What is political correctness? It
is a refusal to face and discuss uncomfortable things. It is an enthusiastic
adherence to outright clichés and platitudes which nobody would quarrel with,
and extreme fear of any kind of political terra incognita.
As a result, political
correctness amounts to philosophical and political impotence, business as
usual, if you like, but at a terrible hidden cost to the nation that practices
it.
Staying out of politics and not
holding a politically-charged job, I enjoy the luxury of having flushed political
correctness down the drain. This is also
a tribute, with the Fourth of July approaching, to the great country where free
thought is still allowed, although it does not pay much, or rather, not at all.
And so, my treatment of sensitive
subjects continues.
The series on Italian fascism is
inevitably followed by the series on German fascism. General entries on the
nature of totalitarianism can be found throughout my blog postings over the
last decade, and some more of them will follow later.
***
For obvious reasons, I used to
find Mussolini and the fascist regime in Italy theoretically far more interesting
than the Nazi German counterpart. After all, Italy takes precedence over
Germany in that respect, and her philosophical study of the nature of totalitarismo and fascismo (both originally-coined Italian words), plus the
international stature of their chief philosophical proponent Giovanni Gentile, makes it a no-contest
comparison.
But of course there is a big
difference between politico-philosophical theory and political practice, and
here the situation is dramatically reversed. Whereas politically the Mussolini
regime proved to be rather shaky, even without the misfortunes of getting drawn
into World War II terminally, Hitler’s Germany displayed a remarkable staying
power, and, had it not been for a series of lethal blunders on Der Führer’s part, the biggest of
them being his 1941 invasion of Russia, the Third Reich might have come triumphant
out of WWII, with
consequences of unimaginable nature. It is, therefore, not so much a question
of subjective interest (mainly from the politico-philosophical point of view,
to be sure) as it is of objective geo-political importance, and it is in this
latter respect that Germany of the Third Reich is unquestionably more
important than Italy of the Last Imperium.
There are several entries
relating to Hitler in my History section, and even more on him in my
unpublished book Stalin, and Other Family. The rationale for this entry
is to provide some additional information on him, for the purpose of further
study. The title here is Man Of The Prinzip, which is, of course, not a
unique feature of the Nazi regime. The Führerprinzip, although a German
word, identifies the most characteristic element of the nature of all
totalitarian societies, and as such equally applies to Hitler, Mussolini, and
Stalin before him; Mao, Kim, and Ho after him, not to mention numerous other
lesser cases. In a well-refined and somewhat humanized form it is present in
the Putin cult in today’s Russia, and
I do not see anything wrong with that, as long as the particular national
psyche demands a heroic leader now. It is only the abuse, which often
comes naturally, of the office of the Leader, that leads the society
away from healthy totalitarianism toward unhealthy authoritarian excesses,
which ought to be condemned and delegitimized.
Hitler’s initial excesses were
ostensibly legitimized by Germany’s mistreatment after the Great War (World War
I). No such abuse was done to Germany after World War II, even though the
German nation may have deserved it the second time around to a far greater
extent than in the first instance.
But Hitler’s later excesses on
all fronts revealed a very high level of political inconsistency which weighed
the state down, and eventually made the lethal mistakes of the regime
inevitable.
To be continued…
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