02-02-2019, 10:55 AM
(02-01-2019, 06:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: On the existing two-axis and two-quadrant Nolan grid, that would be the vertical axis for anarchy (or libertarian) at the top vs. totalitarian, (or statist) at the bottom, upper right vs. lower left for economics, and upper left vs. lower right for individual rights vs. social conservatism (group power/hive mentality); normally called the cultural or social axis. I think those are adequate. Religious conservatism in politics is just another hive mentality or group power type. Examples of these conservative groups are nations, races, and religions. In many cases they are all fused, as in fascist Italy. Hitler was an extreme example of all three group types as part of their ideology, and the religious aspect was uppermost, consisting of the final solution to the Jewish "problem." Donald Trump is another example of this fusion, although not always explicitly stated; but Trump can lie and obfuscate by changing his statements at a moment's notice.
Hitler, Mussolini. and Stalin were all horrible people whom no religious tradition could ever accept. All three exploited the hierarchical tendencies, street theater, and rigid authority within the Catholic Church in Austria and Italy and the Orthodox Church in Georgia/Russia to create the patterns of political devotion inherent in a totalitarian state. The processions of the saints (with parish priests carrying the images) within Catholicism and Orthodoxy are themselves benign and even quaint. Icons of the saints and martyrs are harmless because the saints and martyrs cannot do bad things to people. But turn the procession of the saints into a procession of live political hacks and military equipment along with a deprecation or opponents and pariahs as demons, and the procession becomes a menace. Replacement of an icon of Saint Peter with the Great and Glorious Leader creates great potential for abuse.
Before anyone says that such is exclusive to the Catholic Church or to Eastern Orthodoxy, we need remember that the 1915 Klan, hostile to the Catholic Church, aped Catholic ritual, ceremony, and hierarchy. Maybe German Protestants (Catholics in Germany were less amenable to Hitler) envied the processions and icons and got those in the form of street theater, marching, and symbolism until Hitler became an object of adulation. It is easy for me to compare Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin to Satan because they had great power and used it entirely for destructive and dehumanizing purposes.
I cannot say that Satan is real in the sense that religious believers recognize God as the definitive reality. Is "Satan" a demigod, a rival who would be God, a mere personification of evil, or simply human fallibility (as in a perverse superego -- harshly judgmental, but cruel and amoral)? To be a fascist, Nazi, Klansman, or Stalinist is to be a servant of Satan.
Quote:On the European political compass, the axes are exactly the same, but they are placed at different locations around the wheel. In that chart, the cultural/social axis or individualism/civil rights vs. group power is the vertical axis. Economics is the left vs. right axis, and the anarchy vs. totalitarian axis falls at lower right vs. upper left. No revision is needed to these wheels in my opinion.
Fascists and Commies pose as antitheses, but their differences are of identity. The fanatic seems to have the best-defined political identity, but the identity is hollow. To build a totalitarian cause requires rapid conversions of people, and that comes with rapid, if hollow, changes in identity and loyalty. Perhaps it is of little surprise that Nazis under Allied custody proved extremely hollow and shallow. They did not have to contemplate the consequences of what they were told to do until the Allies confronted them with the consequences of believing that it was acceptable to round up the Jews in a village in Ukraine and mow them down or to select Jews shipped in from Holland or Hungary in cattle cars for quick death from gassing or for slow death from excessive toil on starvation rations.
Trump has so far taken baby steps along the course to torture chambers and shooting pits in contrast to the giant leaps that Hitler did, but even Hitler imposed his horror incrementally. We must resist the dubious progress of Trump in dehumanizing America before we can repudiate and reverse the horrid tendency.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.