Vile Young Things

These days taking pot shots at the print media is like shooting fish in a barrel. Nonetheless, I feel I should say something when the New York Times reviews a book in their Sunday edition which is then reviewed in the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe. This wouldn't be such a big deal if not for the fact that the New York Times Company owns the Boston Globe. Jaysus, lady, let up on the leash a bit will ya? True, the Globe review has the added appraisal of seemingly more interesting book, but with the plethora of books being churned out is there really any good excuse for this laziness? Whatever, either way the subject matter of Bright Young People provides me with a segue for a follow up to my post titled 'An Aristocracy of Idiots.' Feeling like that post was a bit on the rantish side and might have come across like some GOP radio hack railing against the undefinable liberal, I decided I would more properly define my opinions on Hollywood liberals and celebutantes.

To clarify, the Bright Young People were essentially the prototype to the living dead we call celebutantes today. These include people like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Nicole Richie. There is one more stage of development between the BYP and the celebutantes but I will get to that later. In the mean time, it should be stated that the BYP (and by default the celebutantes) are the antithesis to the Hollywood liberal. To start with, the BYP included some of the Mitford sisters who were either fascists or communist. Secondly, the weltanschauung of the BYP/celebutantes is entirely opposed to that the Hollywood liberal. The BYP and the celebutantes see their wealth, privilege, media exposure and the occasional esteemed last name (note: this doesn't really apply to the celebutantes as being heirs to atrociously corporate hotels or The Man Who Ruined Motown are hardly what one would call esteemed) as a license to bypass all those troubling things boring, normal people deal with, such as: literacy, coherent thought and speech, and the ability to behave in a reasonable fashion in public. The way they see it, the world is their oyster and standards of human decency don't apply to them. As such they are entitled to all the pleasures the world has to offer and in the most decadent way possible because... well, just because they can. As such, the reign of the celebutante is a form of inverse aristrocracy as they are generally far dumber and far less capable of producing anything of worth than members of the general public. While the BYP may have shared the same attitudes and outward apprearances, as James O'Meara has noted they used to speak with improper english because they felt they owned the language, they still hung around with various artists and writers of the time, so in effect they were still aristocrats on the surface for being in close proximity to actual culture. So how did we get from there to here? The missing link is, of course, Andy Warhol and the denizens of the Factory.

While stupid people take Warhol's misquoted "15 minutes" bit to essentially mean "every dog has his day", Warhol was really taking democracy to its logical conclusion. The people who hung around the Factory were generally junkies, prostitutes and weirdos who in the social order of things would be considered beneath the general public. They didn't really work, some were mentally unstable such as the famed Valerie Solanas, and none really contributed to society in any way other than taking up space, and this is why they were such perfect subjects for Warhol's art. Warhol intended and succeeded in making celebrities out of people who by all other accounts were utterly worthless. As such, Warhol was saying that anybody, even the lowest segments of society, could achieve media exposure and thus fame and thus legitimation within the Spectacular society. This is where consumer capitalism, atomized individualism and a democracy which claimed that every person had a voice which should be heard was heading and did, in fact, end up. Consumer capitalism made commodities out of people, the totality of visual media made it so these human commodities could be consumed as images, atomized individualism provided the disconnect from any external realities and democracy provided the justification that anyone could achieve this level of hyperreality.

So there you have it. And now on to the Hollywood liberals, who as we shall see, are actually infintely worse. So while the celebutantes, like Warhol's studio hands and the Bright Young People before them, use their celebrity and wealth to escape from the responsibilities of reality which most people take for granted, the Hollywood liberal finds that his or her celebrity status has elevated their realness. The celebutante phenomena is really an exercise in mass solipsism, but the Hollywood liberal believes that because people like the movies they are in, either because they are decent actors or because they are pretty, they are more real than normal people and in a greater position to change the world around them. In my humble opinion, this is a far more frightening delusion than thinking the world ceases to exist when you close your eyes. The Hollywood liberal finds that the hyperreality they inhabit elevates their humanity rather than diminishes it and rather than being personalized commodities which we, the consumers, can either identify with, hate or lust after, they are role models and/or spokespersons for various political causes. Now there is certainly nothing wrong with actors having political opinions or even expressing them. One has to give it to Vanessa Redgrave who thanked the Academy for not being, "intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums", and the late Paul Newman's social enterprise continues to be an example of positive capitalism. But these were people with political opinions who happened to be actors. Being in the public light does not make one worthy of extolling the virtues of whatever feel good, moralistic bullshit is hot this year. In fact, no one should extol such ludicrousness, they should read a book instead and stop submitting to the tyranny of image.

Social Structures Cont.

As I've mentioned previously, the Big 3 were not solid fortresses of ideology and often complimented and adopted aspects of one another in the struggle for hegemony. For one such example, consider the Casa del Fascio designed by Giuseppe Terragni as a municipal administrative building of the Fascist regime. Terragni was a member of the architectural association Gruppo 7 who, like the Futurists, represented the most avant garde elements of Italian Fascism. Their style was called Italian Rationalism and was essentially a school of the International Style which was to later dominate the architectural landscape of the victorious postwar West. As Diane Ghirardo writes in her essay Politics of a Masterpiece: The Vicenda of the Decoration of the Façade of the Casa del Fascio, Como, 1936-1939:

Because Fascism offered itself as an entirely new and modern phenomenon, it could readily align itself with modern architecture, amply buttressed by references to the "romanitá" and "mediterraneitá" that these contructions presumably projected. In practice, this meant that architects such as Terragni, Adalberto Libera, Mario de Renzi, and Giuseppe Pagano could design solely within their own aesthetic restraints, confident of no official interference and, occasionally, as with Sabaudia and the Stazione S. Maria Novella in Florence, with polemically active support from the regime.

Today the Casa remains very modern looking and could easily be mistaken for a trendy office building or even an affordable boutique hotel.

As Sheri Berman describes in The Primacy of Politics the regime also established, "the hugely popular Dopalvoro, or Leisure-Time Institute, which provided large numbers of Italians with opportunities for education, sport and recreation." Effectively this was the State-sanctioned and directed pursuit of happiness and leisure. While still authoritarian, this is not exactly the drab and grey version of fascism were are normally presented with. Of course, this was when the political movement was also rather independent and Mussolini had yet to become a dupe of the Nazis whose relation to art and architecture were rather reactionary and corny when compared to their Italian allies. Then again, the subtle homoerotic imagery of some of it may hold some relevance for those who get their kicks from uniforms and orders.

So in closing, there was much about the New Italy which was sleek, avant garde, urbanite and sexy. And while not wanting to sound like that slimeball Jonah Goldberg, much they had in common with their liberal opponents.

An Aristocracy of Idiots

While watching the "news" on the death of John Travolta's daughter...er, son (what can I say? Dude looked like a lady) being presented with the same seriousness and importance as the continuing slaughter in Gaza, I got to thinking about celebrity culture and the political role it plays. As such, this post is really my take on something James O'Meara wrote about previously on his excellent blog.

It seems that liberals, despite already having cultural hegemony over the ruling classes and ideological control of the MSM, find that having a famous spokesperson for their ideas helps further the various causes and attitudes they espouse. I recall the first antiwar protest I consciously attended on a beautiful autumn day on Boston Commons. As a burgeoning socialist of 16, I was taken in by all the various factions in attendence with their literature tables on display. One of the speakers was Howard Zinn (of course), and I was pleased to witness his speech as I recalled my father telling me how he was arrested with him at a protest against the Vietnam war. The only other speaker I remember was Tim Robbins. He gave a particularly obvious speech about how waging war on Iraq would be a mistake and was morally wrong. He also reminded the audience that Islamic radicalism was equally detestable as if some of the left-liberal folkies in attendence were seriously considering Qutbism.

Looking back on the whole thing, I still wonder was specific credentials Robbins' possessed that put him in the same category as people like Zinn or Chomsky who have made their living writing about politics. Perhaps it was Robbins' role in the Clinton era cinematic masterpiece Arlington Road where Timmy boy plays a silly individualist who fears the benevolence of the Federal government and actually has the audacity to bomb an IRS building (the horror!!!). Jeff Bridges plays Robbins' neighbor, a emotional mess of a college proffesor who can't stop crying about his dead wife who was killed trying to murder an entire family of backwoods folks who, again, had the audacity to fear the benevolence of the Federal government and were stockpiling arms.

If this is all it takes to be a spokesperson for the Church of Feel Goodism, I nominate Ice Cube for a seat on the UN's Human Rights Council for his role in the The Battleship Potemkin of establishment liberalism: Higher Learning. For those who haven't seen it, this movie has everything one could possibly want in neoliberal agitprop: evil peckerwoods, noble Negroes, acoustic guitar playing LUG's, hippie douchebags, an angry, black prof who wants to show his students just how privileged they all are and a group of neoNazis played by Jewish actors.

Take Al Franken as another example. Never very funny as an actor, he recently won a senate seat in Minnesota under rather dubious circumstances. Again, the question remains, just what exactly are his qualifications? Of course, the point could be made, and I would certainly agree, that politicians simply work to grease the gears of a system responsible for all the awful shit people who actually work for living have to deal with on a daily level, from the most petty to the greatest atrocities. If this is the case, the point of political qualifications is a moot point and the best a politician can do is to slow down the gears of oppression and ineptitude as best they can, hence Dr. No.

Nevertheless, even with the qualifications for holding public office at gutter level, liberals continue set the bar even lower than previously thought possible. Consider the talk of appointing Caroline Kennedy to fill Hilary's senate seat. Here is a woman whose only credit is her name. Yes, the famed Kennedy mantle. Only in America would a group of parvenu bootleggers with run of the mill Democratic party politics be considered something akin to a royal family. Not that I hold any royalist sympathies, but historically aristocrats were cultured people with intense knowledge of the sciences and arts. No, I don't think Teddy or Caroline would be able to hold their own with Oscar Wilde or W.B. Yeats. Even the dearly departed Jack Jr. failed his bar exam twice. Just take Caroline's recent interview with the New York Times, not exactly an enemy of the Northeast liberal establishment. The woman can barely articulate a sentence without a distinctly out of place, dare I say Midwestern, "yuh know." One also gets the impression that her politics are wholly formed simply by the fact that she's a Kennedy and the Kennedys are solid liberal Democrats. And I'm sure her ludicrous support for gun control, which includes supporting an expired ban on assault weapons, has nothing to do with the fact that her father and uncle were shot to death. Yes, those Kennedys, progressive in name only, representing everything entitled and corrupt one would expect from an entrenched political class.

Of course, liberals don't need to explain themselves or even vie for candidacy in elections (yuh know the much vaunted democracy they claim to uphold) because they are simply correct. They are secure in their moral absolutism, born from the same intellectually underdeveloped maniacs currently wading through body parts over a hill of sand, and don't need it tainted by the litmus test of logic or rationalism, things they also supposedly uphold. So despite perpetuating the cult of celebrity normally associated with such underclass items as tabloid rags, this is in fact the new elite. So, yuh know, you better wise up.

Structures, Society and the Big 3

As astute observers have noted, the 20th century saw the formulation of 3 totalitarianisms: Nazifascism, Communism and Liberalism. While it is generally agreed upon that Nazifascism was defeated in 'The Big One', it was only the most anti-modern and illiberal elements which were vanquished. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall ostensibly heralded the defeat of Communism, one sees liberal democracies embracing the security state as soon as the postcommunist era is announced. While Nazifascism and Communism were defeated ideologically, politically and economically, elements remained and fused with the last totalitarianism. Hence the liberalism of today is not the liberalism of Locke or Emerson, it is a mix of Reaganite/Thatcherite neoliberalism and social democracy, the so called Third Way of Clinton, Blair, and [most likely] Obama.



European social democracy in the postwar period has its origins in a few places, but the form it evolved into up to the late modern era can be traced back to the Federal Republic of Germany. As the abstract to Eucken's 'Social Market Economy' and Its Test in Post-War West Germany by Siegfried G. Karsten explains:

Walter Eucken's paradigm of a "social market economy" and "Ordnung" provides a framework for a functional free-market mechanism, which not only accommodates development and change, but which also assures human dignity and freedom, as cornerstones of the Kantian moral universe. Eucken places special emphasis on the integration of economics with "order" and "justice," in a synthesis of negative liberty and positive freedom and of Rawls' and Nozick's theories of justice. Adam Smith's laissez faire economy does not assure a competitive economy, he holds, and will evolve into monopolistic practices, interventionism, and distortions of price relationships; but "structural" and "regulating" principles will facilitate a functionally competitive economy with a compatible social policy, characterized by a flexible price mechanism and stable policies. This "social market economy" would provide goods and services efficiently and also eliminate poverty and the maldistribution of income and resources.

The geographic location of this system is no accident. Germany, located in between the East and West of Europe, synthesized the values of individual freedom and liberty found in West Europe and America with the communal and collective values of Russia and Scandinavia. While some see social democracy as a middle ground between Marxist socialism and capitalism, the social justice and centrality of community in this system is more aptly traced to the ethnocentric, communal conservatism of the continental Conservative Revolution. Hence, the folkhemmet in Sweden has its origins in the thought of Rudolf Kjellén. Kjellén's views are clearly a major influence on the Nazi theory of volksgemeinschaft . Though a few stages of separation away, perhaps this is the "Nazi bedrock" of the West German state which the enfants terribles of the Baader Meinhof gang referred to?



This theory of the state and society as an all-inclusive whole can also be found in a few places among the big 3. One such place is Kojeve's updated theory of Hegel's universal and homogeneous state, which he saw as fulfilling the aims of communism through capitalism. Giovanni Gentile, intellectual father of Italian Fascism, had a similar idea of the role of the state. As Giuseppe Parlato explains in Giovanni Gentile: From the Risorgimento to Fascism from Telos #133:

To Gentile, totalitarianism meant inclusion, the union of the whole, the overcoming of divisions on all levels. From this perspective, the fact that Gentile invited many intellectuals to participate in the Italian Encyclopedia did not signify generosity and political independence, but rather was consistent with his defined plan. For Gentile, the fact that antifascism should be incorporated into the great project of the state was the culmination of the totalitarian thrust, irrespective of the fact that antifascist forces were still opposed to the regime. Thanks to him, these forces were cooperating with the regime.

In the United States, the New Deal marks the beginning for the totalitarian turn of liberalism. Essentially a progressive form of Italian corporatism, though Roosevelt had no intention of incorporating his opponents into the system, it was instituted to save capitalism from itself. With the state on overdrive and a war economy in the works, the population was drawn together under the blanket of a top-down populism and civic nationalism which would be a mainstay of the Democratic Party up to Carter. This era of managerial democracy was articulated by Lawrence Dennis and later James Burnham. While many New Deal programs would be eliminated in the postwar era, the notion of society as an impersonal mass that needed to be managed survived and evolved.



One such place where this idea blossomed was in architecture. Again we see an overlap with the other members of the Big 3, as all modern architecture has its roots in the Bauhaus school whose members were influenced by revisionist Marxism and first forumlated the notion that society could be molded and made more just by the buildings in it. Other famous and successful high modernist architects had connections with fascism and Nazism. Le Corbusier was involved with the Vichy regime due to an interest in planisme and Philip Johnson, a disciple of Father Coughlin, was thoroughly enthused with Nazi Germany for among many reasons, "all those blond boys in black leather."

So in postwar America one has uniform, utilitarian housing projects to promote equality among the masses and expansive, Brutalist corporate and government buildings to project the notions of efficiency and power held by the rulers. Just take this quote and accompanying picture from The Nation's review of a book on HUD director Robert Clifton Weaver.


Robert Clifton Weaver had been a prominent economist, a longtime advocate of fair-housing laws and a member of the country's black intellectual elite ever since the days before the end of segregation. President Lyndon Johnson had appointed Weaver to head HUD after the agency was founded in 1965, making him the first black cabinet official in American history. And it was Weaver who had dedicated the new HUD building three years later, its Brutalist architecture still cutting-edge and the idealism of the Great Society still fresh.

Then in the beginning of the 21st century, we have all the spoiled leftovers of the big 3. From Communism and Nazifascism, an oversized, absolutist state whose notion of legitimacy is based simply on the fact that it exists and can imprison you for questioning it. From liberalism, the continual exploitive aspects of capitalism including the abandonment of manufacturing for a service industy: everybody selling hamburgers and handbags to eachother but nothing of actual worth. From social democracy, a bloated system of welfare, while a living wage for workers, free university tuition for those who are smart enough to get in but can't afford it, and national healthcare remain out of the question. And from Communism and liberalism, a generally accepted consciousness which treats human beings as they should be rather than the way we are. Oh, what a nice grab bag we're left with from all of yesterday's parties.

Hipsters

From Horizon spring 1966, Vol. 7 #2.

Hulk Hogan's Rights of Man

It is election day and very soon we will bid farewell to Bush Jr. his cabal of cretin-esque Neoconservatives, some of the best bad guys we've seen in a while. So as a going away present I thought I would present this video. A good friend of mine originally showed it to me for the obvious humor potential (what is up with that part where the rocket fucks the American flag!?), but after watching it a few times (and downloading the insatiable tune) I began to realize that it was best summation of Neoconservatism and the "accomplishments" of the Bush administration I have ever seen. Here is why:

1. National Greatness: let's start with the simplistic patriotism and gratutitous ammount of flag waving, all predating Fox News, nonetheless. In the very beginning it quickly and effectively sets up the American narrative: the war for independence, the Constitution, a couple of great Presidents, the diversity of our landmass, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Vietnam war. Nevermind certain contradictions like that Jefferson owned slaves or MLK Jr. opposed the Vietnam war, the point is that it was all uniquely American and America rules!

2. Creative Destruction: you can't have progress without blowing up a few buildings, crashing airplanes (hey, McCain...), bicycles or beating the snuff out of a few guys. Despite the fact that the phrase 'creative destruction' can be traced back to Bakunin and Nietzsche, here we are interested in arch-Neoconservative, Jacobin, democratic revolutionary Michael Ledeen's use of the phrase. To be fair, Ledeen probably got it from the futurist writtings of F.T. Marinetti while he was cutting his teeth with the Italian security services co-opting fascisti wild boys and making sure that the Great American Empire would righteously castrate an independent Europe (see previous post).

3. Natural Rights: the key to Hogan's Wilsonian ideology can be found in the lyrics, "I am a real American/Fight for the rights of every man." Despite that Hogan's glory is uniquely American, his duty and destiny extends far beyond our borders. Every true American, the song implies, must not simply take their freedoms and rights (which are given not inherent) for granted. No, he or she must ensure that every human being in world has these rights protected as well. Hence the precondition for imperial intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and anywhere else this particular notion of the Rights of Man is threatened. Also, notice Hogan's tearing up a photo of tinpot dictator Gaddafi, predating the obsession with other insular wannabe Bonapartes like Saddam and Chavez.

4. The last point more has to do with the medium rather than the message, though as McLuhan taught us, the relationship between the two is often closer than we think. So here we see Hogan's patriotic demagoguery amid throngs of flag waving simpletons who just love being duped by the spectacular theatrics of it all, just like people during election season. Again, Hogan's antics predate a key part of Neoconservative methodology: Idiot Populism. Reagan's clean cut cinematic bluster started it all but he was still a bit too obviously corporate for the sans-culottes who make up the small town GOP rallies. Bush's ranch hand persona took it step further and he pretty much sealed the deal with the flight suit, if only for that pesky issue of his unofficial AWOL from the armed forces. The final stage of this phenomena was, of course, the rabid mobocracy of McCain/Palin rallies which got all manners of semi-literate yokels in a tizzy about Obama bringing some sort of socialist caliphate stateside. Of course, legitimate fears about Democratic Party big government intervention into the lives of small town citizens couldn't be properly exploited because the GOP is just as guilty as their 'rivals' in this respect. Who could forget the Bush administration's creation of the Ministry of Information. Even leftists like David Michael Green have noted that:

at least now we can finally answer our pregnant question: Which American president has been the most socialist of all, apart from FDR and LBJ? The (really, really) surprising answer is: George W. Bush.

Sandwich Shop Evoliani

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The New York Times Style Magazine is a generally a good read as it has pretty models, often showcases the elegance and aesthetics of better, past times as well as whatever vapid, cosmopolitan crap du jour the ruling classes are eating up. In the Men's Fashion Fall issue, there was an article on the paninari, subject of the great Pet Shop Boys song. For those who don't know (and I didn't until I read the article, I thought the song was just about buying Italian brand clothes in NYC), this was a subculture of Italian kids who emerged as a reaction to the darker or crustier groups such as Punks and Goths and whose "fashion choices were a way of socializing and publicly embracing appropriation- specifically, the American dream as defined by the quick and easy pop culture culture of the Reagan era. (For an Italian of a previous generation, a slow death would be preferable to a diet of foil-wrapped hamburgers, French fries and Cokes.)

What really caught my eye is the youth second to the far right of the picture with the Celtic cross tshirt and upon closer inspection (see close up) an Iron Cross on his pant leg. Given that this picture was snapped in Italy during the late 1970s or early 80s, it can well be assumed that this symbolism was supportive of certain ultraviolent neofascisti groups operating during the time as part of a dirty war against various far left gangs, the Brigate Rosse being the most famous. Of course, it later came out that the whole Blacks vs. Reds conflict was wholly superficial as generally both sides were being controlled by the CIA and NATO as a part of the last rampart of World War III, i.e. the [not so] Cold War, in an effort to protect Western Europe from Soviet invasion. Now while American and Western European anticommunist tactics played no small part in the downfall of Stalinist tyranny, the outcome was pretty inevitable given the crapshack of economic theories the USSR was founded on, not to mention the eternal truth of all totalitarianisms: they are their own wost enemy.

Of course, the whole dichotomy of the Cold War, that it was between two different economic systems: Free Market Capitalism vs. State Socialism/Communism was utterly false. As we all know, capitalism in the West is hardly based on free enterprise and a lack of government intrusion. Instead we see corporate welfare and a litany of laws designed to complicate and prevent any upstart small businesses from flourishing or the individual worker from selling his labor to the highest bidder. As for the USSR and other supposed socialist countries, as anyone with knowledge of theoretical socialism (either Marxian or non-Marxian) will tell you, the USSR and China are what is more properly defined a state capitalism as the industries within these countries were owned either fully or in part by the state apparatus and controlled by party bureaucrats. So while the fall of the Soviet Union and its various satellites led people such as Francis Fukuyama to declare victory for free market capitalism as part of a neo-Hegelian interpretation of the "End of History", as we have since seen (in addition to my previous remarks on the lack of truly free markets and enterprise) with such recent events as the Wall Street bailout, it is really state capitalism which is evolving and becoming the dominant, world wide economic system.

But getting back to the youth in the picture, what I find most amusing about the whole scenario is that certain elements, in fact the most radical sections, of the rightist terror gangs operating during the Years of Lead considered themselves disciples of Julius Evola. As such, they saw themselves as not simply fighting against just Commies but also against democracy, capitalism and the most levelling and tyranically banal aspects of modernism. They wanted to create a hierarchal, spiritually pagan and autarkic order to replace the most profane aspects of Western liberal democracy, in short everything the paninari stood for. Of course, the Gladio operation wasn't simply about protecting Western Europe from Soviet imperialism out of some heartfelt love of liberty and desire to protect those with whom we share a common heritage. It was also about imperialism, but of the order of Scrooge McDuck capitalism and the shiny barbarism of consumer culture. As I've mentioned in previous posts, a healthy, strong and independent Europe was viewed with suspicion from the State Department and their corporate friends as the cases of Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland and Ireland seemed to prove the possibility of having a burgeoning upwardly mobile society while still providing such basic amenities as free health care and education. Of course since the victory of American domination over Europe we've seen these once socially democratic governments turn against their citizens with the most absurd, politically correct laws imaginable while accepting the most destitute and parasitical sections of the Third World, inevitably putting such a strain on the social services as to make them essentially worthless. There is no doubt that this will accumulate into a socio-economic crisis of Malthusian proportions within only a few years. End of History or civilization as we know it? As Rosa Luxemburg put it: Socialism or Barbarism? I think we all know which one is coming...