August 27, 2022

"Contrary to popular perception, totalitarian ideologies are not coherent or consistent..."

"... rather, they are opportunistic concoctions of ideas and words that are useful in times of crisis and mobilization... [Aleksandr Dugan's] star seemed to rise in 2014, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for the first time. Dugin... had called for the creation of a 'Russian World,' a geographically non-specific concept that imagined Russia on a civilizational mission rooted in traditional values and the Russian Orthodox religion.... In 2014, the Kremlin, in its pivot from the politics of Soviet nostalgia to the politics of imperial resurgence, started speaking Dugin’s language...." 

"At one point during [funeral for Darya Dugina], Leonid Slutsky, who leads the (misnamed) Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, called out, 'One country, one President, one victory'—an almost exact translation of the German Nazi Party’s slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. The historian Timothy Snyder has coined the term 'schizofascism' to describe this sort of rhetoric: people acting like fascists while calling their enemies fascists, as the Russian propaganda machine continues to do with Ukraine.... We know now that the twentieth-century events that heralded unprecedented terror—the Reichstag fire in Berlin, in 1933, and the murder of Sergei Kirov, in Leningrad, in 1934—were, in fact, carried out by rogue actors. Still, they set in motion the totalitarian machine. Darya Dugina’s murder may serve the same—probably unintended—function, making her father’s influence infinite indeed."

61 comments:

Michael K said...

"Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"

Jupiter said...

" ... called out, 'One country, one President, one victory'—an almost exact translation of the German Nazi Party’s slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. "

Ummm. Except, an exact translation would be more like "One race, one realm, one leader". So he did not call out an almost exact translation. Rather, he used the same rhetorical cadence to express a rather different political program. Which pretty much eliminates the basis of the argument he is trying to make.

gilbar said...

Now tell us about the Ukrainians

traditionalguy said...

By returning to Orthodox Christianity The Russ became the true successor to the Roman Empire through the Constantinople Eastern Empire that outlasted Rome by 1,000 years. Tzar means Caesar. And thanks to American supplies they won WW2 against a German Army hands down. No sane person laughs at them.

n.n said...

A fetus left in a nursery.

Nazis, ethical religions, diversity [dogma], twilight faith are inherently selective, opportunistic, relativistic or consistent in their own handmade tales. Far-left ideologies are nominally secular philosophies rooted in single/central/monopolistic pursuits of capital and control.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Putin's favorite film is said to be a 1970s Soviet production with the title "Seventeen Moments of Spring." In the film, it is early in 1945, and a heroic KGB agent foils a plot of the Nazis and the Americans to join forces and conquer Russia.
I wonder if what we think is "Nazism" is different than what Putin thinks is "Nazism"? It may be that Putin sees ANY westernization of ex Soviet bloc nations as being inherently nazi-like, because it forwards the Nazi's plan to destroy Russia.

Alexisa said...

"had called for the creation of a 'Russian World,' a geographically non-specific concept that imagined Russia on a civilizational mission rooted in traditional values and the Russian Orthodox religion"

I must have heard speeches like this a dozen times since 1980, and read about the sentiment a hundred times since Russia was founded. It's neither new nor does it originate with with this guy.

Russia has always felt apart from Europe, always hanging in limbo between Europe and Asia. And always snapping back to a Nationalist posture whenever it reached out and got it knuckles rapped.

Information re Russia is suspect since the war started. Americans are swallowing Ukranian propaganda by the shovel load. Zelenski was a move star, he brought his production staff
with him. Americans think they are immune because the watched Wag The Dog

RideSpaceMountain said...

What's telling about this incident is that it shows a lack of technical proficiency. The Russian FSB has got the tech and know-how to pull off a PAL-timed carbomb. The Ukrainian FSB does not, and certainly not proxy-paramilitaries on either side (at least where Russia is concerned at least not independently). It doesn't point to false-flag for me because why miss the intended target with the bigger PR impact?

Even without the technical know-how they could've set up a command trigger but flubbed even that. Amateur hour.

Ambrose said...

What "popular perception" is that?

jnseward said...

Anti-Russian disinformation

n.n said...

Ah, Spring is in the air, but now it's summer going on fall.

n.n said...

"Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"

Witches, warlocks, dukes unpopular, Jews of privilege, baby burdens, vaginas and penises, too. Toil, toil, progress and trouble.

Michael K said...

In other news, the reporter who broke the story of Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch meeting at Phoenix airport during the 2016 campaign was found dead. Don't cross the Clintons.

tim maguire said...

people acting like fascists while calling their enemies fascists,

Surprising words to appear in The New Yorker given that we don’t have to look nearly so far as Russia for an example.

The Reichstag fire in Berlin, in 1933…[was], in fact, carried out by rogue actors.

“In fact”? First I’ve heard that we know who did it and why.

Inga said...

Dugin is/was to Putin what Steve Bannon was/is to Trump. At least Trump didn’t have Bannon blown up when/if he was no longer favored.

rcocean said...

The Reichstag was set on fire by a crazed Leftist. IRC, a communist. Do you think Communists believed in "democracy"? LOL. The nazis seized upon it, to do what they wanted to do. Sometimes, your team helps the opposition.

This New Yorker article is just the standard Liberal/leftist bilge. You kill women, children, innocents? Thats a crime against humanity. OMG, the horror! If we, or someone we like, kills women, children, and innocents. Oh well, they had their reasons. And Gosh, that's just the way things are. everything is so complicated! And maybe they deserved it.

I don't have the slightest doubt that "The New Yorker" and people who read it, would cry, and rend their garments for weeks, if someone was to carbomb Ms. Gleeson or a NYT Oped writer. Or just say "Tough luck baby" if anyone they disliked was killed.

if you want to find their humanity or moral center, I suggest a microscope.

Yancey Ward said...

Inga, bless your heart! I don't remember Bannon telling Trump to invade anyone, but, by all means, enlighten us with your superior knowledge.

Bender said...

The Soviet apologists are again out in force.

Narayanan said...

is it clear in the writing what is totalitarian worldview? and who hold such?

Narayanan said...

so is MAGA totalitarian as FJB claims?

Howard said...

Yancey: Bannon told Trump to insurrection the Capital on January 6th. A failed invasion. Game set match.

Mea Sententia said...

I see the word 'totalitarian' used so often now that it is hard to remember a time, not long ago, when I seldom saw it used at all.

Achilles said...

Inga said...

Dugin is/was to Putin what Steve Bannon was/is to Trump. At least Trump didn’t have Bannon blown up when/if he was no longer favored.

Inga still asserts Trump colluded with Russia despite all of the evidence and we now know it was all a lie.

Inga still supports the people who created the Russian collusion lie and are still using it to persecute her political opponents.

Inga still claims Trump supporters killed Brian Sicknick.

Inga still calls for her political opponents to be censored.

Inga supports the Biden regime using clearly illegal warrants to raid the houses of political opponents.

Inga supports BLM burning down cities and looting them.

Inga has built a fantasy world of lies. She demands that anyone who actually points out what really happened be censored and persecuted.

Inga is just a stupid fascist piece of shit.

Achilles said...

Narayanan said...

so is MAGA totalitarian as FJB claims?


At this point it is clear to everyone who the true fascists are.

n.n said...

Let's see: normalize or reject, or tolerate all things tolerable? Choices, less the sequestered fields of carbon.

n.n said...

Do you think Communists believed in "democracy"? LOL. The nazis seized upon it, to do what they wanted to do.

Differences in color, not quality.

The democratic/dictatorial dual is not an aspirational achievement.

JK Brown said...

"Contrary to popular perception, totalitarian ideologies are not coherent or consistent..."
"... rather, they are opportunistic concoctions of ideas and words that are useful in times of crisis and mobilization..."

Which is why totalitarian ideologies are so popular with the "educated strata".

"The fading of the critical sense is a serious menace to the preservation of our civilization. It makes it easy for quacks to fool the people. It is remarkable that the educated strata are more gullible than the less educated. The most enthusiastic supporters of Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism were the intellectuals, not the boors. The intellectuals were never keen enough to see the manifest contradictions of their creeds. It did not in the least impair the popularity of Fascism that Mussolini in the same speech praised the Italians as the representatives of the oldest Western civilization and as the youngest among the civilized nations. No German nationalist minded it when dark-haired Hitler, corpulent Goering, and lame Goebbels were praised as the shining representatives of the tall, slim, fair-haired, heroic Aryan master race. Is it not amazing that many millions of non-Russians are firmly convinced that the Soviet regime is democratic, even more democratic than America?"
---von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy

And why the college credentialed are so easily duped by social media

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Balfegor said...

I would say, rather, that totalitarian ideologies can be consistent, or at least as consistent as any ideology can be -- see communism, the dominant totalitarian ideology of the 20th century. But once an ideology is translated into a political project, one faces two problems.

First, any political ideology is going to diverge from reality. A communist ideologue might be able to handwave away the difficulties of managing farms and factories so that people can live, but reality is not so kind.

Second, to implement a totalitarian
ideology, one necessarily relies on actors -- politicians, bureaucrats, military officers, ordinary civilians -- who will inevitably pursue their self interest within whatever system is set up, including by changing the system to their advantage when they can.

So either way, the reality of a totalitarian system is always going to diverge from the theory. You might call those discrepancies "inconsistencies." And you might call efforts to patch up barmy communist theory to conform to reality a bit better "inconsistencies" (cf. "communism with Chinese characteristics," i.e. fascism with bells on).

These weaknesses are most glaring with communism, both because it's an evil ideology inflicted with great brutality and enormous human suffering upon many countries around the world in the past century, and because it's unusual in the cruel rigidity of each nonsensical permutation -- Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc. But these contradictions aren't unique to communism.

Drago said...

Russia Collusion Truther and Hillary Hoax Dossier Dead Ender Inga: "Dugin is/was to Putin what Steve Bannon was/is to Trump. At least Trump didn’t have Bannon blown up when/if he was no longer favored."

Ah, Inga back to her patented mindreading-based analyses again!

By the way, thats how Inga kept us all informed for over 2 years about what Mueller and Weissman "really knew" and were up to.

Of course, when that all completely collapsed Inga pivoted to claiming she didn't ever really care about that at all.

It takes Inga about 6 months to shift from screaming "treason" to pretending she said nothing at all whereas Howard and gadfly can pivot on a dime as soon as new instructions fron on high are received.

Narayanan said...

"had called for the creation of a 'Russian World,' a geographically non-specific concept that imagined Russia on a civilizational mission rooted in traditional values and the Russian Orthodox religion"
========
is this any different from Solzhenitsyn hope for Russia?

tim in vermont said...

He was on a kill list from Azov, like that Ukrainian blogger who was brutally murdered in Kiev in April, and others. How will we ever know their motives if we rule out the most logical first?

Robert Cook said...

"At this point it is clear to everyone who the true fascists are."

Yes...it's the other guys!

cubanbob said...

Putin is known for staging deaths for his purposes like the Moscow bombing in 1999. Who killed the daughter is unknow and will be unknown for decades. While the father was the most likely target it doesn't necessarily mean he was the target. Killing her might be a message as well.

What is it with the Putin apologists? Russian invaded Ukraine in 2014. Russia continued invading Ukraine in 2022. The Ukrainians were not slaughtering ethnic Ukrainian Russians, the Ukrainians were not rounding up those Russians and sending them to Ukrainian gulags.

We spend eight hundred billion a year on defense and against whom are we defending ourselves from? Russia, China/North Korea and Iran/Islamic terrorists. Arming Ukraine is weakening one of our adversaries, which is for us a good thing. It cautions the Chinese/North Koreans which is also a good thing. We should be quietly selling Taiwan all the ant ship missiles, air defense systems and HIMARS and similar type weapons and anti-tank weapons they would need to repel a Chinese invasion. That would put Xi in a bind. The problem with Biden is that he and his people just can't STFU about arming the Ukrainians. The Soviets were smart enough not to brag about arming and aiding the North Koreans during the Korean war and during the Vietnam war and we should do the same.

cubanbob said...

These weaknesses are most glaring with communism, both because it's an evil ideology inflicted with great brutality and enormous human suffering upon many countries around the world in the past century, and because it's unusual in the cruel rigidity of each nonsensical permutation -- Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc. But these contradictions aren't unique to communism."

Indeed, this is true of all totalitarian states. The justifications are always the same. On behalf of the people for the benefit of the people even if the people don't understand what is best for the people done for the people by the Vanguard of the people. We don't have to go too far to see this in action. The fourteen years in our country is plenty evident that we are not so far from these authoritarian ideologies for the benefit of the people and eliminate wrong think for the good of the people by the Vanguard of the People. Vote in November likes your lives depend on it because it is true, your lives and the lives of your loved ones are at stake. Climate change is nothing but Communism with a green eco-face.

Narr said...

I was just about to pose the good question that Narayanan asked at 327.

It's been a long time since I read Solzhenitsyn, and I'm not an expert on Duginism, but at first glance there is overlap. But Solzhenitsyn, like Tolstoy, had wider and more generous outlooks than Dugin exhibits.

At any rate, if Dugin's desire is to civilize the rest of the world with Russian Orthodoxy, it might be best for NATO to attack Russia now.

Inga said...

Drago, who is too prissy to ever say a swear word, has no compunctions about lying. You know Drago, there is a Commandment about lying.

narciso said...

like cancelling ones bank accounts because one opposes a recently approved therapeutic,

Yancey Ward said...

Howard believing he is clever is the funniest thing today.

Mason G said...

"It takes Inga about 6 months to shift from screaming "treason" to pretending she said nothing at all whereas Howard and gadfly can pivot on a dime as soon as new instructions fron on high are received."

I commend you for having the patience to keep up with their postings, I find it more productive to just scroll past them. There are only so many hours in a day and I try to limit my reading to things that at least have the potential to be interesting/informative.

n.n said...

A suitable religion (i.e. behavioral protocol): morality in a universal frame, ethics its relativistic sibling, and law their consensual cousin for people capable of self-moderating behavior. Competing interests to mitigate the progress of others running amuck.

Lurker21 said...

It's hard to say who really is a fascist and who is just being painted as one. It's possible that the Dugins are fascists, but the word gets applied to anyone abroad who questions Western or American hegemony and to anyone at home who ... well, you know the rest.

Once those who threatened our power were Communists or were labeled Communist. Now they are called fascist. Then and now, the Russians have a starring role in the drama. The "civilizational state" is becoming significant. China, Russia, India are all assuming that role, and one is always threatening to arise in the Muslim world. Are civilizational states really going to be aggressive and try to impose themselves on other countries and cultures? Or are they just trying to protect their own core civilization? Countries that feel their own uniqueness or specialness or chosenness or exceptionality have tended to become expansionist in the past. Is that true of civilizational states, or is it just their challenge to our own supremacy that makes us see them that way?

Ideologues aspire to logicality, consistency, and coherence, but in fact ideologies are shaped by history, by circumstances, opportunities, challenges and threats, by what's possible and necessary at the time. Usually, ideologies conform neatly to the interests of those who profess them and change as those interests change and the ideology's base of supporters changes. Inconsistencies and contradictions abound. So does hypocrisy, but attempts to apply ideological systems and conclusions consistently and uncompromisingly leads to disaster.

Rockeye said...

Russian world = international socialism. Bland recycling of USSR rhetoric.

Michael K said...


Blogger Howard said...

Yancey: Bannon told Trump to insurrection the Capital on January 6th. A failed invasion. Game set match.


Inga is just dumb. Howard works at it to come up with cray stuff like this.

n.n said...

like cancelling ones bank accounts because one opposes a recently approved therapeutic

The conundrum of civilization in the breach in, but certainly not limited to, our Northern neighbor.

Inga said...

Michael K is just delusional, ask his daughters.

Inga said...

“WHEN STEVE BANNON said on his radio show on Jan. 5, 2021 that “all hell” would break loose the following day, he wasn’t speculating. The Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday revealed that Bannon’s radio prediction came shortly after a phone call with President Trump, as the former president was in the final stages of preparing for his supporters to come to Washington to protest the results of the 2020 election.

The White House phone logs obtained by the Jan. 6 committee show that Trump spoke to Bannon at least twice on Jan. 5, once for 11 minutes beginning at 8:57 a.m., and again for six minutes beginning at 9:46 p.m. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said on the air after speaking to Trump that morning. “It’s all converging and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen,” he added with a wry smile. “It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. All I can say is, strap in.””

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/steve-bannon-trump-phone-call-jan-6-1381848/

Michael K was/is quite the big Steve Bannon fan, IIRC.

Maynard said...

Inga is just a stupid fascist piece of shit.

Yes. I agree. She is a modern day white suburban female Democrat.

So, why pay much attention to her bleatings?

Achilles said...

Robert Cook said...

"At this point it is clear to everyone who the true fascists are."

Yes...it's the other guys!

I have pointed to dozens of examples of leftists acting like fascists.

Let us see your list of Trump supporters acting like fascists.

Or more likely this is just another stupid baseless assertion with no facts or supporting evidence by the boring and stupid Robert Cook.

SGT Ted said...

"In 2014, the Kremlin, in its pivot from the politics of Soviet nostalgia to the politics of imperial resurgence..."

The Communists of the USSR were always imperialists. "International Communism" is the epitome of imperialist projects.

Michael McNeil said...

Drago, who is too prissy to ever say a swear word, has no compunctions about lying. You know Drago, there is a Commandment about lying.

No there isn't. The Commandment in question forbids perjury, not lying per se.

narciso said...

Bannon understands populist forces like ledeen did 40 years ago. In italy when the communists were on the march at the outset of the iranian revolution

effinayright said...

Sigh....how many fucking times to we have to go through this?

HERE's the definition of fascism from an Ur-Fascist, Benito Mussolini:

"“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.

Benito Mussolini’s formulation remains one of the most enduring definitions of modern totalitarianism. Italy’s Fascist regime was the first to declare itself totalitarian, and it envisioned a radically new social order engineered by the state."

So Inga, Cookie and the rest of you proglodytes who are insisting Trump
1s a fascist:

Does a fascist favor Big Government? YES.

Do Trump or his followers? NO.

Does a fascist insist on obedience to the State? YES.

Does a fascist want "the people" acting at state and local levels to decide their own laws, policies and practices? THE FUCK THEY DO. A fascist insists YOU WILL OBEY OR BE KILLED, crushed, canceled, fired, de-platformed, exiled or outlawed.

Dicking with established definitions is what Cook, Inga, Howard, Freder, Heywood, Vicky, gadfly Jimxxxx---and the other fascistic trolls on this blog do all day long---just as Orwell warned they would.

Basta!



Christopher B said...

rcocean said...
I don't have the slightest doubt that "The New Yorker" and people who read it, would cry, and rend their garments for weeks, if someone was to carbomb Ms. Gleeson or a NYT Oped writer. Or just say "Tough luck baby" if anyone they disliked was killed.


Marjorie Taylor Greene targeted with second swatting incident in as many nights.

Cappy said...

Gosh neds, sounds like the Democrats.

Iman said...

Rolling Stone’s take on politics…

Mature and sober, I’m sure.

Robert Cook said...

"HERE's the definition of fascism from an Ur-Fascist, Benito Mussolini:

'Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.'

"Benito Mussolini’s formulation remains one of the most enduring definitions of modern totalitarianism.

"Dicking with established definitions is what Cook, Inga, Howard, Freder, Heywood, Vicky, gadfly Jimxxxx---and the other fascistic trolls on this blog do all day long---just as Orwell warned they would."


It is a slogan more than a definition, but it does touch on the goal of fascism. It can hardly be said to be an "established definition" in that it does not really explain how fascism is promulgated, nourished, and implemented. As with any ideology or method of management/control, tactics can follow general generally recognizable ideological or procedural stages, but there will always be variations, depending on where fascism is nourished, and who is doing the nourishing.

This video provides a succinct little discussion of tactics of fascism. I would say that Trump has used and does use some of these tactics. I don't know that Trump is a knowing or calculated fascist to the degree Mussolini or Hitler were. He is lower-rent and less ambitious than they. Trump is more concerned about feeding his ego and his income stream more than he really cares about ruling or reshaping a nation. He does know how to get people on his side, how to appeal to their wants, vanities, fears and resentments. He is a practiced, even reflexive liar, and his scruples are difficult to identify. To whatever degree these tactics are consciously or intuitively employed by Trump, to whatever smaller ends, the result is that he is fomenting fascism among his followers...and among those would emulate him. It is Trump's more ambitious clones who should be feared.

Robert Cook said...

"Does a fascist favor Big Government? YES.

"Do Trump or his followers? NO."



Hahaha! Trump's followers want big government without even knowing it. And frankly, a nation as big geographically and as populous as the USA requires big government to function at even the barest level of effectiveness. The question is, to whom does the big government answer, to what purposes is it directed, to whose profit is it dedicated? Whether under Republican or Democrat administrations, our big government serves the wealthy, and the wishes of the people are scarcely acknowledged, except in empty rhetoric used to narcotize the public into delusion or disillusion.

Robert Cook said...

"We spend eight hundred billion a year on defense and against whom are we defending ourselves from? Russia, China/North Korea and Iran/Islamic terrorists."

We're not defending ourselves from anyone with all those billions spent. It's all a scam. The money is spent to aggrandize our War Department's importance and authority and to enrich the endless number of parasitic arms manufacturers, the well-named "Dealers of Death" who get ever richer from all those "defense" dollars spent on lies.

Narr said...

I agree with all the good points made here.

Rusty said...

Robert Cook said...
""At this point it is clear to everyone who the true fascists are."

Yes...it's the other guys!"
No, comrade, Bob. We know it's you.

Rusty said...

Robert Cook said...
""HERE's the definition of fascism from an Ur-Fascist, Benito Mussolini:

'Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.'

"Benito Mussolini’s formulation remains one of the most enduring definitions of modern totalitarianism.

"Dicking with established definitions is what Cook, Inga, Howard, Freder, Heywood, Vicky, gadfly Jimxxxx---and the other fascistic trolls on this blog do all day long---just as Orwell warned they would."

It is a slogan more than a definition, but it does touch on the goal of fascism. It can hardly be said to be an "established definition" in that it does not really explain how fascism is promulgated, nourished, and implemented. As with any ideology or method of management/control, tactics can follow general generally recognizable ideological or procedural stages, but there will always be variations, depending on where fascism is nourished, and who is doing the nourishing."

There's a fairly simple tell. Look who's piling up the bodies.