There has been much discussion on this site about the "F" word. It seems that whenever it comes up, certain Kossacks will reply that since the United States is currently not locking people up in concentration camps, the analogy is not apt. But I believe the analogy
is apt, and I want to look at a small part of fascist ideology to make my point.
One of the parts of fascist ideology that gets forgotten is how much it fixated on sex and reproduction. Not just the racial purity laws, but its disciplining of sex and reproduction in service to the state. And, if we look at this specific aspect of fascism, then we can point in this country to a creeping fascism that is aimed directly at the body, pleasure, sex, and reproduction
.
Rather than talk specifically about National Socialism, I want to look at the period in German history that directly preceded the Nazis: The Weimar Republic of 1918-1933. In addition, I'm going to juxtapose current debates in our own culture with those taking place in a society that, feeling that it was spinning out of control, increasingly clamped down on sex and encouraged reproduction, as a psychological/political response to economic crisis.
I've posted before about a "crisis of masculinity" that I see at play in our culture right now. The September 11 bombings of both the WTC and the Pentagon shook our sense as Americans of being inviolable. Our borders were penetrated; this country was symbolically raped, and it's not surprising that a lot of the rhetoric that has emerged has been hyper-masculinized: from country songs that emphasize that the USA is going to kick some ass to the images of Iraqi prisoners as victims of sexual violence and torture in our prisons, it's not hard to look and see this administration's hyper-masculinist symbolic of death and destruction raining down on those who dared to attack us.
"The crucial element of fascism is its explicit sexual language, what Theweleit calls "the conscious coding" or the "over-explicitness of the fascist language of symbol." This fascist symbolization creates a particular kind of psychic economy which places sexuality in the service of destruction. Despite its sexually charged politics, fascism is an anti-eros, "the core of all fascist progaganda is a battle against everything that constitues enjoyment and pleasure"...He shows that in this world of war the repudiation of one's own body, of femininity, becomes a psychic compulsion which associates masculinity with hardness, destruction, and self-denial."
From the foreward by Anson Rabinbach and Jessica Benjamin to Vol II. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies. ppg. xii-xiii
I would argue that despite the fact that sex appears to be everywhere in this culture, in fact, one of the main tenets of the right-wing agenda is anti-eros. Sex is pleasurable, and sex, because it creates loyalties between individuals, is a threat to the state. It's hard to be loyal to an abstract ideal such as patriotism when you love someone. The right wing in this country has also allied itself with Christianity, which, promotes the spirit over the flesh, distrusts the flesh because of its propensity to sin, and promotes a disciplined sexuality with its privileging of marriage.
A small sample of anti-sex or reproductive rights cases in the news in the past six months:
sex toyscase
.
records
records
Plan B contraception
unmarried women
abstinence education.
Fascist ideology, while decrying sex, promote reproduction as being good for the state. As part of that ideology, it often features pro-natalist propaganda while not actually supporting the children who are born. For example, Mother's Day in Weimar Germany:
"Mother's Day made its appearance shortly after Germany's defeat in World War I. The day that we know as the time to `give mom a gift,' `send her flowers,' or `make her breakfast' was propagated in the Weimar Republic during a period of runaway inflation, political turmoil, and social dislocation. It achieved popularity at a time when government cutbacks hurt mothers and children and the real economic and physical situation for mothers became desparate. In an era of depression and mass unemployment, of leftist ferment and right-wing backlash, Mother's Day was promoted by people who hoped to cover up disorder and reinforce tradition: it was a whitewash decorated with roses."
Karin Hausen, "Mother's Day in the Weimar Republic" in Bridenthal.
Think of our own nation, which encourages women to give birth but then does nothing to support them once babies are born. But, for the right wing in our country, it would prefer that all women who give birth be heterosexual, married, and, I would argue, not out there competing for jobs against men. In other words, the stay-at-home mom who raises her children while her husband earns money.
The cult of motherhood means also that the state has a stake in controlling access to abortion.
In Weimar Germany;
"The decline in the birth rate and the `suspiciously high rate of miscarriages, as reported by firms and insurance agencies,' had been of consistent concern throughout the Weimar years, but public discussion and consciousness sharpened with the onset of economic crisis in late 1928 and 1929. The Reichstag Criminal Justice Committee began formulating a new criminal code in 1929, and Paragraph 218 quickly became a main point of contention. An expert Reichs Committee for Population Questions, convened in January 1930, was especially delegated to investigate and combat the `national scourge' (Volksseuche) of abortion." Atina Grossman, "Abortion and Economic Crisis: The 1931 Campaign Against Paragraph 218" in Bridenthal.
Compare this to some of the recent debate about Social Security:
SS
SAN DIEGO, January 17, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A leader of the US's largest denomination of African-Americans said that America's Social Security woes are a result of abortion -- because baby boomers aborted so many of those who would otherwise be supporting them in their retirement.
"Part of the problem that we're seeing now with Social Security has to do with the fact that 40 to 50 million people who have been killed through abortions have not taken their role as productive citizens," Church of God in Christ Bishop George McKinney said, as reported by the AP."
And, of course, we now have officials who are seeking records of those women who had late-term abortions.
There are entire libraries of books that have dealt with these subjects, and I cannot do this topic justice in one diary. But I wanted to bring these issues to the attention of Kossacks. I do not believe that the right wing in this country will start with something as obvious as racial laws that discriminate against Jews, but in putting the laws against gays in a context such as this, or looking at the attempts to control access to contraception, or sex education, or the "sanctity of heterosexual marriage" movement, makes the creeping fascism of everyday life in this country more obvious.
One of Theweleit's arguments is this:
"The monumentalism of fascism would seem to be a safety mechanism against the bewildering muliplicity of the living. The more lifeless, regimented, and monumental reality appears to be, the more secure the men feel. The danger is being-alive itself."
(KT, vol. 1, page 218)
We live under the rule of a president who does not want to accept the notion of the multiplicity of the living. He wants a world built on binary oppposition, of black-white, good-evil, gay-straight. The world is much easier to understand and deal with in that line of thinking. It is up to us as leftists to continue to push for a world view that takes into account just how complicated life, the living, and politics really are.
A site that brings visibility to these issues:
Bring Visibility
Update:
My daughter had early dismissal from school today, so in the three hours I've spent tending to her, there were over 150 comments posted, which means I can't possibly respond to all of them. It's amazing to see the threads that have opened up.
I am aware that all of the parallels don' t meet up, and there are other possible explanations for what's going on in the US right now. But, I chose Weimar Germany because it wasn't fascist at the beginning; it experienced a cultural flowering and a visibility of gay culture; it was experiencing tremendous economic troubles; and, finally, it was experiencing a doubt about itself as a nation that some historians have interpreted as gendered.
Yes, the Nazis held the concept of the volk and lebensraum near and dear to their hearts, but the concept of the "volk" was revived in the early 19th century in response to the Napoleonic encroachment on German territory and ideology.
I tried to write a limited diary, so I mostly discussed Theweleit and the two essays from Bridenthal. As a consequence, because of brevity, things are over-simplified, for which I apologize.
What I'm grateful for is the discussion--whether people disagree or agree with me, there's some fascinating things going on.
But my question remains. Even if we disagree ultimately as to what this means--are we turning fascist or not--how can the left respond to these increasing attempts to control the human body that seems to be a centerpiece of the right wing?
A partial reading list:
Klaus Theweleit: Male Fantasies: Volume 1: women floods bodies history
Klaus Theweleit: Male Fantasies: Volume 2: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror
Claudia Koonz: Mothers in the Fatherland
Jill Stephenson: Women in Nazi Society
Renate Bridenthal: When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany
Susan Sontag: Under the Sign of Saturn
Victoria De Grazia: How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945
Note: I've just been asked to cross-post this to http://www.culturekitchen.com; I still haven't figured out what the rules are regarding "double posts."