Page 55 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 55
defining the ideology of extremism
almost no democracy at all as in the Soviet case. Therefore, it may seem that
in the modern or post-modern democracy such ideologies are necessarily
condemned to remain only ephemeral and more or less marginalised. This
would hold true if the extremist ideologies could be just a reappearance of
exactly the same ideologies with the same strategies as the original ones.
There are strong reasons to believe that the extreme ideologies are able to
adapt, to develop and get strengthened by any kind of crisis of democracy
or even by provoking a crisis themselves through the support of economic,
class and other vested interests. They can even become different ideologies;
they may even mimic a democratic discourse and behaviour – as in many
cases of the postmodern political hybridity. However, they cannot change
their basic attitude as they are making use of a criticism of democracy, pre-
sumably “empty of content” and unable to deliver for the needs of deprived
masses or disadvantaged Volk, or popolo, or narod, or whatever may be the
case within different languages and cultures.4
Furet‘s outstanding historical reflection written in the wake of the
post-communist world, may be read as a strong reminder that any simpli-
fied view of the past or over-optimistic assertions of a rise of a discontin-
ued new epoch may be fatally wrong. The inevitable reduction of complex-
ities of the historical circumstances that occurs in a historical narration
or, for example, in a condensed film or edited video, may suggest to the
reader/viewer of today an utterly wrong impression of the nature of events
in the not so distant past. At the time of the rise of bolshevism and fas-
cism the world has already been “globalised”, and this fact was quite clear-
ly mirrored in the both ideologies, since bolshevism planned the world rev-
olution and Nazism announced that the superior race is about to rule the
world. The communication technology of the time was less developed, yet
radio, telegraph, telephone and film were already able to induce a global
cognizance. The “information society” of today and near future, apart from
4 A good example how misread or misunderstood these interpretations may be was a
prevailing perception of the events in former Yugoslavia by the reporters and their
public in the West at the time of the last war in Yugoslavia. The horrible events
that marked the first few years of the last decade and dominated the news in the
global media for some four years were perceived because of “tribal hatred” with
deep roots in centuries of rivalry in the Balkans. The same reporters and public
would probably hesitate to accept an assertion that the Germany of the 1930s was
“tribal” or “uncivilised”. Yet, quite a lot of parallels between the rise of Nazism and
the nationalist regime in Serbia were quite obvious. Certainly, a number of French
intellectuals (Bernard-Henry Levy, Alain Finkielkraut, etc.) indicated the contours
of this perception, when they tried to analyse the reasons of the West’s inability to
intervene properly in the Balkans.
53
almost no democracy at all as in the Soviet case. Therefore, it may seem that
in the modern or post-modern democracy such ideologies are necessarily
condemned to remain only ephemeral and more or less marginalised. This
would hold true if the extremist ideologies could be just a reappearance of
exactly the same ideologies with the same strategies as the original ones.
There are strong reasons to believe that the extreme ideologies are able to
adapt, to develop and get strengthened by any kind of crisis of democracy
or even by provoking a crisis themselves through the support of economic,
class and other vested interests. They can even become different ideologies;
they may even mimic a democratic discourse and behaviour – as in many
cases of the postmodern political hybridity. However, they cannot change
their basic attitude as they are making use of a criticism of democracy, pre-
sumably “empty of content” and unable to deliver for the needs of deprived
masses or disadvantaged Volk, or popolo, or narod, or whatever may be the
case within different languages and cultures.4
Furet‘s outstanding historical reflection written in the wake of the
post-communist world, may be read as a strong reminder that any simpli-
fied view of the past or over-optimistic assertions of a rise of a discontin-
ued new epoch may be fatally wrong. The inevitable reduction of complex-
ities of the historical circumstances that occurs in a historical narration
or, for example, in a condensed film or edited video, may suggest to the
reader/viewer of today an utterly wrong impression of the nature of events
in the not so distant past. At the time of the rise of bolshevism and fas-
cism the world has already been “globalised”, and this fact was quite clear-
ly mirrored in the both ideologies, since bolshevism planned the world rev-
olution and Nazism announced that the superior race is about to rule the
world. The communication technology of the time was less developed, yet
radio, telegraph, telephone and film were already able to induce a global
cognizance. The “information society” of today and near future, apart from
4 A good example how misread or misunderstood these interpretations may be was a
prevailing perception of the events in former Yugoslavia by the reporters and their
public in the West at the time of the last war in Yugoslavia. The horrible events
that marked the first few years of the last decade and dominated the news in the
global media for some four years were perceived because of “tribal hatred” with
deep roots in centuries of rivalry in the Balkans. The same reporters and public
would probably hesitate to accept an assertion that the Germany of the 1930s was
“tribal” or “uncivilised”. Yet, quite a lot of parallels between the rise of Nazism and
the nationalist regime in Serbia were quite obvious. Certainly, a number of French
intellectuals (Bernard-Henry Levy, Alain Finkielkraut, etc.) indicated the contours
of this perception, when they tried to analyse the reasons of the West’s inability to
intervene properly in the Balkans.
53
