Irony Writ Large

I have seen a couple of posts in the last few days about a concept that distinguished fascism from other authoritarian ideologies. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

" the doctrines which are used to comprise the political ideology of fascism often (involve) the notion that fascism itself is the rebirth of a state and/or empire in the image of that which came before it - thus, the ancestral political underpinnings...The best examples of this can be found with both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany - Italy looking to establish a...line between the 20th century regime under Benito Mussolini as being the second incarnation of the Roman Empire, while Adolf Hitler's regime was seen as being the third...incarnation - beginning first with the Holy Roman Empire ("First Reich") then with Bismarck's German Empire ("Second Reich") and then resulting in Nazi Germany ("Third Reich")."

Sound familiar after this weekend's Glenn Beck rally to "restore America?"

Well, I am not going to discuss this concept in detail, but I would like to point out that it has a name:

Palingenesis.

The Gods are laughing at us.

Comments

magpie said…
The gods of wordplay are laughing, at any rate...

You've touched on one of the reactionary Right's most loathsome qualities here... the idea that cultural identity is something you put in the basement and then put back up again like a Christmas tree, their personal property, and something that only prospers if it is kept apart from others in some hermetically sealed containment.

And it just shows what utterly dismal failures they are on all other fronts. They start wars they don't know how to end, drive economies into the ground, utterly fail the people they are meant to protect and allow to prosper... so when absolutely all else is gone under the blowtorch of their venality and incompetence, they go looking to steal a country's soul.

If anything could make me believe the devil exists, then it's these shitheads.

And their equivalents elsewhere:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/world/asia/29japan.html?_r=1&ref=asia

http://www.theage.com.au/world/skinheads-run-riot-at-russian-rock-concert-20100830-13xxz.html
Green Eagle said…
I was particularly interested in the article about Japan. As I suspect you are well aware, but as many people in this country aren't, there is a long history of virulent anti-Korean attitudes in Japan which, just like the racism here, never seem to die no matter how much progress we make.
magpie said…
A lot of racism is reaction to who is different, but Japanese-Korean attitudes are a reaction to who is profoundly similar. Japanese-Korean marriages are not uncommon. I might blog about it all at length sometime.

An irony is that the Japanese royal family are themselves very possibly remote descendants of invaders from what is now Korea, and the prototypes for each culture as we now know them were once the same civilization. One ancient warrior queen is clearly identified in the separate histories of both countries - and is clearly the same person – but in one she appears as a Korean ruler who conquered a country in Japan, and in the other she appears as a Japanese ruler who conquered a country in Korea.

The Japanese far Right themselves are a varied bunch, but almost without exception they are deeply connected to crime syndicates.

Popular posts from this blog

Wingnut Wrapup

It's Okay, Never Mind

Hamas