<< And Now for the Katastrophe! | Front Page | Citations >>
Sunday, September 09, 2007
More on Dawkins
The controversy stirred up by Dawkins’s latest book The Fascism Delusion really seem to be heating up. Here is one recent review, from many, that takes him to task:
Only Dawkins, or perhaps his psychiatrist, can say why this subject seems to make him so angry; but he should be advised that the intemperate hostility he exhibits towards his subject is counterproductive. I’ll eat my shiny peaked cap if this book persuades even the most hesitant half-Fascist to renounce his beliefs.
… [Dawkins’s] sense of ‘Fascism’ is lamentably error-strewn. Dawkins has only a superficial knowledge of Mein
KamfKampf, or the poetry of Marinetti; and he seems entirely ignorant of the much more subtle and intellectually stimulating work of Fascist philosophers such as Hermann Graf Keyserling, Alfred Baeumler, Martin Heidegger, Giovanni Gentile, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, Alain de Benoist and many others. Only somebody who has mastered the complete works of all these thinkers could even conceivably be in a position to advance an anti-Fascist argument. The lack of that necessary body of knowledge fatally undermines Dawkins’s right to attack Fascism in the first place.Right from the get-go he makes the mistake of talking about ‘Fascism’ as if it were some unified quality. Of course the truth is that there are a great many varieties and flavours of Fascism. Do his generalisations refer to Italian Fascism? Hitlerian fascism? Islamofascism? Falangism? Crypto-Fascism? Brazilian Integralism? It is meaningless to extract an idealised, monolithic ‘fascism’ from this myriad patchwork of human practices, even for polemical purposes. Nor is it right to call Fascism ‘right-wing’ (what about the career of Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser?) or ‘militaristic’ (many Fascists are wholly peaceable).
Dawkins repeatedly compares the best of non-Fascism to the worst of Fascism. He (again repeatedly) accuses Fascism of being an ‘extremism’. There have been some Fascists who were extremists, of course; but this doesn’t mean that Fascism itself is extremist. I certainly did not recognise myself, or any of my local Party organisation, in Dawkins’s bitter, hate-filled portrayal. Worse, he does not seem to realise that his own position, so-called non-Fascism, is actually a kind of Fascism: a structure of belief determined by Fascism, dependent for many of its core ideas on Fascist traditions.
… Take for example this biased observation: “Fascism seeks to impose total state control over all aspects of life, from the political and cultural right down to questions of individual ethical and sexual choice. It valorises strength, and exalts the nation state as superior to the individuals composing it.” Not even the junior Nazi Party secretary who first introduced me to Fascism believed that! ...
Almost all of Dawkins’s claims are easily dismissed. His main one is that ‘the fascist mindset’ (whatever that is) ‘enables people to commit appalling acts of barbarism and violence’, that it ‘encourages a tendency to separate humanity into sheep from goats, thereafter not only permitting but actively encouraging the persecution of the goats’. Then he trots out the tired old example of the holocaust. I’ve news for Professor Dawkins: yes, Fascists killed six million Jews in the 1940s. But they didn’t do this because they were Fascists; but because they were human beings. All through history Jews have been killed. Killing Jews is one of the things that people have always done; deplorable, perhaps, but a fact of life. Since killing Jews predates Hitlerian Fascism, and since it has carried on after the decline in influence of Hitlerian Fascism, I think it’s pretty obvious that this particular mass-murder of Jews had very little to do with Hitlerian Fascism, and everything to do with people’s inherent capacity for evil—something, incidentally, for which Fascism has not only an explanatory theory, but a remedy; which is more than can be said for Professor Dawkins.
... Though he accuses Fascism of being an extremism; he flatly refuses to acknowledge the extremist bias of his own non-Fascist position. He is also blind to the obvious truth that his beloved non-Fascists have killed just as many people as have Fascists—more, indeed. Why doesn’t Dawkins focus his polemic on them? The reason is that a peculiar hysterical hostility to the very idea of Fascism blinds him. (He claims for instance that ‘non-Fascists don’t do evil in the name of non-Fascism’, which would be news to all the senior Fascists hanged by the Nuremberg anti-Fascist trials). All ideals – political, transcendent, human, or invented – are capable of being abused. And knowing this, we need to work out what to do about it, rather than lashing out uncritically at Fascism. But Dawkins cannot understand this.
I am not, of course, suggesting that Fascism has been perfect; no reasonable Fascist would. Whilst it’s true that the Leader is the inerrant embodiment of the will of the People—ordinary Fascists themselves are prone to all the fallibilities of the human condition. Fascism has never claimed otherwise. But whilst Dawkins is happy to highlight the occasional bad consequences of Fascism, he wilfully ignores the good that Fascism manifestly has done in the world. There is no mention in this book of the prodigious architectural triumphs, the autobahns, the economic miracles, or most of all, the sense of belonging, purpose and meaning that being a member of a Fascist brotherhood brings to the ordinary man-in-the-street. All the evidence shows that Fascists are more likely than are non-Fascists to dedicate themselves selflessly to an ideal higher and to forego their own individual gratification; indeed for many people this is the point of Fascism.
Far from being a serious philosophical book, this ill-edited and garrulous diatribe contains just about anything that crosses the author’s mind: page after sarcastic page of attacks against any aspect of Fascism Dawkins considers an easy target. Dawkins avoids the real question of whether one’s political understanding terminates with a structureless, anarchic and social aggregation void of meaning, or with an authority who provides order, stability and reason for living. The bottom line is that Dawkins cannot
affirdafford to entertain the possibility that Fascism fills a deep-seated need in people. But the evidence that this is the case is so strong. Fascism could hardly have been as popular as it has been, for as long, otherwise.
Comments
This is the best thing I’ve read in ages.
Compare this:
I’ve news for Professor Dawkins: yes, Fascists killed six million Jews in the 1940s. But they didn’t do this because they were Fascists; but because they were human beings.
to this:
There is no mention in this book of the prodigious architectural triumphs, the autobahns, the economic miracles, or most of all, the sense of belonging, purpose and meaning that being a member of a Fascist brotherhood brings to the ordinary man-in-the-street.
with this in mind:
Dawkins repeatedly compares the best of non-Fascism to the worst of Fascism.
--
You know where else you can get a sense of brotherhood? A friggin family reunion.
--
All through history Jews have been killed. Killing Jews is one of the things that people have always done; deplorable, perhaps, but a fact of life.
This would come as a surprise to the Mayans. Or to the Assyrians or Babylonians, who may have killed Jews, but killed them as political enemies, not as Jews. When did this change? Look to ideology, and for that, we don’t look to human nature.
Shouldn’t people have at least moved on to Hitchens or Dennett at this point?
You’re right Adam. Nobody’s talking about Dawkins anymore. I’m surprised people even remember who he is.
That was actually going to be my follow-up question: Who is this Dawkins fellow?
Okay: I’m a dumbass.
Now that I’ve clicked through to the wikipedia, I get it.
Wow, I’m impresssed. That is an incredibly useful analogy. By the way, which brand of fascism is supposed to be analogous to Reform Judaism? Which brand is analogous to, say, the Episcopalian Church? Or Buddhism? Or Jainism?
hey everybody! it’s a P A R O D Y.
Yeah, what kind of Fascism is analogous to the church of the FSM?
I suppose that next we’re all supposed to denounce the celebration of Festivus by nerds.
Festivus! Wait—are you calling me a nerd?
Well, J.J., I think the most fitting analogy is the fascism of Augustos Pinochet. After all, he only killed around 11,000 of his political opponents and ceded power to constitutional government after the Communist revolution had been quelled. Beautiful moderation, I say.
It’s a good parody. I’m not sure that Dawkins would agree that fascism was just Nietzschean atheism taken to an extreme in a corporate effort to create supermen—but the point is well taken. Atheism has its monsters, too.
At the same time, I think it would be a mistake to ignore the discontinuities between Nietzsche and Nazism, just as it would be to assume that Heidegger’s philosophy is somehow inherently fascist simply due to the moral failings of Heidegger himself.
Tyler DiPietro: “Well, J.J., I think the most fitting analogy is the fascism of Augustos Pinochet.”
You didn’t quite answer my question. Is it Reform Judaism that is analogous to Pinochet or one of the other religions that I mentioned?
You know, if you’re going to level charges of “only a superficial knowledge of Mein Kamf“ against Dawkins, you should probably at least know how to spell “Mein Kampf. ;)
And if I’m going to comment anyway to pick a nit, there’s an “affird” in there that could use some fixing.
Don’t fascist parents have every right to have their children brought up to believe fascism, just as Democrats teach their children the Democratic way, and Republicans teach their children to be republicans?
In fact there should be fascist schools, funded by the taxpayer, and in Britain at least, it should be made compulsory for the main TV channels to make programmes about fascism.
Fascists should also be given unelected seats in Britain’s parliament system, and fascists can then decide among themselves which of them should take up those seats.
Anything less than this is just totally unwarranted discrimination and persecution of fascists, and complaints about any of the above are the hallmark of angry militants.
the jews == pinochet?
fascist logic at it finest.
Such substitutions are not always appropriate. and care must be taken when using them. However, fascism is a belief system, comparable to theism, and as such non-fascism can be considered as analogous to atheism. My conclusion: the analogy is apt
bigbird: “the jews == pinochet? fascist logic at it finest.”
Indeed it is. I hope that isn’t what Tyler DiPietro meant.
Kadin: “Such substitutions are not always appropriate. and care must be taken when using them. However, fascism is a belief system, comparable to theism”
Actually, theism is a family of widely varying belief systems that as a whole don’t agree on much of anything besides the existence of one or more deities. The various forms of fascism have a heck of a lot more in common than that, and they are all more uniformly toxic. One *might* make a case that Catholicism had vaguely resembled fascism in the past, or that dominionism resembles fascism now. Making the case that, say, Wicca was akin to fascism in some material fashion would be stretching it.
And I have noticed that no one has still answered the question about what brands of fascism resemble Reform Judaism, etc.?
And fascists should have tax exempt status and a larger input into moral values discussions than all others of course. After all, non fascists have no morals.
“the jews == pinochet? fascist logic at it finest."
No that’s not what I was saying.
My point was only that fascism (in the very general sense used here) has its own set of nuances and continuity that is similar to that of religion, its not all on the level of Hitler/Mussolini. There are varieties of it that are more “moderate” than others, as people often point out about religion. We do not use those examples of comparatively mild and ephemeral authoritarian governments as an excuse to avoid attacking the root problem in general.
And yes, this isn’t a perfect analogy. I doubt there is any such beast.
As for which religion J.J. mentioned that best fits the analogy, I would say Buddhism. If you’re looking for religion free of pernicious doctrine and bad influence, Buddhism isn’t exactly clean. It was used for centuries to justify aristocracy and serfdom in Tibet, for instance.
"Only Dawkins, or perhaps his psychiatrist, can say why this subject seems to make him so angry; but he should be advised that the intemperate hostility he exhibits towards his subject is counterproductive. I’ll eat my shiny peaked cap if this book persuades even the most hesitant half-Fascist to renounce his beliefs.”
Well, yes. Even William Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” was more temperate than The God Delusion; while he indulged in some personal attacks on Hitler and moralizing about the evils of Nazism, they made up a far smaller proportion of his books than they do in Dawkins’ book. And, well, yes, just like Dawkins’ book has proven to be less than effective at convincing religious people to convert (by his own admission, ironically enough--he’s said of his reviewers, “it depends whether you get a religious person or not ;_;"), a book like this on fascism probably wouldn’t convince any hardcore skinheads or members of ~*da people’s party*~ of the virtues of democracy.
“… [Dawkins’s] sense of ‘Fascism’ is lamentably error-strewn. Dawkins has only a superficial knowledge of Mein Kamf, or the poetry of Marinetti; and he seems entirely ignorant of the much more subtle and intellectually stimulating work of Fascist philosophers such as Hermann Graf Keyserling, Alfred Baeumler, Martin Heidegger, Giovanni Gentile, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, Alain de Benoist and many others. Only somebody who has mastered the complete works of all these thinkers could even conceivably be in a position to advance an anti-Fascist argument. The lack of that necessary body of knowledge fatally undermines Dawkins’s right to attack Fascism in the first place.”
Well, yes. Any decent scholar of fascism displays considerably more than a passing knowledge of his subject--my graduate teacher in European history last year knew Mein Kampf pretty well, and Shirer spent a good part of the opening of his book on the roots of Nazism ranging from Martin Luther to Friedrich Nieztsche. And indeed, I’d expect anyone writing about Fascism today to be familiar with Heidegger, Benoist, etc. especially if talking about modern European neo-Nazism. So yeah, an anti-Fascist’s ignorance regarding fascism would be just as unforgivable as Dawkins’ ignorance regarding religion.
“Dawkins repeatedly compares the best of non-Fascism to the worst of Fascism. He (again repeatedly) accuses Fascism of being an ‘extremism’. There have been some Fascists who were extremists, of course; but this doesn’t mean that Fascism itself is extremist. I certainly did not recognise myself, or any of my local Party organisation, in Dawkins’s bitter, hate-filled portrayal. Worse, he does not seem to realise that his own position, so-called non-Fascism, is actually a kind of Fascism: a structure of belief determined by Fascism, dependent for many of its core ideas on Fascist traditions.”
Straw man--virtually everyone has met good, decent religious people; I’ve never met a skinhead who fit that description. Also, unfortunately for Adam Roberts, there ARE examples of self-proclaimed anti-fascists acting in very fascistic fashions--take the French Revolution, where mobs killed people in the name of ~*Liberty, Equality, and Fratenerity*~! So yeah, if Dawkins was writing a book on fascism, it’d probably be fair to say that he himself draws a bit too much from the very ideologies he purportedly confronts.
“… Take for example this biased observation: “Fascism seeks to impose total state control over all aspects of life, from the political and cultural right down to questions of individual ethical and sexual choice. It valorises strength, and exalts the nation state as superior to the individuals composing it.” Not even the junior Nazi Party secretary who first introduced me to Fascism believed that! ... “
Maybe he didn’t, considering the fact that there are plenty of Fascists who only subscribe to most, or even only some, of those doctrines--not every Nazi was (or is) a homophobe, for instance.
“Almost all of Dawkins’s claims are easily dismissed. His main one is that ‘the fascist mindset’ (whatever that is) ‘enables people to commit appalling acts of barbarism and violence’, that it ‘encourages a tendency to separate humanity into sheep from goats, thereafter not only permitting but actively encouraging the persecution of the goats’. Then he trots out the tired old example of the holocaust. I’ve news for Professor Dawkins: yes, Fascists killed six million Jews in the 1940s. But they didn’t do this because they were Fascists; but because they were human beings. All through history Jews have been killed. Killing Jews is one of the things that people have always done; deplorable, perhaps, but a fact of life. Since killing Jews predates Hitlerian Fascism, and since it has carried on after the decline in influence of Hitlerian Fascism, I think it’s pretty obvious that this particular mass-murder of Jews had very little to do with Hitlerian Fascism, and everything to do with people’s inherent capacity for evil—something, incidentally, for which Fascism has not only an explanatory theory, but a remedy; which is more than can be said for Professor Dawkins.”
Well, um, yeah. There are a few fascist regimes that were, in varying degrees, indifferent to Judaism and jews in general--I mean, with the USSR it’s obvious, they weren’t particularly anti-semitic beyond their hatred of all religion in general; in fact, I’ve read somewhere that Stalin actually didn’t make an effort to destroy synagogues and the like, though I’ll have to look. In any case, so then yeah, you can’t say that the particular anti-semitism expressed by Nazism is (in and of itself) condemnatory of fascism in general. Of course, then the author subtly but dishonestly jumps track by switching to “Hitlerian Fascism” rather than just “fascism,” obscuring the fact that while you can blame Nazism for its anti-semitism you can’t really use that brush to tar fascism in general, which is exactly why you can blame various bizarre religious ideologies (Wahabism, whatever weird offshoot of Christianity the God Hates Fags people belong to) to some extent for whatever atrocities they’ve caused, you can’t really follow that up and blame religion in general.
“... Though he accuses Fascism of being an extremism; he flatly refuses to acknowledge the extremist bias of his own non-Fascist position. He is also blind to the obvious truth that his beloved non-Fascists have killed just as many people as have Fascists—more, indeed. Why doesn’t Dawkins focus his polemic on them? The reason is that a peculiar hysterical hostility to the very idea of Fascism blinds him. (He claims for instance that ‘non-Fascists don’t do evil in the name of non-Fascism’, which would be news to all the senior Fascists hanged by the Nuremberg anti-Fascist trials). All ideals – political, transcendent, human, or invented – are capable of being abused. And knowing this, we need to work out what to do about it, rather than lashing out uncritically at Fascism. But Dawkins cannot understand this.”
Well, yes--non-Fascists can be just as critical of non-fascist governments as they are of fascist ones. Pretty much any American history book talking about WWII will also mention how Japanese citizens were discriminated against or how African-Americans were treated like shit no matter how well they served their country. William Shirer wrote not only about the horrors of Nazism, but also a couple of memoirs on Gandhi and his struggle against the domination of the (democratic) British. If we require history books to mention how those fighting for democracy failed to live up to their ideals on many occasions, why should Dawkins be exempt from mentioning how atheists surprisingly similar to himself (don’t believe me? Look up “The League of Militant Atheists” on Wikipedia) failed to live up to his ideals on many occasions.
“I am not, of course, suggesting that Fascism has been perfect; no reasonable Fascist would. Whilst it’s true that the Leader is the inerrant embodiment of the will of the People—ordinary Fascists themselves are prone to all the fallibilities of the human condition. Fascism has never claimed otherwise. But whilst Dawkins is happy to highlight the occasional bad consequences of Fascism, he wilfully ignores the good that Fascism manifestly has done in the world. There is no mention in this book of the prodigious architectural triumphs, the autobahns, the economic miracles, or most of all, the sense of belonging, purpose and meaning that being a member of a Fascist brotherhood brings to the ordinary man-in-the-street. All the evidence shows that Fascists are more likely than are non-Fascists to dedicate themselves selflessly to an ideal higher and to forego their own individual gratification; indeed for many people this is the point of Fascism. “
Well, yes--any honest book on any fascist regime will have to mention its successes as well as its failures, if for no other reason than to explain how it became as popular as it did/why it lasted as long as it did. You can’t understand WWII without acknowledging that (and wondering how) Hitler turned poor-ass, inflation-wrecked Germany into a military-industrial powerhouse. Hell, Michael Burleigh’s books on ‘secular/political religions,’ Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes, as well as many other books about fascist regimes, have detailed exactly how people have found belonging and purpose in “The Party.” So if we expect writers on Fascism to do this kind of stuff, why shouldn’t we expect the same of Dawkins when he writes on religion?
“Far from being a serious philosophical book, this ill-edited and garrulous diatribe contains just about anything that crosses the author’s mind: page after sarcastic page of attacks against any aspect of Fascism Dawkins considers an easy target. Dawkins avoids the real question of whether one’s political understanding terminates with a structureless, anarchic and social aggregation void of meaning, or with an authority who provides order, stability and reason for living. The bottom line is that Dawkins cannot affird to entertain the possibility that Fascism fills a deep-seated need in people. But the evidence that this is the case is so strong. Fascism could hardly have been as popular as it has been, for as long, otherwise.”
Yes, exactly. Hell, people attacked Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for being too condemnatory and moralizing, and just compare it to The God Delusion and you’ll see how level-headed and rational it is in tone compared to Dawkins’ book. Other authors have described how fascist regimes have provided purpose and all that other good stuff (again, Michael Burleigh, see also J.T Peukert, who actually looks at how Nazism *failed* to provide this for many people) and have attempted to explain why fascist regimes became so popular. If Dawkins wrote a book on fascism and offered no thesis regarding its success more convincing than “fascists are stupid, lol!” he would be justly excoriated by pretty much any honest scholar of fascism. By the same token, I can’t see why we should go easy on Dawkins when he writes a book on religion and simply pins the fact of its success and longevity as “theists being stupid, lol!”
tl; dr: The author of this article has succeeded magnificently in proving that if Dawkins wrote a book on fascism, it would be just as poor as his book on religion. GG, Adam Roberts. GG indeed.
"Whilst it’s true that the Leader is the inerrant embodiment of the will of the People—ordinary Fascists themselves are prone to all the fallibilities of the human condition.”
That is the funniest sentence I’ve read in quite a while, and this article is a great riposte to all of the theists who believe to have countered Dawkins. Thank you!
“We do not use those examples of comparatively mild and ephemeral authoritarian governments as an excuse to avoid attacking the root problem in general.”
Exactly. As Dawkins nicely describes it in the (real) book, belief unsupported by fact, and the willingness to exclude certain areas of human knowledge from rational examination, are two results of religion, and both are terrible. That some religions are not as bad as others is beside the point; they all share these two bad characteristics.
he forgot, “admittedly fascists do relegate women to kinder and kitchen but look how bad society has got since those uppitty women demanded equal rights”
Wow, my previous comment actually went though? I’m actually kind of surprised, I hadn’t expected it to. In that case, I’m sorry for the swear words (said ‘shit’ and ‘hell’ a couple of times) along with the somewhat unprofessional use of the little ~*sparklies*~. I didn’t actually think it would go through; I initially got it from a friend of mine on Livejournal then copied and pasted here because I was feeling bored and wanted to amuse myself for a few minutes. I didn’t actually think it’d pass through; either because the moderator wouldn’t like it or it was too large to go through properly. Guess I was wrong. Thus, sorry if the author/anyone else is offended by the swearing, and also, Mr. or Ms. Moderator, feel free to delete it if you really want, like I said I didn’t actually think it would start anything. Feel free to leave it up or just edit the swearing out too though, aside from that I don’t think it’s *that* offensive. Sorry again for the trouble ;_;
“So yeah, an anti-Fascist’s ignorance regarding fascism would be just as unforgivable as Dawkins’ ignorance regarding religion."
The problem is that the theists consistently fail to point out why any of this counting angels on a pinhead impacts arguments over whether god(s) exist. Similarly, one doesn’t have to tread to depths of analytic philosophers who influenced fascism to discuss whether, say, subordination of legislative bodies to executive power is justified. It’s just a particularly annoying bit of handwaving and obscuritanism.
“I’ve never met a skinhead who fit that description."
So do you think that all the people who lived in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, Spain, etc. were uniformly bad people? That would be an interesting claim.
“In any case, so then yeah, you can’t say that the particular anti-semitism expressed by Nazism is (in and of itself) condemnatory of fascism in general."
But it is also dishonest to isolate antisemitism when the general point (rather than simply the example cited) is the bad effect of tribalism, jingoism, political absolutism and other evils on the political culture of a nation and its people.
“...why should Dawkins be exempt from mentioning how atheists surprisingly similar to himself (don’t believe me? Look up “The League of Militant Atheists” on Wikipedia) failed to live up to his ideals on many occasions."
He isn’t, but since he doesn’t do this (despite the constant insistence of his detractors, theistic or otherwise) I am at a loss as to understand the relevance of this point.
“So if we expect writers on Fascism to do this kind of stuff, why shouldn’t we expect the same of Dawkins when he writes on religion?"
We do, and Dawkins does spend time in his book disputing the relevance of the comparatively “good” aspects of religion. The point of the paragraph you quoted above this wasn’t against examining the successes of fascism, but using the successes of fascism as a counterpoint to people who assail its intrinsic authoritarianism. This is exactly what Dawkins critics do when resorting to claims about “charity”, “consolation” and the (somewhat tenuous and exaggerated) connection of religion to several highly regarded social movements.
“If Dawkins wrote a book on fascism and offered no thesis regarding its success more convincing than “fascists are stupid, lol!” he would be justly excoriated by pretty much any honest scholar of fascism. By the same token, I can’t see why we should go easy on Dawkins when he writes a book on religion and simply pins the fact of its success and longevity as “theists being stupid, lol!”"
Well of course the primary problem with this is that Dawkins says no such thing. He spends an entire chapter (number 5) exploring the question of why religion enjoys such longevity, and so far as I can tell “theists being stupid” is hardly his thesis.
It seems that, like most of Dawkins’ critics, you are more interested in demonstrating your own erudition by attacking an imaginary version of what he says.
The funniest thing is that much of this parody is actually correct. The term “fascism” has been so overused, that as George Orwell noted, it has come to mean “politics I don’t like”. Most people don’t know much about fascism. Observing its historical results, I can say I would dislike it (considering my near anarchist views I don’t think I’d even need evidence to sway that way) but I’d have a hard time debating a fascist on the inherent merits of his philosophy. Part of the problem is the identifying of fascism with Nazi germany, which was rather aberrant (vanilla fascism seems to be more something found in Catholic countries) and didn’t have much of a coherent philosophy (it is said that at one meeting some proclaimed “We don’t want higher bread prices, we don’t want lower prices, we want Nazi prices!"). Mussolini was an actual theoretician of fascism (even if he never succeeded in creating quite the totalitarian system he envisioned and hence his tenuous grip on power), and we don’t think about him as much in part because he didn’t do as many objectionable things. There is one area where I can definitely say I’d side with the fascists on: they were the only significant group to oppose the annexation of Austria because they were the ones in power who stood to lose it.
All of J.J. Ramsey’s questions are answered in this John Emerson comment to a previous Adam Roberts post about fascism. It turns out that Tibetan Buddhism is the Buddhism of fascism, so to speak.
But in general the comments on this one seem to illustrate some of the varients of Godwin’s Law. Start with a Hitler analogy; get a comment thread full of weird stuff.
Oh brother…
Guys, his point in rewriting the article to trash Dawkins for being anti-fascist isn’t to compare religion(which is the original anti Dawkins was being trashed for), but to show through reducing the author’s arguments to the absurd how said author failed to in anyway engage Dawkins argument. The original author who is being parodied constantly attacked Dawkins for writing a “diatribe”, but Dawkins built his book around reasonable questions about the nature of religion and his own moral outrage at its excesses. The reviewer totally avoided this fact to emotionally attack Dawkins character. That is a diatribe. How can you not see what the parodist is doing? Its excruciatingly obvious, which is the whole point of it.
Randy O: thanks for spotting the typos.
We scientists should all be delighted to see Dawkins finally abandon evolution to which he has contributed absolutely nothing and turn his attention to politics in order to do the same. .
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable,a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
TGGP says: “There is one area where I can definitely say I’d side with the fascists on: they were the only significant group to oppose the annexation of Austria because they were the ones in power who stood to lose it.”
The main reason the Austrian Cathicolo-Fascists were the only signiifcant group at that time is that they had spent their time in power attacking and persecuting the Social Democrats, workers, liberals, communists, Jews and any other anti-fascists. They paved the way for the Nazis by this.
The article itself was one of the funniest things I have read in a long while. Of course it’s not spot on; it’s an anaolgy.
As for the different ‘disparate’ types of Fascism, see the work on fascism of Mark Neocleous and Roger Griffin to show the underlying sameness of fascism.
In another anology between fascism and religion, note the high degree of mutual antagonism between the varieties or religion and the varieties of fascism.
It’s bleedin daylight robbery - that Terry Eagleton ought to be informed.
Nice One although I still cherish Eagleton’s opening lines..
“If someone armed only with the book of British birds had written a book on Genetics he could hardly have done a worse job than Dakins has in the “God Delusion”....
Julian: “Guys, his point in rewriting the article to trash Dawkins for being anti-fascist isn’t to compare religion [to fascism]”
This is disingenuous. Fascism is being substituted for religion, and considering how many diatribes there have been over the years about religion has been violent or oppressive, both traits that fascism pretty consistently has, it strains either charity or credulity to suggest that a tighter analogy between fascism and religion isn’t being attempted.
Guys, his point in rewriting the article
Point? I thought there was no point. It’s a parody.
JJ Ramsey, you quote Julian’s thesis, ignore his argument, and conclude from the fact that (1) arguments have been made that religion is violent and oppressive, and (2) fascism “pretty consistently” has these traits, that (3) a “tighter analogy between fascism and religion is[] being attempted.”
The whole point of this reductio type of argument is that we all feel quite justified in criticizing ideologies we find noxious without engaging in all the fancy footwork Dawkins’ critics require of him when it comes to his criticism of religion. It would therefore rather clearly defeat the purpose of the reductio to substitute for religion an ideology everyone finds commendable.
On the other had, if the shoe does appear to fit unexpectedly well, it’s hard to see how that would make the argument any weaker.
I don’t understand the point of this post. It might be to say that religion is just like fascism, but I don’t think Adam R. thinks that. Failing that, however, it’s really hard to come up with a purpose behind doing this. If he’s trying to defend Dawkins or shame his critics, then it’s a really dumb and needlessly inflammatory way to do it.
Adam can speak for himself, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he wrote it because 1) it’s damn funny, 2) it demonstrates the dishonesty of those among Dawkins’ critics who demand of him what they would never expect of themselves, and 3) it’s damn funny.
Richard Dawkins is to Darwinism what Paul Kammerer was to Lamarckism, a perfect charlatan. Both have been exposed but only Kammerer killed himself.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
Normally I comment to disagree with Scott, but this time I agree. Even the inflammatory quality makes for a funnier comment thread.
"Q” the Enchanter: “JJ Ramsey, you quote Julian’s thesis, ignore his argument ...”
The problem is that Julian’s argument is irrelevant. You can’t pretend that the history of past known commentary on religion--both good quality and bad--doesn’t effect how current commentary will be read. At best, Julian offers a case for semi-plausible deniability.
“Q” the Enchanter: “The whole point of this reductio type of argument is that we all feel quite justified in criticizing ideologies we find noxious without engaging in all the fancy footwork Dawkins’ critics require of him when it comes to his criticism of religion.”
The problem is that many of the objections that the parody reviewer writes fall into two categories:
1) Stuff that is a silly objection for fascism but isn’t so silly for religion (e.g the difficulty in making true generalizations about religion versus the difficulty in making true generalizations about fascism)
2) Stuff that would be legit objections regardless of the topic (e.g. writing a whole book on a topic about which one has superficial knowledge)
Both those things weaken the attempt at a reductio ad absurdum.
Excellent piece!
JJ, I think both your points are mistaken. Point (1) begs the question. An objection can be adjudged “sensible” as applied to religion but “silly” as applied to fascism only on proprietary, definitional grounds. In fact the very example you give—that it is “difficult” to make “generalizations” about religion but not about fascism—is not at all consonant with the practice of most believers, or even secular apologists for religion, who are quite happy to “generalize” about “real” or “true” religion as commendable.
As to your point (2), suppose you were in Nazi Germany and took it as your task to write a polemic aimed at persuading tentative members of the party, and perhaps others sitting on the fence, that national socialism is misbegotten. Now, it’s immediately obvious to you that the suadable population at large doesn’t lend their credulity to National Socialism on the basis of arguments due to Hermann Keyserling, Martin Heidegger, Filippo Marinetti, Alain de Benoist or the like. Rather, they lend their credulity to it on the basis of certain simplistic, but widely held beliefs about patriotism, religion, culture, Judaism, and so forth. The question then arises: In your research and development for your tract, should you focus on the works of Keyserling, et al., or should you focus on developing commonsense arguments aimed at refuting the most widely held nostrums?
Obviously, your choice here has nothing to do with whether you have only “superficial knowledge” about the topic, and everything to do with whether you want to be effective in addressing this issue before a particular audience. (It’s quite possible that Dawkins has failed in this respect, but I’m setting that issue aside.)
John A. Davidson writes:
Richard Dawkins is to Darwinism what Paul Kammerer was to Lamarckism, a perfect charlatan.
Finally, an opportunity to avail myself of some of the useless expertise I’ve acquired these past few years.
Mr. Davidson, Kammerer did experiments designed to prove the validity of Lamarckian thought at a time when no known mechanism of inheritance existed. Dawkins, however, explicates scientific consensus at a time when the mechanism is known. These are fairly important distinctions—ones which someone familiar enough with the history of evolutionary theory to know Kammerer’s name should be able to draw.
I would just like to say that this post is hilarious.
I was wondering where all the, er, non-Valve-like commenters were coming from, so I Googled this thing. It’s been linked all over, including Pharyngula and richarddawkins.net, so pretty much everyone who likes to argue with atheists should be turning up.
"Q” the Enchanter: “JJ, I think both your points are mistaken. Point (1) begs the question. An objection can be adjudged ‘sensible’ as applied to religion but ‘silly’ as applied to fascism only on proprietary, definitional grounds.”
Nonsense. The various religions are all over the map as to acceptance of violence, which makes claims about religion’s propensity for violence suspect. They don’t agree on what happens after death, and the afterlife isn’t even necessarily pleasant, which makes the common claim about religion being a response to the fear of death suspect. Even the idea that religion is about making belief without evidence a virtue, as opposed to just absorbing religious tenets from the culture or even accepting religion on what appear to the acceptor as reasonable grounds, is problematic. Find me a cliched generalization about religion, especially if it is from a polemicist, and you will probably find an overgeneralization.
This isn’t to say that no generalizations can be made at all, or else religion wouldn’t be a category at all, but it is difficult to generalize beyond the most broad and uninteresting statements.
“In fact the very example you give—that it is ‘difficult’ to make ‘generalizations’ about religion but not about fascism—is not at all consonant with the practice of most believers,”
Most believers are mainly familiar with their own beliefs, and even most nonbelievers are mostly familiar with the dominant religion(s) of their culture. I am reminded of a quote from Taner Edis on Secular Outpost:
“Dennett received some very critical questions, some of which pointed out that a number of features of ‘religion’ he identified specifically had to do with contemporary conservative Christianity in the United States, and did not generalize to other traditions and other times.”
http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2007/01/do-more-aggressive-skeptics.html
I am sure that most believers have an easy time *making* generalizations. Making valid ones is another story.
“or even secular apologists for religion, who are quite happy to ‘generalize’ about ‘real’ or ‘true’ religion as commendable.”
And then there are those like Taner Edis who point out that as nonbelievers, we do not have to accept the idea that there is a “true” Islam or a “true” Christianity, etc., and accept that we are dealing with often messy and chimeric complexes of ideas.
“As to your point (2), suppose you were in Nazi Germany and took it as your task to write a polemic aimed at persuading tentative members of the party, and perhaps others sitting on the fence, that national socialism is misbegotten. Now, it’s immediately obvious to you that the suadable population at large doesn’t lend their credulity to National Socialism on the basis of arguments due to Hermann Keyserling, Martin Heidegger, Filippo Marinetti, Alain de Benoist or the like. Rather, they lend their credulity to it on the basis of certain simplistic, but widely held beliefs about patriotism, religion, culture, Judaism, and so forth. The question then arises: In your research and development for your tract, should you focus on the works of Keyserling, et al., or should you focus on developing commonsense arguments aimed at refuting the most widely held nostrums?”
Quite simply, I should guard my flanks as best I can and expect that my subject matter will throw me curves. Given that, I should do at least some research on Keyserling, et al. to at least make sure that my conception of Naziism matches reality and cannot legitimately be charged as being a distortion. Whether that research ends up in my tract is another story, but I shouldn’t rely too much on common sense because it has this nasty habit of often being only kinda sorta correct.
Bear in mind that with Dawkins, we aren’t talking about a tract, but a *book*, which can go into more depth. If I were writing a book with the same purpose as the tract, then I would definitely go into depth and deal at least a little with the Heideggers and such, if only to have credibility with my audience and let them know that I took Naziism seriously enough to be serious in my response.
Bear in mind, too, that you addressed your question at someone who has read various apologetics and anti-apologetics and found much of the anti-apologetics wanting. Something like Robin Lane Fox’s _Unauthorized Version_, even with its imperfections, is a rare jewel, a brutally honest book about the Bible that is more interested in being honest than brutal. Often it is easier to find accurate damning criticism of the Bible from moderate or liberal believers than from actual atheists. Given my experience, I am a bit more sensitive than most to crap and mediocrity coming from atheists.
That’s on me, Rich. I tossed PZ an email when I read this.
If I have my information correct, the paperback edition of The God Delusion will feature something very much like this written by Dawkins himself. Although, rather than delusions about fascism, delusions about the nature of the Emporer’s clothes will be the fulcrum of the criticism.
Yes, well. The satire is not so clear; it cuts both ways, but not with a style that makes me think Adam meant it that way. It’s an attack on Eagleton for demanding more than is reasonable from Dawkins. No, it’s an attack on Dawkins for reducing the incredibly variable social phenomena of religion into an easily attacked straw target that might just as well have been called “fascism” or “evil stuff.” I think Adam meant the first option, but the way that fascism is so much smaller, so much easier to define, and so obviously bad to nearly everyone, and therefore just not comparable enough to sustain the satire, makes me read it the second way.
Somehow the software at that comment. We’ll try again, then I’ll delete the mangled bit.
Adam K. writes: “I don’t understand the point of this post. It might be to say that religion is just like fascism, but I don’t think Adam R. thinks that. Failing that, however, it’s really hard to come up with a purpose behind doing this. If he’s trying to defend Dawkins or shame his critics, then it’s a really dumb and needlessly inflammatory way to do it.”
I think it would be useful to explain what the point is - besides being hilarious, which is the main point. (I expected the response to it to be more angrily uncomprehending - maybe the next wave of anti-Dawkinist will roll in and fulfill my prophecy.)
So here goes. (This is quick. I reserve the right to modify later, because the statement is a bit delicate.)
On the one hand, the post is a good proof-by-example that a characteristic form of response has to be unsound, as a counter-argument to Dawkins. (Because if it were sound, then Adam would have to have successfully defended Nazism. That is, anyone who wished to make an argument of this form against Dawkins would be bound to accept a parallel argument, defending Nazism.)
But to say the argument is unsound is not to say it is wrong or flawed, merely that it is (as it stands) insufficient - incomplete. It might be that this sorts of complaints against Dawkins can be converted into sound argument through the addition of further premises/argumentative apparatus. What would those be? Well, they would need to amount to a (warranted) claim as to what makes religion different from Nazism. (Because if you have that, then Adam can’t run his analogy.)
Now we get to the only element of Adam’s argument that is likely to be missed, potentially. People are likely to be simply taking it as a tacit premise that ‘religion is pretty ok, at the very least’ whereas ‘Nazism is definitely a bit of not alright’. The problem is that ‘religion is pretty ok’ is vague. In fact, the only thing really clear about it is that it is question-begging, so far as Dawkins is concerned. So: it is a non-trivial exercise to find something to say to Dawkins’ that 1) does not beg the question against his conclusions; 2) is not the sort of stuff that is going to play right into this parody Adam has concocted.
Adam’s parody is properly read as a challenge to thread this needle.
In short, the thing to appreciate about Adam’s argument is that it is, in effect, a demonstration of the need for raised standards in argument. It does not - emphatically does not - assume that religion and Nazism are ethically equivalent.
(That said, I myself tend to think Dawkins is too one-note.)
Now that I reread, my comment is not so clear. Other comments upstream do better. Patrick McArdle quotes (I take it) Dawkins himself (I don’t know): “We do not use those examples of comparatively mild and ephemeral authoritarian governments as an excuse to avoid attacking the root problem in general.”
This is rather key. The problem with my comment is that no one really thinks ‘religion is pretty ok, at the very least’ is adequate defense against Dawkins. What Adam’s parody shows is how many arguments that might seem more forceful reduce to something similarly question-begging - given the character of Dawkins’ complaint.
Richard Dawkins is a living demonstration that belief or lack of same in a Creator has a firm heritable basis. He is a victim of his genetic composition, unable to reason in response to the enormous and continually increasing body of experimental evidence that chance could not conceivably have played any role in either the origin or subsequent evolution of life.
As Einstein put it -
“Everything is determined...by forces over which we have no control.”
My determinism, which I share with Einstein, has taken the form of the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. It is firmly based on the shared and largely independently reached conclusions of six of the greatest biologists of the post-Darwinian era, not one of whom was either a Darwinian or a religious zealot. To these six I dedicated both my unpublished “An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis for Evolutionary Change” and my published paper “Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information, Rivista di Biologia, 93: 513-524, 2000. Here they are in no particular order of importance as they all were devastating to the Darwinian myth.
William Bateson, the father of modern genetics, Leo Berg, the greatest Russian biologist of his generaton, Pierre Grasse, Berg’s French counterpart, Otto Schindewolf, unquestionably the greatest paleontolgist since Cuvier, Robert Broom who insisted there had been a Plan, and Richard B. Goldschmidt who independently reached exactly the same conclusion reached by Schindewolf, that all of creative evolution was saltational, without the transitional, incremental transformations required by the Darwinian model.
The primary reason my own work has been ignored and worse, denigrated and ridiculed, is because, if it should be recognized and it will be, the contributions of these great scientists must be recognized as well. That the Darwinians dare not risk and will go to any lengths to prevent as internet forums so dramatically testify. I am studiously avoided by the Christian Fundamentalists as well because, like both Einstein and my six sources I too have seen no reason to interject a personal God into my science. No true scientist ever has. There is no place for religion in science and Darwinism is most certanly a religion. Charles Darwin remains its God. Its major patron saints, in no particular order, are Ernst Mayr, Stephen J. Gould, William Provine, and more recently, P.Z. Myers, Wesley Elsberry, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, not one of whom has ever published a valid word on the only matter which has ever been in dispute - the mechanism of a long past evolution, an evolution no longer in progress.
“If you tell the truth, you can be certain, sooner or later, to be found out.”
Oscar Wilde
“Meine Zeit wird schon kommen!”
Gregor Mendel
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
Scott E. Kaufman
The name is Davison, as in John Davison Rockefeller, not Davidson as in Glen Davidson who also displays his knee-jerk Darwinism here for all to savor and enjoy. You are also dead wrong about Kammerer who was active in the 1920’s twenty years after the discovery of Mendelian Genetics which had lied buried for 32 years.
Thanks for exposing yourself.
Who is next?
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
John Holbo: “Because if it were sound, then Adam would have to have successfully defended Nazism. That is, anyone who wished to make an argument of this form against Dawkins would be bound to accept a parallel argument, defending Nazism.”
Except that the argument is less a defense of Naziism than it is an attack on Dawkins’ purported arguments against Naziium, so even if the argument were successful, it would only show Dawkins’ treatment is wrong, not that Naziium is right.
Come on, this is weak. I expected better from The Valve.
The simple fact is that people are capable of accepting incredibly weak arguments for their own position, while going out of their way to criticise the positions of others. Dawkins has written a weak book, with weak arguments that no theist who is interested in arguing these things would accept.
Now one can ya boo and write articles like this to smirk smugly with ones secular liberal friends or one can actually except that Dawkins, for the sake of intellectual honesty, is not the best argument for atheism versus the arguments for theism and that his arguments for the persistance of religious belief and its social role are hardly the best arguments and ignore whole fields of study, as a number of secular anthropologists have pointed out.
Seemingly to many on this thread and the author of this post, it doesn’t matter that that Dawkins doesn’t get his basic facts right, historically or otherwise. For example, on the question of the origins of fundamentalism Dawkins is simply factually incorrect. Let me quote from a review by Nicholas Lash, stating a point I have made on the subject many times:
“Of course”, says Dawkins at one point, “irritated theologians will protest that we don’t take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as allegories”. Notice that “any more”. Dawkins takes it for granted that Christians have traditionally been fundamentalists, but that as the plausibility of fundamentalist readings of the text has been eroded by the march of reason, “irritated theologians” protest that they no longer take biblical texts literally. Paradoxically, he has the story almost completely upside down. Patristic and medieval theology worked with a rich, at times almost uncontrollable diversity of “senses of scripture”. Passages of Scripture gave up their sense only by being read in many different ways. Fundamentalism – in the sense of the privileging of the meaning which a passage, taken out of any context, appears a priori, on the surface, to possess – is, as the Old Testament scholar James Barr demonstrated thirty years ago, a byproduct of modern rationalism: of the privileging of timeless and direct description, of mathematics over metaphor, prose over poetry.
Simply put Dawkins is wrong, fundamentalism is a diversion from the classic way in which scripture has been read, not, as he thinks, allegorical meaning being a objectional intellectual swizz when theologians are undermined by the march of reason. Other blatent examples are his reading of the scriptures, where he just plain gets it wrong.
Yet anyone who points to this in the name of scholarship or otherwise, explaining why this is a weak book, is defending religion as one might defend fascism. I am fairly sure, if at The Valve someone had utterly misread the whole tradition of literary criticism and said that it was responsible for the decay of childrens minds (as some right-wing critics have said) then you would leap on it. It is as bad an understanding of religion and religious history as the intelligent design reading of evolution as having spaces for some designer to step in. Yet because it is the offical enemy, religion, then any person who says otherwise is defending “fascism” with fallacious arguments.
It is the equivalent in my work of reading Ann Coulter’s The Church of Liberalism as an argument as to why liberalism is philosophically flawed. Or equally, that the existence of God is proved because I like churches and find them tranquil places.
Had someone written a book blaming Nietzsche for fascism, then good scholars would be the first to leap on it, saying its arguments were flawed and its research piecemeal at best. However, when someone makes the same critique with regard to a book on religion, then they are defending the indefensible - defending fascism.
I figured it was best mostly to keep out of this comments thread; a joke explained, and all that. Besides I assumed it didn’t need an authorial steer; it’s hardly rocket science, after all, and neither is it particularly original. But John A Davison’s claim to have ‘exposed’ Scott got me scurrying to the computer in the hope of seeing some naked flesh. To be disappointed, alas; Scott, though headless, is as modestly and soberly dressed as ever.
It is interesting the way people react to this kind of thing. When Jonathan Swift first posted ‘A Modest Proposal’ over on his