The extremism of the centre

[robinturner]

Back in the 1970s, a friend of mine, Laurence Otter, wrote an article claiming that the newly-formed Social Democratic Party was potentially fascist. It was alarmist but well-written, and although the case in question was, in the light of subsequent events, vaguely ridiculous (the SDP was a tiny splinter group from the Labour Party who faded into obscurity soon after) he made a good point: fascism is the extremism of the centre. I don't remember if this was his idea or if he was quoting someone, but it rings true. Fascism is generally thought of as a far right ideology, but extreme right-wingers, such as armed-to-the-teeth Idaho conservatives, have no truck with its corporate state ideology. Fascist movements, diverse though they are, have certain prototypical qualities, including group solidarity, sentimentalism, naive moralism and paranoia. They are prepared to ignore class differences in order to form a partnership between labour and capital for the common good. They glorify war, but are careful to portray it as essentially defensive, a matter of national survival. They may invoke racism, but do not need to; a fascist movement can be built on cultural solidarity as much as racial purity. And of course they indulge in the cult of personality, under the excuse that strong leadership is necessary to save us in this critical situation (and for fascists, all situations are critical).

Now, I am probably being alarmist too, but it strikes me that New Labour has many characteristics of a fascist movement, though "movement" is probably too strong a word to describe a party that has such desultory support (the Labour Party won two elections with strong majorities largely because they weren't the Conservative Party). We have the cult of Blair, though as charismatic leaders go, he is only there because British politics are generally so bereft of charisma. There is "partnership" between labour and capital. National identity looms so large we could be forgiven for thinking we were at a Tory Party conference. And above all, there is national paranoia and glorification of war.

During the Kosovo conflict, I was reluctantly cheering Blair on for dragging America into a just war that had nothing to offer in the way of economic gain. We could argue interminably about the conduct of the war, but as wars go, it had all the criteria for a just war, if you believe in such a thing at all. Now, however, in the build-up to another war, Blair's true colours are shining.

Many people have accused Blair of being Bush's poodle: America wants a war, so Britain will support it; Bush says "frog" and Blair jumps. I have serious doubts about this. Blair is not supporting Bush's war effort because he loves Bush, but because he loves war. I'm not saying that he is an evil person who loves carnage and mayhem; he is a highly moral person who loves a good fight between Good and Evil, and mistakenly assumes that a war with Iraq would be like the ents destroying Isengard, to use a currently popular simile.

The appeal of fascism is its sentimentality, its solidarity, its paranoia and its dualism. While New Labour was involved with windy rhetoric and fiscal conservatism, its posturings could be safely ignored by all but the British public, who have had to suffer the consequences of an increasingly hypocritical and divided society pretending to be a utopia in the making. Now, however, the British government is falling into the delusions of imperial grandeur that it never left completely behind, and is actively supporting a war in a part of the world that has already had too many wars. By playing on an Islamic/Arab/nasty-foreign-person threat that never came anything near to what the IRA achieved, Tony Blair is, in his featherweight way, tipping the scales towards another war in the Gulf.

I am not saying that Blair is a fascist. I am sure he is a perfectly nice person who shares the horror most of us feel at what happened in Europe in the 1930s. To come back to the Lord of the Rings comparison, he is not Sauron, or even Saruman. He is Boromir, an upright fellow who is seduced by the potential power to do good into doing evil.

Note: If you enjoyed this, or any of my other Gulf war related posts, please do something. Talk to your friends, link to, or even slashdot, this post, post something of your own, write to your MP/Congressman - whatever. The Internet has a ripple effect - if everybody who is opposed to this war does something about it on the Net, it may just get back to Bush and Blair, or at least to their spin-doctors.

Comments

[jvb419.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot of good sense in that analysis, but I also have some reservations.

1: All the fascisms--the ones nearly everyone agrees deserve the term, anyway--relied heavily on organizeid mass formations, typically paramilitary, to demonstrate strength, to intimdate enemies, to serve as the nucleus of a kind of parallel state power that becomes official--replacing or existing uneasily alongside the old organs of power--once the fascist movement becomes the government. There are important exceptions but at any rate I don't see anything in present-day Britain or the US that corresponds to this.

2: The "right-wing" character usually ascribed to fascisms has to do with the fact that--again in the "classic" cases, and in some others as well--they arose as responses to strong, working-class-based Left movements, and explicitly characterized themselves in this way. Pinochet declared that Allende had been about to open the door to a Communist or MIRista seizure of power. Fascism in Italy, Germany, and Spain presented itself as saving the nation from an *internal* threat of Bolshevist revolution. Again, I don't see an analogue in present-day Britain or the US.

The fact is, I like a historical analogy as well as anyone, but I think we're in fairly new territory these days--the one imperial hyperpower lurching dementedly around the globe, and so on.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Both your points are valid.

1. It's hard to imagine anyone becoming sufficiently enthused about New Labour to start a Blairshirts organisation!

2. Interesting point - unlike the old SDP, New Labour arose not in opposition to militant labour movements, but because they had been demoralised under Tory rule, leaving a political vacuum.

You're right about new territory - politics are shifting, and the old labels don't apply, except perhaps psychologically. Rather than describing New Labour as crypto-fascist (to use an old-fashioned term), it might have been better to say that there is some overlap in the personality types that are attracted to the two ideologies.

[(Anonymous)]

from alex rooke

imagine you're an iraqi: you've had 30 years of repression; there is no effective opposition to the regime; any attempt to institute such is met with savagery (assuming not all we hear is yank propaganda). would you want a knight in a shiny suit to come to YOUR rescue? would you consider a few thousand lives worth paying as the price for freedom? we did. twice last century. apparently.

[solri.livejournal.com]

If I were to imagine that were an Iraqi, I think my first priority would be staying alive and feeding my family (who may well be malnourished or dying from easily-treatable diseases as a result of a decade of sanctions). Of course if I were an extremely idealistic Iraqi, I might think that the price of freedom is imminent death, and be happy to pay, but if I were that idealistic, the Baathists would have wiped me out twenty years ago. I might want a knight in a shiny suit to come to my rescue, but I would think twice about the risks involved. It would not involve a few thousand lives - recent UN estimates put the likely number of fatalities at half a million, plus over a million people made homeless as a bonus. That's a million homeless people in a country that is already falling to pieces as a result of said sanctions (and, to be fair, bad government), which translates into a few more hundred thousand deaths.

The analogy with the two world wars is specious. The First World War can be ignored as an exercise in idiocy - no moral principles were at stake on either side. However much the Second World War is presented as a Manichaean conflict of Light and Darkness, you know as well as I do (having an MA in International Relations) that the British entered the war extremely reluctantly, and their involvement had little to do with preserving democratic ideals, or even fear of a German invasion (Germany was trying to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Britain right up to the point that Britain declared war). Britain blundered into WWII as a result of old treaties and pressure from various interest groups and ideological factions. There was an element of principle involved, but it was small - British warships even blockaded or sunk Jewish refugee ships headed for Palestine. As for America, as in WWI, they only joined in when they were attacked. Churchill had to bust a gut just to get them to supply Britain with arms.

As I said in previous posts, I'm not always a dove. I berated NATO for pussy-footing in Bosnia (not that they were listening) and took the piss out of America's yellow-bellied stance in Kosovo. I even admitted I was wrong in my initial opposition of military action in Kuwait (I thought, mistakenly, that the UN should have given more time for diplomatic pressure and sanctions to take effect - the results of years of sanctions against Iraq speak for themselves!).

Anyway, it's good to hear from you. Please continue to bait me!

[(Anonymous)]

moi encore:

Ok, ok...

a) World war analogy = subtle irony
b) what if you were a rational iraqi, and said 1 in 18 chance of trouble?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Ah, the rational Iraqi model. I'd say 1 in 18 was a reasonable risk to take if I were guaranteed that an Amercian invasion would bring peace, freedom and prosperity. But since we have no guarantee of that (to put it mildly), the odds don't look so good any more.