Ba'athist Fascism...

[Ardsgaine]

I was given a link to a really fascinating article on the ideological underpinnings of the Ba'ath Party. The similaritiess with the writings by Mussolini that I posted in another thread are amazing. It's a little long, but well worth reading. Here are a few excerpts...

WHEN FACULTY MEMBERS at the Sorbonne gather to discuss who should get the prize for most evil alumnus, they probably rehash all the familiar names--Pol Pot, mastermind of the Cambodian genocide; Abimael Guzman, leader of Peru's Shining Path guerrilla movement; and Ali Shariat, the intellectual godfather of the Iranian revolution. But they really should give serious consideration to Michel Aflaq.

It was Aflaq, a Syrian intellectual and political organizer, who founded the Syrian and Iraqi Baath parties. It was Aflaq, too, who in 1963 elevated Saddam Hussein to the Regional Command in Iraq's Baath party, and so set him on his course to dictatorship. And it was Aflaq who laid down the ideology that continues to dominate Saddam's thinking today. Saddam Hussein, after all, isn't a general who took over a government by means of a military coup. He's not only a thug, a ruthless tribal leader, a Don Corleone-style Godfather, a power-mad dictator. He is first and foremost a political activist, a party man.

MICHEL AFLAQ was born in Damascus in 1910, a Greek Orthodox Christian. He won a scholarship to study philosophy at the Sorbonne sometime between 1928 and 1930 (biographies differ), and there he studied Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Mazzini, and a range of German nationalists and proto-Nazis. Aflaq became active in Arab student politics with his countryman Salah Bitar, a Sunni Muslim. Together, they were thrilled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, but they also came to admire the organizational structure Lenin had created within the Russian Communist party.

No leader, not even a highly ideological one like Saddam, is unfailingly guided by his belief system. Ideas are not everything. All leaders bide their time, looking for opportunities, looking out for themselves. But in the current argument over what do to about Iraq and Saddam, ideas have been treated as if they were nothing. The argument has been over weapons of mass destruction, unilateralism vs. multilateralism, and nuclear capabilities. Very little attention has been paid to what Saddam wants and what Saddam believes--which is like analyzing Hitler without reference to the ideology of the Nazi party or Lenin without reference to communism.

The CIA and the State Department might think otherwise, but we are not all game theorists. Human beings are not all rational actors carefully calculating their interests. Certain people--many people, in fact--are driven by goals, ideals, and beliefs. Saddam Hussein has taken such awful risks throughout his career not because he "miscalculated," as the game theorists assert, but because he was chasing his vision. He was following the dictates of the Baathist ideology, which calls for warfare, bloodshed, revolution, and conflict, on and on, against one and all, until the end of time.

 

[PT]

Settling in for a long read. I'll be back in a few.

 

[PT]

In this struggle we retain our love for all. When we are cruel to others, we know that our cruelty is in order to bring them back to their true selves, of which they are ignorant.

Ok, so when we torture and maim our citizens, it's for their own good, so they can see the true person inside. Wow.

I gotta say, he almost had me up til that point. Something I find interesting is that most leaders, even horrible leaders do what they do with the best intentions, and with the belief that what they are doing is the right thing to do. I do not however understand the leaders like Saddam, Hitler, Stalin, etc, that do horrible things to their citizens and somehow believe that it is the right thing to do.

 

[Ardsgaine]

Something I find interesting is that most leaders, even horrible leaders do what they do with the best intentions, and with the belief that what they are doing is the right thing to do. I do not however understand the leaders like Saddam, Hitler, Stalin, etc, that do horrible things to their citizens and somehow believe that it is the right thing to do.

It is Aflaq whom Saddam cites when he insists, as he does frequently, that the Baath party is not like other parties. Instead, he says, it is a believer's creed, similar in faith and purpose to early Islam, which offers "spiritual ascendance in the process of the nation's uplift" through "great deeds in conquest, liberation, justice, altruism, and flexibility."

The greatest crimes against humanity have been perpetrated in the name of altruism. Look at all the ideologies of the past hundred years that slaughtered millions of people, and the common thread is that they all preached self-sacrifice as the moral ideal. They weren't just using it as a cover for their crime, either. It was the motivation for the crime. They thought that people should sacrifice for the group, and so they saw to it that people were sacrificed for the group.

 

[Squiggy]

And usually to feed their own capitalist greed...

 

[Ardsgaine]

And usually to feed their own capitalist greed...

Do you have an argument to go with that? I'm not going to spend a half-hour typing a detailed response to a one-liner.

 

[ol' man]

Squiggy is on a side of which I have no idea. Is he socialist/communist or what? And if so why bother arguing with the guy?

 

[Squiggy]

And usually to feed their own capitalist greed...

Do you have an argument to go with that? I'm not going to spend a half-hour typing a detailed response to a one-liner.

I didn't really think it begged an argument. Everytime one of these tyrants, whether by themselves or as a group, comes to power under the guise of some politcal genre, they end up being toppled to reveal the life of oppulance and greed that motivated them.....

 

[Ardsgaine]

I didn't really think it begged an argument. Everytime one of these tyrants, whether by themselves or as a group, comes to power under the guise of some politcal genre, they end up being toppled to reveal the life of oppulance and greed that motivated them.....

What needs an argument is the phrase "capitalist greed" when applied to communists and fascists. There's a huge difference between becoming wealthy by building railroads, steel mills and coal mines vs becoming wealthy by slaughtering millions of people and enslaving millions more.

 

[Squiggy]

Slavery is the favorite resource of capitalists. Most of the wealth in America was gained under the guise of capitalism and through the use of slaves...

 

[Ardsgaine]

Slavery is the favorite resource of capitalists. Most of the wealth in America was gained under the guise of capitalism and through the use of slaves..

You seem to be equating every economic transaction with capitalism. That's not the case. Capitalism is the economic system which results when government is limited to the protection of individual rights, including the right to property. Far from depending on slavery, it depends on the work of free, thinking individuals.

Slavery was a holdover from feudalism. It is a massive violation of individual rights. It was an aberration in our system, a contradiction of our founding principles. We did not get wealthy because of it, we got wealthy in spite of it. If slavery was a good way to get wealthy, then China would be the richest country on the planet. When we finally rid ourselves of slavery, it was the industrial, capitalist North that freed the slaves, while the agrarian, aristocratic South tried to keep them enslaved.

 

[Squiggy]

You seem to be equating every economic transaction with capitalism. That's not the case. Capitalism is the economic system which results when government is limited to the protection of individual rights, including the right to property. Far from depending on slavery, it depends on the work of free, thinking individuals.

Then those who serve to protect our individual rights should be the highest paid because their job is by far the most important. Show me a capitalist that would tolerate that.

Slavery was a holdover from feudalism. It is a massive violation of individual rights. It was an aberration in our system, a contradiction of our founding principles. We did not get wealthy because of it, we got wealthy in spite of it. If slavery was a good way to get wealthy, then China would be the richest country on the planet. When we finally rid ourselves of slavery, it was the industrial, capitalist North that freed the slaves, while the agrarian, aristocratic South tried to keep them enslaved.

The capitalists in China are doing splendidly by exploiting the 'slavery'. This is where our thoughts diverge. I am speaking of the capitalist that exploits his nation under the guise of any other political banner. Obviously, Saddam wanted it ALL for himself. That would make him a text book capitalist. And a damn good one at that. Same was true of Hitler.
The capitalists in America made great wealth exploiting slavery. It was the individual capitalists that made the gains....the Rockefellers etc...While that didn't make us collectively capitalist, it is still the truth.

 

[PT]

I see Squiggys point here though I think. People like Saddam like to get his people all pissed off because we are capitalistic pigs that throw our money around on frivolous items, yet look at his Palaces, One of the best examples of throwing money around on frivolous items.

 

[outside looking in]

Squiggy, that's the most bizarre definition of capitalism I've ever read. Interesting, an bizarre. I tend to draw lines between political and economic motives. According to Squiggy's view of the world, every tyrant by nature is a capitalist. Does it not matter at all whether they actually used the tools of the capitalist philosophy to reach their "success," or do you simply equate success with "capitalist" and be done with it?

Really. I've seen some strange definitions here, but even sober this one has me scratching my head.

 

[Ardsgaine]

I see Squiggys point here though I think. People like Saddam like to get his people all pissed off because we are capitalistic pigs that throw our money around on frivolous items, yet look at his Palaces, One of the best examples of throwing money around on frivolous items.

Call it fascist greed, then.

I thought the article made it clear, though, that he believes in the ideology. Underneath the ideology, I'm sure there is a psychology of power lust, but the ideology provides the rationale and he's heavily invested in it.

Besides, the palaces aren't there just for him, they serve as symbols of prestige and power for the Arab people. He is the fulfillment of their aspirations, and it would not do for him to live in a modest split level, 4br, 2 1/2 bath, etc. He is Saladin and Nebuchadnezzar rolled into one. He has to have a palace.

 

[PT]

If it was for the Arab people then why can't you walk more than a block without seeing a Large portrait or Statue of that man in Iraq? He may have had the intentions of having those palaces for the pride of the people, but I think he went overboard at some point and started thinking it was all for him because he deserved it.

 

[Ardsgaine]

The capitalists in China are doing splendidly by exploiting the 'slavery'. This is where our thoughts diverge. I am speaking of the capitalist that exploits his nation under the guise of any other political banner. Obviously, Saddam wanted it ALL for himself. That would make him a text book capitalist. And a damn good one at that. Same was true of Hitler.
The capitalists in America made great wealth exploiting slavery. It was the individual capitalists that made the gains....the Rockefellers etc...While that didn't make us collectively capitalist, it is still the truth.

You're responding by simply repeating your earlier assertion at greater length. You haven't addressed the definition of capitalism that I offered, or proposed an alternative one of your own. You use the term as if it simply means 'businessman', but that's not the case. There have been businessmen who were, ideologically, communists, fascists, monarchists, democratic socialists, etc. You name it. Calling them capitalists because they own capital ignores the fact that we are discussing ideologies, not investment deals.

 

[Squiggy]

Call it fascist greed, then.

But you can't do that since you've already proclaimed fascist as considering the whole as opposed to the individual and therefore leftist....

 

[Ardsgaine]

If it was for the Arab people then why can't you walk more than a block without seeing a Large portrait or Statue of that man in Iraq? He may have had the intentions of having those palaces for the pride of the people, but I think he went overboard at some point and started thinking it was all for him because he deserved it.

It's difficult to separate the ideology from the psychology. Psychologically, he needs those trappings for himself, to feed his lust for power. Ideologically, he justifies them by saying that they belong to the people; indeed, that he belongs to the people. That's the deal that the altruist makes: you be my slave, and I'll be yours. The master sees himself as a slave to the slave. He takes care of them, looks after their welfare, treats them like his children, noblesse oblige, and all that.

 

[ol' man]

Ever notice how some people just like to argue just to argue? No matter the topic some people will always, even if there beliefs are the same as yours, take the opposite side of the argument. Just for the sake of arguing?