Thomas_More
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Religions too are coherent systems and compilations of doctrine.
Maoism too. It is small wonder that state ideologies like Maoism felt it had to either crush religion or drag it into service. There could be no God other than The Leader.
In Europe the Italian and Spanish Fascists were supported by the Catholic Church, so conflict was minimal. In Nazi Germany too, the Protestant churches did not oppose the Nazis, although both Catholic and Protestant individual rebels did. Hitler was not comfortable with Pétain’s ruralist Catholicism, however, but tolerated it. Himmler set up a neo-pagan Germanist religious structure for the SS, but it was limited to his inner circle of cranks. It too was an ideology with its own internal structure for followers to imbibe.
All ideologies are INTERNALLY coherent, in that they all possess their own logic.
For instance, objectively Orthodox Christianity is a compilation of nonsenses, but subjectively and internally it possesses its own logic.
An Orthodox Christian polemicist has a logical response to any theological critique, but all theology is irrational in the light of modern scientific knowledge. But whether one is born and raised in Orthodox Christianity or has consented to enter and be a follower of its ideology, one is introduced to and indoctrinated into a construct that has its own logic and trains its followers in it. The same with all religions and also state ideologies.
But the Socialist Party asks for no followers and has no leaders.
Indeed, it insists that would-be members arrive at common conclusions through individual reasoning and understanding.Ideology. However, a non-socialist author on the subject would say that we follow an ideology, and are no different from other followers of ideologies. Which is why all are welcome to witness our manifold and often harsh clashes of opinion with each other, which are not tolerated in leader and follower organisations.
Antifascists are fascists in that they oppose free speech and wish to silence those of another opinion.
No wonder they are on both sides of the front line in Ukraine.Anti-Fascists recently blocked a peace march in Germany. Anti-Fascists also hijack workers’ and trades union demonstrations, provoking the police.
The European heads of state who are warmongering against Russia are supported by Anti-Fascists and some of these have joined the Ukrainian army. (Paradoxically, because Putinists throw the name “Nazi” at the Ukrainians).
The rightwingers in Europe who are anti-war are called “fascists.”
WSWS is obsessed with Fascism, which does not exist any more. It’s an emotive word that the Leninist Left always toss around.
I am more worried by Trump being in the hands of Washington’s and Europe’s NeoCon warmongers who want WW3.
US move to resume nuclear testing.
European heads still doing their utmost to provoke a nuclear war, as well as sabotaging their own economic interests. Still no explanation to be found.
Nationalist upsurgents in Japan unwittingly revealing how fake, western and foreign their nationalism is, by condemning homosexuality.
Homosexuality was an integral part of samurai culture and was never persecuted, but valued, in Old Japan. This was another of the many cultural aspects shared by Old Japan with Ancient Greece.Nationalism is a fraud anyway – as Japan’s “national flag”, an American ensign pilfered from a US merchant vessel by Meiji nationalists in the 19th century.
Trump now on direct warpath against Russia.
As the Ukrainian state loses more and more, European governments might launch a war with Russia in order to bring in the US.
They keep asking, “Would you defend us if Russia attacks?”, which could be whispered, “If we can get Russia to attack us, would you defend us?”True. All I meant was that the existence of, say, the English nation-state under, say, Elizabeth Tudor, does not mean there was nationalism too. Unless one says there was, but in the form of protestantism.
The popular sentiment, instilled by state brainwashing, media and schooling, of “nation for nation’s sake” emerges in the late 18th century and doesn’t really take off until the late Victorian era.
Then it rises throughout European states more or less simultaneously.
The nation-state evolved before popular nationalism. Indeed, the Tudor and Stuart state was fraught with internal dissent and its subjects divided in earnest by religion, with English Catholics mortal enemies, or considered mortal enemies, of the state in spite of being English subjects.
That is what I meant.
But the nation-state’s origins is a different thing from nationalism, by which is meant the popular sentiment of that name.
Loyalty was to princes and the Church (whichever Church is one’s Church). The Gunpowder Plot conspirators were English, but gave their lives to kill the sanctified and legally consecrated King of England. Guy Fawkes was a Yorkshireman, and fought for Spain against England.
