RE: [microsound] Re: art of noise

[Steven Taylor <StevenT@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is some input from a friend of mine who is a lot more clued up than me
in this area. :)

> futurism  had  as  many links with bolshevism as with fascism. fascism
> isn't  necessarily  about  "superior beings", although the demagoguery
> necessary  to  rally  the  plebs  has  meant that in practice this has
> emerged  through  racial  superiority  doctrines,  ethnic persecution,
> imperialist  expansion,  and  genocide.  but the same could be said of
> bolshevik  states  (which  are  not  the  same  as 'communist', in the
> classical sense). fascism is primarily about celebrating the nation as
> an  organic  community  transcending  all  other loyalties. this often
> entails  doctrines  of  superiority  (racial or otherwise), but again,
> likewise  with leninist/stalinist bolshevism (with it's worship of the
> motherland).
> 
> historically,  fascism  didn't arise as a challenge to monarchism, but
> in  reaction  to  19th  century revolutions (eg. 1815-48, which *were*
> bourgeois-led  and anti-monarchist). in fact, many fascist states have
> been  strongly  monarchist  (eg., franco. mussolini was, ironically, a
> republican,  although  more due to his paranoia and megalomania than a
> principled  distrust of monarchs. he felt that victor emmanuel III was
> a  threat  to  his  popularity  and  power). the counter-revolutionary
> politics  of  fascism  kind  of  fitted in with the futurist/modernist
> reaction  to  relativism  and  skepticism,  which  viewed  culture  as
> arbitrary  and  denied  the  possibilty of essential, authentic being.
> this  was  expressed in futurism in terms of "the self-valuable word",
> in  fascism  in  terms  of  the  transcendental  nation-state,  and in
> bolshevism   in   terms   of   class  struggle,  the  vanguard  party,
> "dialectical materialism", and other such bullshit.