The Debate: Final Reflections

Our debate in class was very interesting - seeing how each side defended its own point, and how the pro-fascism side (especially Nick) managed to convey the sense of insane fanaticism present so often in fascism. The central problem with the debate was the problem with all debate, which is that you can't prove philosophical postulates and each team entered with different ones. Their team continuously referenced anti-social elements being suppressed, and our team continuously said that what was more important was tolerance.
It's possible that this is a reflection of how everything worked in the actual world - there cannot be reasoned debate, and sometimes even discussion is strained, when two opposing sides have worldviews based on mutually contradictory postulates.

In Response...

In response to Jonathan's response to Nate's post, I would like to say that I think that people acting in their best interest and supporting the groups that people think will follow their best interests is obvious. I think the question in politics is more about which group you think will support your own best interests, and that people being hesitant to support the "whites" on the grounds of them being instruments of foreign powers is an example of people supporting those who will act in their own self-interest.

Hitler vs Stalin

Hitler is the general western world's first thought when we think about the ultimate incarnation of evil, the second being Satan. This is despite his much lower death toll compared to Stalin - though there are occasional people who argue that Hitler was worse than Stalin, even amongst them the death toll for Stalin is higher, and the vast majority consider Hitler more important - when I type "Hitler" into my google search, which gives me suggested searches based on others' searches, a variety of suggested searches about Hitler come up, but amongst the Stalin suggested searches are both "Stalin and Hitler" and "Stalin vs Hitler" - in terms of mass-murdering villainy, Stalin is clearly Hitler's still-evil-but-not-quite-as-bad assistant.
The reason for this is probably American propaganda during WW2, which led to lots of "Captain America fights the Nazis" and very little "Captain America fights the Russians". However, I wonder whether there is any other reason that Hitler is so much more the ultimate villain than Stalin.

Fascism

Fascism was, and is, an interesting ideology, to the point that either there is an American Fascist Party or some crazy guy made a website, though it isn't as if that hasn't happened before. The interesting thing about Fascism is that it's so simple, and it must have been how government originally emerged - some guy was just charismatic enough, and had a large enough group of soldiers, that he convinced everybody else to listen to him. The fact that this kind of leadership emerged instead of democracy, which is one of the most complex forms of government, indicates the degree to which Italy was devastated by World War One.
The other interesting aspect of fascism is the degree to which it derives itself from democracy - the closer a form of government gets to completely expressing the will of the people, the easier it is for a charismatic person to seize power by convincing the people he should have it. It's a vicious cycle.

Dear Nate:

While you may have mostly agreed with my post, I don't think that the reason why the soldiers committed less atrocities before was due to technological limitations. After all, soldiers have been able to attack civilian settlements at little cost for a very long time - the vikings raided stuff for a long time before world war 1 - as long ago as the 790s, and they didn't have any technological advantages apart from their extreme manliness over the populations which they were raiding.

While perhaps it isn't necessarily true that it was the mind-breaking, I think it was a combination of perhaps that and fervent nationalism, which translated easily to a hatred of other cultures.

Communist History

All I can think about when I'm learning about the history of the Soviet Union is Animal Farm, but I always loved Animal Farm and maybe that's part of the reason I find this so interesting. It was definitely heavily simplified from the actual event, as one would expect from a fairy tale adaptation, but I think the central themes were the same.
Stalin seized control, and from then on (and even for some time before that) it wasn't really communism, it was something resembling it, mostly because true communism, at least in Russia, was totally untenable. For one thing, it hadn't come about by a natural Marxist revolution, and in addition it had the New Economic Plan, which seems to me like a total refutation of communism that's so blatant as to be hilarious. The Communists, in order to strengthen their economy, turned partially capitalist temporarily. This was a refutation of all Lenin's ideas that Russia could turn communist anyway, no matter which way you look at Marx. If Marx was wrong, this proves that capitalism simply performs better than communism. Even if you look at Marx as right, this proves that Russia needed to become stronger and more industrial before it could become a true communist state, capable of staying communist and not backtracking to capitalism when weak. The final point that proves completely that Russia was not ready for communism was the appeals to nationalism - Stalin consistently appealed to nationalism rather than to the working class as a communist would be expected to.
The fact that Russia was not really very communist ties this back to Animal Farm - the pigs were, after all, not very different from the humans.

Total War

The weird thing about WW1 is that it turned into total war, and that it somehow caused everyone to commit more atrocities against civilians than most soldiers had in wars prior to this one. The reason for this is uncertain to me, but I think it's because of the increased sense of nationalism in this war as well as the level to which the soldiers are disgruntled. World War 1 is generally, at least the land war, portrayed as having been extremely empty for soldiers, extremely deadly, and extremely destructive of their minds, and this is especially interesting because of the reading I'm doing for Literature of WW1, so far All Quiet on the Western Front and Mrs. Dalloway. The war broke the minds of soldiers with constant barrages of artillery fire as well as with the horrors of trench warfare, and I think the cruelty to civilians was a result.

Weekly Summary

This week, I feel like we have finally moved into the modern era with Freud and Nietzsche. Nietzsche's ideas don't have the same raw, pulled out of whole cloth sense that the previous philosophers, such as Kant, had (using people as a means to an end and not acting out of non-universalisable maxims are equivalent? What?). Similarly, Freud's ideas seem to be not rejecting the church and established morality but merely ignoring them, as they are no longer such powerful forces in everyone's minds and thoughts.
Nietzsche was a lot like Machiavelli, in that he spoke of rejecting morality, but he spoke in much more vague and metaphysical terms, which is a luxury he had in the modern era. Machiavelli's work was highly practical, and simply assumed that one would abandon morality when he needed to, which presumably successful leaders were already doing, or they wouldn't be successful leaders. Nietzsche, on the other hand, formally said that this form of leadership was good, which would've been impossible to argue in early Renaissance philosophy.
I really like Freud's ideas. Humans are not in control of our own minds, and it really refreshed me to see someone in history finally admit that.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's comment on the noble side of things being the center of morality is something that makes intrinsic sense to me - that morality all originates from the weak and poor saying that the noble who rules them and takes their things is bad. Nietzsche's statements about negative will to power, to me, however, do imply that we should all act in the noble way, rejecting morality. Cas said that Nietzsche, if read improperly, can lead people to believe that they can do whatever they want, but, to me, that is what Nietzsche said, and I cannot find any evidence to the contrary.

Freud

My objection to Freud's Civilization and its Discontents is primarily that he says that the war committed by large groups against each other is an indication of human aggression and violence. I will not deny that those in power frequently want to expand their power, though whether power corrupts or corrupt people get power I'm not sure. However, while the Huns and the Mongols may be good examples of human aggression being set free and running wild, I don't know enough about these to comment. The crusaders, on the other hand, were operating out of a sense of piety, not aggression - though the popes who ordered the crusades may have been aggressive, those who went on them were likely more following the call of their leaders, and the World War even more so - having read All Quiet on the Western Front, the soldiers were not aggressive toward their enemies but rather always following the orders of their leaders and seeking glory for their countries when they joined the army.

Weekly Summary

It seems to me that the main focus of the previous week was Russia, and the actions of the Tsars that led up to the Russian Revolution. The main problem the tsars faced was that they were trying to keep their country conservative rather than give any ground to the rebels, and they were not skilled enough to balance the interests of the nobles, the peasantry, and the working classes. Essentially, their goal was originally to create bad conditions for the peasantry in the countryside to get many of them to move to the cities, but while some moved to the cities many were less proactive and merely whined about the poor conditions, until ultimately the whining ended up removing the tsars from power.