communism and fascism deconstructed

COMMUNISM* AND FASCISM* DECONSTRUCTED

Psychohistorical analysis of these ideological Sign-use constructs.


THINK the TEXT
FEEL the TOKEN

Ideological thinking : when certain words, phrases, iconic sounds are used in common discourse with assumed descriptive application (as text); having strong (trauma related) emotional evocations (as tokens); the effect of communicating by means of such signs is to split and ramify the responses (“universe of discourse”). This can be called “ideological thinking”.

Examples would be uses of “communism” and “fascism”, for instance. As text, these would ordinarily be taken to refer to 20th century systems for organizing state government, represented by Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, respectively. For detailed knowledge* of what communism and fascism are, however, much, much reading of sources, historical, philosophical, economic, psychological, you name it, is required, at the minimum. Records, especially testimonials of survivers, are necessary to provide depth of understanding. Plus ability to make other connections through personal feelings, by having undergone similar experiences as survivors relate.

If you are from America’s Great Southwest, like myself, these are all things you learn after having grown up, moved away, or especially studied. I can’t recall hearing either of them through high school; college, probably (Baylor University), but like Greek geometry in cognitive appreciation. They were not part of common discourse. As I learned from having moved away (Wisconsin; upstate New York), all the events in Europe connected with World War II which we heard about were, in fact, being experienced by intellectual circles there and here under these terms, or related ones. “Hitler”, and “Nazi” one knew, of course; though in an objective, emotionally innocent way, except as colored by RKO Pathe news and radio. I don’t remember newspapers around in Lockney, except at the Rexall downtown. “Jew” and “Catholic” would during this time belonged in the Greek geometry category. “There is one living at Childress,” for the first; my sister visited. “Sprinkle their babies for baptism” was about all for the second. Neither was regarded negatively, in home, school, community, county, region (except, I’m sure, in certain pockets). Definitely more positive in general tone, I would say. Vitual




*****/

Separated from all such context in contemporary these terns occur, now, as “power signs” on the token side. Their use has the effect of splitting the response of those communicating along ultimate – “theologized” -- lines. You are expected to know how you line up on the side of political reality in regard to anything and everything else you might predicate on in the world, as history, even cosmology, from Hiroshima to God, in order to use them correctly. And you are expected to use them correctly to relate to anything other than a narrow, parochial reality. Most especially, if you want to address the national public; because “Jew”, and “Catholic” are right behind “communism” and “fascism” in the grammar you must know – they fall on the same side (Jew/communist; Catholic/fascist) of some inner line that gets drawn by “knowing” all those things mentioned above, the way survivors do. This is something you have to pick up as you go along. It isn’t written out anywhere, yet.

“Catholic” goes with “fascism”, on the token side, by association with the religion of those in parts of Germany (mainly, more southern), and Italy, the two major fascist countries (Croatia was a third). The unity of the people was the polity of the state: the leader spoke for/from/to the default position* of all. Recognized as such by the people, as a “Folk,” he WAS the state. When Hitler stood before the group en masse, hand raised to receive its group-outpoured respect toward It, in Him, right there, then…. he was not, did not represent (vorstellung) himself as a personality. He was, and represented, “Die Fuhrer.” It* was not an entity apart from him, but through him, in the people. One could extend one’s hand, snap heels, and say “Seig Heil” to what it* was he represented. That common bond of what it was to be German, present at the inauguration of The Third Reich. What is common between “Fuhrer” and “Pope”, on the token side, is “Father.” That is why Catholicism is associated in the unconscious with fascism. The way Catholics feel about their spiritual Father is the way the Nazi party expected Germans to feel about Hitler, and many did, allowing for the spiritual seque from mageterium to Sturn und Drang. Even though Catholics, today, would start in insisting on that the Catholic Church did not approve of Hitler, Pius XII did keep silent more than he had to to protect his priests, etc., this is beside the point which “fascism” is brought out. There is a line of connection through the unconscious, via the “Father”, that leads from Pope, to State Leader (re-mythologized), to Popish State Leader (substituting “Leader of corporate fascist US empire descended through Germany and Italy plus Vatican Rome) – with a Protestant twang, as history would have it. The marriage of opposites (Jung) that began warring in World War II, within and without state/religious bounds (Catholics wad to go qo with Hitler if the world was to be divided between him and Stalin) has been brought to America post-2000, on the Wings of that Great Speckled Bird (=The Bible – metaphor from song by Grand Ole Opry star Grandpa Jones)


******/
“Communisms”, on the textual side, is synonymous on common discourse with the system of governance set up in Moscow, fabled old Russian city, by Bolshevik ideologists under the title “Soviet Russia”. It was a system that also ‘nationalized’ everything, but differently, bringing industry, agriculture, money, education, history, even metaphysics and language under state control and management. The inner bond of unity was the State – doubled back onto itself, AS inner bond, replacing single person. Everyone has equal authority, and share of wealth, on different levels. This is not represented (in theory) by/in any one embodiment, as Pope, Fuhrer, Priest, King or….Tzar. It had been the murder of the Tzar (Nicholas?) for ideological reasons – he was a good man, as Tzars go. Done by “Jews”, rumor had it.

On the Token side, as seen, “communism” communicated and communicates the public – group-fantasy – elimination of The Father. No more “Mr. Dad”, with a swastika, reversed priestly collar, or Businessman or other obedience-demanding figures. The guy on the other side of the counter works for you, too. The state owns what’s in it. In Freudian terms, this (causally) represents the mentality of “killing the father”. The spirit of fraternity modeled on worker’s commaraderie was the familiar “brother” term. “Comrade”. Wild fantasies – about wild fantasies, mostly – abounded about girls required to have sex on demand by righteous comrades. Sexual freedom with political revolution; both defied The (inner) Father projected as the default position* of the group. Thus, what the German Folk came to honor as a spiritual totality, was psychologically polar opposite of what Soviet Communists honored as theirs, in re the Father content. One was “godly”; the other “godless”.

*****/

What “communism” communicated came to be associated with “the Jews.” The Bolsheviks were very heavily Jewish, up to 85-90% early on. This takes a long time to appreciate, since it is one of those things the Jewish version of 20th cent history tends to ignore. It was an international movement, starring intellectuals who followed the work of Karl Marx (who had followed that of Hegel, the philosopher), an ideology one may appreciate intellectually without religious or tribal identification (Marx was “anti-Semitic” in regard Judaism as a religion, as the term is used now: he rejected what “the Jew” represented, then ). The core spiritual unity of this movement, besides killing external authority, was the positive humanistic impulse called tikkun olim : roughly (as I understand it*) “work toward the good of humanity as a whole.” What began as a Jewish movement – today, I think, called “Trotskyite” by PJ Buchanan and to-the-right conservatives – merged with movements of “workers,” “socialists,” equalitarians, and those called “liberals ” today (making abortion, freedom to die, etc. politically fundamental). And perhaps it* would have remained, historically recalled, as a kind of pure strain of positive being, as many intended it, if….

It* (had not) re-emerged in the 80-90’s – post-Vietnam, exploiting America’s war-guilt to brew “neoconservative”, around “Zion”. This is what went over to pro-Bush politics after 2000.

This connects the theo-State-Leader complex with the Protestant Twang - G.W.Bush and the Evangelical Christian, religious-right, “base” of pro-Bush politics.

Let me say here I am obliged to use these terms of group-identity to keep in contact with political discourse in the mainstream media (MSM). The “Evangelical Christian base of Bush Republicanism” is a mythic construct, kept going by its reciprocated use by such as Jerry Faldwell, Pat Robertson, S. Baptist president Land, and others who identify. It would carry “clout”, and for some still does, were it not for the knowledge, now, of the personalities and deal being swapped back around 1996 when Benyamin Yahu was tapped to be PM of Israel, and Zionism began to be aggressively pushed, though largely behind the scenes in think-tanks, lobbies, and placement of key personnel, as a keystone of national discourse. This was such a blatant reversal of church-state relations, for the U.S. to recognize such an ideological term in state discourse, attaching what “Israel” represents to something previous defenders may have detested and do to this day – effectively converting their inner state to one Zionists can identify as “with the enemy”… that Rudoph Giuliani was compelled to reverse that, pre-emptively declaring anti-Zionism equal to anti-Semitism, and telling European governments they had better crack down on anti-Semitism, now that it was (he said) expanding to include anti-Zionism. When (as the saying goes these days), it was just the other way around.

*****?

Bottom line: This European Union of Opposites, communism and fascism, has been imported, now, with their histories and, especially, religious tensions, to fuse with “end of days” (latent – 2005) political theo-thinkers into America, via its democratic system, over against a “New” externalized Father-killer – Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, al-Zaquari (Milosevic, etc.).

It is at this point that the plot of the psychohistorical narrative takes a strange turn. Not only is “kill the Father” (communism) stuck together with “worship the Father” (fascism), glued by so-called dispensationalist theology holding that Jerusalem must be returned to the Jews before Jesus can come again; but – wouldn’t you just know it – also deconstructed in the historical group process is the theme of homosexuality. This was one of the issues raised along with the 60’s revolution that glommed onto the respect won by anti-war Protestors-on-principle. “Freedom” was the word then, as played at Woodstock by L…..And it went deep. The individual’s control over his or her own sexuality as a “right”, under the U.S. constitution. Defines the kind of country “we” have. The kind of people we are. What others do behind closed doors is not for law to decide: it is the right to privacy, aka sexual freedom. This became an accepted part of what right-wingers call “liberalism”, though strongly supported by SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia. (This is a major, major psychological twist. More later). It is significant that it is just the sexual issues raised by the 60’s FOR THE RIGHT-WING; THOSE WHO SUPPORTED THE VIETNAM WAR – namely, abortion and homosexuality – that are the ones that have remained and emerge, now, in 2005-6, almost intact, like a solid block of “squared” mythic narrative history, as what these “right-wing Republican Jewish/Catholic/ideological Christian base” of pro-Bush politics must forever, perpetuially, be “running against”.

What cannot be seen except through Freudian lenses, I would argue, is the connection between “kill the Father” fantasies, inherent in communist anxiety, and “male homosexual anal rape” fantasies inherent in gaynxiety*, which would explain why both should historically deconstruct at the same time, in the same process. It lies in the analysis Freud did of Daniel Shreber (around l912?), famous Leipsig judge who went mad the day he was sworn into highest office, confined himself to an asylum for the mentally ill and wrote “Memoirs of My Mental Illness”, read by all the late 1890’s elite. From the demented world-view he brilliantly elaborated living in in fantasy, Freud reconstructed the common basis of: his extreme narcissism; hallucinations of being sodomized at night (experienced with “voluptuosities” ); New Man creator of the next generation; hypochondria; psychotic loss of reality (not permanent; thus, soft-, not hard-wired); … and homosexuality. The latter emerged from his early childhood erotic fantasies by putting together the contents of his cosmic elaborations alongside the relationship with his personal father, and deducing that in later life he was regressing to that mode of libido cathexis – arousing ferocious defense against these, intra-psychically. It is this, in itself precious bond between son and father, and vice versa, that is twistedly correcting the reality of the physical world in Schreber’s fantasies. It results in/from the unconscious desire to be anally raped by the Father, as expression of love.

-Sid Thomas
tbc