Subject: Re: As usual
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 02:39:27 -0500


no wittgenstein, here, eh?

often wonder if we aren't working from different historiographies, tho?

what passes for the canonical conception and history re nazism,  really only
another bourgeois theodicy.

ww2 was merely the end of a protracted struggle
btw britain and germany,
starting with bismark,
for bourgeois imperial hegemony.

in the event ww1 achieved the destruction of whig,
wilhelmine, germany... her traditional ruling class.

then, the failure of weimar to emplace
a viable programme (new deal) to meet
the big wave crisis of the great depression,
disqualified the bourgeois liberal class mandate.

next in succession would have come the proletariat.
but as the international big bourgeois, godfathered by
britain and US, had already taken care to eliminate
the vanguard element, liebknecht, luxembourg, meyer,...
by sponsoring freikorps death squads thru the decade of the 20's,
power defaulted to the one-eyed man, the lumpen,
led by the battle-hardened cadre, the freikorps cum nazis,
and their iron cross first-class fuehrer.

and, the final stroke, the whole thing was turned to
account to pay the price, a fraction of which was
the holocaust, to defeat bolshevism.

pretty standard lenin

but, thence the pop notion of nazism
is seen for a fetishized construct, bourgeois myth/history.
historically determined and class contingent;
the sociopathology, a truism: empowered lumpen equals barbarity;
and over all, from beginning to end,...
the providential genius of the entire historical production,
international capital;  the real evil,
with its underclass (predatory criminal) reflection,
the lumpen
... not racism, militarism, totalitarianism,...

this pattern: big bourgeois patronizing lumpen barbarity
to deal with its internal imperial security, is the
essential structure of fascism...the US/pinochet
episode replicated almost ubiquitously
(of recent note, suharto, mobuto...even saddam hussein)
a major component (the fascist component)
of bourgeois imperial governance.

in the US mandarin complicity (cia/fbi/pentagon...
more than cornball aspen institutes and renaissance week-ends,
breaking bread with rockefellers, guggenheim grants, nobel prizes...)
at the highest levels is so seeming unproblematical
(chomsky proves the rule), heid's nazism loses all distinction

add to this the fact that any young man's (heid's) attempting to
engage history within the vortex of revolutionary times
is a thing so frought with contingency,
levels of ambiguity, excruciating ethical nuances,
...as makes most outcomes humanly disasterous ...
and as makes near impossible the task of sorting
motive from rationalization, prejudice from reasoned analysis,
illusion from fact,...
the rendering a honest retrospective.

as a rule the winners propagate triumphalist myth,
and force upon the losers the abject posture
of confession and supplication.
so one could even argue that heid's silence here
was a kinda heroic integrity.

ultimately, of course, heid and b&t are somehow
a product, a "thrown-ness," of these same
material historical determinants.
leaving one less of a problem with his fascism
than his personal (especially husserl, eh) betrayals.
his failure to make good on them accounts.

bob

-----Original Message-----
From: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
To: Rscheetz <Rscheetz>
Date: Monday, January 25, 1999 6:18 AM
Subject: As usual


>
>Was Plato a fascist?
>
>For many reasons,  I genuinuely do not know; just two of those reasons
>are that I don't know what a fascism is, nor whether Plato's vision in
>theRepublik of the tripartite State would qualify as such.
>However, let's suppose his vision is fascistic.
>In P's case, there is an immediate (almost deductive) relation between
>his analysis of the kind of creature that we are, namely, his tripartite
>view of the Soul, and his tripartite view of the State.
>P's metaphysics can be 'blamed' for his fascism.
>
>Is the same true of H? Is there such an immediate relation between his
>Dasein-construal of the kind of creature that we are and his membership
>to NS -- this membership interpreted as H's confirmation that NS is
>political arrangement proper for creatures like ourselves? (I would
>prefer to ignore the so-called 'argment' of Farias).
>
>Where is the argument for this? Or are these 'allegations' about the
>relation merely cases of the informal fallacy of 'guilt by association'?
>
>Could the 'relation', if you will, have been more in tune with that
>between Hume's skeptical doubts (entertained inside the study) and his
>enjoyment of Backgammon (entertained outside his study).
>
>On the other hand, perhaps, these questions are wildly naive, romantic,
>idealistic, ....?
>jim
>
>PS. Jan, thanks much for the post. I'm reading it now and will get back to
you.
>
>
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