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I mean didn't he literally just get purged for expressing a political opinion?
He doesn't have to read about authoritarian states, he's already living in one!
EDIT: Well that comment didn't last long. Here's the original:
Fascism can be conceived as the marriage between biological instinct and the State, and for this reason any fascist should note: the #1 most important thing is for your spokespersons to be biologically compelling, ie beautiful and strong. There’s a reason why Hitler perfected his voice and gestures and costumes in private, only allowing himself to be seen in select moments indicating strength — even at select times of day and in select lighting! You don’t want a non-masculine mid to ever be professing “fascism” in public. This is the real issue with the Jubilee video. It’s all Chad meme (always has been .jpg).
This is a ahistorical view. Fascism grew out of syndicalism, the specifically biological animus is a German adjunct which plainly grew out of the culturally German importance of blood. Mussolini was famously anti-racist before his alliance with Germany, and many examples of actual fascism (as opposed to run of the mill authoritarian nationalism) had little to do with race.
What you're trying to point at is a central concern for the spirited part of the soul that guides fascist (and more generaly ultranationalist) politics in reaction to its neglect by liberal democracy. What the Greeks and Fukuyama call Thymos. The desire for recognition, dignity, and self-worth. The drive to be acknowledged as having value and status.
This is at the center of revanchism, the obscession with aesthetics and much of Fascist politics. But the form it takes is a function of the society it appears in. Romanian fascism focused on religion, German fascism focused on race, etc.
By “biological” I don’t mean race alone: the biological instinct to secure and favor one’s territory without regard for any potential benefit of internationalism; a leader who is strong, militant and paternal, occupying the same role as a leader in a primitive human group or warband; paternal regard for citizens; distrust of foreigners and saving the worst hatred for foreigners who meddle in your territory; importance of allegiance to a single leader; importance of tradition; shaming individualism; increasing pride through deeds specifically for the group (as opposed to say, getting a job in finance). These spring up from a biological source; non-fascist societies actually need to train people to feel otherwise. An untrained boy will always like the strong, militant, paternal superhero; he makes exclusive “hide-outs” in the woods with his own friend group and would be upset if another group of boys encroached; he imitates his father’s ways; etc. You could see these features in many prehistoric societies.
All behavior springs from a biological source ultimately. So I don't see this as a productive distinction.
Epithumia and Logos, which are the more characteristic motivators of Liberalism are also quite natural. You will see humans express desire and self-interest without needing to be taught as such.
And indeed the sort of paternalist hero worship that you describe features prominently in the history of most political ideologies, Liberalism included. Italians will be quite familiar with Garibaldi for instance.
No, not every state roots itself in biological instinct to the same degree. “Ranked choice voting” and “representatives based on population” are examples of procedures unrooted in biological instinct. These procedures require the use of intellect to conclude that the procedure is ultimately in our best interest; when instinct rears its head and says “I wish my leader continued longer than the term allows”, it is quelched by a sense of logic insisting that it’s for the greater good. Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler obtained power through force (or the threat thereof) without much interest in procedure. That’s biological: you could see that happen in humans 100k years ago, or in primate groups.
Epithumia and Logos are too broad as concepts to know in what sense you mean that they are “biological”. Logos, as a construct of wisdom, is surely non-biological.
I don’t believe that humans actually come with “individualistic self-interest”; they come with a self-interest mediated by social cooperation and tribal allegiance. Purely individualistic self-interest is… how old? Not very old at all. It’s like 20th century new. In any other period, someone who pursued ruthless self-interest at the expense of the collective would be (rightfully) purged, his genes being defective.
Probably because of his heroic and glorious military career in pursuit of securing territory for a people, his subservience of selfish ambition to nationalist aspirations. Or because “he is not a man; he is a symbol, a form; he is the Italian soul”. His hero worship is precisely because he mirrors fascism. If he were simply a bureaucrat politician with some ideas, no one would worship him. And indeed, I don’t think anyone worships him for his view of democratic republicanism (he fought for the monarchists for the sake of unification). Fascism is about Garibaldimaxxing, to the fullest extent, so that men have a lot of passionate feelings about the nation, which can only occur through marrying it to biological instinct.
Why?
Iceland's parliament is about 11 centuries old. And Mesopotamia had primitive forms of democracy. It's quite literally as old as History. I see no reason to assume it's not as viscerally embedded in human nature as autocracy.
All three systems of government seem to fade into the eons in this way.
Fascism is ultranationalist, that's true, but it has neither a monopoly on nationalism, nor on ultranationalism, making this not a sufficiently defining characteristic to base a whole political analysis on, in my view.
I don’t think we know enough about ancient Mesopotamia to say whether it was a primitive democracy; given that the King was labeled “king of the universe” I think it’s unlikely. But in any case, “old as history” means “as old as civilization”, and humans are much older than that. Men didn’t form advanced civilization due to any biological impulse or feeling compelling them, but because their intellect persuaded them that it was for the greater good. It required significant social infrastructure to keep afloat: priests, myths, stories, tragedies, rituals, public executions, angry gods.
Reading is as old as written history, but reading is non-biological. It has been lost before, like in the Bronze Age Collapse / Greek Dark Ages. It’s not like throwing, or building a shelter, which all humans know how to do. An example in another animal might be a primate learning primitive sign language. That’s not biologically-rooted, though they can do it. You can train a monkey to ride a unicycle, but that’s not natural or rooted in their biology.
So there’s a very real, and useful, distinction between “humans do this because intellect/reason assures them of a delayed benefit”, and “humans do this because they feel a strong primal urge to do it”. A woman might be compelled by reason to marry an ugly guy if she has no other option; but a woman would not be passionate about it. I don’t think fascism just so happens to take advantage of animal biology to increase passion for the state; I think that this is its functional definition, especially colloquially.
Because it is an abstract construct that requires training for a human to either care about or learn. Humans don’t stumble across abstract philosophy in the natural environment.
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