05-10-2021, 04:43 AM
With Saddam Hussein we have someone like Pierre Laval who went from being a socialist with nationalist tendencies to a full-blown fascist. It is no wonder that Gorbachev could sell him out. Not that that wasn't right. Hitlerite fascism sees only one morality -- the Nation, which excuses any crime in its name. I can think of some renegade socialists and even Communists (Laval of course, Quisling, Mussolini, Pavolini, Doriot, perhaps Goebbels, and the mercifully-obscure D.C. Stephenson). D. C. Stephenson? He was the charismatic leader of the Indiana KKK in the 1920's... and I could make the case that the Second Klan (1915) had many of the characteristics of Nazism and Fascism before those monstrous causes came into existence. Even the stiff-arm salute (if with the "wrong" arm for Nazism and fascism) is do not know whether a KKK innovation from 1915.Except for the added hatred of Catholics the Klan had much the same hatreds.
OK... I have a couple of early-modern figures to suggest for placement: Cromwell and William of Orange.
OK... I have a couple of early-modern figures to suggest for placement: Cromwell and William of Orange.
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.