Page 52 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 52
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
extremes that took shape in fascism and bolshevism.2 In both cases we may
find extremism, which did not remain a marginal phenomenon, but de-
veloped into a political system, starting from usurping the apparatus of
the state and, further on, secured a high degree of mass loyalty. Therefore,
fascism and bolshevism, each in its own way, gave a historical example of
the ultimate possibility for an extremist ideology to become constitutive
for a whole society. Although based on different particular ideas, so-called
religious extremism – as a sectarian Christian and Islamic terrorism – is
structurally very similar to the secular kinds of extremism. Both extreme
ideologies remain to be paradigms of a materialisation of both main cur-
rents within political ideologies: particularism and universalism, reflect-
ing the binary logic of Western thought – and Eastern too for that matter.
Since these extreme ideologies took shape – for not just a short while – of
a “normal society”, their “being-a-fact-of-history” represents an instance
for any critical reflection on the potential of supposedly marginal extrem-
ist ideologies and movements of today. I do not speak of a fear concerning
the possibility of their simple re-emergence, but about a fear that we might
be(come) unable to recognize and define the distinctive attributes of a pro-
cess, which is already at work; or, even more frightening, that we might rec-
ognize them, but we are unable to influence the process itself. Once extrem-
ism takes over the society, its institutions, and the public life and so on,
there is very little that can be done against it. Speaking in global terms that
is what already happened in at least some former socialist countries, nota-
bly in Serbia, as an example of a prolonged bolshevism, stripped off of its
universalized shape, modified and adapted to new realities and supported
by populism and nationalism. 3
The long essay by the French historian François Furet exposed the
above-mentioned liabilities, derived from a retrospective of the gruesome
historical experience of this century. As Furet points out “bolshevism and
fascism entered almost jointly the theatre of history as the latest items on the
European political repertoire” (Furet, 1995: p. 38). In Furet’s view of histo-
ry, it seems difficult to imagine that these ideologies, now looking “absurd,
2 I find the use of term “bolshevism” here more appropriate then “communism”
since it may be argued that communism represents a number of different forms of
ideology and organisations, like movements, ideas, views, parties as well as some
political systems, that could not be simply defined as extremist.
3 The most recent phenomena in 21st Century in Europe, such as a number of extremist
parties in “new democracies” of Hungary and Poland, where they even ascended to
power, demonstrate that the extremism in power can co-exist and extend its influence
within the EU, which was supposed to be based on pluralism and democracy.
50
extremes that took shape in fascism and bolshevism.2 In both cases we may
find extremism, which did not remain a marginal phenomenon, but de-
veloped into a political system, starting from usurping the apparatus of
the state and, further on, secured a high degree of mass loyalty. Therefore,
fascism and bolshevism, each in its own way, gave a historical example of
the ultimate possibility for an extremist ideology to become constitutive
for a whole society. Although based on different particular ideas, so-called
religious extremism – as a sectarian Christian and Islamic terrorism – is
structurally very similar to the secular kinds of extremism. Both extreme
ideologies remain to be paradigms of a materialisation of both main cur-
rents within political ideologies: particularism and universalism, reflect-
ing the binary logic of Western thought – and Eastern too for that matter.
Since these extreme ideologies took shape – for not just a short while – of
a “normal society”, their “being-a-fact-of-history” represents an instance
for any critical reflection on the potential of supposedly marginal extrem-
ist ideologies and movements of today. I do not speak of a fear concerning
the possibility of their simple re-emergence, but about a fear that we might
be(come) unable to recognize and define the distinctive attributes of a pro-
cess, which is already at work; or, even more frightening, that we might rec-
ognize them, but we are unable to influence the process itself. Once extrem-
ism takes over the society, its institutions, and the public life and so on,
there is very little that can be done against it. Speaking in global terms that
is what already happened in at least some former socialist countries, nota-
bly in Serbia, as an example of a prolonged bolshevism, stripped off of its
universalized shape, modified and adapted to new realities and supported
by populism and nationalism. 3
The long essay by the French historian François Furet exposed the
above-mentioned liabilities, derived from a retrospective of the gruesome
historical experience of this century. As Furet points out “bolshevism and
fascism entered almost jointly the theatre of history as the latest items on the
European political repertoire” (Furet, 1995: p. 38). In Furet’s view of histo-
ry, it seems difficult to imagine that these ideologies, now looking “absurd,
2 I find the use of term “bolshevism” here more appropriate then “communism”
since it may be argued that communism represents a number of different forms of
ideology and organisations, like movements, ideas, views, parties as well as some
political systems, that could not be simply defined as extremist.
3 The most recent phenomena in 21st Century in Europe, such as a number of extremist
parties in “new democracies” of Hungary and Poland, where they even ascended to
power, demonstrate that the extremism in power can co-exist and extend its influence
within the EU, which was supposed to be based on pluralism and democracy.
50
