Anyway, so I have this Twitter account. I use it mostly to follow the Occupy Wall Street movement. (And I have a couple of RL friends on there.) I just post random things on there ’cause I have the damn thing and should use it for more than checking on where the protesters are or the current game status for the Red Wings. So I posted this little gem:

Maybe #ows should adopt “Me ne frego” as their motto with all the arrests and violence.

Yep. Not a big deal…until some one remembers that this was the motto of the fascist squadristi. Yeeeeeeaah. Well, I realized what I had done shortly after hitting the enter button, but decided to not worry about it ’cause I have very, very few followers. Then one of RL friends with loads of followers retweeted the damn thing!

This has been very humbling. I just called a bunch of rampant protesters fascists (okay, so that’s not what I really said, but still the comparison I made wasn’t flattering and pretty much no one wants to be compared to fascists) and no one gives a damn. Hm. Unless my reference was hopelessly obscure and no one wants to research my brain patterns. Either way, I’ve certainly been put in my place.

Though, I will say that I have been spending so much time with the fascists that everyone is starting to look vaguely fascist to me. Mussolini, you rat bastard, stop invading my head!

I feel so freakin’ clever.

Okay, okay. I figured out why my paper writing process is so very different from apparently everyone else’s.

Okay, okay, okay. I have to explain that. In class last Monday, most everyone talked about the throat-clearing that you do at the beginning of a paper until you figure out what you want to say. I don’t do this. At all.

It’s all so very simple. I grew up hating to write. It was the most loathsome of tasks to me in middle school. So I got in the habit of only writing exactly what I intend.

Bam. I have a process.

And, admittedly, it kinda sucks.

Oh, the title? I don’t give a damn in Italian. I love these fascist bastards.

Seriously. For a couple of reasons. But my favorite? They swoop in and steal shit like the anti-positivistic notions of the modernist movement and pre-fascist organizational methods and associations…like mutual aid societies!

Anyway, this should be heartily interesting. Especially since someone is bound to be offended with some inadvertently rude comment. Faugh.

Oh, the subject came up when Mike and I were having a conversation with Dr Dyke about personal processes. In fact, instead of talking about it in a more general sense, he asked about our own. Mike had a great answer right on hand. He starts with a subject he wants to know more about; checks with Wiki and uses their imbedded sources to explore to his heart’s content. You should understand that this means he gets a pretty good grasp on the subject with very possibly many viewpoints on the subject.

I, on the other hand, have crap. I think I blathered on about not having an organized system and making connections, which is what happens. Of course, when I say that you have no idea what that even means. So, I’ll tell you. I let information come and filter to me with no intent or purpose. I don’t go find books on topics I’m interested in; books happen into my life when people give them to me or I find a book on a shelf in a bookstore that calls my name.

This passivity on my part plays in to my fears that I’m a wide shallow sea. I know about lots of things, but I’m the master of nothing. No wonder I can’t decide what I want to be when I grow up. Faugh.

(In a side discussion on that same day, we were talking about the sociology of waiting tables…partially ’cause it’s interesting and partially ’cause it is what I do for a living at the moment. In that discussion, various kinds of prejudices came up and when I stated that I’m not really the sort to change the level of service based on something exterior, Dr Dyke said it’s ’cause I don’t ritualize social interaction enough for that. Ritualized social interaction=prejudiced behavior. That was a revelation. I’m still kinda reeling.)

I want to talk about classmates’ processes, but I find myself completely stymied…

First, I’m gonna talk papers. I need to alter my focus to include the stuff that this class is actually about: culture and social history. Ideas, politics and etc (the sorts of information that I’m actually comfortable with) that was the content of my first paper doesn’t really count. Faugh. So, I’m looking into how defeated manhood in post-WWI Italy played into the rise of Fascism and Mussolini. Fortunately, Mark Jones wrote a whole paper on the culture of defeat during that time…so, I just need to find other sources that discuss the same thing or close to it.

On to Kaos, I was super-fascinated by La Giara. Mostly ’cause I just love crockery. Seriously. Anyway, I was surprised to see that the jar wasn’t glazed on the inside, so I’ve been intending to look it up and, finally, today: I remembered to do it. Here, there is some discussion of Italian crockery. (You should go to the site just for the pretty pictures.) However, these lines are the ones I’m interested in:

The ancient olive jars at Mital-a collection amassed over a lifetime by his father.  Franco was clear-none of the ancient jars were for sale.  Though they were simply diplayed at the pottery, they were a treasured reminder of all the the history of his craft.  Glazed on the inside, olive jars both new and antique have a distinctive shape.  The large oval bodies tapering at the bottom permitted the jars to be stored upright in metal or clay rings, or in wood braces aboard ships.  The relatively narrow necks still permitted easy access to the oil; the handles were useful should the jar need to be moved.

I was right. I like being right. Couldn’t tell, could you?

Marriage. Even with Dr O’Neil’s assistance, I’m still not sure what we can definitively say about rural Italy in the late 19th century and the early 20th from what we know about marriage. That’s just ridiculous for me to accept this…I believe that marriage is a civil and social contract for inheritance and property rights, regulated and therefore, presumably, safe sex…wtf?! Why did I spend all that time reading about cousin marriages?! Especially since I was in the middle of writing a sentence…that I can’t remember the last part of. I may have to give up on this.

(Did you know that double cousins are as closely related as half-siblings? And they’re not nearly as rare as Wiki seems to think…)

Oh, right, I was looking for this. I was hoping to freak some of you out with GSA. You’ll be happy to note that the Westermarck effect should mean that most of us are safe.

I think I should get off the internet now…but I’ll leave you with this:

EDIT: I’ve been reading about the book and it sounds much more like it’s about Nazi Germany than Fascist Italy. Oh, and interestingly enough someone was surprised to find that the author talks much more than is normally done about the economic situation in Nazi Germany. Yeah, dude, Neumann was a Marxist…

Now, the big question is why do I ask?

Well, have you heard about the 99%? You should have. You belong to that statistic. You are apart of the 99% of humanity that must share just 1% of the world’s resources. Arguably, this is hardly fair, but who is doing something about it?

We’re in luck. (Again, arguably, but work with me here.) There is a tumblr protesting and sharing stories. There is a blog discussing the writer’s own complicity in the mess. There is a movement of protestors in NYC trying to garner attention for the little man. Mark Ruffalo tweetdecked an article by Lee Fang that compared to the movement to the Boston Tea Party.

Buuuuut, are we taking them seriously? CNN clearly isn’t. Lauren Ellis of Mother Jones Magazine doesn’t think that the movement is very effective. And Donald Trump thinks it looks more like speed dating!

Well, if capitalism is broken, who fixes it? And how?

Wait, are we even capitalist?

EDIT: I spend too much time on the internet, but, happily, it lead me to this interesting little image:

(Oh, and unrelated pic is sorta related. In a way that isn’t explained in my paper. At all.)

Tools of History

Fascism is a word thrown to vicious effect in American and world politics, particularly by people who have little to no understanding of the term. However, it should be noted that even academics are unable to firmly lock in a solid definition for fascist. A. James Gregor acknowledges that the term is widely and loosely used as a catch-all term for anything ‘extreme right.’[1] Fortunately, the evolution and development of the Italian version of the phenomenon can be described, at least partially, by examining the recorded actions and words of its leader and creator, Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini, curiously, finds his opening and early momentum in his association with an art movement. The Furturists, led by Filippo Marinetti, were a frenetic group of young men that exalted fierceness, manly vigor and a determination to never stop moving.[2] However, it should be noted at this juncture that the most striking and lasting influence that Futurism seems to have placed in the consciousness of the Fascist movement is the glorification of war. Marinetti’s “The Futurist Manifesto” states as its ninth article:

“We want to glorify war—the only cure for the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for women.”[3]

 This sense of radical and violent nationalism can be found deeply imbedded in Mussolini’s “The Doctrine of Fascism”, written in 1932, wherein he described “…the State, which is the conscience of and universal will of the man in his historical existence.”[4] The point is more sharply drawn later in the same document, where Mussolini wrote:

“War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.”[5]

However, Fermi notes that Mussolini was not always so ardently fond of war. He, as a young man, escaped his compulsory military service by spending much of 1903 and 1904 in Switzerland and being defended by the fiercely anti-militaristic National Socialist Party.[6] In the light of this information, Richard Jensen’s assertion that the Futurists first attracted the aspiring newspaperman and politician as a way to reach and sway to his cause the displaced, untrained soldier left over from the ‘Great War’[7] becomes disturbing.

Except Mussolini’s pre-World War I position as spokesman for the National Socialist Party via the paper Avanti! alters the notion that he was deliberately misleading, at least in this case. He was, in line with his Socialist Party principles of inter-nationality and anti-militarianism, deeply antagonistic to Italy’s involvement in the war. On 22 August 1914, Mussolini wrote in Avanti!:

“The Proletariat furnishes raw material, cannon fodder with which the states make their history…. War is the maximum exploitation of the proletarian class. After sweat, blood; after exploitation at work, death on the battlefield.”[8]

Anti-Austrian and pro-French sentiments, however, overwhelmed those principles in Mussolini and many of the proponents of Socialism, such as Frenchman and mutual admirer, Gustave Hervé. Most interestingly, in this period Mussolini made a glaring error. On 18 October, he published an article called “From Absolute to Active and Working Neutrality” describing the alteration in his stance, but he framed the wording as the idea of the Party. He surprised the other members of the Party, particularly his party mentor, Angelica Balabanoff, and, not surprisingly, they demanded his resignation from the paper.[9] Mussolini was not a humble man.

Mussolini’s expulsion from Avanti! was the impetus for the creation of his paper, Il Popolo d’Italia,[10] and that paper irrevocably demonstrated his absolute change of position on 23 May 1915 as Italy declared war upon Austria.

“O mother Italy, we offer thee, without fear and without regrets, our life and our death.”[11]

Mussolini did not voluntarily enlist for combat as did many of the young men who read his inflammatory articles published in that year.  In August of 1915, he was re-called into active service[12] after a nine-year lapse from his original year-long training in the peacetime Italian army.[13] Despite being wounded in the trenches of the War, Mussolini derived much of his influence on Italian politics afterwards with poor peasant soldiers and fierce young officers who come home to an Italian government that could not fulfill the promises made to them.[14]

Mark Jones attributes some of the post-War environmental acceptance of Mussolini’s virulent nationalism to a floundering sense of displacement among the Italian people in the wake of the loss of the battle of Caporetto,[15] while Fermi links it to the civil unrest relating to a weak Italian governments rotating in and out directly after the war and a growing fear of Socialism and Socialists. The American President Wilson and the League of Nations also share in some of the blame, according to Fermi and Mussolini, for frustrating Italian nationalist notions when allowing certain coveted territories self-determine their new rulers.[16] Most prosaically, William Brustein crunched numbers of voting patterns and socio-economic statuses between 1919 and 1921 and came to the conclusion that many of the formerly Socialist voters jumped ship according to their new statuses as land-owners.[17]

The date for the official beginning of Italian Fascism is March 23, 1919,[18] when Mussolini and 100 others, many of them young men who fought in the War[19] form the Fasci di Combattimento. The title of the movement and the group was appropriated from earlier revolutions; Sicilian peasants are recorded to have revolted as a fasci, or bundle, as early as 1893 and Marinetti even uses the term for his group.[20] Sadly, there isn’t a published manifesto originating from that Spring, but later Mussolini would remark on the occasion with:

“We allow ourselves the luxury of being aristocratic and democratic, reactionary and revolutionary, legalistic and illegalistic, according to the circumstances of place, time and environment in which we are compelled to live.”[21]

This line contrasts nicely with a small selection from his article, “Which Way is the World Going?” published on 25 February 1922:

“The soulless, drab egalitarianism of the democracy, which has taken the colour out of life and crushed all personality, is on its deathbed. New kinds of aristocracy are arising, now that we have proof that the masses cannot be protagonists, but only the tools of history.”[22]

After the 1922 March on Rome, Mussolini had managed to set himself in a position to use those tools. In his own way, he appears to have believed whole heartedly in his own cause and his own worthiness to lead that cause. Never does he seems to be have been conflicted by his own contradictory statements. Rather the reverse, if “Mussolini is always right,” the eighth maxim of the 1934 Fascist Decalogue and the tenth maxim of the 1938 version, is taken into consideration.[23]

The Fascist State arose in Italy not only due to the tireless efforts of Mussolini, but also in the vacuüm created by ineffectual government, lack of unified cultural identity and thwarted nationalistic pride. There is possibly no other century and place that could have produced and followed such a man. The words of that man, who, perhaps, would have better titled Il Stato than Il Duce, sum up his extraordinary view of himself and his Party with far more deftness than an outsider:

“In the Fascist State the individual is not suppressed, but rather multiplied, just as in a regimental soldier is not weakened but multiplied by the number of his comrades. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves sufficient scope to individuals; it has limited useful or harmful liberties and has preserved those that are essential. It cannot be the individual who decides in this matter, but only the State.”[24]

Did anyone else read this Freshly Pressed post? Got any thoughts as they apply to our class?

EDIT: Seriously, if you want to use any of my graphs (you know you want to ’cause they’re so dang pretty), just right click and hit the ‘Save image as…’ option and upload it to your own posts. I don’t believe in intellectual property. (Of course, it should be noted that I don’t make my living off of owning intellectual property and if that days ever comes, I’ll likely feel differently.)

Then, irritatingly, it was suggested that I was somehow part of the comparison equation. I hate this. I hate feeling like the bad guy, especially since it’s ludicrous.

Helpfully, someone suggested the rubric as the comparison. I haven’t read the rubric, but this seems to be a fairly good idea. (I pretty much never read rubrics, so it’s not just yours, Dr Dyke.) Of course, the problem with being obsessed with the rubric means that the tendency is to do the minimum.

Now, I did, in jest, remark to Mike, during class, that anything I write will be good. I don’t really think this is true as I have written some remarkable bits of prosy trash, but it does reflect something that I must acknowledge: I could not, on that day in class, definitively describe good writing.

I usually let my gut decide such things. I fear this means I have slid into some sort of meta-cognitive failure. Writing is practically instinctual to me. I don’t think about the process much at all. Words have sound and rhythm and music that just autoplay for me.

(Don’t hate me. I was trained early and well in the art of reading AND writing as my parents believe that children that are exposed to good writing and forced to practice it have greater opportunity.)

So I have sat down this week to come up with a way to describe good writing; it was awful.

First, I think writing should be conversational and clear. The waters shouldn’t be muddied by ‘elevated’ phrasing or vocabulary. The words should be chosen according to their precise denotations with an eye to their layers of connotation. Every paper should be readily and easily read aloud to an audience.

Secondly, I think that good writing displays a writerly eye for organization and thought development. Papers should have progression and order. What sort of structure this may be is really irrelevant, because no particular kind is suited to all applications.

Most importantly, I think good writing can and must educate and edify. I believe that truly clever people aren’t clever alone in the corner or with other clever people, but they have the ability to lift other less informed people towards their own level. I fear I’m not particularly clever in my own estimation.

Well, that’s really it, which is sad considering how long it took for me to come up with it. I mean, I could talk about the minutiae of grammar, vocabulary and etc., but why? Other than to say that good writing cannot exist without adhering to the basic forms of communication in English. (I know the rules also apply to other languages, but I’m only fluent in one.)

Communication is the basic gift that our ancestors gave us when they developed and wrangled out the written word. To ignore that is appalling and unworthy of us.