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January 17, 2005
The most democratic nation?
You write a post about the lingering fascination of Nazism and what happens? The nice-but-dim third-in-line to the British throne is snapped wearing a swastika armband. Considering the Windsors are about as British as bratwurst, such antics were likely to prod the broadsheets into dredging up the Royal Family's (and particularly King Edward VIII's) rather dodgy relationship with Hitler's gang. Meanwhile in Italy, as The View from Bologna reported, Lazio striker Paolo di Canio found himself in hot (or perhaps only lukewarm) water after allegedly delivering a fascist salute after scoring against bitter rivals Roma. As our Bologna correspondent notes, admitting to Fascist sympathies is, alas, no big deal in contemporary Italy.
This queasy mixture of Afrika Korps aristos and Mussolini-supporting footballers made me come up with the following non sequitur: Is Ireland the only country in Europe that is both a republic and is free of an ugly fascist past? Whenever I fumble for reasons to be proud of this country, this is a fact that I return to. I think any country that retains a monarchy, regardless of whether they're immured in wedding-cake palaces or bicycling among the populace, is suffering from a democratic deficit. Moreover, I'd go as far to say that Fascism and Monarchism are grounded in the same weakness, rooted as they are in the need for some paternalistic figure who is "above politics". (In cases such as Spain this relationship was made explicit in the 1970s when the dictator Franco essentially designated King Juan Carlos as his successor. The fall of Benito Mussolini's regime, which was quickly followed by the end of the Italian monarchy, is also instructive.)
Some of Ireland's previous leaders may provoke little in the way of admiration but at least they avoided the totalitarian option*. And today we are free from the parasitic royals unlike, say, Scotland. In fact, you could argue that the Republic of Ireland has a history of being the most democratic nation in Europe. Which is, I think, a lot more commendable that the sort of hype that appears almost daily about how rich we're meant to be. (See here for today's specimen.)
*De Valera saw the potential threat of Eoin O'Duffy's somewhat ludicrous Blueshirts and prevented a potential coup d'etat. So his overlong tenure did, actually, have some positive aspects.
Posted by Shane Barry at January 17, 2005 11:05 AM
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The so-called "Roman" salute is a myth in that it did not come from ancient Rome. It is a myth that has been refuted by the historian Rex Curry, the USA's leading authority on the pledge of allegiance.
The Nazi salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) came from the original pledge of allegiance to the USA's flag. Francis Bellamy, the author of the pledge, was a national socialist in the U.S. and created the pledge of allegiance to the flag using a straight-armed salute, the so-called "Roman" salute, in 1892. http://www.rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html
Bellamy adovated "nationalism" including a government takeover of schools, in order to create an "industrial army" for "military socialism." Because of the Bellamy dogma, government did take over education and it institutionalized segregation and taught racism as official policy. The straight-armed salute in the USA's racist and segregated government schools, served as an example to Germany through WWI and for over three decades before Nazism and WWII. The National Socialist German Workers' Party was inspired by the films, by the pledge of allegiance, and by the older national socialism movement in the USA.
The salute is not in any Roman art or text. The salute occurs in these films: the American "Ben-Hur" (1907), the Italian "Nerone" (1908), "Spartaco" (1914), and "Cabiria" (1914).
In imitation of such films, self-styled Italian "Consul" Gabriele D 'Annunzio borrowed the salute as a propaganda tool for his political ambitions upon his occupation of Fiume in 1919. Earlier, D'Annunzio had worked with Giovanni Pastrone in his colossal epic Cabiria (1914). Mussolini worked with D'Annunzio.
http://www.rexcurry.net/pledge1.html
The National Socialist German Workers' Party was also inspired by German-Americans who were already national socialists in the U.S. and who joined the German-American Bund movement to support national socialists in Germany before WWII. http://rexcurry.net/pledgebund.html
The salute began to change during WWII.
Francis Bellamy was inspired by his cousin and cohort Edward Bellamy, the author of the book “Looking Backward” (a bestseller written in 1887 by Edward Bellamy).
http://www.rexcurry.net/pledgebackward.html
Both Bellamys wanted the government to take over all schools and create an “industrial army” of totalitarian socialism as described in the book.
Government-schools spread and they mandated segregation by law and taught racism as official policy and did so through WWII and beyond
http://www.rexcurry.net/stopthepledge4.html
The bizarre practices served as an example for three decades before they were adopted by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. When Jesse Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics in Germany, his neighbors attended segregated government schools where they saluted the flag with the Nazi salute. As under Nazism, Jehovah's Witnesses (and blacks and the Jewish and others) in the USA were required by law to perform the Nazi salute in the USA and robotically chant the pledge. If they refused, then they were expelled from government schools and had to use the many better alternatives. There were also acts of physical violence.
Edward Bellamy’s best-selling book was translated into 20 different languages, including Russian, German, Italian, and Chinese. It was popular among the elite in pre-revolutionary Russia, and Lenin’s wife was known to have read the book, because she wrote a review of it. John Dewey and the historian Charles Beard intended to praise the book when they stated that it was equaled in influence only by Das Kapital (1867) (The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848).
25 years later, Bellamy’s totalitarian ideas continued. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began in 1917. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party came into existence in 1920 (with electoral breakthroughs in 1930 and dictatorship in 1933). In 1922, Mussolini gained power. The People's Republic of China began in 1949.
The worldwide impact of Bellamy’s totalitarian ideas influenced the socialist trio of atrocities. While the Holocaust was monstrous, it was part of the bigger socialist "Wholecaust": Under the industrial army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 62 million people were slaughtered; the People's Republic of China, 35 million; and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 21 million (numbers from Professor R. J. Rummel's article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999)).
http://www.rexcurry.net/socialists.jpg
Posted by: rexcurrydotnet at May 23, 2005 11:04 PM