Is anyone interested in forming a study group on postmodernism?

I've noticed a lot of the discussions on Askville seem to have philosophical undercurrents of which the people arguing their positions seem unaware. Some people seem to instinctively lean toward fascism, while others lean toward "postmodernism." Lately I have been trying to get up to speed on these subjects, and am now just starting to review some critiques of postmodernism and am looking for others who might also be interested in sorting out their own ideas.

One area I am particularly interested in is the political cooptation of language, from old fashioned rhetoric to propaganda, to Orwellian Newspeak. Another area I would like to explore is the interplay between our ideas about human rights and dignity and the ideological justifications of American imperialism. If interested, take an answer slot and discuss the books or topics you would like to explore, and we can take it from there.

Please don't take an answer slot if you are not going to particiapte. Asked by Zuma 43 months ago Similar questions: interested forming study group postmodernism Society > Philosophy.

Similar questions: interested forming study group postmodernism.

1 By the way, the Federation portrayed in Star Trek the Next Generation was intended to be an example of a society based post modernism. Notes on Fascism:Lawrence Britt wrote "Fascism Anyone? ," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20).

Studying the fascist regimes of Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), and he found that they all had 14 elements in common. I think it might be useful if we reviewed a this checklist with an eye as to whether they apply. Not all of these may apply to the same extent as in Nazi Germany, but then do they really have to in order to count?

Especially considering that we are in the relatively early to mid-stages of the process. 1. A Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need."

The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.4. Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected.

Soldiers and military service are glamorized.5. Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid.

Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy. 6. Controlled Mass Media Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.

Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. 7. Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.8.

Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.9. Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia.

It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws.

The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.14. Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media.

Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. In addition to these, there are another 14 somewhat overlapping connotative criteria supplied by Umberto Eco, in his essay, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" in the New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp. 12-15.

Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp.57-59. These get deeper into the sensibility of the fascist and, I think, is the more penetrating analysis. --------------------------------------------------------------------------In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism.

These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. * * *1.

The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism.In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history.

This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia. This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions.

Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life.

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes.

Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds. " The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.6.

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one.

The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside.

In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people.

They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies.

Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world.

But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians.In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.11.

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.

It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death! "). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness.

By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die.In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter.

Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.

But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show. * * *Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.

" Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world.

Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task..

By the way, the Federation portrayed in Star Trek the Next Generation was intended to be an example of a society based post modernism. Notes on Fascism:Lawrence Britt wrote "Fascism Anyone? ," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20).

Studying the fascist regimes of Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), and he found that they all had 14 elements in common. I think it might be useful if we reviewed a this checklist with an eye as to whether they apply. Not all of these may apply to the same extent as in Nazi Germany, but then do they really have to in order to count?

Especially considering that we are in the relatively early to mid-stages of the process. 1. A Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need."

The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.4. Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected.

Soldiers and military service are glamorized.5. Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid.

Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy. 6. Controlled Mass Media Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.

Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. 7. Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.8.

Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.9. Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia.

It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws.

The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.14. Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media.

Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. In addition to these, there are another 14 somewhat overlapping connotative criteria supplied by Umberto Eco, in his essay, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" in the New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp. 12-15.

Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp.57-59. These get deeper into the sensibility of the fascist and, I think, is the more penetrating analysis. --------------------------------------------------------------------------In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism.

These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. * * *1.

The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism.In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history.

This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia. This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions.

Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life.

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes.

Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds. " The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.6.

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one.

The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside.

In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people.

They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies.

Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world.

But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians.In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.11.

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.

It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death! "). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness.

By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die.In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter.

Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.

But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show. * * *Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.

" Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world.

Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

2 I think you NEED to create your own AskMontyZumaVille.

I think you NEED to create your own AskMontyZumaVille.

3 AskMontyZumaVille---Gee Monty! No need for a "wisdom section".. All the answers one needs can be found in the "ask us" click-on at:1. Brittney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Paris .2.

Sports figures websites.3. Rapper websites.4. The Parking lot at White Castle Restaurants at 3:00 AM..5.

The Motor Vehicle office..6. Any governmental office whereas they are heavy into "equal oppertunity"..

AskMontyZumaVille---Gee Monty! No need for a "wisdom section".. All the answers one needs can be found in the "ask us" click-on at:1. Brittney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Paris .2.

Sports figures websites.3. Rapper websites.4. The Parking lot at White Castle Restaurants at 3:00 AM..5.

The Motor Vehicle office..6. Any governmental office whereas they are heavy into "equal oppertunity"..

4 POSTMODERNISMBoth Postmodernism and Fascism are reactions to Modernity, although they are almost mirror images of themselves. Modernity is the culture which has emerged out of the Enlightenment, a secular intellectual movement which accepted the then novel proposition that human reason was capable of solving human problems. Since then, modernity has sought to rationalize every sphere of human endeavor--to perfect our understanding of the cosmos through the advancement of science; to optimize the efficiency of our economies through various mixtures of freemarket capitalism and socialism; to reform the arbitrary and autocratic tendencies of government by instituting constitutional democracies, checks and balances, civil and human rights.

Modernity has sought to replace the irrationality, inefficiency and strife of aristocratic societies in which one person was considered superior and literally better than another based on birth. It abolished the aristocratic titles and priveliges of an inherited ruling class, with a power elite based on a meritocracy of the best and the brightest. It further sought to bring equality among the races and between the sexes.

And it also tried to reform human character itself by instituting public education to eliminate ignorance and superstition, and by the promotion of civil virtue, and even evangelical religion. It sought to regulate people's morals by criminalizing their vices, then by introducing "correctional" systems to engineer their compliance to "correct" behavior. It then introduced studies of human psychology and sociology to better to understand and rationalize their control people.In short, Modernity sought to create a civilization based on Progress, a civilization of such self-evident benefit and goodness that it seemed automatically justified to impose it on others, even if the rationalization of indolent traditional culture benefited the colonizers and the imperialists far more than the native peoples.

Modernity was all about tossing out the traditional way of doing or understanding things in favor of finding the "best" (rational) solution, which it would continually try to improve upon. But quite often these "rational solutions" were optimized on such narrow criteria that they turned out to be quite disasterous. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, for example, is a postmodernist icon of one of the failures of Modernist rationality.

Here, was a top-down planned community that packed people together most efficiently. But, because it did not have the amenities that oganically evolved, bottom-up planned comunities develop, it was so cold and sterile you couldn't even pay people to live in it, and it eventually had to be torn down. The post modernist critique of rationality that Pruitt-Igoe illustrates is not that critical thinking and rationality are bad per se, but that the kind of commodity optimizing rationality employed at Pruitt-Igoe can often be too narrow to solve the problem.

Producing large impersonal housing blocks cost efficiently was not the problem. It was the failure to think through what kind of effect that living in these kinds of structures would have on a person.It was a failure to consider the importance of aesthetics in how people form attachments to places, how a person's sense attachment to place determines whether they see themselves as members of a community or as captives in a place. It is a failure to consider how identity and community are intertwined, or the kind humiliating message it would send to folks living in the kind of de facto apartheid that these projects represented.

So, it isnt rationality that's the problem.It is the narrow conception and application of rationality that is the problem, as if poetic, humanistic, and aesthetic approaches to problems are irrellevant and can not be resolved rationally. Indeed, failure to consider a wide range of viewpoints on a complex issue is itself a form of irrationality. (to be continued) .

POSTMODERNISMBoth Postmodernism and Fascism are reactions to Modernity, although they are almost mirror images of themselves. Modernity is the culture which has emerged out of the Enlightenment, a secular intellectual movement which accepted the then novel proposition that human reason was capable of solving human problems. Since then, modernity has sought to rationalize every sphere of human endeavor--to perfect our understanding of the cosmos through the advancement of science; to optimize the efficiency of our economies through various mixtures of freemarket capitalism and socialism; to reform the arbitrary and autocratic tendencies of government by instituting constitutional democracies, checks and balances, civil and human rights.

Modernity has sought to replace the irrationality, inefficiency and strife of aristocratic societies in which one person was considered superior and literally better than another based on birth. It abolished the aristocratic titles and priveliges of an inherited ruling class, with a power elite based on a meritocracy of the best and the brightest. It further sought to bring equality among the races and between the sexes.

And it also tried to reform human character itself by instituting public education to eliminate ignorance and superstition, and by the promotion of civil virtue, and even evangelical religion. It sought to regulate people's morals by criminalizing their vices, then by introducing "correctional" systems to engineer their compliance to "correct" behavior. It then introduced studies of human psychology and sociology to better to understand and rationalize their control people.In short, Modernity sought to create a civilization based on Progress, a civilization of such self-evident benefit and goodness that it seemed automatically justified to impose it on others, even if the rationalization of indolent traditional culture benefited the colonizers and the imperialists far more than the native peoples.

Modernity was all about tossing out the traditional way of doing or understanding things in favor of finding the "best" (rational) solution, which it would continually try to improve upon. But quite often these "rational solutions" were optimized on such narrow criteria that they turned out to be quite disasterous. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, for example, is a postmodernist icon of one of the failures of Modernist rationality.

Here, was a top-down planned community that packed people together most efficiently. But, because it did not have the amenities that oganically evolved, bottom-up planned comunities develop, it was so cold and sterile you couldn't even pay people to live in it, and it eventually had to be torn down. The post modernist critique of rationality that Pruitt-Igoe illustrates is not that critical thinking and rationality are bad per se, but that the kind of commodity optimizing rationality employed at Pruitt-Igoe can often be too narrow to solve the problem.

Producing large impersonal housing blocks cost efficiently was not the problem. It was the failure to think through what kind of effect that living in these kinds of structures would have on a person.It was a failure to consider the importance of aesthetics in how people form attachments to places, how a person's sense attachment to place determines whether they see themselves as members of a community or as captives in a place. It is a failure to consider how identity and community are intertwined, or the kind humiliating message it would send to folks living in the kind of de facto apartheid that these projects represented.

So, it isnt rationality that's the problem.It is the narrow conception and application of rationality that is the problem, as if poetic, humanistic, and aesthetic approaches to problems are irrellevant and can not be resolved rationally. Indeed, failure to consider a wide range of viewpoints on a complex issue is itself a form of irrationality. (to be continued).

5 All I can say is "Wow! " Just "Wow! " .

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.