all have the equal right to not have ourselves or our property to be bothered. Okay, sure, but is that all that we want politics to do?

Am I the only one in the U.S. that is yearning for the politics of the U.S. to be MORE totalitarian (in other words, to have politics invade MORE of our lives and do more to imbue our lives with more meaning)? Am I crazy in wanting that? I speak, of course, about not an authoritarian totalitarianism, but a democratic totalitarianism (sort of like the French Revolution on steroids), a democratic total-Weltanshauung (world outlook) to replace, equally, not only what I find to inherently be the hierarchical total-Weltanshauung of religion, but also the incomplete, petty, fussy, pathetic excuse for an inspiring Weltanschauung that is bourgeois liberalism. I want a politics that will imbue our lives with extremes of emotion and meaning...but I don't want a theocracy (which would, as it happens, accomplish those goals perfectly well).

It has always been accepted that religion is allowed to imbue our lives with meaning, but to turn to politics for that has always been seen as totalitarian and out of the proper scope of politics. According to classical liberalism, the proper scope of politics is confined to guaranteeing certain negative liberties (freedom from being harmed, etc.), which might make abstract sense, but applying only negative liberties, in practice, leads in practice to a skeleton of a society: fair, equal, just, but alienated, frustrated, pointless, uninspiring, depressing, etc. What about politics that don't just stand against something negatively (standing against infringement on property, liberty, etc.), but that also positively compel people to achieve certain accomplishments of meaning and greatness and excitement in their lives? This is the same lament that one hears from religious authorities about the problems of post-modern society, and I very much feel what they are saying and concur with them on this point. But I find THEIR solution intolerable. I am driven to desperately search for something else. But so far I have not found it, and I fear that I am the only one looking in this direction.

So far, the closest I have come to fleshing out these vague impulses that I feel has been to juxtapose something like this:

H. Rap Brown of the Black Panthers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMoxZeTeRPE

And something like this...

Laibach: Geburt einer Nation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YE_j0xIsJA
Laibach: Life is Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbB1s7TZUQk

...and insist that they can be organically and harmoniously fused, and that they are two sides of the same coin, of a similar current of feeling running throughout all of humanity. Just as Joseph Campbell has written about the common threads of the religions of the world, and how one can come to not just a passive common appreciation of all of them, but an active fusion of their best elements, and just how he wrote similarly about mythological archetypes in "Hero of a Thousand Faces," likewise I would like to construct a "Nation of a thousand flags." Not just passive "tolerance" of national "diversity," but a forceful integration of all of the most extreme, exciting, compelling, and meaning-imbueing aspects of the world's nationalisms. There was once upon a time when nationalism was on the left, not on the right. (The French Revolution, many third-world independence movements, black nationalism, etc.) Oh how I long to forge a new left-nationalism. The result would be a stark contrast with what I see as bourgeois society:

Laibach: Wirtschaft ist tot (The Economy is dead)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJGujbkUaCs

Sterile. Obtaining better "quality of life" and better "purchasing power" (Qualität des Lebens & großen Angebote (literally, "bargains")) at the expense of putting ourselves through the process of bourgeois domestication. Substituting a set of cruelly self-regimented accountant's indulgences for the wild and free indulgencies of organic life. Substituting the bleak and cold stoicism and strength of steel and obedient factory workers for the fiery, impassioned, yet resolute organic stoicism and strength of the "Life is Life" video, or of these videos:

Die Liebe ist die größte Kraft. Die alles schaft. ("Love is the greatest force. It can accomplish anything).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9va2Le-9ZU

Dead Prez - Way of Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kEirYlSlgM

Despite the superficial difference in the "ethnic" wellsprings of these videos, I consider them to represent the same human longing for a free, indulgent, expansive, yet self-disciplined, strong, and meaningful organicism...and I could not think of a starker contrast to this organicism than the sterility and the guilty, suffocating self-loathing of the organic pleasures of worldly life that most religions maintain.

Long story short, I guess that's why my heart aches when I watch your video.

---Matthew

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One further thought:

Although it might seem at first like bourgeois society and religion are in an adversarial relationship, as it happens it seems to me like they are accidental (and unwilling) co-conspirators. Bourgeois society can't help but continue to have certain shortcomings that leave something to be desired from life (lack of meaning, etc.), and this constant source of problems is a boon for religion, as it gives religion a purpose and gives people a continued reason to flock to it. Then, with people going to religion as a compensation, people are contented, and bourgeois life is given no imperative to fundamentally change or revolutionize/transcend itself. So the two systems, even though they are oriented in opposite directions, end up enabling one another. This sly game has been going on for far too long for my taste. Though we may find escapism from bourgeois life's problems in religion, in the end I find it just as dissatisfying as escapism from bourgeois life via drugs or video games. Life still fundamentally feels empty. No, only an abolition/transcendence of bourgeois life towards some higher secular mission will save my heart and body from withering into dust.

The situation in Iran

For some leftist coverage of the situation in Iran, check out:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/iranian-uprising-f235/index.html

It appears to be a very complicated situation there. I do not think the time has yet arrived for unbridled giddiness. As I see it, the acting groups of the situation are:
*Ahmadinejad & co.
*The clerical establishment
*Moussavi & co.
*Average people who are Moussavi supporters
*Other average people who are understandably dissatisfied with the Iranian regime, but who do not support Moussavi
*The U.S. (incl. CIA interference)
*People being paid off by the CIA to contribute to the destabilization of the country.

For the first two groups, the Iranian uprising is a hindrance rather than an opportunity. Ahmadinejad & co. will want to hold onto power at all costs, though, whereas I could see the clerical establishment being willing to cut a deal with Moussavi & co. if it is deemed to be worth it. Moussavi, after all, is no direct opponent to this clerical establishment, just some of its more hardline cultural policies. I would expect very little change in Iranian foreign policy, for example, if Moussavi were to attain power with the clerical establishment intact (and perhaps even without the clerical establishment intact). Iran will still be pursuing a nuclear program. Iran will also still probably be supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. The only difference might be a little more willingness to receive direct investment from the West.

For the rest of the groups, the uprising is an opportunity. Not an unconditionally positive thing, for the uprising may yet still take a turn against their particular favor, but an opportunity. They each want different things.

Moussavi & co. want power.

Many Moussavi supporters started out just wanting a re-do of the election so that they could get a legitimate chance of getting their favorite, Moussavi, into power. But many have become rapidly disillusioned with the whole clerical establishment by the recent events, and many of this group are now calling for the outright abolition of that establishment. Moussavi & co. are not quite comfortable with this, for I'm sure they expected to be able to lean on the familiar clerical establishment for support once in power, and even worse, the abolition of the clerical establishment would give an opening to more radical groups and a radicalization of their own supporters that could threaten Moussavi & co.'s chances for power. That is something that Moussavi & co. do not want. So Moussavi & co. have in the past few days been trying to get out in front of the demands of their supporters (by belatedly calling for more radical tactics and appearing to take some initiative, whereas in reality it is Moussavi & co. who are being led), reaffirm their credentials, and corral their supporters' aspirations into tamer demands.

Other people who are dissatisfied with the Iranian regime, but who do not support Moussavi, have been some of the most radical elements in the uprising so far. This is where the chants of "Death to the Dictator" and the anti-clerical language have mostly arisen at first. However, this group is itself internally diverse. It includes communists of MANY MANY feuding sub-types (as usual), in addition to culturally-radical students and others who are just disillusioned with the entire system after perceiving the election as a complete fraud (which, by the way, I'm not even going to touch upon the issue of whether the election was really a fraud or not, but by this point, that no longer really matters. The uprising, in general, has moved beyond that issue). It is this group that has jumped on this unprecedented opening to call for systemic change that I would "support" during the ongoing uprising, and it is the existence of this group that makes me conclude that the uprising does have some worth and is, in general, worth defending against the crackdowns of the ruling regime, despite the unquestionable existence of...

U.S. interference. Although the U.S. would not have much to gain by supporting any one faction in this uprising (for example, I do not think that the U.S. is really trying to foment another "color revolution" in favor of Moussavi because that would not really help the U.S. much on the all-important foreign policy front...the U.S. would like to topple the Ahmadinejad regime, but only in favor of a much more docile puppet, rather than a homegrown nationalist reformer), I am still sure that the U.S. is using this uprising as an opportunity to foment general disorder even more, considering that it has had existing destablilization covert ops projects enabled against Iran since at least 2006, and I have seen nothing to suggest that the U.S. has since discontinued these projects. The ideal outcome for U.S. stabilization efforts is to have this uprising end in a stalemate that ends up weakening Iran internally over the long term. An outright Moussavi victory might be a slight victory for the U.S. efforts, but not much. The worst case scenario for the U.S. would be the victory of communist forces that would maintain economic and military nationalism, but would diffuse domestic tensions by abolishing the religious establishment and by reforming cultural practices and rectifying economic inequality.

So, I am sure that some component of the uprising consists of U.S. lackeys. However, unlike others who have been trying to paint this entire uprising as one big staged spectacle in the service of U.S. imperialism, I think this is a small element that does not define the overall character of the Iranian uprising. Therefore, in conversation, my position would be to support the Iranian revolution, and especially to acknowledge the existence of, and support, the most radical elements. That said, even a Moussavi victory would be a slightly progressive change (although we should have no illusions about the fact that Moussavi will crack down upon leftists in order to end the uprising and put to rest the more radical aspriations, if/when he gets into power, so in that sense, I will probably never "support," Moussavi, even though I would have to acknowledge that his victory would take Iran in a more progressive direction, which would be a comparatively good thing. Not supporting Moussavi, despite this good aspect of his, has to do with the ethical imperative of not being implicated, in even the remotest sense, in the suppression of leftist forces, I suppose).

American nationalism is the most pathetic nationalism in the world

American nationalism has all of the excitement of a high school civics lecture. The problem is, American nationalism is always too distant from the heart. It is always reflecting on what the American *State* has accomplished, perhaps because that is one of the few things that truly unites Americans--we are all subjects (and beneficiaries) of the American State. We can all relate to that. But the result is a type of civic, bureaucratic nationalism that would be fitting for the Roman Empire in its last days of decadence.

American nationalism is always reflecting on either the greatness of the American State, or on how the contributions of miniscule, ordinary Americans have made the American State strong. One does not feel heroic when one serves the American State. One feels like a tiny, miserable mercenary, serving a huge, distant, bureaucratic, elitist multi-ethnic empire like Austria-Hungary.

Amercian nationalism entirely lacks the Blood-and-Soil folkish heroism of German nationalism.

American nationalism also cannot match up to the revolutionary, universalist, radical utopian heroism of French nationalism. Sure, we make some feeble attempts with a few "We the People" phrases scattered in our national tradition, but the minute you start singing, "Aux armes citoyens!" you are bound to get some petulant lecture about "the dangers of mob rule" and how "we are a republic and not a democracy, you know!"

The nationalist fairy tales that we are taught in elementary school might be good enough for a 3rd-grader, but they are hardly anything suitable for an adult to sink his or her teeth into.

At its very best, American nationalism is like the loyalty one feels to a company that provides dental insurance and free child care.

Napoleon summed up the problem most clearly:

"A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him."

But half-pences and petty distinctions are all that American society currently offers its citizens. And that's exactly why American national feeling rightfully languishes in the pathetic state that it does.

More specifically....

My current thinking can be entirely encapsulated in the contrast between the following images:
http://www.forsalebyowner.com/images/large/21100042-1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blv-haussmann-lafayette.jpg
I am for the latter and against the former. (If you've ever been to Paris, you know in your gut what I'm alluding to).

To elaborate....What does the first image represent?
*Pre-modernism
***Religion
***Family as the essential economic unit
***Private society (as opposed to mass society or public society)
***Narrow-mindedness
***Provincialism
***Exclusionism and hierarchy according to the following criteria:
*****Nation
*****Race
*****Gender
*****Class
***Nepotism
*****Non-transparency in life
*****Arbitrariness

What does the second image represent?
*Modernism
***Secularism in the public sphere (which will be expanded to include any relation between two people...genuinely-private

spirituality, residing only in one's thoughts and solitary actions, will be the only socially-acceptable form of irrationality. Convicing other people to do something or feel a certain way based on supernatural evidence will be laughed at outright).
***Family no longer as an economic unit (children and non-working family members not economically dependent on the family, but rather supported by the public). Family as a provisional instrument for raising citizens, with children and other family members (girls, women, mothers) who are traditionally told to keep to the private sphere being transformed into fundamentally public citizens, ultimately answerable not to any head of the household, but to the public citizenry in general from the basis of being an equal fellow citizen.
***Mass society or public society (as opposed to private society)
*****People addressing each other in the political/economic sphere not as friends, pals who are owed favors or privileges, etc, but as equal citizens.
*******Friendship and love freed from any instrumental, mechanistic political/economic duties, and liberated to function truly as bonds of affection between mutually-consenting peers, without the strategic calculations of former times
***********The strategic calculations are instead relegated to the formal, transparent public political/economic sphere. People argue for policies, renumerations (not favors), etc., as citizens meeting in ultra-democratic workplace, municipal, and national councils.
***************All citizens vote directly on all laws applying to their jurisdiction (workplace, town, or countryewide).
***************Drafting committees are elected to guage concerns and propose, but not pass, legislation. Others may draft legislation and petition it for the general ballot.
***************Ballots are not taken once every few years, but are accessible continuously. That is, there will be a permanent ballot office in each precinct. You will have a safety-deposit box with your ballots that you have filled out. Whenever you want to change your vote or vote on something new, you go there, get out your old ballots, change your vote, get the vote recorded, and put the ballot back in your safety-deposit box as a record of your vote. No need for "nay" votes. When a bill gets 55% of the registered voting citizenry to vote "yea" for it, the bill becomes law. If enough people who supported the bill ever change their votes such that the bill drops below 45% approval, the law is revoked.
***************Elected, instantly-recallable judges and jury duty as before.
***************Elected, instantly-recallable officials of the executive branch.
***************This is mob rule. If you fear the consequences, you need to go to work on your fellow citizens, whipping them up into shape to take on these adult responsibilities in a rational manner.
***************All adult citizens will also have militia training and militia duty for a few weeks out of every year.
****************The citizenry's vote will be required for a formal declaration of war, and a formal declaration will be required in all cases for an extended conflict. The (recallable) executive may exercise provisional powers for only a short period of time. The professional, standing army will be minimal--enough to resist a surprise attack for a short while. In the case of a real war, the military will use a ruthlessly undiscriminating "Levée en masse" (draft). Only the disabled, young, elderly, and resisters will be exempted. Resisters will lose their citizenship if they resist, but it would be illogical to force them to fight. Gays will be included.
*******************In the military, to be eligible to be an officer, one must have a certain qualification of training. From this pool, officers are to be elected by their inferiors by secret ballot. But while they are officers, they are to receive strict obedience. Officer votes (recalls) will occur only at certain intervals. Generals are to be elected by the citizenry and are to be instantly recallable.
******************As long as citizens perform their basic jury, militia, and (if need be) military duty, they will be provided with basic food, housing, and healthcare. What renumeration they receive beyond that will depend on the judgment of their workplace council.
***Broad, farsightedness.
***Internationalism. The entire world may even be conceived of as "one nation of humans."
***Inclusive of everyone who makes effort to ally with your cause. Integrating races, ethnicities, genders, and classes into one equal citizenry so as to strengthen society and free it from being riven by internal divisions.
***Impersonal workplace councils as the key to "success," not nepotist favors or informal favors from family or friends (which breed their own dependencies and power relations). Friends and family members can still give and receive gifts, but no citizen will be dependent on such charity because each citizen will have his/her essentials provided for, in addition to extra renumeration from their workplace.
*****There will be no bosses or owners in the economic sphere. In this sense, it will be post-capitalist.
*******There can be competition, though. People will compete at being citizens. The better the work they do, and the better they are impersonally rated by their co-workers, the more renumeration they will receive. But under all circumstances, all citizens will have equal *power* to contribute to these decisions.
********New companies will can be launched and given starting capital by municipal votes. Workplaces will compete against each other. There will be a market exchange mechanism. But nobody may buy another's labor-power. Those involved in an enterprise must always be treated as equal citizens with equal decision-making power.
*********Workplace delegates (instantly-recallable) may be elected.
**********This movement sees the daily struggles between workers and employers as irrelevant to our interests. We will take sides with neither one. We are not for any class above any other. We want workplace democracy for all citizens. We are not interested in the particularistic battles benefitting one trade union or another. We want equal power. Once we have equal power, we will each be in an equal position to judge whether particular situations warrant equal *conditions* or renumeration for those involved. Insofar as communist groups are striving for these same things, they are our allies. If they relegate themselves to narrow reformist battles, they are irrelevant.

The key word is modernism.

The key manifestation is mass society.

The key method is direct democracy. Mob rule.

Calling all hardcore "vrai(e)s républicain(e)s": let us fulfill the promise of 1793.

The catchphrase: "The French Revolution on steroids."

Okay, why is this fascist?
*The political/economic community is defined in terms of citizenship instead of class (although it is a citizenship that is willing to embrace any race, nation, gender, etc., and that only discriminates based on a person's views and willingness to fulfill the duties of a citizen of this society, and it is a citizenship that inherently dissolves class).
*It calls for strict self-discipline and coldly-nihilistic rationality in the public sphere (when political/economic issues aren't involved, when you are in what private sphere is left, when you are not using a social relation for instrumental advantages, you can be as irrational and emotional as you want). How else could this mass public citizenry not descend into emotivism, irrationality, and mob rule?
*It is motivated by a desire to modernize and strengthen one's society, to make it more dynamic, just as fascism was, in part, motivated.
*It calls for allegiance to the public before allegiance to the family or any other personal, private relations. When the two conflict (when you must disagree with your friend or lover on policies, or when you must judge them concerning a criminal wrongdoing), your duties as a citizen carry more weight than your duties as a friend or lover. (But as long as they remain good citizens as well, everything's peachy).

How does this differ from traditional fascism?
*It's more modern than fascism. It is not saddled with absurdly obsolete racist biology, primitive leader-worship, or pre-modern enshrinement of the family.
*Allegiance to the public and occasional sacrifice is ultimately justified on transparently, farsightedly-egoistic grounds rather than on supposedly-altruistic ones (which usually turn out to be egoistic anyways when you pull away the rhetorical disguises).
*This does not seek to protect capitalism, but to supersede it. It does not just call for "respect" between employers and workers, or even better conditions for workers. It calls for the abolition of employers and workers, and the institution of equal economic citizens at each workplace (and by the way, if you want to change workplaces, you have to get voted on at the next one, but you assume your position with equal powers at the new workplace just as everyone else. Perhaps not equal expertise right away, but equal powers. And if you want to kick a miscreant co-worker out of the workplace, you can vote on that and do that as well. That worker will just have to subsist on the citizen rations for a bit and join another workplace sometime later).

This new "state" is obviously not authoritarian as it is in fascism. Instead, it is directly-democratic. However, this new "state" in this new modern mass society is still just as totalitarian, perhaps even moreso, because it "intrudes" into the private sphere perhaps even more than in fascism (or, rather, it robs the private sphere of territory...when it comes to the family, when it comes to dispelling nepotism, when it comes to providing for economic survival, when it comes to confining religion or spirituality to an ultra-private domain, etc.). It is totalitarian in the same way that the French Revolution was totalitarian.

Finally, I must mention that the new Spartan state will be in favor of all forms of mutually-beneficial organic pleasure, so consensual homosexual love and sex will be celebrated just as much as heterosexual love and sex. Similarly with transgender love, etc.....people pursuing their organic desires with nihilistically-rational determination. That's what I'd like to celebrate.

Aha! A Parisian analogy....

I've got it! This will explain things....

Do you know that when I was visiting Paris with my class over spring break during my junior year in high school, when I stepped out of the subway into the thick of Paris, the feeling of the place hit me like a shockwave. It was like columns of stereo speakers were blaring this into my head:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk4Q1B5UQsE&fmt=18

I loved that feeling. If my home town could only rise to that level, I'd be deeply satisfied.

But what is my ultimate, wildest dream? It's to walk through a city with that sort of historical richness that tells you, instinctually, where you are in history and where you are going, and with that sort of monumental, public citizenry-feel to it, but...a thoroughly modern version of that. Paris was modern for the 19th century. Paris was basically the world capital of the 19th century. The only slight problem is, it's *still* the world capital of the 19th century. And here we are in the 21st.

So what I'd like is everything that I've just described, but instead of feeling Beethoven's 5th throbbing through your body as you walk down the street, you feel a mix of Immortal Technique (minus the homophobia and misogyny), Ill Bill, Sabaton, and Nightwish throbbing through you. Thoroughly modern music to fit thoroughly modern institutions, architecture, political/economic systems, and culture. Naturally, the military parades, in order to be truly modern, could only be fittingly accompanied by the Red Alert 3 Hell March:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cenim1nTWg
If your Nation is not marching to that tune, your Nation is not modern.

As far as architecture is concerned, existing skyscraper cities don't quite cut it for me because, although they are modern, they lack a public sphere. Each building harbors a private, exclusive establishment and nothing else. The tinted windows shut you out and consciously turn you away. They are more like fortresses or compounds than places of civic, public space. (Aside from the tinted windows, though, many of those buildings are fine as they are. We just need to make them functionally public by democratizing and throwing open to the public view and public interference what goes on inside.) Same with Wal-Mart. Same with gated communities and other types of housing in the U.S. I feel like it's all going down the wrong path in the vast majority of the U.S. And China looks like it wants to emulate much of our architecture and society in general...check out:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beijing-orange-county-china.jpg

"'Orange County, China' refers to a 60 million dollar, 143-unit housing development situated about one hour north of Beijing, China, comprised entirely of expensive American-style townhouses and tract homes, decorated and furnished with American products. The Chinese developer Zhang Bo built the community to anticipate the 2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing. All 143 units were sold within a month of going on sale, in a phenomenon the Beijing media called "The Orange Storm." Designed by architect Aram Bassenian, who authentically hails from Newport Beach, California in Orange County, California, the Orange County development is an example of wealthy Chinese literally adopting the suburban American lifestyle."

Oh god....

We've got to come up with a more attractive alternative, or this architectural/societal virus will continue to spread over the entire earth.

This...is...Sparta!!!!!

A storm has arisen
All people come listen
Come hear now the forging of our modern Nation
We come now to shatter the chains of the past
And forge a robust public Nation at last
A strong public Nation, we forge it at last!

No forced isolation
In family relations
Our children will grow strong in our public Nation
Like Spartans of old, we will train them to be
The citizen-soldiers of democracy
The citizen-soldiers of democracy!

All for our desires!
Until we expire!
With ruthless pursuance we kindle the fire
A strong new nihilistic egoistic day
The old superstitions shall pass away
The old superstitions shall pass away!

Old hierarchy, never!
The Demos forever
In work, school, and war, in our councils together
Our strength, from the self-discipline of our ranks
We blaze forth, determined, like Soviet tanks
Our disciplined ranks, like Soviet tanks!

(Sung to the tune of the Anthem of the Comintern)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KncK5cZ5Rmk