Page 61 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 61
defining the ideology of extremism
brought up such points in his essay on Ethics, where he elaborates criticism
of the humanist ideology.
Victims are identified with the confused animal shown on the dis-
play, and humanitarians are identified with conscience and im-
perative... Who cannot see that these ethics, which deals with the
misery of the world, hides white Human behind its Human-vic-
tim, good Human. Because the barbarity of the situation is thought
of only in the light of ‘human rights’- however in fact we have in-
variably to deal with the political situation that demands politi-
cal thought-practice, whose real agents are always already present
– this situation is perceived from the highs of our presumably gen-
tle peace as uncivilised, as the one, that demands the civilised to in-
tervene in the civilised manner. But each intervention in the name
of civilisation demands above all a contempt of the whole situation
including the victims (Badiou, 1993: p. 14/15).
Fukuyama‘s liberal democracy therefore represents a framework,
within which the extremist discourse develops. The Universalist idea of the
liberal democracy that only recently got rid of the Universalist extreme rep-
resented by bolshevism and some other left wing ideologies, is now con-
fronted with the strengthened particularism, which, in view of Badiou‘s
criticism, grows from within it. The demise of communism even enlarged
the field of argumentation for the right wing extremists: now their rhetoric
increasingly comprises a criticism of capitalism as a threat to the nation-
al identity. Therefore, the multinational capitalism enters into the paranoid
picture of a conspiracy against the “little man”. As in the times of the rise
of bolshevism and fascism, so today the formula of the “little man” makes
it possible for the extreme ideology to connect its aspirations to the frus-
trations of large layers of society, to enlarge its rank and file and to scheme
for an end of democracy. On the other side of this clash of identities within
so-called new democracies, the nationalist extremism finds its reasons in
the West’s aloofness and in the myths of the past that support the idea of a
nation‘s own “superior identity”. The representative democracy, just being
introduced in the former socialist countries, is already accused in the ex-
tremist populist and nationalist discourse as ineffective, corrupt and cul-
turally strange. And although the historic paradigm of bolshevism and fas-
cism seems to be mainly a matter of the past, which cannot repeat itself, the
redressed and rearranged patterns are plain to see within the core of grow-
ing old/new ideologies.
59
brought up such points in his essay on Ethics, where he elaborates criticism
of the humanist ideology.
Victims are identified with the confused animal shown on the dis-
play, and humanitarians are identified with conscience and im-
perative... Who cannot see that these ethics, which deals with the
misery of the world, hides white Human behind its Human-vic-
tim, good Human. Because the barbarity of the situation is thought
of only in the light of ‘human rights’- however in fact we have in-
variably to deal with the political situation that demands politi-
cal thought-practice, whose real agents are always already present
– this situation is perceived from the highs of our presumably gen-
tle peace as uncivilised, as the one, that demands the civilised to in-
tervene in the civilised manner. But each intervention in the name
of civilisation demands above all a contempt of the whole situation
including the victims (Badiou, 1993: p. 14/15).
Fukuyama‘s liberal democracy therefore represents a framework,
within which the extremist discourse develops. The Universalist idea of the
liberal democracy that only recently got rid of the Universalist extreme rep-
resented by bolshevism and some other left wing ideologies, is now con-
fronted with the strengthened particularism, which, in view of Badiou‘s
criticism, grows from within it. The demise of communism even enlarged
the field of argumentation for the right wing extremists: now their rhetoric
increasingly comprises a criticism of capitalism as a threat to the nation-
al identity. Therefore, the multinational capitalism enters into the paranoid
picture of a conspiracy against the “little man”. As in the times of the rise
of bolshevism and fascism, so today the formula of the “little man” makes
it possible for the extreme ideology to connect its aspirations to the frus-
trations of large layers of society, to enlarge its rank and file and to scheme
for an end of democracy. On the other side of this clash of identities within
so-called new democracies, the nationalist extremism finds its reasons in
the West’s aloofness and in the myths of the past that support the idea of a
nation‘s own “superior identity”. The representative democracy, just being
introduced in the former socialist countries, is already accused in the ex-
tremist populist and nationalist discourse as ineffective, corrupt and cul-
turally strange. And although the historic paradigm of bolshevism and fas-
cism seems to be mainly a matter of the past, which cannot repeat itself, the
redressed and rearranged patterns are plain to see within the core of grow-
ing old/new ideologies.
59
