Anti-fascism is the fascism of the 21st century -- Henryk Broder

JudeoN4zi wrote:
>
> Anti-fascism is the fascism of
> the 21st century -- Henryk Broder
>

What else is new? This is nothing but
the repating pattern of one religion
attempting to replace another, and
sometimes even under the same name.

In the 1st century AD, Christianity
started to replace Judaism, under the
claim it was a "better" religion.

In the 7th century AD, Islam claimed
it was the ultimate revelation, and
an improved, "better" religion than
Christianity. It claime to be the
only true religion and invoked it
as justification to conquer a large
swath of the world.

In the 16th century AD, Luther and
Calvin introduced a more radical,
new flavor of Christianity. They
claimes as usual it was the only
"correct" form of Christiany, and
triggered blood baths all across
Europe.

In the 19th century, Marx and Engels
designed Communism, a new religion.

In the 20th century, Mussolini and
Hitler created yet another religion,
Fascism.

Every time humankind goes through
one of these "revelations", the
new religion claims superiority
over the older ones, invoking
any reasons or pretexts that
one can imagine.

Invariably, all the religions are
essentially Ponzi schemes. They all
promise believers a better, brighter
future, typically in afterlife, if
they adopt and follow the newly
minted religion, oftentimes at
great personal sacrifice, as
well as sign up to enslave,
main and kill the rest of
humankind.

If tbis isn't fraud in advertising
combined with a RICO conspiracy
I don't know what fraud is.

Cheers!

DeepBlue wrote:

> JudeoN4zi wrote:
>>
>> Anti-fascism is the fascism of
>> the 21st century -- Henryk Broder
>>

> What else is new? This is nothing but
> the repating pattern of one religion
> attempting to replace another, and
> sometimes even under the same name.

It's a bit more complex than that... It's also not just religions (fascism, and anti-fascism aren't religions), but ideologies generally that make the lives of humans more miserable than it ought to be.

Judaism when it was conceived was as an act of enlightenment in a way (establishing social order etc; in it's time and place it was very progressive; Islam when it was established was regressive)

> In the 1st century AD, Christianity
> started to replace Judaism, under the
> claim it was a "better" religion.

In terms of human rights it certainly was (For example: *no circumcision. It is mutilation (sorry to say - this criticism is pro jewish emancipation!, people have to be able to consent to this, and statistically botched surgeries happen -- I don't think circumcised penises look bad or we, but bodily integrity is a human right ffs). In many ways Christianity was more progressive than orthodox Judaism.

> In the 7th century AD, Islam claimed
> it was the ultimate revelation, and
> an improved, "better" religion than
> Christianity. It claime to be the
> only true religion and invoked it
> as justification to conquer a large
> swath of the world.

> In the 16th century AD, Luther and
> Calvin introduced a more radical,
> new flavor of Christianity. They
> claimes as usual it was the only
> "correct" form of Christiany, and
> triggered blood baths all across
> Europe.

> In the 19th century, Marx and Engels
> designed Communism, a new religion.

They did not provide an ideology (although they sometimes succumb to ideology); but are in fact critical of ideologies. Marx (Engels is a bit more problematic) never outlined the image of a perfect society the way Judaism and Christianity or Islam do, but he just criticised this society. He did not design anything (just goes to show, that you know nothing about Marx, because you never read him, but only heard about him).

What Marx describes in Das Kapital is objectively true ;) And if it were not for Marx, someone else must have come up with the same ideas (similar to mathematical ideas in some ways maybe). He also doesn't say that capitalism is all bad, he has many good things to say about it...

Horkheimer; difference of objective vs subjective reason - just going to leave it here:

"Horkheimer wrote about reason in exile during World War 2; he'd been chased to New York City and saw a lot of his friends and family be deported, never to be seen again. To understand anything of Adorno's or Horkheimer's you must first fully grasp what the holocaust/shoah was. Most American writers in critical theory seem to neglect that and see the Germans' eliminatory Anti-semitism as just another form of racism, which simply isn't true. Ant-semitism is a never ending delirium whose aggressor can only be appeased if they achieve full annihilation of those they deem responsible or personifying the circumstances bothering them, namely capitalist sociation, whereas racists would be content with segregation because they don't see their objects of hate as powerful enough.

Now back to reason: Horkheimer's lectures were published in German as "Critique of instrumental reason" (Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft) and deal with the cold, rational Logic that dominates economics and military thought for instance.

Subjective reason, according to Horkheimer, always ends up as being instrumental reason because it considers the utility of things from a certain lense, thus making it subjective. Historically speaking, this was how enlightenment worked: science was driven by the need for innovation and its findings had to be beneficial to someone, say the military or the industry. It's not only the utility of things examined, but their utility for certain people/groups.

Objective reason, on the other hand, seeks to grasp things as a whole, without considering their implications on certain people. So whether a thing is good or bad does not depend on the way I myself perceive this thing but rather its totality in history. Horkheimer cites the philosophy of history of Hegel, Marx and Comte as proponents of the latter but he also says that they tend to romanticize history and succumb to Ideology way too often.

Nearing the end of his life, Horkheimer was frustrated to see that the world approached neither a messianic age like Judaism foresaw it nor a communist society as outlined by Marx. With the advance of automatization he saw instrumental reason (i.e. subjective reason) triumph and conceded that objective reason had no chance of surviving. The world, at its core, wasn't reasonable but instead only tried to sustain itself."