You know, some part of me is kind of sympathetic to this issue of credentialing. (Should say up front here that I am professionally in academia and acknowledge the perspectival warping that probably produces.) Reading, say, some of the books by n+1 authors, like Nikhil Saval's "Cubed," I remember thinking, what the fuck is this? It's not by a trained historian, so there's no substantive research, and it's not by a political or cultural theorist, so there's no real scope of argument--it, and others like it, just read like diligent papers by "A" students. It really feels like there's just this deskilling of intellectual labor, even in contexts where there is genuine debate and disagreement, like say on the Catholic right. I mean, Ross Douthat, Michael Brendan Doherty--not exactly Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. (Can't think of any Catholic intelletuals of the top of my head here.)
Academia, of course, has the opposite problem, in that extreme specialization, the focus on questions of methodology and argument, and just a deficiency in writing ability means that everything that comes out of there is parochial and boring. So I think the stuff I gravitate toward tends to be general audience academic stuff, like, say in the New Left Review. Hence the all-around excitement, I think, about those Perry Anderson mega-articles a two years back?
On the other other hand, here I am, following your Twitter and reading your Substack with great enthusiasm. It seems to me that social media just instantiates a very different audience-public intellectual relationship that previously existed, where individual writers become little public spheres onto themselves. There's this parasocial effect I guess I really like here, in that you (and the people who comment here) remind me of my friends from high school and college, and the conversation is kind of a formalized version of the informal conversations we used to have--more of a friend sharing stuff with you to think about, than a public intellectual taking stances, though, of course, it's also that, since you have a real readership, and will soon have a book. The problem here seems to be on Hamid's side, for puffing himself up and not recognizing the more intangible, informal nature of the interaction?
Not that it matters, I’m just a rando, but, I feel, man—it is difficult to deal with haughty people who care, or feign to care, more about decorum than substance, especially after being outrageous or denigrating themselves in what they think is ‘genteel’ enough a way. That you’re still substantive even while salty is kinda great!
Still beating him down but with thorough insight. Would it be worth the effort to explore the material interests of the Sorelian Left, contrarian intellectual class et al? [S is one of many] I speculate some provoke as such, signaling their merit with the status quo ante or should a fascist regime deeply entrench itself, their acceptability. A bit like Heidegger but without having to accept a Rectorship.
Always nice to see Lakatos referenced. Agree on Stanley. Entirely derivative and shapelessly liberal. I'm sceptical of the "laundry list" approach at the best of times. But there's a world of difference between Paxton's list and Stanley's. Paxton's is original and well-grounded in historical research. Stanley's is derivative and tailor-made to fit a liberal agenda of the hour
"...Jason Stanley, who I also have grown to dislike personally for the wildly inverse proportion of his ego to his contributions...his tiresome posturing and self-aggrandizement...."
Okay, I can see why you might arrive at that judgement on the basis of his writings and his public persona.
But if you ever deal with him in a small group setting where you can really get to see his human side...
It's so much worse. So much ego. So self-obsessed. So willing to talk over anyone else's experience or insights.
Physicists who study gravitational attraction are currently trying to get him into a lab, in order to figure out how something so ponderous can defy the normal laws and be repulsive instead.
Want you to know I unsubscribed to SH's crack publication (which is essentially a self-hosted Substack, so his dismissal of Substacker is very funny) and became a paid subscriber to you because of this. So your recent writing is a very good use of your time.
I know this is not the main thread of your post, but is there a relatively clear cut argument to say "Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China were not fascist." ?
I don't have any wish to condone so called "horseshoe theory" nor entertain the notion that "tHe NaZiS wErE sOcIaLiSts" (in fact, multiple incidents of people being able to make this claim and not be forever laughed out of public opinion bothers me so much that I believe it somewhat radicalized my politics).
However, especially in the case of Stalinist Russia, couldn't one make the case that the original revolutionary impulse decayed into something that could be considered fascism? With the permanent mobilization, the charismatic leader, etc, etc, etc.? Honest question.
It feels like the racial aspect of fascism sits awkwardly with Stalinist Russia, which, as Putin supporters often point in bad faith, is in fact a multi ethnic state. (Of course, in actual fact, there was real Russian chauvinism.) There's also the question of private property, which is crucial to fascism, and also the movement's class composition, an alliance of the propertied classes that, through intense ideological messaging, is also able to peel off just enough of a chunk of the working class to give itself cover as "beyond class," and to split the left. Stalin's Russia and Mao's China just didn't really work that way, and bundling them all together just creates mushy analysis.
I think, for people like Arendt, and also the early neocons, this was a really a moral question about anti-Communism, I don't think the temperature is quite so high now. For me, arguing that Stalin's Russia wasn't fascist isn't equivalent to saying it was a great place to live or a morally legitimate regime. It's primarily a question of analysis and the illuminative use of political categories. You can slice it the other way, too--why don't we categorize the Jim Crow South as fascist?
Enormous topic, endlessly debated, but still shouldn’t be lightly dismissed. Briefly and schematically, I think it just depends on the level of analysis one chooses to bring to bear. Historical fascism evolved in the context of market capitalism, electoralism, and revolutionary labour insurgency. Obviously Stalinism and Maoism emerged in radically different contexts. In terms of outcome, however - specifically, the individual’s relationship to the state and state violence - fascism/Stalinism/Maoism/Khmerism share many of the same features.
I don't disagree, I think I would just add that the analysis can't be carried out with some meta-analytic acknowledgment and debate about what's at stake in the distinction, since fascism is as much a moral category as it is a political one. For Arendt, it seems clear that putting Hitler and Stalin under one roof was part of a Cold War anti-Communism directed against the left, whereas, in the German Historikerstreit of the 80s, Nolde's goal in comparing Hitler and Lenin was to show that Germany wasn't uniquely guilty and therefore shouldn't be held to any special standard of atonement.
Yes, for all her high-level analysis, Arendt’s fundamental concern was with totalitarianism’s annihilation of autonomous personhood - in other words, her preoccupation, in many ways, was with the moral destruction of individuals, regardless of the political system that inflicted it. Much can be learned from her about that process, but there is little to be learned about the social and economic forces that made historical fascism possible.
That's a great way of putting it. I really enjoy Arendt, but Origins doesn't hold a candle to Neumann's Behemoth for the very reasons you lay out here.
Haven't read Stanley but the speed with which philosophers who built their careers on technical issues in core analytic philosophy have turned of late to social and political philosophy, assuming a typically analytic separation between concrete subject matter and some vague notion of skills or techniques, where the latter (surprise!) are what's important -- the speed has been notable and embarrassing, as have the results. This is the price mainstream anglophone philosophy now pays for pretending to stand on the campus culture war sidelines in the 70s-90s.
When I was in college fifty years ago, I was taught by some excellent historians that there was no single meaning to "fascist" or "fascism". They eschewed it as a useful descriptive term. Even though Mussolini self-described and Hitler adopted it, there were substantial differences in their regimes in fact. That seems to have gone by the board. The Soviet Union was, and Communist China is, a totalitarian state. Please read Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism. I believe that the confusion arises from the fact that totalitarian states can and do invoke nationalism to preserve their monopoly on power and suppress dissent. See, e.g. the USSR's use of the Great Patriotic War (during the war to the present) and the CCP's full-on claim to exclusively represent China's ancient traditions and historic regional domination. Trump and his brown-shorts can, I think, be described as fascist because they are violent (or potentially violent) white "Christian" nationalists. That is their appeal.
You two have a fruitful line of consideration here, I believe. Hamid's claim to expertise, which I find interesting but I graze mostly, is regarding Islam and whether it is compatible with Western Democracy. He has more than once in writing and speaking argued that belief in God is essential to being and although his interlocutor on his podcast is not a believer, they do discuss this frequently. Because of his faith, Islam, and his belief that all should be believers in God (a prescriptive notion), he is more comfortable with religious prescriptions at the governmental level. I consider those types of prescriptions can too easily tip.
I live in Tennessee, and not too far from David French. Because of French's argument regarding "states rights" (it is a wee bit more complicated and a bit more fleshed out than in the past), I listened to a back and forth the two had. French and Hamid argued that states should be allowed the opportunity to have "local laws" that reflect "local religious" beliefs. With Dobbs overturned, Tennessee now has a law that does not allow for abortion in any cases... period.
That "tip" regarding women's reproductive health, coupled to our laws regarding curriculum in the schools, books in libraries, LGBTQ rights, etc., is towards "Christian" nationalism. To me, Hamid and French should be used as comparative cases, even though French is 15 years or so Hamid's elder. From that comparison, who/what politicians/policies are given a well groomed path based in religious prescriptions are important.
As a transplant to this place, an older Boomer whose name is close to Karen, and not a writer/pundit, there is a visceral feeling of authority through the primitive power of because I said so, where I is someone with "illiberal" tendencies that easily tip into worse tendencies.
I too spent time with Hamid's ideas when he wrote his book about Islam. (I was going through a phase and spent time with thinkers at the Divinity school at Vanderbilt to fill out that phase.) I have also listened to some of the episodes of his podcast with Damir Marusic, but I fear that although Marusic is someone who will push Hamid on "belief," he isn't able or willing to aid Hamid in seeing changes in US institutions, for the worse.
Brookings has given Hamid a place in the DC orbit. Unless he does something untoward (i.e., "reflecting pool swimming" events brought forward) he will be comfortably employed for the rest of my lifetime.
"Hamid is fond of citing a 1944 Orwell quote that goes:
....
But the full quote is more instructive:"
Yeah, whenever my intellectual honesty has been called into question, I counter with a bit of selective quotation. That'll show I'm a scholar of integrity and rigor!
You know, some part of me is kind of sympathetic to this issue of credentialing. (Should say up front here that I am professionally in academia and acknowledge the perspectival warping that probably produces.) Reading, say, some of the books by n+1 authors, like Nikhil Saval's "Cubed," I remember thinking, what the fuck is this? It's not by a trained historian, so there's no substantive research, and it's not by a political or cultural theorist, so there's no real scope of argument--it, and others like it, just read like diligent papers by "A" students. It really feels like there's just this deskilling of intellectual labor, even in contexts where there is genuine debate and disagreement, like say on the Catholic right. I mean, Ross Douthat, Michael Brendan Doherty--not exactly Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. (Can't think of any Catholic intelletuals of the top of my head here.)
Academia, of course, has the opposite problem, in that extreme specialization, the focus on questions of methodology and argument, and just a deficiency in writing ability means that everything that comes out of there is parochial and boring. So I think the stuff I gravitate toward tends to be general audience academic stuff, like, say in the New Left Review. Hence the all-around excitement, I think, about those Perry Anderson mega-articles a two years back?
On the other other hand, here I am, following your Twitter and reading your Substack with great enthusiasm. It seems to me that social media just instantiates a very different audience-public intellectual relationship that previously existed, where individual writers become little public spheres onto themselves. There's this parasocial effect I guess I really like here, in that you (and the people who comment here) remind me of my friends from high school and college, and the conversation is kind of a formalized version of the informal conversations we used to have--more of a friend sharing stuff with you to think about, than a public intellectual taking stances, though, of course, it's also that, since you have a real readership, and will soon have a book. The problem here seems to be on Hamid's side, for puffing himself up and not recognizing the more intangible, informal nature of the interaction?
Not that it matters, I’m just a rando, but, I feel, man—it is difficult to deal with haughty people who care, or feign to care, more about decorum than substance, especially after being outrageous or denigrating themselves in what they think is ‘genteel’ enough a way. That you’re still substantive even while salty is kinda great!
Still beating him down but with thorough insight. Would it be worth the effort to explore the material interests of the Sorelian Left, contrarian intellectual class et al? [S is one of many] I speculate some provoke as such, signaling their merit with the status quo ante or should a fascist regime deeply entrench itself, their acceptability. A bit like Heidegger but without having to accept a Rectorship.
Always nice to see Lakatos referenced. Agree on Stanley. Entirely derivative and shapelessly liberal. I'm sceptical of the "laundry list" approach at the best of times. But there's a world of difference between Paxton's list and Stanley's. Paxton's is original and well-grounded in historical research. Stanley's is derivative and tailor-made to fit a liberal agenda of the hour
"...Jason Stanley, who I also have grown to dislike personally for the wildly inverse proportion of his ego to his contributions...his tiresome posturing and self-aggrandizement...."
Okay, I can see why you might arrive at that judgement on the basis of his writings and his public persona.
But if you ever deal with him in a small group setting where you can really get to see his human side...
It's so much worse. So much ego. So self-obsessed. So willing to talk over anyone else's experience or insights.
Physicists who study gravitational attraction are currently trying to get him into a lab, in order to figure out how something so ponderous can defy the normal laws and be repulsive instead.
Want you to know I unsubscribed to SH's crack publication (which is essentially a self-hosted Substack, so his dismissal of Substacker is very funny) and became a paid subscriber to you because of this. So your recent writing is a very good use of your time.
I know this is not the main thread of your post, but is there a relatively clear cut argument to say "Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China were not fascist." ?
I don't have any wish to condone so called "horseshoe theory" nor entertain the notion that "tHe NaZiS wErE sOcIaLiSts" (in fact, multiple incidents of people being able to make this claim and not be forever laughed out of public opinion bothers me so much that I believe it somewhat radicalized my politics).
However, especially in the case of Stalinist Russia, couldn't one make the case that the original revolutionary impulse decayed into something that could be considered fascism? With the permanent mobilization, the charismatic leader, etc, etc, etc.? Honest question.
It feels like the racial aspect of fascism sits awkwardly with Stalinist Russia, which, as Putin supporters often point in bad faith, is in fact a multi ethnic state. (Of course, in actual fact, there was real Russian chauvinism.) There's also the question of private property, which is crucial to fascism, and also the movement's class composition, an alliance of the propertied classes that, through intense ideological messaging, is also able to peel off just enough of a chunk of the working class to give itself cover as "beyond class," and to split the left. Stalin's Russia and Mao's China just didn't really work that way, and bundling them all together just creates mushy analysis.
I think, for people like Arendt, and also the early neocons, this was a really a moral question about anti-Communism, I don't think the temperature is quite so high now. For me, arguing that Stalin's Russia wasn't fascist isn't equivalent to saying it was a great place to live or a morally legitimate regime. It's primarily a question of analysis and the illuminative use of political categories. You can slice it the other way, too--why don't we categorize the Jim Crow South as fascist?
Enormous topic, endlessly debated, but still shouldn’t be lightly dismissed. Briefly and schematically, I think it just depends on the level of analysis one chooses to bring to bear. Historical fascism evolved in the context of market capitalism, electoralism, and revolutionary labour insurgency. Obviously Stalinism and Maoism emerged in radically different contexts. In terms of outcome, however - specifically, the individual’s relationship to the state and state violence - fascism/Stalinism/Maoism/Khmerism share many of the same features.
I don't disagree, I think I would just add that the analysis can't be carried out with some meta-analytic acknowledgment and debate about what's at stake in the distinction, since fascism is as much a moral category as it is a political one. For Arendt, it seems clear that putting Hitler and Stalin under one roof was part of a Cold War anti-Communism directed against the left, whereas, in the German Historikerstreit of the 80s, Nolde's goal in comparing Hitler and Lenin was to show that Germany wasn't uniquely guilty and therefore shouldn't be held to any special standard of atonement.
Yes, for all her high-level analysis, Arendt’s fundamental concern was with totalitarianism’s annihilation of autonomous personhood - in other words, her preoccupation, in many ways, was with the moral destruction of individuals, regardless of the political system that inflicted it. Much can be learned from her about that process, but there is little to be learned about the social and economic forces that made historical fascism possible.
That's a great way of putting it. I really enjoy Arendt, but Origins doesn't hold a candle to Neumann's Behemoth for the very reasons you lay out here.
Haven't read Stanley but the speed with which philosophers who built their careers on technical issues in core analytic philosophy have turned of late to social and political philosophy, assuming a typically analytic separation between concrete subject matter and some vague notion of skills or techniques, where the latter (surprise!) are what's important -- the speed has been notable and embarrassing, as have the results. This is the price mainstream anglophone philosophy now pays for pretending to stand on the campus culture war sidelines in the 70s-90s.
When I was in college fifty years ago, I was taught by some excellent historians that there was no single meaning to "fascist" or "fascism". They eschewed it as a useful descriptive term. Even though Mussolini self-described and Hitler adopted it, there were substantial differences in their regimes in fact. That seems to have gone by the board. The Soviet Union was, and Communist China is, a totalitarian state. Please read Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism. I believe that the confusion arises from the fact that totalitarian states can and do invoke nationalism to preserve their monopoly on power and suppress dissent. See, e.g. the USSR's use of the Great Patriotic War (during the war to the present) and the CCP's full-on claim to exclusively represent China's ancient traditions and historic regional domination. Trump and his brown-shorts can, I think, be described as fascist because they are violent (or potentially violent) white "Christian" nationalists. That is their appeal.
I have read Origins of Totalitarianism more than once
You two have a fruitful line of consideration here, I believe. Hamid's claim to expertise, which I find interesting but I graze mostly, is regarding Islam and whether it is compatible with Western Democracy. He has more than once in writing and speaking argued that belief in God is essential to being and although his interlocutor on his podcast is not a believer, they do discuss this frequently. Because of his faith, Islam, and his belief that all should be believers in God (a prescriptive notion), he is more comfortable with religious prescriptions at the governmental level. I consider those types of prescriptions can too easily tip.
I live in Tennessee, and not too far from David French. Because of French's argument regarding "states rights" (it is a wee bit more complicated and a bit more fleshed out than in the past), I listened to a back and forth the two had. French and Hamid argued that states should be allowed the opportunity to have "local laws" that reflect "local religious" beliefs. With Dobbs overturned, Tennessee now has a law that does not allow for abortion in any cases... period.
That "tip" regarding women's reproductive health, coupled to our laws regarding curriculum in the schools, books in libraries, LGBTQ rights, etc., is towards "Christian" nationalism. To me, Hamid and French should be used as comparative cases, even though French is 15 years or so Hamid's elder. From that comparison, who/what politicians/policies are given a well groomed path based in religious prescriptions are important.
As a transplant to this place, an older Boomer whose name is close to Karen, and not a writer/pundit, there is a visceral feeling of authority through the primitive power of because I said so, where I is someone with "illiberal" tendencies that easily tip into worse tendencies.
I too spent time with Hamid's ideas when he wrote his book about Islam. (I was going through a phase and spent time with thinkers at the Divinity school at Vanderbilt to fill out that phase.) I have also listened to some of the episodes of his podcast with Damir Marusic, but I fear that although Marusic is someone who will push Hamid on "belief," he isn't able or willing to aid Hamid in seeing changes in US institutions, for the worse.
Brookings has given Hamid a place in the DC orbit. Unless he does something untoward (i.e., "reflecting pool swimming" events brought forward) he will be comfortably employed for the rest of my lifetime.
"Hamid is fond of citing a 1944 Orwell quote that goes:
....
But the full quote is more instructive:"
Yeah, whenever my intellectual honesty has been called into question, I counter with a bit of selective quotation. That'll show I'm a scholar of integrity and rigor!