What I’m reading…

Heidegger, Hunter, Hopkins.

Y Fascism

People reading this blog might wonder why all the talk of Fascism or a Transcendental Fascism? Back from the USA and refreshed it seems I owe a brief explanation…

I clearly see the question of Fascism or fascism (big F or little, I use them both at random, as I write quick and in a flurry, and often don’t pay attention to such details, though big F should be historical Fascism, both past, present and future, and small f for the generic category or concept)  as being one of the main intellectual issues of the 21st century. As Michael Haneke’s fascist parable The White Ribbon wins the Palme D’Or and Tarantino’s fascist ode Inglorious Basterds wins Best actor with the character of the Nazi Jew Hunter played by Cristoph Wirth… what better time to hold forth on THE political philosophy of the 21st century? It seems it was the fascist Cannes, so the question arises, as Susan Sontag once observed… what is so fascinating about F/fascism?

Firstly, I’d say Fascism is to a certain extent a utopian and romantic political philosophy… but in a vastly different respect to Capitalism or Socialism/ Communism in many ways. Facism tells it like it is rather than how we’d like it to be. One of the great interesting characteristics about fascism is that it perfectly reflects nature and the structure and Being of the Universe. Boyd Rice’s famous essay “Nature’s Eternal Fascism” is a good textual example to support this thesis. Indeed, this nature/fascism topic seems  to be the subject matter of the new Lars Von Trier film AntiChrist (another Cannes winner)…

A lot of pomo wankers will insist on the importance of irony, undecidability and deconstruction in an interpretation of a work of art, but as we all know those tools are a poor man’s hermeneutic… and that true art is like a lightning bolt from Being itself. It is not ironic, it is simply what it ‘is’. Bare and pure in its nakedness. It is purely ontological and given. A gift.

But is this how fascism is treated and discussed in our society? No. Consider the way fascism as topic is treated in today’s discourse. This ought to be a perfect guide to its hidden power, relevance and true significance to humanities future. Essentially, fascism, as an open political discussion point is completely forbidden. If fascists are portrayed or discussed in the media, it is generally in terms of documentaries about bottom of the barrel Neo Nazi’s, with a grade two education, espousing some crude racism or in Hollywood fiction crazed Nazi’s killing everyone on screen for kicks. This is 90% of the image of fascism that capitalism’s media machine would like you to receive. Of course it is very far from the truth of the matter…

But many artists some mentioned above (…and below) have taken fascism and understood it in its deepest most intellectual sense as a core issue for humanity, one that they either support subversively, or engage with intellectually with caution, or as a caveat.

One of the things that is often annoying about the portrayal of fascism in the media is, as mentioned above, its portrayal of uneducated Neo-nazi’s and also the consistent and on going portrayal of Nazi’s on screen as pathologically insane maniacs… and that they are somehow not part of Western Civilisation, and her History. Again, nothing could be further from the truth…

Nazism is in many senses the most extreme, far reaching and intense manifestation and representation of Western Civilisation ever to be made factical. Some historians even equate fascism and modernism together (see Roger Griffin’s recent work). Which, by the way, I believe, and is why I bought my “Modernist” T shirt recently in LA. I love modernism and modernist artists and authors, and generally dislike and hate post modernism as an utterly repellent sophistry and completely decadent discourse; the sly supplement and ally of later day Capitalism (see Jameson). Enough with fucking Deleuze already! He was a suicidal confused buffoon with a few clever ideas and takes on Nietzsche, Von Sacher Masoch, cinema and Sade… but over all made no cohesive sense…his schizo philosophy was exactly that!

But I digress, Nazism, as mentioned, was simply a too intense and destructive form of Modernism for its own damn good! I have always felt, along with the futurists, that fascism is in many senses The Future. Many sci fi writers are in full agreement… and the fascist dystopia is Legion as sci fi motif. What excites me though, about say, footage of Nazi rallies, its architecture, or political philosophy of the era, is its vast futuristic character. A cold and logical paradigm shift in human development had taken place under Mussolini and Hitler and its full intensity proved too much for the bourgeois allies, and the monstrous ‘dread leveler’ best represented by Stalin. Of course, I have stated that Nazism is full of errors of intensity, nuance and velocity, the main being the aforementioned choice of Jew as internal enemy, when clearly Jews are a most superior people, who should be allied to the cause of Western civilisation, rather than recast as its enemies and victims. This mistaking of Jews as enemies rather than allies, I suspect and have said elsewhere, probably cost Hitler the war! As, for example, he lost Jewish intellectuals and scientists who could have steered The Reich to new strategies and Super weapons like the A bomb very early in ww2, putting an end to Western Capitalism once and for all, etc. But instead due to this mistake, Germany lost many of its brightest and finest due to a retrograde anti-semitic prejudice of some of the top Nazi’s. Things could have been very different… and should have been. But this century presents problems even more pressing and potent than the last for Western Civilisation, and its important this time the Jewish people stand with us at the bastions of Western culture, and fight hand to hand with us, in what could be the last great battle for the planetary harmony and survival…indeed recent neo-cons, and even their supplement Obama understand this…hence the undying support for Israel, which I support, by the way…

Due to this Jewish mistake, can F/fascism, or Nazism for that matter, be dismissed intellectually and out of hand as purely Evil? I think not. Like Heidegger said, where the danger is, also lies the saving power. As a hermeneutic strategy I recommend bracketing out the Jewish holocaust all together intellectually (ala Husserl’s famous phenomenological reduction), put it out of your head, after acknowledging its error of course, as a vast form of foolish collateral damage, to borrow a modern term. A Bataillean Accursed Share, an unaccountable excess of the Nazi matrix. Once you have acknowledged it, then put aside the Nazi Jewish t/error of ww2,  then one can move onto the waters of fascism easily, with a clear conscience and unhindered. Like an adventurous sojourner setting forth on a calm quest on the quite sea of the eternal Now…

This of course is the essential strategy of most holocaust deniers, essentially, but one need not deny the Jewish holocaust to redeem fascism. This seems excessive and  unnecessary. There are other ways forward, ‘always forward, over the dead bodies’ as Albert Speer once said, of which I suggest just one, above…

The intellectual pedigree of fascism as Giuseppi Botai described in 1924 is “exquisitely intellectual” and that it represents “a revolution of the intellectuals” and an “intellectual revolution”.  Israeli historian Zev Sternhell feels the same way, in his post war histories of the intellectual back grounds of fascism. Sternhell claims fascism has a fully functional intellectual apparatus and ideology to rival that of even the Left and Marxism. This, too, I strongly concur with. And to find it out you have to really study the texts hidden away in libraries and research the topic, as its a secret history, like that of a Dan Brown conspiracy novel…

Next time you see some idiot on TV espousing a crude biological racism, think perhaps on some of the following thinkers as a riposte to this common misrepresentation:

Martin Heidegger’s ontological fascism, Nietzsche’s hierarchical nihilist immorality, Ezra Pound’s masterful cantos of mythic/structural fascism and his adhorence of usury, TS Eliot’s social critique of Western Civilisation as ‘waste land’ filled with ‘hollow men’ and his call for conservative renewal, DH Lawrence’s sexual, frenetic and animalistic ‘fascism without bullying’, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s critique of the bourgeois, and call for a new Romantic elite, Wydham Lewis’s vortex of forces and iconoclastic outsider fascist modernism, Yeats mythic nationalist poetry, geared theory of history and fascist visions, Celine’s masterful misanthropy and avant garde literary agression, Curzio Malaparte’s literary complexity and his architectual interests, Yukio Mishima’s Japanese vision of fascism with Emperor worship and a new military elitism, Knut Hamsun’s pastoral, green and proletariat fascism, the eugenic theories of Sir Francis Galton, the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer, the scientific monism and artwork of Ernst Haeckel, the focus on the purifying and fertilising power of Violence to be found in Sorel, Oswald Spengler’s Hegelian/Historical synthesis and warning of the Decline of the West, and lastly warrior poet Gabrielle D’Annunzio’s first synthesis of the fascist minimum during the taking of Fiume. I can go on, and on, like this. Further figures like Ernst Junger, Carl Jung, Luigi Pirandello, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Arno Breker, Timothy Findlay, Mario Sironi, Charles Peguy, Ernest Renan, Paul de Lagarde, Charles Darwin, Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Maurice Barres, Giovanni Papini, Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil, Jose Antonio Primo De Rivera, Oswald Mosley, Leni Riefenstahl, Arnold Fanck, Moeller Van Den Bruck, Francis Parker Yockey, Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, Robert Brassilach, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, JG Ballard, Max Nordau, Otto Weininger, Michael Moynihan, Bret Easton Ellis, Alain De Benoist and even early Blanchot and Paul De Man…all testify to a fascism that is far from an unintellectual and unartistic movement. In fact Fascism is, par excellence, the product of the finest minds of the 19th and 20th centuries. This hidden intellectual pedigree of fascism, i.e. the fact that it is essentially hidden, is one of the great intellectual scandals of the last 100 years. I call these authors and artists above, ‘the Other’ canon, representing a completely different vision of humanity and society. Many books deal individually with these artists, thinkers and writers (above) engagement in or with fascism, but few join the collective dots… and outline a vision for a new Fascist International, that can be drawn from this vast resource…

Well, here at Idea Fix, we will do our bit to get you thinking and talking about F/fascism, whether you agree with it, or not. We reject the curiously censorious ‘verboten’ attitude to its discussion and believe the list of Nazi crimes is not enough to relegate the concept to the dust bins of history. Indeed, Communism’s crimes far exceed fascist ones, and yet its discussion is de riguer at Universities. Why not fascism? This state of affairs exist because the Left is, lets face it, no real threat to later day Capitalism and it acts really as just a fashion statement or hipster strategy for most students. Fascism is, of course, totally another matter…Do people really only see the media stereotype of it? …and not believe it has other possible manifestations, or potentials?

Engage, think, discuss and debate the issue/s here at Idea Fix. As these thinkers (above) demonstrate, disagreements and open discussion is as welcome in fascist/rightist circles… as it is, in any other. And while you study and reflect, remember to think and consider the full weight of what these thinkers thoughts may actually portend… What do they have to say about humanity as a whole, and its manifest destiny, on our small and imperiled planet?

I discuss this often at some personal pain, as I know F/fascism is not a popular issue with some people. But like any writer or artist of modernist era and before, I feel compelled to speak the truth as I see it. And also I find it scandalous that no one else (or very few) are cohesively assembling such thoughts and that the majority of humanity appear duped on the topic of fascism. For better or worse, I hope to make my own humble contribution to the topic and subject matter. I wish to pursue the idea that a regenerated fascism need not be Evil or destructive, and that a ‘good’ fascism could indeed exist in the future.

I hope you, mein lecteur…”hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère”, will have the patience to endure the content of my thoughts, and perhaps dare to think in dangerous waters with me, for the saving power, if you so desire…”the future is that mountain”…

Vale JG Ballard…long live the Metro Centre!

JG Ballard passed away on the weekend. An amazing literary talent has left us, one whose later works were, in my humble opinion, sheer genius.

Best source for stories about his death is ballardian.com here. Its a great site run by Simon Sellers. Its a little bit of a pomo wankfest, but informative, detailed and sincere.

I wrote this post below Sellers obit, comments and tributes are welcome there:

“A genius, who saw the future. He didn’t write science fiction in his later years he wrote science fact. His prescience about a new form of fascism being the only legitimate form of resistance to later day Capitalism, in his last novels, could not be closer to the truth. Viva The Metro Centre, James! Something is coming, you won’t live to see it, JG…but many will…”

I think it says all I need to say…

Here is a visual tribute to one of Ballard’s last books, the masterful career ending Kingdom Come, with its Metro Centre, a mall that acts as a site of a people’s uprising. The mock Metro Centre website is here. I love these photos, a guy looking in a rubbish bin with a light emanating from it, a guy depressed in a shipping department with headline “Sale Now On”, other ads promoting losing it and going completely crazy, and the last chestnut, “The Wait is almost over”. This is an advertising campaign supposedly designed by and featuring character David Cruise from “Kingdom Come”, that was created to publicise said novel. Its intentions are to unsettle and unhinge people with the utter and complete emptiness of capitalism, thereby fostering some form of new fascist revolution. Indeed, that is the purpose of the book, also. Don’t believe me? Read the book… tell me if I wrong…

Charlie Brooker hates you, and thinks you are a zombie

Super hip English media critic and razor sharp wit Charlie Brooker is now reviewing the news, after his excellent TV show Screen Wipe that reviewed the media like no other. This new show is equally classic, Brooker’s opinions are right on, his choice of back ground music like Dawn of the Dead sound track, Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon classical music and Escape from New York electro, are sublime and spot on. Brooker wears his misanthropy on his sleeve and has some of the best insults on the idiot box that will have you with pen in hand taking notes. He picks the best topics about which to vent his spleen and has a a rare talent for getting to the heart of an issue or subject. Dare I say it, he has views on some topics very similar to some of my own. Some even say I look a bit like him! I think he looks a bit like Jon Hewitt, or a mixture of myself and Jon to be more precise…

Anyway, Brooker is a discovery, he has a blog here and a cool book out of many of his essays and writings called Dawn of the Dumb that is a must have. Brooker appears to be a ‘Dawn’ junkie constantly referencing it with music from the film over moronic Arab or social unrest to make a strong political point, and even doing his own great Zombie TV show on BBC Dead Set. Hunt Dead Set down it rocks!

Here are the beginnings of the first two episodes of Newswipe. The continuation of these episodes is to be found on You Tube.

Now go away.

Welcome to Cipherspace

Angelina Jolie as the new Madonna presiding over a sea of consumer shit. Got some new books today from Amazon that I have long been after. Should provide fuel for further reflections here at Idea Fix.

For the moment a quick message from later day Capitalism’s sponsor… Moronic celebrity.

Enter Michel Houellebecq…

…into my world.

I’m going to get to know some of his work, and report back here.

Double look out! Mark Savage is blogging!

Aussie (currently expat) filmmaker and bon vivant Mark Savage (Marauders, Defenceless) has created a blog called Phantom Of Pulp. It is now officially one of my favourite blogs. Mark’s unique personality, and view on life, is a world unto itself. A truly perverted world, but a world all the same. Its somehow a crystalisation of every sex and horror movie or novel, seedy porn rag or pulp tittie book – all tied up with a strange form of curious innocence. Knowing Mark, and having happily collaborated with him, and been friends with him since my teens, I have heard many of his remarkable ideas on horror, sexuality and violence. The experience is something I thought you would simply have to know Mark in person to understand. But through the miracle of blogging, and through Mark’s talents as a writer, he is bringing his inner world to life in his cool, and disturbing blog – Phantom Of Pulp. Inside the head of Mr. Savage is a very strange place indeed. And coming from me, you can be assured, it really is out there!

Here’s some of what to expect: incest, necrophilia, Forry Ackerman, Coffin Joe, Guy N. Smith, slasher films, arcane cinema knowledge to rival Tarantino and Scorsese, giant rats and crabs, torture porn, Garbage pail kids, mutants and freaks, rare horror novels and cool cover art, glorification and appreciation of rape and murder, Asian movies with titles like “White Rose Campus: Then, everybody gets raped”, ultra rare old movie ads, depravity, serial killers, skeletons, vampires, and oh, every form of sexual excess and deviance known to man and beast. Yes, in other words it’s the shit. Pure. Uncut Mark Savage is now on display. A world of pure horror, just like the one we all live in every day, examined with a phenomenological eye for detail and nuance. See it here bitches, “And piss your pants…piss them”.

If you haven’t seen his films get the cool box set “Savage Cinema From Down Under” from Subversive Cinema. See here. You might even spot a teenage Richard Wolstencroft, as a helpful Mr. John Smith in Marauders. John Smith likes to help…Mark knows the rest of this joke…

Here are some of the book titles Mark likes to submit to his own theory of deconstruction and critical analysis at his site. These all display a certain theme, one to rival Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, I dare say:

In Praise Of Prejudice, Lucifer and counterknowledge

Idea Fix and Richard Wolstencroft recommend the following books:

In Praise of Prejudice by Theodore Dalrymple. An astutely observed book that examines how useful and true most prejudices are, and that to live one’s life without them is almost impossible. or at least a great folly. A fun read, a tad neo con at times, but you can take and leave his examples and apply his rules to your favorite prejudice. Hours of fun for the whole family.

Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson. An excellent book about the many quack theories being esposed on the net and in mainstream culture. I’m guilty of propagating counterknowledge with my own doubts over the official 911 story. Book attempts to debunk all conspiracy theories and pseudo histories. Some deserve debunking and the book is good in some cases. Others Thompson relies too heavily on the official record and fails to recognise that at one time ideas like gravity and the world being round were counterknowledge. Sometmes you have to allow bullshit… to get at the kernels of truth. Still, a good read.

The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. Why good people turn evil. From the guy who did those Stanford experiments on prisoners and guards known as the Stanford Prison Experiment and defended the Abu Ghraib torturers. Fascinating Psychological book on what makes people turn to the dark side of the force. Zimbardo’s emphasis is on environment and situations. Half way in to it. Good so far, but a little long.