Totalitarian Ideology Research Articles

The Cross or the Double-Cross: Roman Catholicism, Anti-Communism, and the Political Theology of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

The Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen was an advocate of American Catholic patriotism and opponent to the spread of totalitarianism, especially communism. He grounded the two positions in what I call the “ecclesial foundation” in which he defined American citizenship in terms of membership in religious institutions. In Sheen's view, religious institutions provided the ultimate, spiritual ends for humankind. Therefore, the American government had to protect, above all, religious liberties at home and abroad. Totalitarian regimes, which Sheen believed sought to replace spiritual with material ends of the state, violently deprived their subjects of religious liberty and, therefore, embodied the spirit of the anti-Christ. Only the Vatican had the spiritual and moral authority to identify this spirit, and—especially after the Second World War—only America had the military and economic power to confront it. Ironically, this argument was an appropriation of the old Nativist arguments against the Vatican itself. The Nativist argument was that religious liberty of Protestant churches was the source for political authority of the American state to use against the absolute, arbitrary, foreign dictator in Rome. Sheen's appropriation and redeployment of the old narrative persuaded millions of Americans to oppose totalitarian ideologies and view, after centuries of distrust, American Catholics as loyal citizens.

Book Reviews

84 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIX, No.4, Summer 2016 Book Reviews Edited by Nadia Barsoum Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa THE SUNNI TRAGEDY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Northern Lebanon from al-Qaeda to Isis, by Bernard Rougier. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 259 pages. Rougier aims to explain how and why jihadism wove its way into a Sunni social fabric in the throes of a leadership crisis. He sheds new light on the methods and actions of the Jihadists, their internal debates, and their evolving political agenda over the past decade. This book reveals the difficulty—but not the impossibility —of building a liberal Sunni constituency in this part of the Levant. A LAND OF ACHING HEARTS, by Leila Tarazi Fawaz. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2014. 384 pages. Fawas examines the transformation of the Middle East after the Great War, bringing to an end four hundred years of Ottoman rule in Arab lands while giving rise to the Middle East as we know it today. This book traverses ethnic, class, and national borders to recover the personal stories of the civilians and soldiers who endured the cataclysmic event. But the local populations were not passive victims Fawaz chronicles the initiative and resilience of civilian villagers, and townsmen determined to survive the war as best they could. DEFEATING JIHAD: The Winnable War, by Dr. Sebastian Gorka. Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2016. 244 pages. Gorka examines the Jihadi war which become clearer if we remove our ideological blinders and apply basic strategic principles. That means accurately naming the enemy, understanding his plan, and drawing up a strategy to defeat him. Our enemy is not “terror’ or “violent extremism”. Our enemy is the global Jihadi movement, a modern totalitarian ideology rooted in the doctrines and martial history of Islam. 85 IN THE NAME OF IDENTITY: Violence and the Need to Belong, by Amin Maalouf translated by Barbara Bray. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2012. 164 pages. In this work, Maalouf discusses the identity crisis which Arabs have experienced since the establishment of continuous relationships with the west, adding his personal dimension as a Christian Arab. The book is intended for both Arabs and Westerners (as well as for people with mixed heritage). This work is divided into five major chapters, “Identity and Belonging,” “When Modernity Comes From the Other,” “The Era of Cosmic Tribals,” “Taming the Shrew” and a glossary. He begins with universal values of identity, which he dissects, describes the extremes, then applies them to the Levant. He tries to describe how the average modern Arab feels, along a wide spectrum of ideologies in practice throughout the Arab world…from religious beliefs and traditional practices to total secularism. The book also sheds light on recent events in the Arab world, from civil wars to relations with the west. SHADES OF SULH, by Rasha Diab. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2016. 248 pages. Diab Sulh is a centuries-old Arab-Islamic peacemaking process. In Shades of Sulh, Rasha Diab explores the possibilities of the rhetoric of sulh, as it is used to resolve intrapersonal, interpersonal, communal, national, and international conflicts, and provides cases that illustrate each of these domains. Diab demonstrates the adaptability and range of sulh as a ritual and practice that travels across spheres of activity (juridical, extra-juridical, political, diplomatic), through time (medieval, modern, contemporary), and over geopolitical borders (Cairo, Galilee, and Medina). Together, the cases prove the flexibility of sulh in the discourse of peacemaking—and that sulh has remarkable rhetorical longevity, versatility, and richness. Shades of Sulh sheds new light on rhetorics of reconciliation , human rights discourse, and Arab-Islamic rhetorics. THE SHIAS OF PAKISTAN: An Assertive and Beleaguered Minority, by Andreas Rieck. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 540 pages. Andreas Rieck examines the Shias of Pakistan are the world’s second largest Shia community after that of Iran, but who comprise only 10-15 per cent of Pakistan's population. In recent decades Sunni extremists have increasingly targeted them with hate propaganda and terrorism, yet paradoxically Shias have always been fully integrated into all sections of political, professional and social life without suffering any discrimination. In mainstream politics, the Shia...

Odejście „człowieka ferdydurkicznego”

Gombrowicz’s life can be divided into two parts. During the first period of his life, Gombrowicz is preoccupied with the “Ferdydurke Man”, i.e. a funny character who is tortured by Form, which he tries to overcome but which he finally succumbs to by falling into inauthenticity. This man, though incoherent, is understandable both for the author and the reader because he comes from the world they both live in and epitomizes their own problems, which makes readers laugh. The second period of Gombrowicz’s life begins with a scene in Venice in 1938. He meets young Italian pilots who are ready to destroy the city if Mussolini gives such an order. This is when new and “savage” young people take the place of the “Ferdydurke Man”. They are a product of their time – they do not think independently and they constitute a breeding ground for totalitarian ideologies. Gombrowicz tries to understand this generation and presents a picture of the world these young people are building for themselves in consecutive dark literary works.

Clashing cultural nationalisms: the 19th-century Danish-German intellectual debate, the Schleswig wars (1848-1864), and some reflections on the cultural roots of National Socialism

Romantic culture, far from only being an intellectual phenomenon, was a pivotal element in the 19th-century nation-building processes experienced in Europe, and it ended up influencing and being influenced by contemporary political events. The wars waged between Denmark and the German Confederation (1848-1864) are a foremost example of it, as the political claims for the control of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg intertwined with the intellectual polemics between some prominent German scholars (Jacob Grimm, Karl Müllenhoff etc.) who intended to prove the German nature of the duchies’ cultural heritage and of Scandinavian cultures in general, and some Danish intellectuals (Nicolai Grundtvig, Rasmus Rask etc.) who strove to undo what they perceived as a politically-charged cultural aggression. The relevance of the Schleswig Wars and their related intellectual debate is not restricted to 19th-century studies, as some authors of the second half of the 20th century have suggested that the German-Danish intellectual conflict over the heritage of the Old North was actually a prelude to what would eventually be Nazi Germany’s totalitarian ideology. Unfortunately, little has been written so far on the relationship between the Schleswig Wars and the then-contemporary scholarly debate. This article is intended to be an effective contribution in this direction.

Combates pela historiografia: a história política das ideias de Franco Venturi

Neste artigo situaremos a obra de Franco Venturi na historiografia do século XX sobre o Iluminismo. Iniciaremos com uma apresentação da trajetória do historiador italiano, mostrando a sua experiência de vida em relação às ideologias totalitárias do século. Na sequência, exporemos os debates historiográficos que tece no livro Utopia e reforma no Iluminismo (1969), enfatizando suas críticas ao que denomina “tradição filosófica da Aufklärung alemã” e à “interpretação social do Iluminismo”. Deverá ficar claro que rejeita o marxismo como ferramenta para a compreensão das Luzes, manifestando preferência por abordagens que partam do indivíduo e de suas relações concretas. Por último, analisaremos suas ideias sobre as origens do socialismo/comunismo no século XVIII, discutindo as posições do autor sobre as ideias de Marx e o marxismo.

Educational discourse in Spain during the early Franco regime (1936–1943): toward a genealogy of doctrine and concepts

In this article an analysis is undertaken of Spanish educational discourse during the early years of the Franco regime, from the Civil War (1936–1939) to the establishment of the Nuevo Estado or New State (1939–1943), employing Reinhart Koselleck’s principles of conceptual history. Without totally spurning the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the new regime, this educational discourse constructed an imagined community of España Nacional (Nationalist Spain) by means of a historical narrative that began with the uprising led by General Franco in July 1936. The discourse sought to recover the importance of the nation’s traditions so as to promote a conceptual and symbolic imaginary that might lead to the re-Christianisation and Hispanisation of society, based firmly on a providential vision of Spain’s history. It rejected the ideas of modern pedagogy in favour of an education based on the essential elements of the fatherland, namely, the Catholic faith and the imperial mission embodied in the idea of Hispanidad (a community of Spanish-speaking peoples), and understood as a spiritual message that would redeem humanity.

A School That Forms? A Look at the Years of the Communist Regime and the Present

Abstract Based on personal experience of students and use of archives, the study shows how totalitarian ideology of communist regime influenced students and aimed at socialization of villages - collectivization. Real examples imply various questions in relation to the past and the future: How should teachers influence students nowadays? Should history classes focus on historical facts, or should they form students and their values?

The Ideological Dimension of Aryanization Politics in Interwar Romania

The socio-political order emerging after World War I triggered some unprecedented radical phenomena which led to a genuine primacy of totalitarian ideologies in most European countries. Romania prematurely experiences the rising pressure of both internally and externally motivated political extremism. The democratic values were therefore altered and the multiethnic national profile became a major challenge, in terms of governance potential, for the political elites of that time.This paper attempts to investigate and highlight the major role played by the Romanian integral nationalism in the process of shaping and implementing the so-called aryanization measures especially in the regions having a significant Jewish minority. Given the fact that such particular instances of Romanian anti-Semitism were insufficiently analyzed, both in Romanian and European historiography, it is scientifically relevant to proper investigate the emergence and development of aryanization by taking into account its regional manifestations.

Resilience: detecting vulnerability in marginal groups

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to detect causes of potential vulnerability via indicators of non-resilience among marginalized groups. These causes could become a catalyst for a major deprivation of resilience and further victimization of a group, either while disaster is occurring or in its aftermath. Design/methodology/approach – Exploration of resilience was based on social and economic research conducted in Serbia 2012-2013 with one of the most vulnerable communities, with the goal of mapping local understandings of resilience in contrast to issues of risk and vulnerability. A specific two layer methodology, i.e. phenomenology of desperateness was based on sociological imagination and social action. Findings – The author detected and labeled the most relevant socio-economic causes of miserable life conditions among the given marginal group. Such analytical dimensions become marked as the indicators of vulnerabilities. Mapping these vulnerabilities, especially among the marginal communities, is the first step in preventing their victimization. Practical implications – The responsible social agents are compatible with the creation of the relevant map and profile of the most vulnerable actors with the goal of preventing a possible eugenics selection during DRR and response. Social implications – In addition to preventing victimization during a disaster, this study provides preventives of the sentiment-driven actions induced by paternalistically organised everyday life (established by way of the same indicators) within the framework of a new totalitarian ideology, such as a para-military organization of daily activities. Originality/value – This paper provides a specific methodology for detecting desperateness as an inner process in vulnerability and new insights into the comprehension of the relation between social structure of marginal groups, their resilience and their members’ vulnerability.

Besieging the Courthouse: The Proxemics of Law Between Totalitarian Awe and Populist Rage

In 2006, acclaimed Italian film director Nanni Moretti released Il caimano [“the Caiman”], a surreal depiction of Silvio Berlusconi’s career as controversial businessman and politician. In one of the last sequences, an indicted Berlusconi leaves the courthouse of Milan, while his supporters besiege its premises and set them on fire. Admired for his capacity of prophetically foreseeing the developments of Italian society (2011 film Habemus Papam, by the same director, somehow ‘predicted’ the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI), Nanni Moretti’s apocalyptic vision was confirmed by reality on March 11, 2013, when a group of deputes and senators from PDL, Silvio Berlusconi’s political party, ‘besieged’ the courthouse of Milan in order to interfere with the new trials the political leader was involved in: an affair of prostitution of minors, known as “the Ruby case”, and the alleged corruption of a senator. Since when Silvio Berlusconi has been the center of the Italian both political and juridical arena, and with the increasing representation of his trials in Italian and international media, the courthouses of such trials, and particularly that of Milan, have turned more and more into the theater of a socio-political showdown, in which what matters though is not only what takes place in the Court, but also, and perhaps even more, what happens in the area surrounding its premises. Here pro- and -anti Berlusconi partisans have gathered daily in order to manifest their stand to both the citizenry and the media; here media professionals have been stationed 24/7, waiting for the next scandal; and here a dramatic battle line between the political power and the juridical one inexorably materializes with all the violent evidence of its proxemics. The essay analyzes through semiotics a series of verbal and especially visual texts representing the courthouses of Silvio Berlusconi’s trials, with the goal of understanding what this imagery reveals of the current trends of Italian socio-political and juridical arena. More broadly, the essay compares this case study with other instances of courthouses besieged by crowds, so as to semiotically seize the delicate equilibrium of the judiciary proxemics between totalitarian and populist ideologies of law.

The Legitimation of the Albanian Totalitarian Regime

The totalitarian regime in Albania has been considered as one of the most rigid and isolated of the twentieth century, in the whole Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1991. Even though the isolationist ideology has been convenient to support the status-quo of the communist regime, it led to the social-economic crises, and consequently to the collapse of the communism. However, in order to understand the totalitarian ideology and the behavior of its leader Enver Hoxha, it is important to focus on the particular philosophical principles where the regime found the necessary base to legitimate itself. This specific totalitarian philosophy, in the Albanian post- communist literature, is known as “Enverism”. Indeed, the totalitarian leader, tried to legitimate his totalitarian power by pretending and propagandizing that the Marxist-Leninist doctrine constituted the only pure truth, and the common good. In one hand, totalitarian leader tried to legitimate the suppression of any kind of resistance against the totalitarian project. On the other hand, the citizens obeyed to the regime, because they believed that this project would be the embodiment of the pure truth and the common good. This paper will analyze the Albanian dictatorship ideology as an instrument of legitimating. Therefore a strong base of study will be the communist literature that was used as a propaganda instrument. It is significant the fact that the Albanian dictator has published hundreds of books as an author and other hundreds have been published by the Institute of the Marxism Leninism Studies, that was an exclusive propaganda tool of the dictatorship. Through the methodology of the literature review, the paper will try to find out how the E. Hoxha and his oligarchy could justify the choice of communism, but which is more important, how could they stand this regime for almost a half century. In the end the paper will try to answer to the research question: was Enverism a peculiar product of some social, political and historical circumstances? DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p500

German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism and the United States, 1776-1945

The main argument of Jan-Uwe Guettel’s book is that Germany’s imperial liberalism, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, was racist and expansionist, drawing as it did both on examples of westward expansion in the USA and on the discriminating racial politics prevalent in the American South to further the cause of German colonies. The perception of America as a liberal colonial empire was incorporated into German liberal theories from the late eighteenth century, and put into practice in the late nineteenth century when colonial debates in the Reichstag allowed for a framing of issues that transcended political lines. In defining liberalism, Guettel notes that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, it is often seen as a relatively benign concept when compared with Nazism. He disputes this, positing that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial liberalism was infused with violence, racism and oppression. In his lengthy introduction Guettel argues that German colonialism was supported and championed by German liberals, a stance contrary to traditional historical narratives, yet one aired by various newer studies. He draws upon a wide range of secondary literature (watch out for footnote 7, which is almost two manuscript pages long) to contextualize and describe the intellectual development of this historiography in reference to German history. His broader argumentation throughout the book questions the three prevailing methodologies describing German liberalism: cultural pessimists (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer); those who see European colonialism as the origin of European totalitarian ideologies (Hannah Arendt and others); and those advocating the theory of a German Sonderweg. In describing the historiography of the positive exceptionalism of America’s imperial and colonial past, Guettel draws upon a much smaller and predominantly older set of sources than he does for the German historiography. This sets the tone for the focus upon German domestic and international politics as opposed to domestic US politics.

Il significato internazionale del magistero sociale del Santo Giovanni Paolo II P.M

The international significance of St. John Paul II’s social teaching
 The teaching of John Paul II undoubtedly became a great provocation for the contemporary thinking of man due to its skillful and innovative treatment of a unique event which has been at the centre of the life of the Church for more than two thousand years and which presents a specific opportunity for any man who wants to cope with his own fate. The Pope offered as the essence of his evangelizational message Christianity presented in its completeness, as a phenomenon which cannot be reduced and compared to any form of ideology. Moreover, such Christianity is capable of exerting a creative influence upon man and providing him with a new form of culture. (We may venture an opinion that the entire magisterium of John Paul II is suffused with two kinds of wonder: the wonder of humanization and the results of humanization i.e. the transformation of man). The magisterium of John Paul II should be viewed as a pursuit to renovate the original identity of the Christian faith, a pursuit to promote the Church in it missionary function, a pursuit of a versatile development of the feeling of responsibility for the defense and promotion of human rights and collaboration to maintain peace. Not only did the Polish Pope supplement the output of the social teaching developed by his great predecessors, but he also enhanced it by the idea that the defense of the missionary freedom of the Church and of the Church itself was also associated with an unconditional defense of freedom and the rights of people and nations. This defense entailed the pursuit of such a social order on all levels, from the national level up to the global level, in which the human person would occupy the central position and would constitute a definitive value, irreplaceable by any other value. In one of his most famous social encyclicals entitled Centesimus annus, the Pope clearly emphasized the idea that by defending its own freedom, the Church defends man who should be more obedient to God than to other men, the family or various social and national organizations which enjoy their own sphere of autonomy and sovereignty. Today, more than anytime else, this line of thought finds justification not so much in the confrontation with overtly totalitarian ideologies, but in the struggle with ideologies which seem less bloody in comparison with past ideologies. However, according to such ideologies the human person and the rights of people and nations are systematically rejected in the name of the realization of a project of economic and scientific-technocratic globalization. By continuing the tradition of his predecessors on St. Peter’s throne in the sphere of social teaching, John Paul II introduced one fundamental innovation. When the great ideologies saw their end, he realized that the social teaching of the Church should above all increase its interest in man in his religious and secular therefore natural dimension. This increased interest should be associated with the care about his fundamental rights. The teaching and the activity of John Paul II made the social doctrine of the Church more authentic and even more engaged in the cause of evangelization today than ever before. The Church “practises” or suggests a social doctrine because it desires to fulfil its evangelizational mission completely. At the same time, it meets man in various historical contexts which are objectively difficult to cope with. The Church was engaged in the consideration of all political problems of the world with a freedom which no other institution enjoys. John Paul II spoke to individual people and to nations who lived in various conditions and various situations, to friends and enemies, without a preemptive estimation of possible reactions, including the reactions of the greatest powers on Earth. He did so for the good of mankind, to help mankind maintain its complete humanity. Man is the fundamental value which is subject to no negotiations. God is another value which is subject to no negotiatons because he reveals the true nature of man. We may surmise that with the long course of John Paul II’s pontificate we witnessed a new phase of the development of the social doctrine of the Church. Above all with the arrival of the third millennium the Church is more and more engaged in the problems of the modern word.

Topeltstandardid Eesti Televisiooni partei-algorganisatsioonis aastatel 1968–1988

It has been thought that Soviet society was characterised by a phenomenon that only the truth sanctioned by the authorities was talked about in public, even in cases when the real, diametrically opposite truth was actually known. Such dualism and duplicity were also characteristics of Soviet journalism. For example, Peeter Vihalemm and Marju Lauristin (2004) have drawn attention to ambivalence as one of the characteristic features of Soviet Estonian journalism: on the one hand, it was a part of the totalitarian ideology and propaganda system, but on the other hand, it was a bearer of the cultural sphere, cultural identity and opposition. However, according to the Marxist-Leninist canons, journalism was only a means for achieving the political and ideological goals of the Communist Party. Therefore, from the time it was founded, Eesti Televisioon (ETV) (Estonian Television Company) was highly controlled by the party. ETV was granted the status of an ‘ideology institution’ and the party treated TV journalists as ideology workers. Consequently, the requirements for them were high, e.g., they had to have the ability to “evaluate social phenomena from Marxist-Leninist viewpoints” and the skill to defend this ideology and to expose hostile ideologies. Hagi Shein, having researched the history of ETV (2004), has argued that journalists could express themselves more freely on apolitical areas of TV programmes, and although self-censorship was strong, they learned to make use of different situations, to balance on the edge between the allowed and the prohibited, to deceive the censors, and to use different contexts. The author of this article researched the minutes and records of the party meetings of the Teleradio Committee of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic and ETV to find the double standards of Communists working at ETV. The period under examination started with the year 1968 when events in Czechoslovakia caused the strengthening of controls over the Soviet media system, and ended with the year 1988 after a few years of perestroika and glasnost policies. It would be misleading to think that there were no true Communists at ETV. However, the article concludes that the ETV party sub-organisation was by no means composed of only committed and principled Communists who absolutely obeyed those positioned higher in the party hierarchy. Rather, the Communists tried to do as little party work as was barely necessary. This was the mentality that could have reduced their presentations, discussions, decisions, plans and reports to an empty formality. A party organisation that was internally weak and two-faced could not effectively assure the realisation of expectations and tasks, such as ideological supervision, political educational work or control over carrying out decisions made by party leaders. This, in its turn, created favourable conditions for preserving cultural identity and for opposition. We can conclude that ETV did not justify its status as a Soviet ideological institution, at least not in those categories that the Communist Party required of an organisation that held as important a place in the propaganda system as did ETV.

Totalitarianism and music in the context of the 20th century

The article Totalitarianism and Music evaluates the system of totalitarianism and realization of its ideologies in arts. The article does not aspire to provide comprehensive and detailed analysis of totalitarianism, its purpose is to create an informed impetus for further in-depth studies of totalitarianism, the objectives are to (1) comprehend the totalitarian systems and the musical culture politics established in 1930ies by the most notable examples of totalitarianism – USSR and Germany (3rd Reich), (2) to compare these examples, highlighting the main ideological conceptions of the realization of the aforementioned culture politics (socialistic realism, songs of masses, degenerate music, censorship, ceremonial, music outside the law, et al), (3) to observe differences and similarities in the perceptions of the ideological criteria of “correct” art (principle of party and principle of nationalism), (4) to define the place and role of the artist – creative personality – in these systems. The work employs methods based on research of scientific and journalistic sources, audio and video documents that capture processes of the given time period, personal competencies of composer and conductor, as well as other available materials. The conclusion of the article offers a comparison of similarities and differences of music politics in totalitarian systems. Fundamentally, several similar totalitarian ideologies and mechanisms of artistic control exist; differences hide within their realization and concept of priorities, as well as in the general perception and view of culture politics. Music and arts are subject to control exerted by party and ruling elite; the term music outside the law is clearly defined. Musical and ideological upbringing objectives facilitate its purpose for wide social strata (music in factories, for town squares, for working people, etc). The relative competence of the leaders (Y. Stalin and A. Hitler) in music history and musical processes, their general interest in music and arts, as well as desire and pleasure to act as “enlightened rulers” facilitated spreading of specific musical taste and comparatively proficient evaluation of musical tendencies, as well as valid concept definitions. The “ideological” composer of both systems was Beethoven, confirming the universal nature of his music. In the Soviet Union the mass musical education was realized through new music of social realism, reflecting the ideology of the regime. The culture politics of the 3rd Reich prioritized values of classical music. The USSR differentiated music and art according to their ideological characteristics, declaring the aesthetics of social realism and mass songs the cornerstones of its culture ideology. In Germany, however, music and arts were differentiated according to national characteristics (degenerate art). In contrast with the communist ideology of ceremonial and commissioned music, Germany forbids composition of dedications to individuals or to party. The juxtaposition of mass song and academic music, as well as the contrasting attitudes towards innovative elements in art are the most significant differences between both totalitarian culture politic systems.

The Revival of Islamic Identity and American Totalitarian Ideology

The Revival of Islamic Identity and American Totalitarian Ideology

Kanokogi Kazunobu: Pioneer of Platonic Fascism and Imperial Pan-Asianism

Kanokogi KazunobuPioneer of Platonic Fascism and Imperial Pan-Asianism Christopher W. A. Szpilman (bio) In late 1946 Kanokogi Kazunobu (1884–1949), thin, frail, and looking much older than his sixty-one years of age, left Sugamo Prison, where he had been held for more than a year as a class-A war criminal. Diagnosed with terminal pulmonary tuberculosis and given no longer than three years to live, he was released on medical grounds, not because he was deemed innocent.1 He died two years later, by all accounts a broken and isolated man. It was a sad end for a onetime celebrity, the squalor of his death in stark contrast to the fame and prestige in which he had basked only a few years earlier. But perhaps such a contrast was to be expected, for Kanokogi, a former professor of philosophy at two of Japan’s imperial universities, a Ph.D., a doctor of letters, and a right-wing activist, had been a man of extremes—and extreme views. In the midst of the Great War he had campaigned to introduce sweeping totalitarian reforms in Japan; in the 1920s he had provocatively spoken of world revolution; and in the late 1930s he had even concluded his speeches with “Heil Hitler.”2 At first glance, he cuts a contradictory figure. Although at one time a Christian, he came to hold a distinctly un-Christian belief in the divine character of the Japanese imperial family. Although a Japanese fundamentalist, he showed great partiality for things German, for fascism, and for national socialism; while he insisted on Japanese authenticity, he wished to turn Japan into a latter-day version of Plato’s Republic. He was an ardent monarchist, yet frequently talked of revolution, and even though he [End Page 233] held Japan’s national polity immutable, he pioneered totalitarianism, an ideology that, if put into effect, would have transformed this national polity beyond recognition. These contradictions perhaps help account for the relative silence that has surrounded Kanokogi since the end of the Second World War.3 On closer look, however, the core of Kanokogi’s thought was remarkably consistent. He never deviated from his hatred of Western liberalism, materialism, individualism, parliamentary democracy, and laissez-faire economics; he never wavered in his belief that elitism, collectivism, dictatorship, and economic planning would transform Japan into a perfect totalitarian state modeled after Plato’s utopia. This dogged hostility to the values of the Enlightenment as well as predilection for dictatorship and authoritarianism pervade all of his writings. Kanokogi openly advocated national socialist ideas and waxed enthusiastic about Nazi policies after Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933. Yet even before 1933 the ideas he propounded clearly shared much with Western varieties of fascism. Significantly, Kanokogi arrived at his proto-fascist system of thought at the end of the First World War, independently of Western fascism, even if the subsequent apparent successes of fascism in Europe contributed to radicalizing his views even further. This makes Kanokogi’s case highly relevant to the question of what constitutes Japanese fascism.4 It may even add to our understanding of this complex and opaque phenomenon in a global context, for it should not be overlooked that his ideology, which he first articulated in a number of lectures in 1917, anticipated Western totalitarianism and fascism by several years.5 Kanokogi’s case thus casts doubt on Eurocentric theories of totalitarianism and fascism. It instead lends weight to the view that fascism, far from being limited to the West, arose independently also outside Europe, albeit as part of the same global reaction to the unprecedented catastrophe that was the First World War. This is not to minimize Western influences on Kanokogi, who was educated in the West and throughout his career kept abreast of European political and intellectual trends, including the development of fascism. Nevertheless, the 1919 launch of Mussolini’s fascist movement had not yet taken place when Kanokogi, inspired by a similar combination of nationalist, militaristic, and anti-Enlightenment ideas, integrated a number of notions that had been common in Europe since at least the turn of the century, if not earlier, into his totalitarian ideology. In other words...

Odejście „człowieka ferdydurkicznego”

Gombrowicz’s life can be divided into two parts. During the first period of his life, Gombrowicz is preoccupied with the “Ferdydurke Man”, i.e. a funny character who is tortured by Form, which he tries to overcome but which he finally succumbs to by falling into inauthenticity. This man, though incoherent, is understandable both for the author and the reader because he comes from the world they both live in and epitomizes their own problems, which makes readers laugh. The second period of Gombrowicz’s life begins with a scene in Venice in 1938. He meets young Italian pilots who are ready to destroy the city if Mussolini gives such an order. This is when new and “savage” young people take the place of the “Ferdydurke Man”. They are a product of their time – they do not think independently and they constitute a breeding ground for totalitarian ideologies. Gombrowicz tries to understand this generation and presents a picture of the world these young people are building for themselves in consecutive dark literary works.

Islamism and Islam

Despite the intense media focus on Muslims and their religion since the tragedy of 9/11, few Western scholars or policymakers today have a clear idea of the distinctions between Islam and the politically based fundamentalist movement known as Islamism. In this important and illuminating book, Bassam Tibi, a senior scholar of Islamic politics, provides a corrective to this dangerous gap in our understanding. He explores the true nature of contemporary Islamism and the essential ways in which it differs from the religious faith of Islam. Drawing on research in twenty Islamic countries over three decades, Tibi describes Islamism as a political ideology based on a reinvented version of Islamic law. In separate chapters devoted to the major features of Islamism, he discusses the Islamist vision of state order, the centrality of antisemitism in Islamist ideology, Islamism's incompatibility with democracy, the reinvention of jihadism as terrorism, the invented tradition of shari'a law as constitutional order, and the Islamists' confusion of the concepts of authenticity and cultural purity. Tibi's concluding chapter applies elements of Hannah Arendt's theory to identify Islamism as a totalitarian ideology.

The Exile Memoirs – between the Identity Discourse and the Critique of the Totalitarian Ideologies: Herta Müller's Case

Believing that “the things one has experienced disappear in time and reappear in literature”, Herta Müller, the German writer of Romanian origin, writes her narrative – the fictional as well as the memoir one – by constantly relating it to the totalitarian ideological context. In his autobiographical essays from Der König verneigt sich und tötet (2003) and Immer derselbe Schnee und immer derselbe Onkel (2011), the anamnesis focusing the personal history as part of “the great history” – both being deeply influenced by the experience of terror displayed by the “cannibal” and mnemophobic ideology – is permanently backed up by the meditation on the totalitarian mechanisms (social, psychological, ideological). The main point of interest entailed by the identity discourse – generating an exemplary history – is different from “self-edification”, pointing to the revival of “another time when I have always wondered about what is mere happening and what framing up in my own life” [Müller, 2011: 42], to the construction of a critical “meta-history” focusing the theme of mentally and behaviourally re- shaping the intellectual portrayed as “totalitarian subject.” Being more than an existential testimony, Herta Müller's autobiographical essays play a radiographic role for the period, equally interpreting a history of terror - her approach is totally justified, as the author strongly believes that the socio-cultural context mirrors the Communist past from a political and ideological perspective.