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Haha. I think that is still an open question. For about two years after 9/11, I thought the Bush regime might morph into full-fledged fascism, but I don't find that likely any more. (It must be said, however, that some people, like Chalmers Johnson, think that America still might turn fascist in the next 10 or 20 years or so, as a result of strains caused by its militarism.)

I suppose it is fair to say that there is a correlation between rationalism/communitarianism and fascism (the Nazis), but I would claim that anything in Kant or Hegel only condemns fascism, rather than supporting it. The way I would look at it is that German idealism and Nazism have some common antecedents, the way  that liberalism and fundamentalism do. (By the way, after Hegel's death, there was a gradual decline in German philosophical culture (and the effort to regain that culture is being carried out mainly in the US, not in Germany) which I still don't understand. Thus, at the time when Germany started taking its wrong turn (after Bismarck's death), the German idealist tradition was not very influential any more.)

I would consider American slavery to be a form of radical racism, wouldn't you? And then there is the genocide of the native Americans... Thus I don't think rationalist/communitarian societies have a monopoly on that.

As a final note, one might speculate that fundamentalism might be the anglophone equivalent of fascism, as you were getting at. Certainly, when I look for something comparable to fundamentalism's anti-rationalism in modern Europe, the first thing I think about is the Nazis.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:31:27 PM EST
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