The Dark Side of Revolution's Romanticism

Revolution has a certain romance - Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela. We should not forget Mussolini was a revolutionary. So was the Austrian paperhanger. There is a dark side to revolution. I believe that what attracts so many American men to fascism is the romantic cachet of revolution.

A sane video explaining fascism:

 The Dark Magic of Words: Why Fascism and Illiberalism Are So Seductive to Writers (Literary Hub)

Limonov in Lefortovo shows that a persecuted author need not be a voice of tolerance and free expression, as Ezra Pound broadcasting for Radio Rome during the Second World War can attest to. Still, in a totalitarian state, writers often became martyrs of free expression, dissidents like Vaclav Havel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, refugees such as Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky.

“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism,” Brodsky said at a Williams College commencement address in 1984, “originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity.” Fair enough as it goes, but Limonov was certainly also an individual, he was original, even whimsical and eccentric.

This speaks to the Janus-faced nature of writing, of thinking of yourself as a writer, of believing yourself capable of producing literature, which is to say of reorganizing reality. It requires a narcissism that’s the hallmark of the totalitarian. What is a totalitarian leader other than an individualist taking that creed to its cruel conclusions, erasing the uniqueness of every other person into mere characters in a drama?

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The fascist, like the hubristic poet, imagines that the world can be recreated by the self, through words alone. A dangerous pure aestheticism in the artist who rejects empathy, because in making themselves the sovereign they believe that it is they who can decide the exception.

A Limonov, or a D’Annunzio, or a Mishima, not to mention a Goebbels (who wrote novels) or a Karadžić (who wrote poetry) may revel in illiberal transgression, in antinomian authoritarianism, but that is the result of an idolatry of aestheticism. Ever the punk, in interviews Limonov spurns “squares,” though apolitical aestheticism is anything but—it’s already chosen its side.

Basic though it may seem, if a writer is to be worth anything—regardless of their individual talent—it’s not to be for death and tyranny, but rather for their opposites. 

Do those who want a more authoritarian President really understand that Trump is not offering freedom? If MAGA wants revenge for their failing to compete in the wider world, then supporting Trump makes sense. They think they will be able to kick those who offend them. They do not freedom, they want to belong to the crew of top dogs, even if they are far from the top of the pecking order. If you, dear reader, are tempted by fascism, then consider what fascism means: you, the individual, are not important other than as a cog in the machinery of the state:

A short documentary on Fascist Italy, so much sounds like MAGA.....

This is what people want for America? Why?

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