Notes on Some Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

_Some Comments on the Society of the Spectacle_ by Guy DeBord
London, New York: Verso, 1988, 1990
ISBN 0-86091-520-4

(4) And since the spectacle today is certainly more powerful than it was before, what is it doing with this additional power? What point has it reached, that it had not reached previously? What, in short, are its present _lines of advance_? The vague feeling that there has been a rapid invasion, which has forced people to lead their lives in an entirely different way, is now widespread; but this is experienced, rather like some inexplicable change in the climate, or in some other natural equilibrium, a change faced with which ignorance knows only that it has nothing to say. What is more, many see it as a civilizing invasion, as something inevitable, and even want to collaborate. Such people would rather not know the precise purpose of this conquest, and how it is advancing.

(6) The empty debate on the spectacle – that is, on the activities of the world's owners – is thus organized by the spectacle itself: everything is said about the extensive means at its disposal, to ensure that nothing is said about their extensive deployment. Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term “media". And by this they mean to describe a mirror instrument, a kind of public service which, with impartial “professionalism," would facilitate the new wealth of mass communication through mass media – a form of communication, which has at last attained a unilateral purity, whereby decisions already taken are presented for passive admiration. For what is communicated are _orders_; and with perfect harmony, those who give them are also those who tell us what they think of them.

(9-10) The integrated spectacle shows itself to be simultaneously concentrated and diffuse, and ever since the fruitful union of the two has learned to employ both of these qualities on a grander scale. Their former mode of application has changed considerably. As regards concentration, the controlling center has now become occult: never to be occupied by a known leader, or clear ideology. And on the diffuse side, the spectacle has never before put its mark to such a degree on almost a full range of socially produced behavior and objects. For the final sense of the integrated spectacle is this – but it has integrated itself into reality to the same extent as it was describing it, and that it was reconstructing it as it was describing it. As a result, this reality no longer confronts the integrated spectacle as something alien. When the spectacle was concentrated, the greater part of surrounding society escaped it; when diffuse, a small part; today, no part. The spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality. It was easy to predict in theory what has been quickly and university demonstrated by practical experience of economic reason's relentless accomplishments: that the globalization of the false was also the falsification of the globe. Beyond the legacy of old books and old buildings, still of some significance but destined to continue a reduction and, moreover, increasingly highlighted and classified to suit the spectacle's requirements, there remains nothing, in culture or in nature, which has not been transformed, and polluted, according to the means and interests of modern industry. Even genetics has become readily accessible to the dominant social forces.

(11-12) The society whose modernization has reached the stage of integrated spectacle is characterized by the combined effect of five principal features: incessant technological renewal; integration of state and economy; generalized secrecy; unanswerable lies; an eternal present.

(15) History’s domain was the memorable, the totality of events, whose consequences would be lastingly apparent. And thus, inseparably, history with knowledge that should endure and aid in understanding, at least, in part, what was to come: "an everlasting possession," according to Thucydides. In this way, history was the measure of genuine novelty. It is in the interest of those who sell novelty at any price to eradicate the means of measuring it. When social significance is attributed only to what is immediate, and what will be immediate immediately afterwards, always replacing another, identical, immediacy, it can be seen that the uses of the media guarantee, a kind of a eternity of noisy insignificance.

(18-19) Thus, it is no longer possible to believe anything about anyone that you have not learned for yourself, directly.

(19) For the agora, the general community, has gone, along with communities restricted to intermediary bodies, or to independent institutions, to salons, or cafés, or to workers in a single company. There is no place left where people can discuss the realities which concern them, because they can never lastingly free themselves from the crushing presence of media discourse, and of the various forces organized it to relay it.

(20) ... men resemble their times more than their fathers. [An Arab proverb from the 14th century]

... We believe we know that in Greece history and democracy entered the world at the same time. We can prove that their disappearances have also been simultaneous.

To this list of the triumphs of power we should, however, add one result which has proved negative: once the running of a state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge, that state can no longer be lead strategically.

(21) Once it attains the stage of the integrated spectacle, self-proclaimed democratic society seems to be generally excepted as the realization of a fragile perfection. So that it must no longer be exposed to attacks, being fragile; and, indeed, is no longer open to attack, being perfect, as no other society before it. It is a fragile society because it has great difficulty managing its dangerous technological expansion. But it is a perfect society for governing; and the proof is that all those aspire to govern want to govern this one, in the same way, changing hardly a thing. For the first time in contemporary Europe no party or fraction of a party even tries to pretend that they wish to change anything significant. The commodity is beyond criticism: as a general system and even as the particular forms of junk which heads of industry choose to put on the market at any given time.

(24) Such a perfect democracy constructs its own inconceivable foe, terrorism. Its wish is _to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results_. The story of terrorism is written by the state, and it is, therefore, a highly instructive. The spectators must certainly never know everything about terrorism, but they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case, more rational and democratic.

(26-27) Nowadays there is a pretense of wishing to preserve a purely political crime, like some inexpensive luxury, a crime which,doubtless no one will ever have the occasion to commit again, since no one is interested in the subject anymore; except for the professional politicians themselves, whose crimes are rarely pursued, nor for that matter called political. All crimes and offenses are effectively social. But of all social crimes, none must be seen as worse than the impertinent claim to still want to change something in a society which has so far been only too kind and patient; but has had enough of being blamed.

(29-30) The primary cause of the decadence of contemporary thought evidently lies in the fact that spectacular discourse leaves no room for any reply; while logic was only socially constructed through dialogue. Furthermore, when respect for those who speak through the spectacle is so widespread, when they are held to be rich, important, prestigious, to be _authority itself_, the spectators tend to want to be just as illogical as the spectacle, thereby proudly displaying an individual reflection of this authority. And finally, logic is not easy, and no one has tried to teach it. Drug addicts do not study logic; they no longer need it, nor are they capable of it. The spectator's laziness is shared by all intellectual functionaries and overnight specialists, all of whom do their best to conceal the narrow limits of their knowledge by the dogmatic repetition of arguments with illogical authority.

(31) The individual who has been more deeply marked by this impoverished spectacular thought than by _any other aspect of his experience_ puts himself at the service of the established order right from the start, even though subjectively he may have had quite the opposite intention. He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with; the one in which he learn to speak. No doubt he would like to be regarded as an enemy of its rhetoric; but he will use its syntax. This is one of the most important aspects of spectacular domination's success.

(33-34) McLuhan himself, the spectacle's first apologist, who had seemed to be the most convinced imbecile of the century, changed his mind when he finally discovered in 1976 that "the pressure of the mass media leads to irrationality," and that it was becoming urgent to modify their usage. The sage of Toronto had formally spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms,created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom, and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity, in which it has become impossible to distinguish the Grimaldi-Monaco or Bourbon-Franco dynasties from those who succeeded the Stuarts. However, McLuhan's ungrateful modern disciples are now trying to make people forget him, hoping to establish their own careers in media celebration of all these new freedoms to “choose" at random from ephemera. And no doubt they will retract their claims even faster than the man who inspired them.

(34) The spectacle makes no secret of the fact that certain dangers surround the wonderful order it has established. Ocean pollution and the destruction of equatorial forests threaten oxygen renewal; the earth's ozone layer is menaced by industrial growth; nuclear radiation accumulates irreversibly. It merely concludes that none of these things matter. It will only talk about dates and measures. And on this alone, it is successfully reassuring – something which a pre-spectacular mind would have thought impossible.

(36-36) The nuclear industry, both military and civil, demands a far higher dose of secrecy than in other fields – which already have plenty, as we know. To make life – that is to say, lying - easier for the sages chosen by the system's masters, it has been found useful also to change measurements, to vary them, according to a large number of criteria, and refine them, so as to be able to juggle as necessary with a range of figures which are hard to convert. Hence to measure radioactivity levels, one can choose from a range of units of measurement: curies, becquerels, roentgens, rads alias centigrays, and rems, not forgetting, the humble millirads, and sieverts, which are worth 100 rems. It reminds one of the old subdivisions of British currency which foreigners found so confusing, back in the days when Sellafield was still called Windscale.

(37) In June 1987, Pierre Bacher, deputy director of installations at Electricité de France, revealed the latest safety doctrine for nuclear power stations. By installing valves and filters it becomes much easier to avoid major catastrophes, like cracks or explosions in the reactors, which would affect a whole “region." Such catastrophes are produced by excessive containment. Whenever the plant looks like blowing, it is better to decompress gently, showering only a restricted area of a few kilometers, an area which on each occasion will be differently and haphazardly extended depending on the wind. He discloses that in the past two years discrete experiments carried out at Cadarache in the Drôme, "clearly showed that waste – essentially gas – is infinitesimal, representing at worst 1% of the radioactivity in the power station itself." That's a very moderate worst case: 1%. Formerly, we were assured there was no risk at all, except in the case of accidents, which were logically impossible. The experience of the first few years changed this reasoning as follows: since accidents can always happen, what must be avoided is their reaching a catastrophic threshold, and that is easy. All that is necessary is to contaminate little by little, in moderation. Who would not agree that it is infinitely healthier to limit yourself to an intake of 140 centilitres of vodka per day for several years, rather than getting drunk right right away like the Poles?

(38) At the international conference of experts held in Geneva in December 1986 the question was quite simply whether to introduce a worldwide ban on the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the gases, which have recently and rapidly started to destroy the thin layer of ozone, which – as will be recalled - protects this planet against the harmful effects of solar rays. Daniel Verilhe, representing Elf-Aquitaine's chemical subsidiary, and in this capacity part of a French delegation firmly opposed to any ban made a sensible point: “It will take at least three years to develop substitutes, and the cost will be quadrupled." As we know, this fugitive ozone layer, so high up, belongs to no one has no market value. This industrial strategist could thus show his opponents the extent of their inexplicable disregard for economics: “It is highly dangerous to base an industrial strategy on environmental imperatives.”

(39) When an all-powerful economy lost its reason - _and that is precisely what defines these spectacular times_ – it suppressed the last vestiges of scientific autonomy, both in methodology, and, by the same token, in the practical working conditions of its “researchers.”

(40-41) The science of lying justifications naturally occurred with the first symptoms of bourgeois society's decadence, with the cancerous proliferation of those pseudo-sciences known as “human"; yet modern medicine, for example, had once been able to pass as useful, and those who eradicated smallpox or leprosy were very different from those who contemptibly capitulated in the face of nuclear radiation or chemical farming. It can readily be seen, of course, that medicine today no longer has the right to defend public health against a pathogenic environment, for that would be to challenge the state, or at least the pharmaceuticals industry. But it is not only by its obligation to keep quiet that contemporary science acknowledges what it has become. It is also by its frequent and artless outbursts. In November 1985, professors Even and Andreiu at Laënnac hospital announced that they had perhaps found an effective cure for Aids, following an experiment on four patients which had lasted a week. Two days later the patients having died, several other doctors, whose research was not so far advanced, or who were perhaps jealous, expressed certain reservations as to the professors' precipitate haste in broadcasting what was merely the misleading appearance of victory – a few hours before the patients' condition finally deteriorated. Even and Andreiu defending themselves nonchalantly, arguing that, after all, false hopes are better than no hope at all. Their ignorance was too great for them to recognize this argument as a precise and complete disavowal of the spirit of science; as the one which had historically always served to endorse the profitable daydreams of charlatans and sorcerers, long before such people were put in charge of hospitals.

(44-45) The relatively new concept of _disinformation_ was recently imported from Russia, along with another number of other inventions useful in the running of modern states. It is openly employed by particular powers, or, consequently, by people who hold fragments of economic or political authority, in order to maintain what is established; and always in a _counter-offensive_ role. Whatever can oppose a single official truth must necessarily be disinformation emanating from hostile, or at least rival powers, and would have been intentionally and malevolently falsified. Disinformation would not be simple negation of a fact which suits the authorities, or the simple affirmation of a fact which does not suit them: this is called psychosis. Unlike the straightforward lie, disinformation must inevitably contain a degree of truth, but one deliberately manipulated by an artful enemy. This is what makes it so attractive to the defenders of the dominant society. The power which speaks of disinformation does not believe itself to be absolutely faultless, but knows that it can attribute to any precise criticism the excessive insignificance which characterizes disinformation; with the result that it will never have to admit to any particular fault.

(48) If occasionally a kind of unregulated, disinformation threatens to appear, in the service of particular interest temporarily in conflict, and threatens to be believed, getting out of control, and thus clashing with the concerted work of a less irresponsible disinformation, there is no reason to fear that the former involves other manipulators, who are more subtle or more skilled: it is simply because disinformation now spreads _in a world where there is no room for verification_.

(50-51) What is false creates taste, and reinforces itself by knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic. And what is genuine is _reconstructed_ as quickly as possible, to resemble the false. Being the richest and the most modern, the Americans have been the main dupes of this traffic in false art. And they are exactly the same people who pay for restoration work at Versailles or in the Sistine Chapel. This is why Michelangelo's frescoes will acquire the fresh, bright colors of a cartoon strip, and the genuine furniture at Versailles, the sparkling gilt which will make them resemble the fake Louis XIV suites imported by Texans at such great expense.

(56) It has most certainly been almost universally accepted that the geological explorations for oil-beds in the subsoil of the city of Paris, so noisily conducted in the autumn of 1986, had no other serious purpose than to measure the inhabitants' current level of stupid, stupid faction and submission; by showing them supposed research, so obviously devoid of economic reasons.
NB: The Madwoman of Chaillot

... More profoundly, in this world, which is officially so respectful of economic necessities, no one ever knows the real cost of anything which is produced. In fact, the major part of the real cost _is never calculated; and the rest is kept secret_.

(58) Far from being a peculiarly Panamanian phenomenom, this General Noriega, who _sells everything and fakes everything_, in a world which does precisely the same thing, was altogether a perfect representative of the integrated spectacle, and of the success is it allows the assorted managers of its internal and external politics: a sort of statesman. In a sort of state, a sort of general, a capitalist. He is the very model of _our modern prince_, and of those destined to come to power and stay there, the most able resemble him closely. It is not Panama, which produces such marvels, it is our times.

(59-60) When television has shown a fine picture and explained it with a brazen lie, idiots believe that everything is clear. The demi-elite is content to know that almost everything is obscure, ambivalent, “constructed" by unknown codes. A more exclusive elite would like to know what is true, hard as it is to distinguish in each particular case despite all their access to special knowledge, and confidences. Which is why they would like to get to know the method of truth, though their love usually remains unrequited.

(61) In his Discourse sur la servitude volontaire, La Boétie showed how a tyrant's power will be considerably reinforced by the concentric circles of individuals who believe, rightly, or wrongly, that it is in their interest to support it. In the same way many politicians and media professionals who are flattered not to be suspected of being _irresponsible_, learn a lot through their connections and confidences. Someone who is happy to be given confidential information is hardly likely to criticize it; nor to notice that in all that is confided to him, the principal part of reality is invariably hidden. Thanks to the benevolent protection of his deceivers, he sees a few more of the cards, false though they may be; he never learns the rules of the game. Thus he immediately identifies with a manipulators and scorns an ignorance which in fact he shares. For the titbits of information tossed to the familiars of a lying tyranny are usually poisoned with lies, manipulated and uncheckable. Yet they gratify those who get them, for they feel themselves superior to those who know nothing. Their only role is to make domination more respectable, never to make it comprehensible. They are the privilege of _front-row spectators_ who are stupid enough to believe they can understand something, not by making use of what is hidden from them, but _by believing what is revealed!_

(63) But Edgar Allan Poe had already discovered the real path to truth, in a well-known argument in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”:
“It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution – I mean for the outré character of its features… In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred', as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before’.”

(67) It is always a mistake to try to explain something by opposing Mafia and state: they are never rivals. Theory easily verifies what all the rumors in practical life of all too easily shown. The Mafia is not an outsider in this world; it is perfectly at home. Indeed, in the integrated spectacle, it stands as the _model_ of all advanced commercial enterprises.

NB: The revolution is over. The mafia has won. Tom Thompson, 1967

(69) The ubiquitous growth of secret societies and networks of influence answers the imperative demand of the new conditions for profitable management of economic affairs, at a time when the state holds a hegemonic role in the direction of production and when demand for all commodities depend strictly on the centralization achieved by spectacular information/promotion, to which forms of distribution must also adapt. It is therefore only a natural product of the concentration of capital, production, and distribution. Whatever does not grow, must disappear; and no business can grow without adopting the values, techniques and methods of today's industry, spectacle and state. In the final analysis, it is the particular form of development chosen by the economy of our epoch which _dictates the widespread creation of new personal bonds of dependency and protection_.

(69-70) It is precisely here that we can see the profound truth of the Sicilian Mafia's maxim, so well appreciated throughout Italy: “when you've got money and friends, you can laugh at the law." In the integrated spectacle, the laws are asleep; because they were not made for the new production techniques, and because they are evaded in distribution by new types of agreement. With the public thinks, or prefers, is of no importance. This is what is hidden by the spectacle of all these opinion polls, elections, modernizing restructurings. No matter who are the winners are, the faithful customers _will get the worst of it_, because that is exactly what has been produced for them.

(74) Networks of promotion/control slide imperceptibly into networks of surveillance/disinformation. Formerly one only conspired against an established order. Today, _conspiring in its favor_ is a new and flourishing profession. Under spectacular domination people conspire to maintain it, and to guarantee what it alone would call its well-being. This conspiracy _is a part_ of it's very functioning.

(76-78) to this kind of counter-journalistic false critique can be added the organized practice of rumor which we know to be originally a sort of uncontrollable byproduct of spectacular information, since everyone, however vaguely, perceives something misleading about the latter and trusts it as little as it deserves. Rumor began as something superstitious, naïve, self-deluding. More recently, however, surveillance has begun introducing into the population people capable of starting rumors which suit it at the very first signal. It has been decided here to apply in practice the observations of a theory formulated some 30 years ago, whose origins origins lie in American sociology of advertising – the theory of individuals known as “pacemakers," that is, those whom others in their milieu come to follow and imitate – but this time moving from spontaneity to control. Budgetary, or extra-budgetary, means have also been released to find numerous auxiliaries; beside the former specialists of the recent past, academics and media professionals, sociologists and police. To believe in the continuing mechanical application of past models leads to,just as many errors as the general ignorance of the past. "Rome is no longer Rome," and the Mafia are no longer thieves. And the surveillance and disinformation services are as far removed from the police and informers of former times – for example, from the roussins and mouchards of the Second Empire – as the present special services in all countries are from the officers of the army,general staff’s Deuxième Bureau in 1914.

Since art is dead, it has evidently become extremely easy to disguise police as artists. When the latest imitations of a recuperated neo-dadaism are allowed to pontificate proudly in the media, and thus also to tinker with the decor of official palaces, like court jesters to the kings of junk, it is evident that by the same process a cultural cover is guaranteed for every agent or auxiliary of the state's networks of persuasion. Empty pseudo-museums, or pseudo-research centers on the work of nonexistent personalities, can be opened just as fast as reputations are made for journalist-cops, historian-cops, or novelist-cops. No doubt Arthur Cravan foresaw this world when he wrote in Maintenant: “Soon we will we will only see artists in the streets, and it will take no end of effort to find a single man." This is, indeed the sense of the revived form of an old quip of Parisian loafers: “Hello there, artists! Too bad if I've got it wrong.”

(79) The whole history of spectacular society called for the secret services to play the pivotal role; for it is in them that the features and force of such a society are concentrated to the highest degree. Moreover, they are always also the arbiters of that society's general interests, despite their modest title of “services." There is no corruption here, for they faithfully express the common morals of the spectacular century. Thus do watchers and watched sail forth on a boundless ocean. The spectacle has brought the secret to victory, and must be more and more controlled by _specialists in secrecy_ who are certainly not only officials who who have to different degrees managed to free themselves from state control; who are not only officials.

(79-80) A general working rule of the integrated spectacle, at least for those who manage its affairs, is that in this framework, _everything which can be done, must be done_. This means that every new instrument must be employed, whatever the cost. New machinery everywhere becomes the goal and the driving force of the system, and is the only thing which can significantly modify its progress, every time its use is imposed without further reflection. Society's owners indeed want above all to keep a certain "social relation between people," but they may must also maintain continual technological innovation; for that was one of the obligations that came with their inheritance. This law must also thus apply to the services which safeguard domination. When an instrument has been perfected it must be used, and its use will reinforce the very conditions that favor this use. Thus it is that emergency procedures become standard procedures.

(82-83) So it is that thousands of plots in favor of the established order tangle and clash, almost everywhere, as the overlap of secret networks and secret issues or activities grows ever more dense along with their rapid integration into every sector of economics, politics and culture. In all areas of social life the degree of intermingling in surveillance, disinformation and security activities gets greater and greater. The plot having thickened to the point where it is almost out in the open, each part of it now starts to interfere with, or worry, the others, for all these professional conspirators are spying on each other without really knowing why, are colliding by chance yet not identifying each other with any certainty. Who is observing whom? On whose behalf, apparently? And actually? The real influences remain hidden, and the ultimate aims can barely be suspected and almost never understood. So that while no one can be sure he is not being tricked or manipulated, it is rare for the string-puller to know he has succeeded. And in any case, to be on the winning side of manipulation does not mean that one has chosen the right strategic perspective. Tactical successes can thus lead great powers down dangerous roads.

(84-85) It is in these circumstances that we can speak of domination's falling rate of profit, as it spreads to almost the whole social space, and consequently increases both its personnel, and its means. For now, each means aspires, and labors, to become an end. Surveillance spies on itself, and plots against itself.

Its principle present contradiction, finally, is that it is spying on, infiltrating, and pressurizing _an absent entity_: that which is supposed to be trying to subvert the social order. But where can it actually be seen at work? Certainly conditions have never been so seriously revolutionary, but it is only governments who think so. Negation has been so thoroughly deprived of its thought that it was dispersed long ago. Because of this, it remains only a big, yet highly disturbing threat, and surveillance in its turn, has been deprived of its preferred field of activity. Surveillance and intervention are thus rightly led by the present exigencies, determining their terms of engagement to operate on the very terrain of this threat in order to combat it _in advance_. This is why surveillance has an interest in organizing poles of negation itself, which it can instruct with more than the discredited means of the spectacle, so as to manipulate, not terrorists this time, but theories.

(85) The French revolution brought great changes in the art of war. It was from that experience that Clausewitz could draw the distinction between tactics, as the use of forces in battle to obtain victory, and strategy, as the use of victories in battle to attain the goals of a war.

(87-88) Not only are the subjective led to believe that to all intents and purposes they are still living in a world which in fact has been eliminated, but the rulers themselves sometimes suffer from the absurd belief that in some respects they do too. They come to believe in a part of what they have suppressed, as if it remained a reality and had still to be included in their calculations. This backwardness will not last long. Those who have achieved so much so easily must necessarily go further. It should not be thought that those who have been too slow to appreciate the pliability of the new rules of their game and its form of barbaric grandeur, will last forever like some archaism in proximity to real power. It is certainly not the spectacle's destiny to end up as enlightened despotism.

We must conclude that a changeover is imminent, and ineluctable in the coopted cast who serve the interests of domination, and above all manage the protection of the domination. In such an affair, innovation will surely not be displayed on the spectacle's stage. It appears instead like lightning, which we know only when it strikes. This changeover, which will conclude decisively the work of these spectacular times, will occur discreetly, and conspiratorially, even though it concerns those within the inner circles of power. It will select those who will share the central exigency: that they clearly see what obstacles they have overcome, and of what they are capable.

NB: My notes on DeBord's The Society of the Spectacle are at https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2017/04/notes-from-society-of-spectacle.html

Notes on Hannah Arendt's On Revolution

 On Revolution by Hannah Arendt

NY:  The Viking Press, 1963

(5)  Under modern circumstances, however, this appearance or reappearance of total war has a very important political significance insofar as it contradicts the basic assumptions upon which the relationship between the military and the civilian branches of government rests:  it is the function of the army to protect and to defend the civilian population.  In contrast, the history of warfare in our century could almost be told as the story of the growing incapacity of the army to fulfill this basic function, until today the strategy of deterrence has openly changed the role of the military from that of a protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger.

(9)  The point here is that violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence.

(10-11)  The tale [Cain & Abel, Romulus & Remus] spoke clearly:  whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origins in crime.

(13)  …revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

(15)  appanage - a gift of land, an official position, or money given to the younger children of kings and princes to provide for their maintenance;  a necessary accompaniment.

(23)  The polis was supposed to be an isonomy, not a democracy.
NB:  Isonomy - the principle that all citizens or subjects of a state are equal before the law, or that they have equal civil or political rights

…The equality of the Greek polis, its isonomy, was an attribute of the polis and not of men, who received their equality by virtue of citizenship, not by virtue of birth.

(28)  But violence is no more adequate to describe the phenomenon of revolution than change;  only where change occurs in the sense of a new beginning, where violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of government, to bring about the formation of a new body politic, where the liberation from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak of revolution.

(46)  Politically, the fallacy of this new and typically modern philosophy [post-Kantian Hegel?] is relatively simple.  It consists in describing and understanding the whole realm of human action, not in terms of the actor and the agent, but from the standpoint of the spectator who watches a spectacle.  But the fallacy is relatively difficult to detect because of the truth inherent in it, which is that all stories began and enacted by men unfold their true meaning only when they have come to their end, so that it may indeed appear as though only the spectator, and not the agent, can hope to understand what actually happened in any given chain of deeds and events.
NB:  DeBord;  multiple points of view - actor, spectator

(49)  The sad truth of the matter is that the French Revolution, which ended in disaster, has made world history, while the American Revolution, so triumphantly successful, has remained an event of little more than local importance.

(58)  [Marxism]  Not freedom but abundance became now the aim of revolution.

(65)  Since then [French Revolution], the passion of compassion has haunted and driven the best men of all revolutions, and the only revolution in which compassion played no role in the motivation of the actors was the American Revolution.

(80)  For compassion, to be striken with the suffering of someone else as though it were contagious, and pity, to be sorry without being touched in the flesh, are not only not the same, they may not even be related.

(85)  Since the days of the French Revolution, it has been the boundlessness of their sentiments that made revolutionaries so curiously insensitive to reality in general and to the reality of persons in particular, whom they felt no compunctions in sacrificing to their “principles,” or to the course of history, or to the cause of revolution as such.

NB:  Not just Left revolutionists either

(95)  It was the war upon hypocrisy that transformed Robespierre's dictatorship into the Reign of Terror, and the outstanding characteristic of this period was the self-purging of the rulers.

(135-136)  For abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor;  they are the mirage in the desert of misery.  In this sense, affluence and wretchedness are only two sides of the same coin;  the bonds of necessity need not be of iron, they can be made of silk.  Freedom and luxury have always been thought to be incompatible, and the modern estimate that tends to blame the insistence of the Founding Fathers on frugality and “simplicity of manners” (Jefferson) upon a Puritan contempt for the delights of the world much rather testifies to an inability to understand freedom than to a freedom from prejudice.

(136)  The hidden wish of poor men is not “To each according to his needs,” but “To each according to his desires.”  And while it is true that freedom can come only to those whose needs have been fulfilled, it is equally true that it will escape those who are bent upon living for their desires.

(140)  If, however, one keeps in mind that the end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom, the political scientist at least will know how to avoid the pitfall of the historian who tends to place his emphasis upon the first and violent stage of rebellion and liberation, on the uprising against tyranny, to the detriment of the quieter second stage of revolution and constitution, because all the dramatic aspects of his story seem to be contained in the first stage and, perhaps, also because the turmoil of liberation has so frequently defeated the revolution.

(152)  In this respect, the great and, in the long run, perhaps the greatest American innovation in politics as such was the consistent abolition of sovereignty within the body politic of the republic, the insight that in the realm of human affairs sovereignty and tyranny are the same.

(154)  Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows;  nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.

(155)  The singular good fortune of the American Revolution is undeniable.  It occurred in a country which knew nothing of the predicament of mass poverty and among a people who had a widespread experience with self-government;  to be sure, not the least of these blessings was that the Revolution grew out of a conflict with a “limited monarchy.”  In the government of king and Parliament from which the colonies broke away, there was no potestas legibus soluta, no absolute power absolved from laws.

(170)  in nuce -  in a nutshell

(180)  To the eighteenth century, as to the seventeenth before it and the nineteenth after it, the function of laws was not primarily to guarantee liberties but to protect property;  it was property, and not the law as such, that guaranteed freedom.

(182)  They themselves still knew very well what made them succeed where all other nations were to fail;  it was, in the words of John Adams, the power of “confidence in one another, and in the common people, which enabled the United States to go through a revolution.”

NB:  Another side of the "confidence" concept from Melville's The Confidence Man to The Confidence Game (https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-confidence-game-guide-to-2016.html)

(186)  It is all the more noteworthy that John Adams - who even before the outbreak of the Revolution had insisted on “rights antedecedent to all earthly government… derived from the great Legislator of the universe” and who then became instrumental in “retaining and insisting on [the law of nature] as a recourse to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware” - should have believed that “it was general opinion of ancient nations that the Divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men.”  For the point of the matter is that Adams was in error, and that neither the Greek νόμος nor the Roman lex was of divine origin, that neither the Greek nor the Roman concept of legislation needed divine inspiration.

(235)  The perplexity was very simple and, stated in logical terms it seemed unsolvable:  if foundation was the aim and the end of revolution, then the revolutionary spirit was not merely the spirit of beginning something new but of starting something permanent and enduring;  a lasting institution, embodying this spirit and encouraging it to new achievements, would be self-defeating.  From which it unfortunately seems to follow that nothing threatens the very achievements of revolution more dangerously and more acutely than the spirit which has brought them about.

(239)  Hence, they could hear with approval, though perhaps not entirely without misgivings, when Benjamin Rush proposed the new and dangerous doctrine that although “all power is derived from the people, they possess it only on the days of their elections.  After this it is the property of their rulers.”

(250-251)  However, this sad familiarity should not prevent us from recognizing that we are confronted even in the midst of the French Revolution with the conflict between the modern party system and the new revolutionary organs of self-government.  These two systems, so utterly unlike and even contradictory to each other, were born at the same moment.  The spectacular failure of the council system were both due to the rise of the nation-state, which elevated the one and crushed the other, whereby the leftist and revolutionary parties have shown themselves to be no less hostile to the council system than the conservative or reactionary right.

(257)  Jefferson’s ward system:  Hence, the ward system was not meant to strengthen the power of the many but the power of “every one” within the limits of his competence;  and only by breaking up “the many” into assembles where every one could count and be counted upon “shall we be as republican as a large society can be.”  In terms of the safety of the citizens of the republic, the question was how to make everybody feel “that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day;  when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.”

NB:  Oscar Wilde's trouble with Socialism was all the meetings but there are a variety of meetings and ways to do so

(265)  There are certain paragraphs in the writing of the Utopian Socialist, especially in Proudhon and Bakunin, into which it has been relatively easy to read an awareness of the council system.  Yet the truth is that these essentially anarchist political thinkers were singularly unequipped to deal with a phenomenon which demonstrated so clearly how a revoliution did not end with the abolition of state and government but, on the contrary, aimed at the foundation of a new state and the establishment of a new form of government.  More recently, historians have pointed to the the rather obvious similarities between the councils and the medieval townships, the Swiss cantons, the English seventeenth-century “agitators” - or rather “adjustators,” as they were originally called - and the General Council of Cromwell’s army, but the point of the matter is that none of them, with the possible exception of the medieval town, had ever the slightest influence on the minds of the people who in the course of a revolution spontaneously organized themselves in councils.
NB:  Wards, councils, communes, coops, soviets, mutual aid, no Kropotkin?!

(270-271)  In order to prove what Odysse Barrot felt to be true [the federation was both liberal and republican], we must turn to the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia and to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, both of which lasted just long enough to show in bare outlines what a government would look like and how a republic was likely to function if they were founded upon the principles of the council system.  In both instances councils or soviets had sprung up everywhere, completely independent of one another, workers', soldiers', and peasants' councils in the case of Russia, the most disparate kinds of councils in the case of Hungary:  neighborhood councils that emerged in all residential districts, so-called revolutionary councils that grew out of fighting together in the streets, councils of writers and artists, born in the coffee houses of Budapest, students’ and youths’ councils at the universities, workers’ councils in the factories, councils in the army, among the civil servants, and so on.  The formation of a council in each of these disparate groups turned a more or less accidental proximity into a political institution.  The most striking aspect of these spontaneous developments is that in both instances it took these independent and highly disparate organs no more than a few weeks, in the case of Russia, or a few days, in the case of Hungary, to begin a process of coordination and integration through the formation of higher councils of a regional or provincial character, from which finally the delegates to an assembly representing the whole country could be chosen.

(277)  The conflict between the two systems, the parties and the councils, came to the fore in all twentieth-century revolution.  The issue at stake was representation versus action and participation.  The councils were organs of action, the revolutionary parties were organs of representation, and although the revolutionary parties halfheartedly recognized the councils as instruments of “revolutionary struggle,” they tried even in the midst of revolution to rule them from within;  they knew well enough that no party, no matter how revolutionary it was, would be able to survive the transformation of the government into a Soviet Republic.  For the parties, the need for action itself was transitory, and they had no doubt that after the victory of the revolution further action would simply prove unnecessary or subversive.

(277-278)  The fatal mistake of the councils has always been that they themselves did not distinguish clearly between participation in public affairs and administration or management of things in the public interest.  In the form of workers' councils, they have again and again tried to take over the management of the factories, and all these attempts have ended in dismal failure.
NB:  Not sure that’s true with the variety of worker-ownership possibilities available.  Mondragon Cooperatives for instance.  Worker owner and investor models are now numerous and successful in many different forms.

(279)  Freedom in a positive sense is possible only among equals, and equality itself is by no means a universally valid principle but, again, applicable only with limitations and even within spatial limits.

(280)  My quarrel with the “élite” is that the term implies an oligarchic form of government, the domination of the many by the rule of a few.  From this, one can only conclude - as indeed our whole tradition of political thought has concluded - that the essence of politics is rulership and that the dominant political passion is the passion to rule or to govern.  This, I propose, is profoundly untrue.  The fact that political “élites” have always determined the political destinies of the many and have, in most instances, exerted a domination over them, indicates, on the one hand, the bitter need of the few to protect themselves against the many, or rather to protect the island of freedom they have come to inhabit against the surrounding sea of necessity;  and it indicates, on the other hand, the responsibility that falls automatically upon those who care for the fate of those who do not.
NB:  "those who care for the fate of those who do not” - Milt Raymond’s for the benefit of all who are for the benefit of all

(282-283)  But while, in all authoritarian government we know of, authority is filtered down from above, in this case [council or ward system] authority would have been generated neither at the top nor at the bottom, but on each of the pyramid's layers;  and this obviously could constitute the solution to one of the most serious problems of all modern politics, which is not how to reconcile freedom and equality but how to reconcile equality and authority.

(283-284)  It would be tempting to spin out further the potentialities of the councils, but it certainly is wiser to say with Jefferson, "Begin them only for a single purpose;  they will soon show for what others they are the best instruments” - but the best instruments, for example, for breaking up the modern mass society, with its dangerous tendency toward the formation of pseudo-political mass movements, or rather, the best, the most natural way for interspersing it at the grass roots with an “élite” that is chosen by no one but constitutes itself.  The joys of public happiness and the responsibilities for public business would then become the share of those few from all walks of life who have a taste for public freedom and cannot be “happy” without it.  Politically, they are the best, and it is the task of good government and the sign of a well-ordered republic to assure them of their rightful place in the public realm.  To be sure, such an “aristocratic” form of government would spell the end of general suffrage as we understand it today;   for only those who as voluntary members of an “elementary republic” have demonstrated that they care for more than their private happiness and are concerned about the state of the world would have the right to be heard in the conduct of the business of the republic.  However, this exclusion from politics should not be derogatory, since a political élite is by no means identical with a social or cultural or professional élite.  The exclusion, moreover, would not depend upon an outside body;  if those who belong are self-chosen, those who do not belong are self-excluded.  And such self-exclusion, far from being arbitrary discrimination, would in fact give substance and reality to one of the most important negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient world, namely, freedom from politics, which was unknown to Rome or Athens and which is politically perhaps the most relevant part of our Christian heritage.

NB:  You might want freedom from politics but politics, and politicians, affect you whether you like it or not

(324)  Oskar Anweiler on the Hungarian Revolution:  The councils were "striving for the most direct, extensive and unrestricted participation of the individual in public life possible"

Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet on The Russian Revolution translated by Bertram D Wolfe, 1940

(326)   René Char, Feuilles d’Hypnos, Paris, 1946 translated as Hypnos Walking:  Poems and Prose, NY 1956

Thomas Paine's Age of Reason

Finally got around to reading a falling apart hardback copy of Paine's Age of Reason (published as three pamphlets in 1794, 1795, 1807) found at a Little Free Library long ago.  It's a very modern book and Paine is very clear as a writer.

Paine deconstructs and demolishes the Bible but believes instead that 

"The creation is the Bible of the Deist.  He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries."

Sounds like an ecological world view to me.

Reading Age of Reason led me to his pamphlet "Agrarian Justice" (1797) where he argued that the Earth itself belongs to all of us and that we are entitled to a just portion of that.  The sums would be "fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: £1,599.00 ($1955.98)

"And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum:  £1,066.00 ($1303.98)"

I like Tom Paine and grew up with people who liked him too.  After I read the book, I found my grandmother's paperback copy among my books.  I gave both copies to the various Little Free Libraries around town after I finished my notes.

Now Paine's Rights of Man goes on the reading list.

 Age of Reason by Thomas Paine

(2)  I believe in one God, and no more;  and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man;  and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

(30)  If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me;  but if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed;  moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty, even if the innocent would offer itself.  To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself;  it is then no longer justice, it is indiscriminate revenge.

Editorial Comment:  The plot of A Tale of Two Cities

(32)  The word of God is the creation we behold and it is in _this world_, which no human can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

(36)  Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible that convey to us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job and the 19th Psalm;  I recollect no other.  Those parts are true deistical compositions, for they treat the Deity through his works.  They take the book of Creation as the word of God, they refer to no other book, and all the inferences they make are drawn from that volume.

(40)  That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

(58)  … and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

(73)  Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery.  The belief of a God, so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity.  And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our acting toward each other as he acts benignly toward all.  We cannot _serve_ God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such service;  and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God had made.  This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of the world and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.

(101)  It is a duty incumbent on every true Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible.

(133)  … to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little things,…

(204)  I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that which is called willful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the the Old Testament, for prophesying is lying professionally.

(219)  A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a life hereafter.

(229)  The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies;  for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.

NB:  The Catalans by Patrick O’Brian

 Love your neighbor as yourself is not enough, nothing like enough, if you have a deep, well-founded dislike of yourself.
and
I will tell you what I mean by the death of the soul.  When you no longer have the power to love, when there is no stir of affection anywhere in your being, then your soul is dead.  That is the death of your soul.  Your soul is dead, and you are damned:  you are dead walking, and you are in hell in your own body.

These two quotes explain much of the state of humanity, such as it is, these days.

(231)  The creation is the Bible of the Deist.  He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.

From A Distant Mirror

 A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

NY:  Ballantine Books, 1978

ISBN 0-345-28394-5

(page 54)  Potatoes, tea, coffee, and tobacco were unknown;  hot spiced wine was the favorite drink of those who could afford it;  the common people drank beer, ale, and cider...

Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer:  matins around midnight;  lauds around three am;  prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six am;  vespers at six in the evening;  and compline at bedtime.  The reckoning of time was based on the movements of sun and stars, were nature's timekeepers, which were familiar and carefully observed.

(115)  At Worms in March 1349 the Jewish community of 400, like that of York, turned to an old tradition and burned themselves to death inside their own houses rather than be killed by their enemies.  The larger community of Frankfurt-am-Main took the same way in July, setting fire to part of the city by their flames.  In Cologne the Town Council repeated the Pope's argument that Jews were dying of the plague like everyone else, but the flagellants collected a great proletarian crowd of "those who had nothing to lose," and paid no attention.  In Mainz, which had the largest Jewish community in Europe, its members turned at least to self-defense.  With arms collected in advance they killed 200 of the mob, an act which only served to bring down upon them a furious onslaught by the townspeople in revenge for the death of Christians.

NB:  Worms and Gandhi

(210) In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

(225)  Italian White Company under Sir John Hawkwood, Tard-Venu and mercenary, at least "they did not roast and mutilate their victims like the Hungarians."

(235) In Picardy, for more general enjoyment, the swan festival was held in July and August, when all three estates joined to chase the young swans raised in local ponds and canals and not yet able to fly.  Led by the clergy, followed by nobles, bourgeois, and commoners in order, everyone went out in boats accompanied by music and illuminations.  Participants were forbidden to kill what they caught.  For sport only, the chase lasted several days interspersed with festivities.

(243)  Among those who shared the feast [wedding of Lionel of England and Violante Visconti in MIlan in 1368-69] were Petrarch, an honored guest at the high table, and both Froissart and Chaucer among the company, although it is doubtful if the two young unknowns were introduced to the famous Italian laureate.

(503)  "Hopfrog" and the Bal d'Ardents which nearly killed King Charles VI in January 1393

(584)  valor in combat is not the equivalent of competence in war

(602)  Peasant Life in Old German Epics by Clair Hayden Bell, Columbia University Press, 1968

(611)  The Brethren of the Common Life by Alvert Hyma, Michigan, 1930

(614)  The Merchant of Prato, 1335-1410 by Iris Origo, NY, 1957

(617)  Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White, Oxford, 1962

Notes on Nazis, Fascism, and Tyranny

Once upon a time, my family lived next to a rabbi and his family.  When they moved out, my new neighbors told me that they found all the windows on the first floor had been nailed shut.  All my life, I’ve been reading about Nazis, Fascists, tyranny because I wanted to be forearmed and forewarned.  May these notes be useful to others as these ideas, these people — tyrants, Fascists, Nazis, authoritarians — never go away.

Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XAio8jsAoRE

Dorothy Thompson’s classic “Who Goes Nazi?”
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

Defying Hitler - the best book I’ve read on the rise of Nazism from the ground up
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2022/01/defying-hitler.html

The Voice of Memory: Primo Levi Interviews 1961-1987 - author of classic memoirs of the death camps
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-voice-of-memory-primo-levi.html

Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder - interviews with a concentration camp commandant
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/12/into-that-darkness-from-mercy-killing.html

The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections on Germany, 1938 - 2001 by Gitta Sereny - essays on the war, Nazism, and the aftermath
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-healing-wound-experiences-and.html

Notes on The Language of the Third Reich - a German-Jewish philologist who lived through the war in Germany examines the language used
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/08/notes-on-language-of-third-reich.html

Quotes from On Hitler’s Mein Kampf:  The Poetics of the Third Reich - an examination of the concepts and language of Hitler himself
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2024/06/quotes-from-on-hitlers-mein-kampf.html

The Mass Psychology of Fascism
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2024/07/from-mass-psychology-of-fascism.html

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements - Eric Hoffer’s classic on mass movements
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-true-believer-thoughts-on-nature-of.html

Every Man Dies Alone - a novel of a small acts of resistance under the Nazi regime
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/10/every-man-dies-alone.html

Friendly Fascism - a warning about the slow, soft, and steady approach of authoritarianism
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2023/01/friendly-fascism.html

Sawdust Caesar:  That Mussolini Lip - the first USAmerican biography of Mussolini by George Seldes who left Italy because Mussolini was trying to kill him
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2015/10/sawdust-caesar.html

First day of tyranny: Margaret Atwood - from The Handmaid’s Tale
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/6/23/221551/- 

First day of tyranny: Sebastian Haffner - the reality comes home, from Defying Hitler
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/6/24/221747/- 

First (and more) day(s) of tyranny: Sinclair Lewis - from It Can’t Happen Here
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/11/3/265848/-

from The Mass Psychology of Fascism

 _The Mass Psychology of Fascism_ by Wilhelm Reich

NY:  Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1970

(xiii)  Viewed with respect to man’s character, “fascism” is the basic emotional attitude of the suppressed man of our authoritarian machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life.

It is the mechanistic-mystical character of modern man that produces fascist parties, and not vice versa.

(xiv)  In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all the irrational reactions of the average human character. To the obtuse sociologists who lack the mettle to recognize the supreme role played by irrationality in the history of man, the fascist racial theory appears to be nothing more than an imperialistic interest, or, more broadly, speaking, a “prejudice.”

(xiv-xv)  The racial theory is not a product of fascism. On the contrary: it is fascism that is a product of racial hatred, and is its politically organized expression. It follows from this that there is a German, Italian, Spanish, Anglo-Saxon, Jewish, and Arabian fascism. _Race ideology is a pure biopathic expression of the character structure of the orgastically impotent man.

The statistically perverse character of race ideology is also betrayed in its attitude toward religion. Fascism is supposed to be a reversion to paganism and an archenemy of religion. Far from it – fascism is the supreme expression of religious mysticism. As such, it comes into being in a peculiar social form. Fascism countenances that religiosity that stems from sexual perversion, and it transforms the masochistic character of the old patriarchal religion of suffering into a sadistic religion. In short, it transposes religion from the “otherworldliness" of the philosophy of suffering to the "this worldliness" of sadistic murder.

Fascist mentality is the mentality of the "little man," who is enslaved and craves authority and is at the same time rebellious. It is no coincidence that all fascist dictators stem from the reactionary milieu of the little man.

(xxiv)  There are liberal capitalists and reactionary workers.  There are no class distinctions when it comes to character.

(18)  The basic traits of the character structures corresponding to a definite historical situation are formed in early childhood, and are far more conservative than the forces of technical production. It results from this that, as time goes on, _the psychic structures lag behind the rapid changes of the social conditions from which they derived, and later come into conflict with the new forms of life._ This is the basic trait of the nature of so-called tradition, i.e., of the contradiction between the old and the new social situation.

(19)  We begin to see, now, that the economic and ideologic situation of the masses need not necessarily coincide, and that, indeed, there can be a considerable cleavage between the two. The economic situation is not directly and immediately converted into political consciousness.  If this were the case, the social revolution would have been here long ago.

Social psychology sees the problem in an entirely different light: what has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals, or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why is the majority of those who are hungry _don't_ steal and why is the majority of those who are exploited _don't_ strike.

(20)  Narrow-minded economy has repeatedly failed to see that the most essential question does not relate to the workers' consciousness of social responsibility (this is self evident!) but to what it is that _inhibits the development of this consciousness of responsibility_.

(21)  A realistic appraisal would have had to point out that the average worker bears a contradiction in himself; that he, in other words, is neither a clear-cut, revolutionary nor a clear-cut conservative, but stands divided. His psychic structure derives on the one hand from the social situation (which prepares the ground for revolutionary attitudes) and on the other hand from the entire atmosphere of authoritarian society – the two being at odds with one another.

(25)  The Freudian conception comes considerably closer to the facts of the case [short-lived rebellions submitting to authority], for it recognizes such behavior as the effect of infantile guilt-feelings toward the father figure. 

NB:  short-lived rebellions are also without the structure to continue 

(26)  Freud's second great discovery was that even the small child develops a lively sexuality, which has nothing to do with procreation; that, in other words, _sexuality_ and _procreation_, and _sexual_ and _genital_, are not the same. The analytic dissection of psychic processes further proved that sexuality, or rather its energy, the libido, which is of the body, is the prime motor of psychic life.

(27)  The conflict that originally takes place between the child's desires, and the parent's suppression of these desires later, becomes the conflict between instinct and morality _within_ the person. In adults, the moral code, which itself is unconscious, operates against the comprehension of the laws of sexuality and of unconscious, psychic life; it supports sexual repression ("sexual resistance”) and accounts for the widespread resistance to the uncovering of childhood sexuality.

(28)  Sex-economic sociology goes further and asks: _For what sociological reasons is sexuality, suppressed by the society and repressed by the individual?_ The church says it is for the sake of salvation beyond the grave; mystical moral philosophy says that it is a direct result of man's eternal ethical and moral nature; the Freudian philosophy of civilization contends, that this takes place in the interest of “culture."

(29)  If one studies the history of sexual suppression and the etiology of sexual repression, one finds that it cannot be traced back to the beginnings of cultural development; suppression and repression, in other words, are not the presuppositions of cultural development. It was not until relatively late, with the establishment of an authoritarian patriarchy and the beginning of the division of the classes, that suppression of sexuality begins to make its appearance.

(30)  In short, morality's aim is to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment required of him later. _Man's authoritarian structure_ – this must be clearly established – _is basically produced by the embedding of sexual inhibitions and fear in the living substance of sexual impulses._

(31)  Indeed, the inhibition of rebellion itself is unconscious. In the consciousness of the average non-political man, there is not even a trace of it.

(32)  … sexual inhibition changes the structure of economically suppressed man in such a way that he acts, feels, and thinks contrary to his own material interests.

(34)  In fact, National Socialist propaganda was built upon this “führer ideology.”

...In keeping with this peculiarity the rally speeches of the National Socialists were very conspicuous for their skillfulness in operating upon the _emotions_ of the individuals in the masses, and of _avoiding relevant arguments as much as possible._   In various passages in his book, Mein Kampf Hitler stresses the true mass psychological tactics dispense with argumentation and keep the masses' attention fixed on the "great final goal" at all times.

(37)  This ambivalent attitude toward authority - _rebellion against it, coupled with acceptance and submission_ – is a basic feature of every middle-class structure from the age of puberty to full adulthood and is especially pronounced in individuals stemming from materially restricted circumstances.

(40)  Hence, what is important about Hitler sociologically does not issue from his personality but from the importance attached to him _by the masses._ And what makes the problem all the more complex is the fact that Hitler held the masses, with whose help he wanted to carry out his imperialism, in complete contempt. Instead of giving many examples and substantiation of this, let _one_ candid confession suffice:  "… The mood of the people was always a mere discharge of what was funneled into public opinion from above.”

(62)  From the standpoint of the masses, the nationalistic führer is the personification of the nation. Only insofar as this führer actually personifies the nation in conformity with the national sentiments of the masses does a personal tie to him develop. Insofar as he knows how to arouse emotional family ties in the individuals of the masses, he is also an authoritarian father figure.

(63)  Even more essential, however, is the identification of the individuals of the masses with the “führer." The more helpless, the “mass-individual” has become, owing to his upbringing, the more pronounced is his identification with the führer, and the more of the childish need for protection is discussed in the form of a feeling at one with the führer. This inclination to identify is the psychological basis of the national narcissism, i.e., of the self-confidence that individual man derives from the "greatness of the nation.”  The reactionary, lower middle-class man perceives himself in the führer, in the authoritarian state. On the basis of this identification, he feels himself to be a defender of the "national heritage,"of this "nation,” which does not prevent him, likewise, on the basis of this identification, from simultaneously despising "the masses” and confronting them as an individual. The righteousness of his material and sexual situation is so overshadowed by the exulting idea of belonging to a master race, and having a brilliant führer that, as time goes on, he ceases to realize how completely he has sunk to a position of insignificant, blind allegiance.

(70)  Fascism promises the abolition of the classes, that is to say, the abolition of proletarian status, and in this way, it plays upon the social inferiority felt by the manual laborer.

(73)  _Disappointment in Social Democracy, accompanied by the contradiction between wretchedness and conservative thinking, must lead to fascism if there are no revolutionary organizations._

(80)  The structure of fascism it characterized by metaphysical thinking, unorthodox faith, obsession with abstract ethical ideals, and belief in the divine predestination of the führer.  These basic features are linked with a deeper layer, which is characterized by a strong authoritarian tie to the führer-ideal or the nation.

(106)  The notion that sexuality is moral only in the service of procreation, that what lies outside the pale of procreation is immoral, is the most important feature of reactionary sexual politics.  

(115)  As we have already pointed out, when political reaction is successful with a certain ideological propaganda, this cannot be ascribed solely to befogging. It is our contention that a problem of mass psychology must lie at the root of each instance of its success. Something that we still haven't grasped is going on in the masses, and it is that "something" that enables them to think, and to act against their own vital interests. The question is decisive, for without this attitude on the part of the masses, political reaction would be wholly powerless. It is the willingness of the masses to absorb the these ideas – that we call a dictator's _“soil of mass psychology”_ – that constitutes fascism's strength. Thus, it is imperative to seek a complete understanding of this.

(116)  Since mystical contagion is the most important psychological precondition for the assimilation of fascist ideology by the masses, an understanding of the psychological effect of mysticism in general is an indispensible part of an investigation of fascist ideology.

(137)  ...De Coster’s Till Eulenspiegel, a masterpiece, which, as far as I am concerned, has remained without peer in its liberal humanity.

(141)  All reactionary types condemn sexual pleasure (not without impunity, however) because it attracts and repulses them at one and the same time.  They cannot resolve the contradiction between sexual demands and moralistic inhibitions in themselves.

(185)  Insofar as the abortion law causes distress, death, and grief, it is a question of general social politics. Not until, and only when, it is clearly and explicitly understood that people violate the law because they have to _have intercourse even if they don't want to have children_ will the question of abortion become a sex-political question. This has passed unnoticed until now, despite the fact that it is emotionally the _most important_ point of the question. If a reactionary, social politician should take it upon himself to tell the people: “You complain that the abortion law demands so many sacrifices in health and human life! You don't have to _have_ sexual intercourse," then there would be an end to the approach that is concerned solely with population politics.  _The question is meaningful only if one clearly, and openly speaks up for the necessity of a satisfactory sex life._

(200-201)  Hitler not only established his power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then, essentially non-political; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal" manner, by mobilizing, no less than five million non-voters, that is to say, non-political people.  The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the question as to what it means "to be indifferent or non-political."

(201)  To be non-political is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a _defense_ against the awareness of social responsibility.

(205-206)  It would not be farfetched to say that it is in the nature of a politician that he does not learn anything from experience.

(210)  It is in the nature of a political party that it does not orient itself in terms of truth, but in terms of illusions, which usually correspond to the irrational structure of the masses.

(214)  The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian, one-party system, hence totalitarian, a system in which power takes priority over objective interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes.

(215)  _Sexual suppression serves, as we know, to mechanize and enslave the masses._ Thus, wherever we encounter authoritarian and moralistic suppression of childhood and adolescence sexuality, a suppression backed up by the law, we can infer with certainty that there are strong, authoritarian-dictatorial tendencies in the social development, regardless of which slogans the ruling politicians use.

(225)  The fear of social responsibility on the part of the masses of people brought the socialist movement into the _political_ sphere. However, in the scientific sociology of Karl Marx, who worked out the economic conditions of social independence, we find no mention of the _state_ as the goal of socialist freedom. The "socialist" _state_ is an invention of party bureaucrats. And now, _it,_"the state," was supposed to introduce freedom: _not the masses of the people,_ you see, _but the state._ It will be my object in what follows to show that the socialist idea of the state not only has nothing to do with the theory of the early socialist, but, on the contrary, represented a distortion of the socialist movement.  However unconsciously it may have been brought about, this distortion is to be imputed to the structural helplessness of the masses of people, who were nonetheless imbued with an intense desire for freedom. An intense desire for freedom on the one hand, coupled with a structural fear of the responsibility of self-government, on the other hand, produced in the Soviet Union a form of state that was less and less in accord with the original program of the Communists, and eventually assumed an authoritarian, totaliatory, and dictatorial form.

… According to the sociology of its founders, “socialism" was conceivable only on an international scale. A national, or even nationalistic socialism (National Socialism = fascism) is sociological nonsense. In the strictest sense of the word, it is mass deception.

(235)  Lenin’s communism is always conscious of its task:  The “dictatorship of the proletariat is that social form that leads from an authoritarian society to a nonauthoritarian, self-regulatory social order requiring neither police force nor compulsive morality.

(236)  According to Lenin’s conception the social revolution had the task not only of eliminating the surface formality and actual conditions of servitude, but also, and essentially, _of making men and women incapable of being exploited_.

(252)  … the fact that slave mentality is deeply rooted in the body itself, has become a second nature, as it were, so that _the masses of people pass on their suppression from generation to generation.

(258)  We must never lose sight of the fact that Hitler always built upon the justified hate of masses of people against sham democracy and the parliamentary system - and with great success!

(264)  Outbreaks of sentimental pathos always point to fear on the part of those who are responsible.  We want to have nothing to do with it.

(266)  The tendency to see everything in terms of economy is catastrophic.  Every effort must be made to correct this tendency.

(293)  When a man takes pleasure in his work, we call his relationship to it "libidinous.” [They love their work.] Since _work_ and _sexuality_ (in both the strict and broad senses of the word ) are intimately interwoven, man's relationship to work is also a question of the sex-economy of masses of people. The hygiene of the work process is dependent upon the way masses of people use and gratify their biologic, energy.  _Work and sexuality derive from the same biologic energy._

(295)  _Ungratified sexuality is readily transformed into rage._

… _The more gratifying one’s sexual life is, the more fulfilling and pleasurable is one’s work._

(300)  Illusions always prevent that which they pretend to be from _really_ materializing.

(312)  Natural love, vitally necessary work, and natural science are _rational_ functions of life. By their very nature, they cannot be anything but rational. Hence, they are arch enemies of any form of irrationalism. Political irrationalism, which plagues, disfigures, and destroys our life, is, in the true psychiatric sense of the word, a perversion of social life, a perversion brought about by the failure to recognize the natural functions of life, and by the exclusion of these functions from the regulation and determination of social life.

(317)  Peace can be hammered out only at a time of war, then and only then.

(354)  Though freedom is not capable of being organized, since any organization is contrary to freedom, the _conditions_ that are to clear the way to the free unfolding of the life forces can, indeed, must, be organized. 

(354-355)  It is ridiculous to argue with a murderer about his right to murder, but this ridiculous mistake is made again and again, in dealing with fascists.

(355)  Freedom does not have to be achieved – it is spontaneously present in every life function.  _It is the elimination of all obstacles to freedom that has to be achieved._

(368)  Those who are engaged in practical work, are not _against_ one thing or another. It is only the politician who, having no practical tasks, is always _against_ and never _for_ something. Politics in general is characterized by this "being against" one thing or another.  That which is productive in a practical way is not accomplished by politicians, but by working men and women, whether it is in accord with the politicians' ideologies or not. Years of experience have clearly demonstrated that the men and women who perform practical work always come into conflict with a politician. Thus, those who work for a living functioning are and operate against politics, whether they want to or not. The educator is _for_ the objective upbringing of small children; the farmer is _for_ the machines necessary in agriculture; the researcher is _for_ proofs for scientific findings. One can easily satisfy oneself that whenever a working man or woman is _against_ this or that achievement, he, or she is not speaking up as a worker, but under the pressure of political or other irrational influences.

(377)  If human society were rationally organized, the priority of love, work, and knowledge would be unquestioned;  they, and not unnecessary institutions, would have the right to determine social existence.

(391)  The nature of public opinion is essentially _political_, and it has a low estimation of the everyday life of love, work, and knowledge. And this is in keeping with the feeling of social insignificance experienced by those who love, work, and have knowledge.

However, a rational reassessment of the social conditions is out of the question as long as political rationalism contributes 99 per cent, and the basic functions of social life contribute only 1per cent, toward the formation of public opinion, and, therefore, toward the formation of the human structure.

----------

More Notes on Nazis, Fascism, and Tyranny

https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2024/07/notes-on-nazis-fascism-and-tyranny.html