8 March 2006: Two books on fascism

I have been reading two new books, both which are of interest to the study of fascism. The first is Esther Leslie's Synthetic Worlds (just published by Reaktion), a study in the encounter between chemistry and philosophy. Although Goethe, Marx and Walter Benjamin all have walk-on parts, the most interesting chapters of the book for me are the sixth and the seventh, 'Nazi Rainbows' and 'Abstraction and Extraction in the Third Reich'. Leslie shows that the giant combine IG Farben had interests which partially overlapped with those of the NSDAP, and partly contradicted them. As early as 1931, the Farben directors were calling for a German dictatorship. In power, however, the company had to be purged of Jewish managers, directors and scientists. Official histories of the company made much of its Nazi future, much of the role it could play in providing ersatz products for a country preparing for war. 

'For the Nazis', Esther Leslie writes, 'art imitated the external look of nature. Science and technology improved on nature, brining progress to humanity through the laboratory creation of better substances, colours, textiles. But the goal of science and technology was the ensuring of victory in war, which is, in effect, an assault on nature, on landscapes as on life. This was the Nazi materiality beneath the ideology of nature, blood and soil. As war advanced, so too did scientists' inventiveness. The sublimity of the skies was to be ripped up.' 

The other is the new edition of Paul Ginsborg's biography of Silvio Berlusconi (published by Verso, in time for this year's election). Ginsborg argues convincingly that Berlusconi should not be seen as latter-day Mussolini. There is that politics in his coalition, but it does not dominate. Instead, Berlusconi succeeds in establishing an alliance between crony capitalists, media lawyers, and Berlusconi loyalists (Forza Italia), admirers of Mussolini (Alleanza Nazionale) and racists of a non-fascist origin (Lega Nord). Really, Ginsborg's book is about the concentration of media ownership, and the possibility that opens up for figures of the type of Bernard Tapie and Michael Bloomberg, Roberto Marinho and Cem Uzan, Thaksin Shinawatra and Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Steve Forbes and Ross Perot. 'Italy's present experience', Ginsborg writes, 'has a significance that goes beyond the narrow and complicated realm of the country's politics'.

Ginsborg's book helps us to see the difference between an authoritarian centre-right and the politics of fascism. Consumerism, family life and self-interest create a politics more normal, more subtle than those of dictatorship. 'The whole point of the sort of regime which Berlusconi has tried to install is that it is based on formal political liberties, on continuing freedoms in everyday life, even on spaces left open for opposition in the media system, even on satire aimed at the Leader on his own television channels. Berlusconi takes such mild mockings in good spirit, flashes his famous smile at his detractors and marks in this way his distance from the grimacing Mussolini.'

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