Amaresh Misra: Can you hear sounds of Fascist jack-boots in India?
An Intellectual's Suicide In 1940, Walter Benjanim, the renowned literary critic of Germany, known all over the western world as one of 20th century greatest, liberal-left intellectual, was hounded to death by Hitler's cohorts. Finding Germany's illiberal atmosphere under Hitler arraigned against free speech and liberal arts, Benjamin wanted to emigrate; Nazi-fascist German authorities would not let him; finding all doors closed-even an attempted escape foiled-Benjamin committed suicide (Walter Benjanim).
Walter Benjamin was a Jew; it was impossible for him to fit into the `superiority of the pure Aryan race', anti-Semitic, fascist-totalitarian ideology, peddled, by Hitler and his cohorts. Benjamin represented the quality driven strand of excellence, tolerance and pluralism in classical German culture; he stood proud and singular in the tradition of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Heinrich Heine and other famous German artistes and intellectuals, several of whom were Jews. As part of the pre-Nazi, Germanic spirit-which prized music, philosophical breakthroughs, Judaic mysticism, idealism, and the science of dialectics-Benjamin rebelled against the Nazi-fascist thought of regarding Jews as inferior human beings. Benjamin also couldn't accept Hitler's dictum that the `pure German race'-if anything of that sort ever existed-possessed the divine right to rule other races and nations.
Walter Benjamin was a Jew; it was impossible for him to fit into the `superiority of the pure Aryan race', anti-Semitic, fascist-totalitarian ideology, peddled, by Hitler and his cohorts. Benjamin represented the quality driven strand of excellence, tolerance and pluralism in classical German culture; he stood proud and singular in the tradition of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Heinrich Heine and other famous German artistes and intellectuals, several of whom were Jews. As part of the pre-Nazi, Germanic spirit-which prized music, philosophical breakthroughs, Judaic mysticism, idealism, and the science of dialectics-Benjamin rebelled against the Nazi-fascist thought of regarding Jews as inferior human beings. Benjamin also couldn't accept Hitler's dictum that the `pure German race'-if anything of that sort ever existed-possessed the divine right to rule other races and nations.
The Myth of Racial SuperiorityBenjamin knew that all distinct cultures and identities of the world emerge only after prolonged material and spiritual praxis running over centuries. This process involves close interaction-struggle and unity-war and peace-intermingling and interbreeding-with people of other faiths-different skin colours-various cultural identities-and so on and forth.
Hitler's very idea of a pure German race was a myth-a momentously ludicrous-and horrendously murderous-dark and comic lie. Told by him and his cohorts loudly and repeatedly, this lie instigated an irrational frenzy of anti-Semitic fear amongst the German people. The purpose was to divide the German people, so that they forget bread and butter, anti-establishment anger-issues-against the post World War I socio-economic order. Run by cold-hearted, anti-working class, German big business-corporate interests, the prime interest of this order lay in profit and fleecing its own people during one of worst economic depressions in human history. Forming a military-industrial complex and perpetuating War as an extension of business by other means was the logical outcome of agreements between fascists and big business interests.
Bertolt BrechtUnlike Walter Benjamin-Bertolt Brecht-Benjamin's friend-and a famous Marxist playwright-regarded second only to Shakespeare in art and content-was a non-Jewish, "true-blue blood" German. He could have slid easily into Hitler's fantasy driven world of `pure Aryans' controlling the earth. A resolute anti-fascist, Brecht, however, chose to fight; citing how Hitler and fascism distort and misuse the greatness of German culture for narrow, homicidal-political ends, Brecht attacked the banal fascist propaganda with pro-people, creative, leftist poetry, drama, and occasionally, cinema. Fortunate enough to have left Germany soon after Hitler ascension to power, Brecht termed Walter Benjamin's suicide as the "first real blow to German literature" handed down by fascists (Bertolt Brecht).
Hitler's very idea of a pure German race was a myth-a momentously ludicrous-and horrendously murderous-dark and comic lie. Told by him and his cohorts loudly and repeatedly, this lie instigated an irrational frenzy of anti-Semitic fear amongst the German people. The purpose was to divide the German people, so that they forget bread and butter, anti-establishment anger-issues-against the post World War I socio-economic order. Run by cold-hearted, anti-working class, German big business-corporate interests, the prime interest of this order lay in profit and fleecing its own people during one of worst economic depressions in human history. Forming a military-industrial complex and perpetuating War as an extension of business by other means was the logical outcome of agreements between fascists and big business interests.
Bertolt BrechtUnlike Walter Benjamin-Bertolt Brecht-Benjamin's friend-and a famous Marxist playwright-regarded second only to Shakespeare in art and content-was a non-Jewish, "true-blue blood" German. He could have slid easily into Hitler's fantasy driven world of `pure Aryans' controlling the earth. A resolute anti-fascist, Brecht, however, chose to fight; citing how Hitler and fascism distort and misuse the greatness of German culture for narrow, homicidal-political ends, Brecht attacked the banal fascist propaganda with pro-people, creative, leftist poetry, drama, and occasionally, cinema. Fortunate enough to have left Germany soon after Hitler ascension to power, Brecht termed Walter Benjamin's suicide as the "first real blow to German literature" handed down by fascists (Bertolt Brecht).
Fascism and DemocracyMade famous by Hitler and Mussolini, the fascist ideology killed democracy in the 1930s and 40s in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and several East European countries invaded by Germany during World War II. Fascism led to the incarceration and death of such noted European intellectuals asAntonio Gramsci and Frederico Garcia Lorca to name a few; it also forced Freud and Einstein to flee from Continental Europe to the USA.
On 10th May, 1933, in a state-sponsored frenzy presided over gleefully by Hitler, Goebbels and other top Nazi officials-the first of its kind in modern human history-thousands of Nazi-fascist students burned over 25,000 volumes of classical and contemporary German literature (Nazi book burnings).
On 10th May, 1933, in a state-sponsored frenzy presided over gleefully by Hitler, Goebbels and other top Nazi officials-the first of its kind in modern human history-thousands of Nazi-fascist students burned over 25,000 volumes of classical and contemporary German literature (Nazi book burnings).
Carried out all over Germany especially in University towns, the act presaged decades of illogical censorship and maniac, linear control of culture that destroyed German modernity and the country's 2000 year old intellectual-cultural heritage. Thus, fascism destroyed both tradition and modernity-old and new-humanism and liberalism-religion and agnosticism-in one stroke.
Persecution, Dictatorship and Totalitarianism Like Mussolini in Italy before him, Hitler went on to suspend Germany's Parliament, declare dictatorship, end freedom of press, personal and religious liberty, and the right to form political parties. Communists, liberals, agnostics, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, gypsies, believers, non-believers, housewives, working women, prostitutes, even children-anyone even suspected of not falling in line with the fascist-Nazi ideology-was either killed or sent to concentration camps. Double standards were such that a homosexual with Nazi beliefs was allowed to thrive-but homosexuals of other ideological persuasions were declared deviants, not worthy of existence as human beings.
Irrespective of whether they supported or opposed Hitler, Jews were stripped of citizenship rights, hounded and killed-often in state sponsored gas chambers-in numbers crossing the six million mark (The Holocaust).
World War IIInitiated by fascists and their irrational-fanatic lust for arbitrary, bloodthirsty power over "lesser" and "rival" nations-especially western democracies and socialist-communist countries-World War II claimed between 50-73 million lives (World War II)... read more:
Persecution, Dictatorship and Totalitarianism Like Mussolini in Italy before him, Hitler went on to suspend Germany's Parliament, declare dictatorship, end freedom of press, personal and religious liberty, and the right to form political parties. Communists, liberals, agnostics, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, gypsies, believers, non-believers, housewives, working women, prostitutes, even children-anyone even suspected of not falling in line with the fascist-Nazi ideology-was either killed or sent to concentration camps. Double standards were such that a homosexual with Nazi beliefs was allowed to thrive-but homosexuals of other ideological persuasions were declared deviants, not worthy of existence as human beings.
Irrespective of whether they supported or opposed Hitler, Jews were stripped of citizenship rights, hounded and killed-often in state sponsored gas chambers-in numbers crossing the six million mark (The Holocaust).
World War IIInitiated by fascists and their irrational-fanatic lust for arbitrary, bloodthirsty power over "lesser" and "rival" nations-especially western democracies and socialist-communist countries-World War II claimed between 50-73 million lives (World War II)... read more:
