Fireside this week! We’ll pick up looking at some of the successes of Hellenistic armies next week.
For this week’s musing, I wanted to take the opportunity to expand a bit on a topic that I raised on Twitter1 which draw a fair bit of commentary: that fascists and fascist governments, despite their positioning are generally bad at war. And let me note at the outset, I am using fascist fairly narrowly – I generally follow Umberto Eco’s definition (from “Ur Fascism” (1995)). Consequently, not all authoritarian or even right-authoritarian governments are fascist (but many are). Fascist has to mean something more specific than ‘people I disagree with’ to be a useful term (mostly, of course, useful as a warning).
First, I want to explain why I think this is a point worth making. For the most part, when we critique fascism (and other authoritarian ideologies), we focus on the inability of these ideologies to deliver on the things we – the (I hope) non-fascists – value, like liberty, prosperity, stability and peace. The problem is that the folks who might be beguiled by authoritarian ideologies are at risk precisely because they do not value those things – or at least, do not realize how much they value those things and won’t until they are gone. That is, of course, its own moral failing, but society as a whole benefits from having fewer fascists, so the exercise of deflating the appeal of fascism retains value for our sake, rather than for the sake of the would-be fascists (though they benefit as well, as it is, in fact, bad for you to be a fascist).
But war, war is something fascists value intensely because the beating heart of fascist ideology is a desire to prove heroic masculinity in the crucible of violent conflict (arising out of deep insecurity, generally). Or as Eco puts it, “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life, but, rather, life is lived for struggle…life is permanent warfare” and as a result, “everyone is educated to become a hero.”2 Being good at war is fundamentally central to fascism in nearly all of its forms – indeed, I’d argue nothing is so central. Consequently, there is real value in showing that fascism is, in fact, bad at war, which it is.
Now how do we assess if a state is ‘good’ at war? The great temptation here is to look at inputs: who has the best equipment, the ‘best’ soldiers (good luck assessing that), the most ‘strategic geniuses’ and so on. But war is not a baseball game. No one cares about your RBI or On-Base percentage. If a country’s soldiers fight marvelously in a way that guarantees the destruction of their state and the total annihilation of their people, no one will sing their praises – indeed, no one will be left alive to do so.
Instead, war is an activity judged purely on outcomes, by which we mean strategic outcomes. Being ‘good at war’ means securing desired strategic outcomes or at least avoiding undesirable ones. There is, after all, something to be said for a country which manages to salvage a draw from a disadvantageous war (especially one it did not start) rather than total defeat, just as much as a country that conquers. Meanwhile, failure in wars of choice – that is, wars a state starts which it could have equally chosen not to start – are more damning than failures in wars of necessity. And the most fundamental strategic objective of every state or polity is to survive, so the failure to ensure that basic outcome is a severe failure indeed.
Judged by that metric, fascist governments are terrible at war. There haven’t been all that many fascist governments, historically speaking and a shocking percentage of them started wars of choice which resulted in the absolute destruction of their regime and state, the worst possible strategic outcome. Most long-standing states have been to war many times, winning sometimes and losing sometimes, but generally able to preserve the existence of their state even in defeat. At this basic task, however, fascist states usually fail.
The rejoinder to this is to argue that, “well, yes, but they were outnumbered, they were outproduced, they were ganged up on” – in the most absurd example, folks quite literally argued that the Nazis at least had a positive k:d (kill-to-death ratio) like this was a game of Call of Duty. But war is not a game – no one cares what your KDA is if you lose and your state is extinguished. All that matters is strategic outcomes: war is fought for no other purpose because war is an extension of policy (drink!). Creating situations – and fascist governments regularly created such situations. Starting a war in which you will be outnumbered, ganged up on, outproduced and then smashed flat: that is being bad at war.
Countries, governments and ideologies which are good at war do not voluntarily start unwinnable wars.
So how to fascist governments do at war? Terribly. The two most clear-cut examples of fascist governments, the ones most everyone agrees on, are of course Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy started a number of colonial wars, most notably the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, which it won, but at ruinous cost, leading it to fall into a decidedly junior position behind Germany. Mussolini then opted by choice to join WWII, leading to the destruction of his regime, his state, its monarchy and the loss of his life; he managed to destroy Italy in just 22 years. This is, by the standards of regimes, abjectly terrible.
Nazi Germany’s record manages to somehow be worse. Hitler comes to power in 1933, precipitates WWII (in Europe) in 1939 and leads his country to annihilation by 1945, just 12 years. In short, Nazi Germany fought one war, which it lost as thoroughly and completely as it is possible to lose; in a sense the Nazis are necessarily tied for the position of ‘worst regime at war in history’ by virtue of having never won a war, nor survived a war, nor avoided a war. Hitler’s decision, while fighting a great power with nearly as large a resource base as his own (Britain) to voluntarily declare war on not one (USSR) but two (USA) much larger and in the event stronger powers is an act of staggeringly bad strategic mismanagement. The Nazis also mismanaged their war economy, designed finicky, bespoke equipment ill-suited for the war they were waging and ran down their armies so hard that they effectively demodernized them inside of Russia. It is absolutely the case that the liberal democracies were unprepared for 1940, but it is also the case that Hitler inflicted upon his own people – not including his many, horrible domestic crimes – far more damage than he meted out even to conquered France.
Beyond these two, the next most ‘clearly fascist’ government is generally Francisco Franco’s Spain – a clearly right-authoritarian regime, but there is some argument as to if we should understand them as fascist. Francoist Spain may have one of the best war records of any fascist state, on account of generally avoiding foreign wars: the Falangists win the Spanish Civil War, win a military victory in a small war against Morocco in 1957-8 (started by Moroccan insurgents) which nevertheless sees Spanish territory shrink (so a military victory but a strategic defeat), rather than expand, and then steadily relinquish most of their remaining imperial holdings. It turns out that the best ‘good at war’ fascist state is the one that avoids starting wars and so limits the wars it can possibly lose.
Broader definitions of fascism than this will scoop up other right-authoritarian governments (and start no end of arguments) but the candidates for fascist or near-fascist regimes that have been militarily successful are few. Salazar (Portugal) avoided aggressive wars buthis government lost its wars to retain a hold on Portugal’s overseas empire. Imperial Japan’s ideology has its own features and so may not be classified as fascist, but hardly helps the war record if included. Perón (Argentina) is sometimes described as near-fascist, but also avoided foreign wars. I’ve seen the Baathist regimes (Assad’s Syria and Hussein’s Iraq) described as effectively fascist with cosmetic socialist trappings and the military record there is awful: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq started a war of choice with Iran where it barely managed to salvage a brutal draw, before getting blown out twice by the United States (the first time as a result of a war of choice, invading Kuwait!), with the second instance causing the end of the regime. Syria, of course, lost a war of choice against Israel in 1967, then was crushed by Israel again in another war of choice in 1973, then found itself unable to control even its own country during the Syrian Civil War (2011-present), with significant parts of Syria still outside of regime control as of early 2024.
And of course there are those who would argue that Putin’s Russia today is effectively fascist (‘Rashist’) and one can hardly be impressed by the Russian army managing – barely, at times – to hold its own in another war of choice against a country a fourth its size in population, with a tenth of the economy which was itself not well prepared for a war that Russia had spent a decade rearming and planning for. Russia may yet salvage some sort of ugly draw out of this war – more a result of western, especially American, political dysfunction than Russian military effectiveness – but the original strategic objectives of effectively conquering Ukraine seem profoundly out of reach while the damage to Russia’s military and broader strategic interests is considerable.
I imagine I am missing other near-fascist regimes, but as far as I can tell, the closest a fascist regime gets to being effective at achieving desired strategic outcomes in non-civil wars is the time Italy defeated Ethiopia but at such great cost that in the short-term they could no longer stop Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria and in the long-term effectively became a vassal state of Hitler’s Germany. Instead, the more standard pattern is that fascist or near-fascist regimes regularly start wars of choice which they then lose catastrophically. That is about as bad at war as one can be.
We miss this fact precisely because fascism prioritizes so heavily all of the signifiers of military strength, the pagentry rather than the reality and that pagentry beguiles people. Because being good at war is so central to fascist ideology, fascist governments lie about, set up grand parades of their armies, create propaganda videos about how amazing their armies are. Meanwhile other kinds of governments – liberal democracies, but also traditional monarchies and oligarchies – are often less concerned with the appearance of military strength than the reality of it, and so are more willing to engage in potentially embarrassing self-study and soul-searching. Meanwhile, unencumbered by fascisms nationalist or racist ideological blinders, they are also often better at making grounded strategic assessments of their power and ability to achieve objectives, while the fascists are so focused on projecting a sense of strength (to make up for their crippling insecurities).
The resulting poor military performance should not be a surprise. Fascist governments, as Eco notes, “are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.” Fascism’s cult of machismo also tends to be a poor fit for modern, industrialized and mechanized war, while fascism’s disdain for the intellectual is a poor fit for sound strategic thinking. Put bluntly, fascism is a loser’s ideology, a smothering emotional safety blanket for deeply insecure and broken people (mostly men), which only makes their problems worse until it destroys them and everyone around them.
This is, however, not an invitation to complacency for liberal democracies which – contrary to fascism – have tended to be quite good at war (though that hardly means they always win). One thing the Second World War clearly demonstrated was that as militarily incompetent as they tend to be, fascist governments can defeat liberal democracies if the liberal democracies are unprepared and politically divided. The War in Ukraine may yet demonstrate the same thing, for Ukraine was unprepared in 2022 and Ukraine’s friends are sadly politically divided now. Instead, it should be a reminder that fascist and near-fascist regimes have a habit of launching stupid wars and so any free country with such a neighbor must be on doubly on guard.
But it should also be a reminder that, although fascists and near-fascists promise to restore manly, masculine military might, they have never, ever actually succeeded in doing that, instead racking up an embarrassing record of military disappointments (and terrible, horrible crimes, lest we forget). Fascism – and indeed, authoritarianisms of all kinds – are ideologies which fail to deliver the things a wise, sane people love – liberty, prosperity, stability and peace – but they also fail to deliver the things they promise.
These are loser ideologies. For losers. Like a drunk fumbling with a loaded pistol, they would be humiliatingly comical if they weren’t also dangerous. And they’re bad at war.
On to Recommendations:
Let me start with this short essay by friend-of-the-blog Liv Yarrow from October of last year on, “Why Latin?” It is more of an open musing as an answer to the question, but I think touches on many of the reasons to learn a language generally and to learn Latin in particular: the unique kinds of mental demands and rewards from learning a language, the powerful window into another culture it provides, and the challenge and satisfaction of doing something difficult.
I’ve also made a few podcast appearances broadly organized around my continuing effort to try to bail out the sinking ships that are our disciplines. I talked again with Drachinifel, this time on the nature of the interaction between academic historians and public-facing history educators on various forms of social media – in particular discussing how both groups (though there is overlap between them) rely on each other and could do a lot more to work together effectively to promote history and history education. In addition in a more higher-ed oriented venue, I talked with Jeff Crane, Dean at Cal Poly Humboldt on his wonderfully titled podcast, Yeah, I got a F#%*ing Job With a Liberal Arts Degree on the importance of public facing work in academia as well as some of what embattled fields in the liberal arts can do to try to help themselves both within the academy and outside of it.
For a bit of gaming history rather than history gaming, over on YouTube, HeyCara compiled a brief one-hour history of Paradox Interactive, charting its rise and the shifts in the kinds of games they’ve produced. It’s a neat look at the history of the company and writes down some of the ‘lore’ that longer-term Paradox players may know that newer folks may note, like the sudden expansion and then equally rapid sputtering of Paradox Interactive as a wide-ranging publisher from 2008 to 2013. As strange as it sounds to say this about what is already an hour-long video, I’d love to see someone do something like this in a lot more depth, split between the trends in PDS and their design philosophies (what I’ve split into generations in my discussions) and Paradox Interactive itself and the different periods of different publishing strategies they’ve had. But there’s real value in keeping and recording the history of these companies and creators, as that is important for understanding their creative products.
For this week’s Book Recommendation, I am going to recommend a book that, quite frankly, I am surprised I haven’t gotten to yet, Greg Woolf’s Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (1998). This is a work that is one of those foundational books every graduate student has to read to get their footing on the topic, but is well worth a read from a general ‘lay’ reader as well, as a useful corrective to the public conception of ‘Romanization.’ While the study of Mediterranean cultural exchange – almost no ancient historians use the term ‘Romanization’ except in scare quotes these days – has advanced a lot (with a real sea-change in our thinking starting really in the 1990s), the public conception, in as much as there is one, hasn’t moved very much. Where there is a public awareness of the spread of Roman cultural features (togas, Latin, red ceramic tile roofs, aqueducts, etc) it is understood as ‘Romanization’ – a process the Romans did to other peoples which reproduced elite Roman culture in some uniform and standard way.
Woolf’s book, focusing on Roman Gaul (modern France, mostly) is one of the cornerstone studies in overturning this notion. First, Woolf notes that in Gaul, as elsewhere in the Empire, the process of cultural convergeance was not ‘top-down’ from the imperial elite, but rather motivated by the local adoption, typically by local elites, of Roman cultural habits as a sign of urbanitas (‘city-living’ with the sense of sophistication) and humanitas (‘gentility’ ‘liberal education’), a way to display status. Those habits, which Woolf tracks across a wide range of cultural features (architecture, urbanism, pottery, etc.) in turn steadily work their way down until eventually even the poor “had learned to be impoverished in a Roman manner” in their limited goods.3 Indeed, Woolf argues, quite rapidly the distinction we see in the archaeological evidence is not between ‘romanized’ and ‘unromanized’ Gauls, but between wealthy and poor Gallo-Romans, all taking part in the same cultural fusion. Of course, Romans – or perhaps we might say Italo-Romans to distinguish them from our increasingly Roman Gallo-Romans – were involved in the process too, as exemplars to imitate, as merchants from whom to buy the markers of Roman cultural identity and so on.
Yet at the same time, as Woolf notes, this is not the death of cultural diversity nor the end of Gallic culture. Woolf rejects ‘Romanization’ as a paradigm, but also notes that there are few, if any, “islands of residual ‘Celticism'” to be found in Roman Gaul. But there is cultural fusion, perhaps most evident in religious practice, with Roman Gods and Roman-style temples (especailly in the cities) operating alongside long-established Gallic ritual practices (like throwing swords into bodies of water – God bless the Gauls (and other Celtic-language speakers) for continuing to throw weapons into lakes and rivers where we can later uncover them) and long-established Gallic holy sites. And these experiences were not uniform, but themselves regionalized, especially with the distinction between largely demilitarized interior and southern parts of Gaul and the militarized north-east.
I hope even this brief effort at description has given you some sense of the wonderful complexity of the picture Woolf paints here, even if I am doing his book ill-service. Woolf writes well and the book is clear and readable, even for the non-specialist. The book also features a number of maps which do well to guide a reader who may not be familiar with the geography of Roman Gaul. The one thing I will say it is missing is pictures beyond the maps, for some of Woolf’s points depend on street plans, architecture and artwork and these may be unfamiliar to the lay-reader and thus hard to picture, though you will have no problem following the argument itself (and should one want to then picture it, the book has footnotes and a full bibliography to oblige further reading!). Cultural change in the Roman Empire is one of those topics that is heavily regionalized, and so no one region quite looks like any other – all one can do is pick a region and try to grapple with its complexities. At this task, Becoming Roman is eminently capable and so well worth a read.
Ok, so there had been multiple people here who attacked Bret Devereaux’s thesis of Fascist regimes being ‘bad at war’ by comparing the ‘Fascist’ countries who fought in WWII with other countries.
However, what would happen if we would do a within-country comparison and compare Nazi-Germany and Fascist Italy with Imperial Germany and WWI Italy instead? That seems a more useful comparison, for the purpose of finding the effect of Fascism on military performance, to me.
Personally, I had the impression that Imperial Germany was more military-strategic competent than Nazi Germany, as they seemingly came much closer to winning despite having to wage a two-front war against both France and Russia from day one.
However, I am an expert in neither WWI nor WWII, so I wonder how accurate that impression is in the first place.
I was under the impression that Imperial Germany had much the same problem in WW1 as Nazi Germany in WW2, i.e., that they were very effective unit-for-unit but their big-picture planning tended to be unrealistic (Exhibit A: the Schlieffen Plan).
Italy, on the other hand, was pretty bad in both conflicts.
Yes.
However, the things I had read* about Imperial Germany, gave me the impression they were clearly more sane and rational when it came it the field of grand strategy. However, being more strategically rational than Nazi-Germany is an extremely low bar.
I also do not know whether what I had read represents the majority opinion of historians of the Great War.
* For example, this here: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/four-myths-about-great-war-1914-1918
As far as strategic outcomes go though, WWI Italy is pretty good: after all, they won. Hell, even as far as battle goes: they won militarily while being left basically on their own against Austria-Hungary and Germany. They may have started with one of the worst higher commands of all the belligerants, they (along with the Balkans’ front) still made so that Austria-Hungary would get out of the war and thus that Germany had no choice but to surrender too.
Imperial Germany was much less military-strategic competent than Nazi Germany, and not closer to winning in any way.
And is that opinion shared by a significant number of expert scholars on WWI and WWII? Or it is merely limited to you, random person on the internet?
Historians generally don’t consider this – each was bad in its own way. The General Staff planned WWI in great operational detail – but had no plan for the blockade, or paid attention to industrial issues until too late, or paid real attention to logistic constraints, and were idiots at diplomacy. The Kaiser’s circle were frankly delusional.
In Word War II the General Staff (often the same people) were again great at operations, bad at logistics, poor at intelligence and idiots at diplomacy. But less rigid in their planning and paid more attention to industry.
Hitler was insane in his aims (many of which the General Staff shared), but very calculating in his methods. So Germany went further and lasted longer and got wrecked harder.
Hitler was insane in his aims (many of which the General Staff shared), but very calculating in his methods.
I have read many things about Hitler*; however, this is the first time that I had encountered a claim of him being ‘very calculating’.
Though, I suppose you are right about the German generals in both World Wars.
* For example, I had once read that his writing was absolutely terrible and he had even failed to edit an enormous amount of misspelling and grammatical errors out of his book, Mein Kampf:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1abidlk/is_mein_kampf_really_so_badly_written_in_every/
Someone noted that he had an acute eye for weaknesses (evident in the way he picked off those elements in the military who might oppose him, or played on French and British hesitations up to 1939), but much less good at gauging strengths.
Imperial Germany fights 16 wars. 15 of which are sufficiently victorious that the Empire survives. The 16th is the Great War, which Germany survives, but the Hohenzollern Empire does not.
Nazi Germany, if you define “participation in war” as broadly as you can, fights 4 wars (Spanish Civil War, Anschluß, Czekhoslovakia, WWII), the last of which results in a far more complete destruction of the German polity than the Great War did – Wilhelm II abdicated willingly, and the elected Reichstag then declares a German Republic. The German state and most of its institutions never cease, and to the degree that they are disrupted or eliminated, that is mostly a consequence of Germans acting.
By contrast, on May 9, 1945, “Germany” no longer exists as a polity. Sure, it is recreated afterwards, with all too many Nazis returning after some whitewashing, but the break between 1945 and 1949 is much, much sharper and clearer.
OP is clearly talking about WW1 here.
And Nazi Germany was closer to victory during summer 1941 than Imperial Germany was at any point of the war, unless you buy into the “we were winning but the Jews stabbed us in the back” myth.
Ha, what a joke.
I have heard many times about historians claiming that the Nazis had already lost the war when they had launched Operation Barbarossa, so much did their opponents outmatch them in industry and manpower. Yet, never, not even once, I had read about any historian claiming that Imperial Germany had already lost the war when they had launched the Schlieffen Plan.
So those historians think Germany would have more chance to win the war if they didn’t invade Soviet Union and instead waited for them to gang up on Germany first? Because Stalin was surely no friend of the Nazi: https://www.wsj.com/articles/stalin-first-tried-to-resist-hitler-with-great-britain-11589838192
Remember Germany crushed the “outmatching” Soviets really hard during the early phase of Barbarossa. And only after the failure of Operation Taifun, Germany started to lose against the SU in a prolonged war.
And do those historians think Imperial Germany’s opponents didn’t outmatch them in industry and manpower? At least the Nazi tried to fight the Allies one by one. Yes, Imperial Germany had already lost the war when they tried to fight a two fronts war against France, Russia and Great Britain at the same time.
I had never talked about that; deciding upon such a course of action would likely also have required that the Nazis were more aware of the USSR strength rather than severely underestimating how many divisions they had.
However, I personally suspect it cannot have been even worse an idea than launching Operation Barbarossa. It is possible that the ever-paranoid Stalin will be too busy with launching purges because he imagines conspiracies everywhere to launch an attack on Germany, or something, after all.
I am well aware that the Central Powers were outmatched in WWI. However, as the Axis was outmatched way more in WWII; WWI was a much more even fight in comparison.
Except, when they had declared war on both the USSR and USA when they were still at war with Britain.
With all respect, Germany and Austria-Hungary had survived longer than Czarist Russia.
If you prevent the USA from entering the war, say by avoiding such things as unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram, it clearly becomes possible* for the CP to achieve a draw/peace of exhaustion on the Western-front after Russia left the war.
Also improve the performance of Austria-Hungary, I had the impression there was more room for improvements there than in Germany, and a CP win becomes possible.
* Though I do not know enough whether it would also be likely.
Which countries then *are* successful at wars, if we look post-1945? Viet-Nam and Afghanistan?
Vietnam, certainly, but also the UK (Falklands War), France (multiple stabilisation ops in Africa that actually worked, mostly), Israel (which, one should recall, was to be destroyed by is Arab neighbours multiple times, but is still there). Morocco, in its war with Spain during the Franco period. Chad, with French assistance, defeats Libya pretty decisively in the Toyota War.
But, as they say, after the game is before the game. History doesn’t end, and most wars do not result in the destruction of the opposing polity.
Israel is actually a good example. Most of its security problems right now are a consequence of Israeli military success; until 1967, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt. Since the Six Day War, of course, those areas are under Israeli occupation.
1) The Nazi leadership did face realities of their style of combat and lost one of his balls for that.
4) Rome’s mentality was a reaction against the pressure from their neighbors, like that guy Brennus who sacked Rome. Nazism was also a reaction against the lost of their empire, their territories, their life standard and their social morality during the economic crisis, which was the result of they losing the previous war. So both Rome and Nazi Germany’s mentality is quite similar – getting tougher to fight their enemies.
1) Source please, at least for Hitler losing any body parts.
4) No, it’s not, because Rome became an Empire that reverberates to this day, and Nazi Germany didn’t even last long enough for a person born in January 1933 to graduate from school. But then, Rome wasn’t fascist.
I’m willing to accept that the Nazis *wanted* a tougher, stronger Germany. The point is that they *failed*, and that that failure was *purely of their own making*.
1) Hitler’s body parts are off-topic here. The point is that some of the Nazi leadership: Hitler, Goering,… did experience war. And we should include the German generals when talking about Nazi leadership as well. After all, they were happy to join a new war after losing the previous one.
4) I was talking about their mentality, not their ideologies.
But since you seem to respect the Roman empire so much, you must know that they were beaten badly by Hannibal during the Punic Wars. If the Romans surrendered after Trebia, Trasimene, Cannae, you would say they are bad at war as well. But they did fight to the end and became an empire, maybe due to their “proto-fascist” mentality that refused to surrender?
So maybe you would say the Carthaginians were bad at war then? Since they are the one got erased from existence.
Bret, I buy your argument that even when facism produces battlefield strength, it is fatally undermined by also producing strategic incompetance, but I’m puzzled by the form. You explicitly state that you’re making an ad hominem argument to facists, but then you keep taking time out to sneer at facists. In my experience nothing stops people listening thoughtfully to your argument faster than being repeatedly rude about them. I’m curious as to whether
1. You intented to make an effective ad hominem argument against facism, but were self sabotaged by an understandable but uncontrollable hatred of facism.
2. You don’t expect facists to read this (this is the internet, why would there be facists?), but want to equip your readers for the next time they’re in a pub having a philosophical/historical debate with a facist.
3. You would like to make an effective ad hominem argument against facism, but you’d also like a job in academia, and they charge of a tax of at least one sneer per paragraph mentioning facism.
Thanks for sharing the strategic perspective with us – it’s such an important one, and all too easily overlooked.
Just noting, “ad hominem” is a logical fallacy that attacks a person’s character instead of their argument.
It has two usages, the worse version you describe is more common, but the version I’ve used is noted in Wikipedia’s introduction, described as “Other ad hominem arguments may be encountered in specialized philosophical usage. These typically refer to the dialectical strategy of using the target’s own beliefs and arguments against them, while not agreeing with the validity of those beliefs and arguments.” which I think is a fair description of what Bret has set out to do.
Is there a better term which unambiguously means the second form of an ad hominem argument that I could use instead?
That’s not an ad hominem. That’s a reductio ad absurdum — or at least an attempt at one.
The internet is pretty well supplied with fascists,sadly. Also, judging from the comments sections of some of the more lefty creators I follow, hate-watching is still a thing, so hate-reading may be also.
Plus, this blog post now makes an easily shareable summary of “fascists are provably bad at war”.
It does not address *WHY*, or how, fascists are bad at war but, at the end of the day, that doesn’t matter. Fascist polities lose wars more consistently than non-fascist ones, and they lose worse than non-fascist polities as well.
Want your country to be militarily effective? Or even just to survive for more than a few decades?
Don’t be fascist.
Right, but since the people we’re trying to convince by sharing such a summary are facists, wouldn’t it be better if it was more convincing for facists? And wouldn’t it be more convincing for facists if it didn’t keep taking time out from its argument to sneer at them?
He needs to cover his arse in case some barely literate left winger comes and misreads his arguments as him agreeing with fascist ideology (and sadly, saying this as another left winger, there are a lot of those going around). Literally all of the sneering is that – him making a little aside to signal that he doesn’t personally agree with e.g. the value of war and heroism as proposed by fascism. If you don’t mention how generally awful fascist ideologies are, you’ll get a bunch of comments along the lines of “uhhh, but what about the crimes against humanity aren’t they worse??” when that’s not the argument. Simply the etiquette of modern leftist discourse kinda dictates that you must acknowledge it.
A fascist will take a quick glance at the rest of his blog or note – whatever the tone – that he doesn’t agree with the ideology and assume a defensive stance anyway. Nothing Brett can do about that, and it IS useful if you remember these arguments for when you encounter one IRL. What’s more, with the alt right’s emphasis on irony, mean humor, and “facts don’t care about your feelings”, even if they get offended you can throw one of those in their face.
About the book recomandation: Greg Woolf’s Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (1998)
I find it very easy to believe that the Gauls (or any other people under the Romans) were generally starting to imitate, copy or otherwise behave like Romans. And one of the reasons for me feeling that way is in the Asterix album The Champion. In it there is this Gallic chieftain who tries to butter up to the Romans, by for instance insisting that they build an aquaduct in the village, although they had a perfectly fine brook running through it. And when challenged, the chief replies something in the vain of: I want that aquaduct, because it screams Roman!
Of course part of this was based on the experiences of both the writer and the illustrator (Goscinny and Uderzo) during WW2 in both Occupied France and in Vichy France, so they both knew what it was to life under foreign occupation.
I wonder if you realize that ‘Rashist’ is an ethnic slur and has no other meaning behind it.
Is it suddenly okay to do that.
I am going to disagree with the premise and agree with the conclusion. That is, I agree fascists lose wars, but the definition of fascism Devereaux uses is wrong, and wrong in a way that really matters.
The world’s leading scholar of fascism is Roger Griffin, who defines it as “palingenic ultranationalism”. The point of fascism is the revitalisation/transformation of the nation – and war is a tool to that end, not the end in itself. The point of war is to enable racial or national unity, the mentality netted in Orwell’s novel. War empowers the state, makes people more likely to endure privations and follow leaders, and, above all, breeds a kind of fanatic, unquestioning unity. And in the service of this end, it doesn’t really matter if the war is successful or even if it is real – because the goals are external, not internal.
So a fascist power can be really successful – on its own terms – even with lousy military track record, as long as that doesn’t threaten the existence of the State. And if that sounds implausible, I have two words for you: North Korea.
North Korea has never won any war I know of, and it maintains a state of permanent militarisation and extreme racism, which keeps the State in power.
(NK propaganda also emphasizes the Kims’ womanly and motherly nature, so so much for the whole fascism-is-masculinity discourse)
This is a big problem, because it is easy to see how fascism can survive and thrive without being a militarily successful doctrine.
In closing, I do hope that, having pointed this out, I am not going to be accused of a sympathy for fascism, and all too common and tedious occurrence.
Hard not to put Nasser in this category as well. 4 wars of choice with results ranging from mere failures (War of Attrition, Suez) to absolute disasters (North Yemen, Six-Day) in only 14 years of rule is a singularly unimpressive record.
How was the North Yemen war a failure? The Yemeni theocratic monarchy was overthrown, which is what the Egyptian-backed side were fighting for.
I’ve also never heard Nasser described as a fascist (although for some definitions, I guess you could squeeze to make it fit).
I’d say Nasser was about as fascist as Salazar (which is to say, not at all).