Conscription was controversial in general in Canada. At this point in the war, conscripts could not be sent overseas unless they volunteered to do so, although a high percentage did volunteer.
Sundin also noted that high scoring German fighter pilot, Hans-Joachim Marseille, was killed bailing out of his Me109 on this day. His engine had caught on fire, and he hit the horizontal stabilizer upon bailing out. Most of Marseille's victories had been over North Africa.
Marseilles was a high scoring, but largely unstudied, German pilot. He was noted for being unorthodox in his flying and his personality.
Canada closed Hastings Park Assembly Center, a temporary staging center for the internment of Japanese Canadians, as it was no longer needed, internment now being in full swing.
Hitler delivered a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast in which he promised that the Jews would be exterminated, rather than the "Aryan peoples". Nobody was, of course, attempting to exterminate the Aryan peoples, to the extent that such a category even exists. The speech was long and mocking, and oddly made reference to specific figures, like Gen. MacArthur.
The Germans were, at this point, in trouble, and at the higher reaches of their government, they knew it. Hitler had been sacking generals on the Eastern Front, the Afrika Korps was back on the defensive, and the British were raiding by air nightly. New weapons were being put into Allied production, which Hitler derisively mentioned, but which indicates that the knowledge that the Germans were losing the technology and production war was starting to set in.
On the same day, Germany and Turkey signed a trade agreement.
Greek Orthodox priests in the city of Kydoniae (Ayvalik) were taken into custody by the Turks while waiting, following the recommendation of their bishop, for evacuation The Turks would murder then three days later.
On the same day, Sotiros Krokidas became the interim Greek Prime Minister.
The Yankees took the American League Pennant, defeating the Boston Red Sox.
Camp Bragg, North Carolina, was redesignated as Fort Bragg, thereby indicating its permanent status.
Giorgia Meloni not sounding like Donald Trump. In a sort of "make Italy great again" speech she calls for uniting the country, governing for all Italians, and doesn't sound like some sort of cheap badly done rendition of Goodfellas. Indeed, her articulate nature comes across, even if you don't grasp Italian, in comparison to Trump's nearly complete lack of it.1Her victory message is certainly different, but the proof, of course, is in the cannolis, not in the menu presentation.
Does the election of Giorgia Meloni tell us something about what's going on in the US right now?
I think it does, or at least did, and therefore explains in part how we got to where we now are.
More than that, does it tell us what isn't going on, and what Trump's backer's might get, or rather the country, if we keep going down this road?
It probably does.
First, we'll note, her victory has already been heralded in parts of the English-speaking world as a non-fascist victory for true conservatism.
At the same time, the American usual suspects, probably none of which actually would be comfortable with Meloni's actual world view, rolled into congratulate her:
Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz under fire for celebrating Italian far-right victory
Italian politician Giorgia Meloni’s party traces its roots to the Second World War-era fascist movement founded by Benito Mussolini
All of this tells us a few things.
The first is that the FdI's rebranding of itself as a non-neo fascist party is taking root successfully, but it remains challenged. The party certainly had its roots there, and its symbol is made up of flames from Mussolini's grave, after all. But maybe it has reengineered itself as a right wing populist party that's no longer an anti-democratic fascist one.
Secondly, the English-speaking right is switching its attention from Viktor Mihály Orbán to Meloni, and maybe that's a good thing, if the FdI is no longer fascist and is democratic.
Of course, at the same time, the populist American right remains basically captive to a large degree to Donald Trump and his acolytes.
Finally, it really shows us what the populist Trumpite wing of the GOP, which anymore we might as well just call the GOP, is, and isn't.
So, what is Meloni's platform?
Well, I'm not Italian and I hadn't heard of the FdI until just the other day, or if I had, I hadn't paid all that much attention to it. Italy has had more than one neo Fascist party over the years. But it's easy to find videos of her giving really fiery speeches. A lot of those have been condensed into snippets, but if the full speech is listed to, they go in directions that you don't really expect. As far as I can tell, and I may be way off, the FdI, under Meloni, is hugely and unapologetically traditionalist and right wing populist, by it retains some syndicalist economic views. It also has dabbled, to some surprising extent, in social legislation which would be regarded as left wing in the United States, as trying to pass a bill regarding child care for working mothers.
So what caused more Italians to vote for it than any other party?
Probably that traditionalism, which is grounded in a sort of philosophy of nature, or new essentialism, or even a combination of classical Western thought and evolutionary biology. It appears, at least in its Italian form, to be of deeper thought than that of the normal American version. Indeed, American conservative intellectualism is of a much different type, and really hasn't evolved in any concrete form since Buckley's day.
What it might simply boil down to is what we've already mentioned. The FdI and Meloni are enormously anti-Woke and aren't apologetic about it in the least. They are also very nationalist in the "Italy for Italians" sense of things. And all that instinctively appeals, all around the globe, to people who aren't keen on being as multicultural as progressives assure them they should be and who, deep down, don't believe that a species that is male and female and has had marriage as its central fundamental societal element needs to now change that view.
It's a huge reaction to 1968 and the things 1968 foisted upon Western Society.
It's also, we might note, a reaction to the 1970s and the Greed is Good ethos that a triumphant capitalism brought in everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s. That part of Meloni's public platform seems missed. Meloni, however, has attacked modern globalism, and therefore that part of capitalism, pretty openly as well.
These themes all appeared in the far right before. Mussolini's original fascism was actually extremely radical in a left wing sense, reflecting a radicalism he'd grown up with, and his original membership in the Socialist Party. The Italian Fascist, however, combined some really left wing concepts with some extreme right wing ones, which was common to early fascist movements in many, but not all, places that it took root, that being one of the things that has made fascism so difficult to define. Because it did that, however, it also appealed to societal voters in the countries where it took root, who would adopt some of its views while blinding their eyes to others, and indeed blinding their eyes to the most radical elements of it.
Indeed, that's what made and still makes fascism really dangerous. We can see it in this example, maybe, and we can now see it in the U.S.
Indeed, we'll turn to the U.S. here, with this entry by some conservative journalist:
Republican voters face a clear choice in the 2024 presidential cycle. Those who think the conservative movement has the solutions to the nation’s crises should vote for a conventional GOP candidate. But those who believe the conservative movement is part of the problem should support Donald Trump.
Only Trump defied the deep state empowered by his Republican predecessors. Only Trump has broken from the disastrous foreign policy championed by the conservative movement. Only Trump has taken on the mania for free trade and outsourcing. No other figure of the right has shown the same willingness to break with his own side’s orthodoxies.
We've noted it here before, but we'll start with this and add in the Meloni element.
What's causing this hard right turn?
Well, in the U.S. and in Italy it's a feeling by rank and file, working people, that their politicians have completely abandoned them and their concerns combined with a reaction to modifying millennia old, and DNA rooted, institutions. That's pretty much it. The FdI promises to do something about that. American Conservatives have promised to do something about that since at least 1976, if not earlier, failed to do so, and even basically lied, in some instances, about their devotion to really doing so. They've started to do something, and ironically it's really Mitch McConnell, through his Supreme Court appointments, whose really started to change the social aspect of this around, in part.
The part where this isn't true had to do with unchecked illegal immigration. Trump, once again, did do something about that. Progressives and many others hated what he did, but he did do something, and that made him the first President since Teddy Kennedy's immigration reforms altered what had been in place to do so.
Economically, Trump had a good three-year run until COVID-19 came by plane, most likely, and ran through the country killing people and destroying the economy. Trump never acted like an economic conservative, however, and the GOP was pretty comfortable spending money like sailors on a three-day shore leave. As, by and large, people are happy with a good economy, it didn't really matter.
A person is free to view this anyway they wish, but Trump's far right policies, which appealed to many rank and file Republicans of the far right, and appealed to rust belt Democrats who came into the GOP, were nativist, traditional WASPish, and very socially conservative. To a very large degree, if they had been advanced by a more conventional politician, that individual would have been regarded as a huge success.
They were not advanced, however, by a conventional politician, but by Trump. It can be doubted, quite frankly, the extent to which Trump believed in any of the things he advocated for, or believes in anything at all other than himself, whom he appears to believe in obsessively. Trump is not an admirable man.
Trump may simply have picked up, as a salesman, on what his demographic wanted to buy. If he had done nothing more than that, he could not be criticized for it. Indeed, politicians of all stripes do that and in a democratic system, they must. There's no reason to believe, for example, that Harriet Hageman really thinks the election was stolen. Her base believes that, and so she must. It's an irony of the democratic system that really effective advocates of certain positions, truly believed by a politician's base, might find no real sympathy with the politician themselves. Indeed, that's why we find advocates of traditional family values caught up in sex scandals of all sorts, or advocates of law and order involved in crime.
Selling to your base, we note, is probably also why we find Kyrsten Sinema a Democrat looking out for monied interests. For that matter, it also may very well explain why politicians in certain regions seem to take positions that are contrary to their educations and backgrounds. They likely don't believe what they're saying, they believe they need to say it.
All of that is how democracy actually works, in part, but only in part.
Trump departed with that, however, in a truly fascistic sense. Appearing to believe principally in himself, he created a personality cult, some of which adopted the worst beliefs and inclinations of his supporters. And he became his movement, which is what Mussolini became, for example, to Italian fascism. His supporters still believe in him, but he believes in himself more. He essentially advances the concept that he, and only he, can save the nation against forces which are illegitimate.
And that is the core of fascism. FWIW, it's the core of Communism, too.
We said there may be lessons here. If so, what would they be?
The principal ones are the ones that Trump learned before he ever took office, and what Mitch McConnell, for all his differences with Trump, also knows. 1968 is over and much of what it brought has been ruinous. People look back instinctively to core societal traditional values and do not want change forced on them from above, or at all.
But what is also there is that there's a major society wide rejection of the consumerist economic revolution. People everywhere are wealthier than they used to be, but they are also more tied to their occupations than ever, and they don't want to be.
And people look at their countries and communities differently than capitalist do, and they don't want to look at them differently. They don't really want ever expanding this and that, and they often would just as soon have things be as they once were, rather than where they seem to be going.
All of those things can be advanced democratically. Meloni claims that she will now do that.
We'll see.
But this raises another question, particularly for American populists. Are you really wishing to buy the entire package?
Footnotes:
1. Meloni has a very direct and highly pithy form of delivery. In contempoary American politics it would be nearly impossible to find an analogy, in part because she very clearly means what she says. An interesting contrast would be to Trumpite Harriet Hageman, who is articulate enough, but who lacks the element of sincreity that Meloni obivously has. Perhaps only Liz Cheney, whose delivery is different, is comparable.
Trump's style nearly defies description, but it's odd and sort of oddly childish, as if he's delivering a rambling address to himself, or to a group in a children's club. That he's gained a wide following is surprsing in part for that fact, as people generally don't like being talked down to. He doesn't come across as consdesencing, but as not too bright. Interestingly one realy diehard fan of his that I spoke to some time ago, who couldn't imagine anyone not admiring him, related that "he speaks like us". Of note, that person was of a highly blue collar background from the East, which gives some creedance to the theory that New York politicians of recent years have learned their speaking style from dealing with East Coast mobsters.
The British launched Operation Braganza with the goal of capturing the ground around Deir el Munassib in Egypt. It would fail.
The Japanese tried again with a second submarine launched seaplane bombing mission against the forest in Oregon, hoping to set them on fire. They did not.
The great comedic actress Madeline Kahn was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
Lahn was born to Bernard and Freda Wolfson, who divorced when she was two. Her mother later married Hiller Kahn who adopted her. Her mother had wanted to be an actress and for a time pursued that goal. Kahn graduated in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy from Hofra University and began purusing an actiing career herself soon after.
Kahn in 1964.
Starting with roles on Broadway, she broke into film in 1968 and by 1972 was in the major motion picture, What's Up Doc?, which I've never seen. The following year, she was in Paper Moon, which is a great film, for which she secured an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was in a series of notable roles after that. In the 1990s she was in the television series Cosby, which was hugely respected, but which is now probably un-airable due to the later revelations about Bill Cosby. She died in 1999 of ovarian cancer at age 57.
There is, I'd note, no proof that Donald J. Trump is a Russian agent.
Nonetheless, two days after the Russians (we suspect) blew a hole in their own gas pipeline to Germany for no rational reason, our former President, who is now in trouble for all the classified information he packed home to his golf resort dwellings, come out with this steaming pile of pooh.
What the crap?
And what hubris.
"I will head up group???"
You have to be joking.
What idiot would want the same man who betrayed Afghanistan into Taliban hands and made twenty years of American, and Allied, effort there meaningless to head up a delegation to try to sort out the war between Ukraine and Russia, a war we might note which Trump buddy Putin is losing badly.1
What would his solution be? Russia takes half of Ukraine, 3/4s of Poland, and a slice of Lithuania to go?
Only a diehard Trump loyalist seriously would believe that Russia would not have raped Ukraine if Trump were President, although you can surely believe that the United States would have done nothing whatsoever to stop it. Nothing. The war would be over, alright, with Ukraine in Russian hands and a followup guerilla war in Ukraine going on right now. Biden's leadership on this topic at least has been monumental.
And why does this come out now?
That's the odd thing.
As noted, there's no evidence that Trump is a Russian agent.
There's reason to suspect he's a Russian asset, probably unknowingly.
But it's sure easy to have suspicions, if, for no other reasons, his own actions, which is in fact probably the only reason, which is why it probably also isn't true.
Anyway you look at it, this offer is beyond absurd.
Footnotes:
1. After posting this, I actually saw a recycled Twitter, or maybe Truth (sic) Social tweet in which somebody cheered "this is how a real President acts".
Not a really good President.
Also, according to the Washington Post, Tucker Carson suggested, which is different from actually stated, that the US may have sabotaged the pipeline. I'm not going to link into the original Carson broadcast as I can't stand him, but if Carson suggested that, I find it difficult in the extreme to believe that he believes that's possible. At this point, anyone still listening to him, really ought to stop.
This assumes, of course, that the Russians did it, in which case, they sabotaged their own pipeline.
The Nord Stream pipeline refers to two natural gas pipelines, now both severed, that run under the Baltic from Russia to Germany, supplying gas to the latter. Nord Stream 1 is owned by Nord Stream AG, whose majority interest owner is the Russian state gas company Gazprom. Nord Stream two is planned to be operated by Nord Stream 2 AG, which would be wholly owned by Gazprom. If the Russians damaged it, they severed what amounted to a stream of revenue. . . save for it being shut down right now due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Wars don't last forever, and logic would presume that the Russians would want to open the spigots back up after the fighting is over. Now, they can't. Or they can't until it's repaired. And now it might never be. Liking burning the boats, right now they can't go back, and neither can Germany. The Germans are going to have to get gas somewhere else.
Well, they've already started to, but they'll have to further look for it. They actually have to do it.
So why?
Well, right now, it's pretty darned hard to figure out why the Russians actually do anything whatsoever. They seem to be on a rampaging ride of ineptitude and incompetence. Their army, once presumed to be one of the best in the world, has been proven inept, with thin depth, in Ukraine. They have been outfought and outmaneuvered right and left by a smaller power. They're calling on reserves that they must not really have, as they're sending men who have only a year of service right into combat. They're actually bringing back blocking units to keep their army from retreating. Their equipment, which I was never impressed with, has been proven to be junk.
And rather than attempt to declare victory and go home, or negotiate a sane face-saving peace, they're doubling down and annexing territory they may very well have no ability to hold on it, while at home men are voting with their feet.
Nothing they've done has worked, and everything that Russian military pundits have called for has failed or is failing.
What good could blowing up your own pipeline serve?
Is it a warning to Germany that they could make things worse, that's supposed to cow the BDR into a greater level of neutrality? Is it a signal to Europe that they'd better take Russia seriously or Russia will take its ball and go home?
If so, that isn't working.
Is it a false flag operation designed to provide an excuse for harsher actions against Ukraine? If so, it's not believable that Ukraine could have severed an undersea pipeline in the Baltic, and it doesn't seem like Russia can be any harsher on Ukraine than it already is trying to be.
Is it to provide an excuse for expanding the war west, under the pretext that the Poles or the Germans did it? If so, there's no reason to believe that the Russians can do any better against the Poles than they already are against Ukraine, and they definitely can't do better against Germany, let alone NATO at large.
Or is it just for interior consumption in a country that's sending men into combat without training for a cause that rank and file Russians aren't seemingly that keen on?
Footnotes:
1. This entry was started before Donald J. Trump posted his absolutely incredibly hubristic comment that he would serve as negotiator due to this event.
Trump will be lucky if he doesn't end up serving time. That he's suggest acting as a mediator is, well, simply beyond belief.
Reich often frustrates me on economic issues, as he creeps up on great Distributist revelations, and then, like most "progressive" economists, runs away from them as fast as he can, making him in essence just part of the corporate capitalist economic mob. There's really very little difference between them and right wing conservative economist other than the issue of exactly how much we should tax the rich.
Anyhow, he does make interesting economic points. Here's one I've often wondered about.
Meloni says she's not a fascist, and compares her party to the British Tories, the Israeli Likud, and the GOP. The American GOP aside, which is in turmoil and which we'll discuss a little in round two of this fascinating series, the FdI, whatever it is, definitely isn't the British Conservative Party or the Israeli Likud.
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.
G.K. Chesterton, in Heretics
This quote, but not in its full length, is getting a lot of traction right now as it shows up, in Italian, being quoted by Giorgina Meloni, in a truncated form, which takes from the following:
Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.
I was surprised to find Meloni quote Chesterton, as I don't think of Chesterton as being a fan of, or useful to, fascists. But perhaps this puts us on the uncomfortable slope where Falangist slide into a certain type of conservatism and trying to define the difficult differences between the Mediterranean post World War Two far right, and Hungarian one, and the American one.
Italian and Spanish fascists were corporatists or syndicalists, which is a hard concept to explain to Americans. They didn't eliminate free enterprise but rather controlled it, with a concept that everything was subordinated to the good of the state which was supposed to work for the good of the people. By the people, it usually meant only the nation in the ethnic sense. In other words, Italian fascists might make common cause with, let's say, Spanish fascists, but that didn't mean that they thought of themselves as the same by any means. The Italian fascists worried principally about ethnic Italians only, which of course ultimately lead to an attempt to expand the Italian empire at the expense of non Italians. Spain's Franco era (Franco was not a fascist, or a Carlist) pretty much started off that way right from the onset, i.e,. Spain's empire was for the Spanish, not for Moroccans.
Falangist are a subset of fascist, with some distinct beliefs. Their basic core tenants were set out in the Twenty Six Points they issued, which stated the following:
NATION - UNITY - EMPIRE
1. We believe in the supreme reality of Spain. The strengthening, elevating, and magnifying of this reality is the urgent collective goal of all Spaniards. Individual, group, and class interests must inexorably give way in order to achieve this goal.
2. Spain has a single destiny in the world. Every conspiracy against this common unity is repulsive. Any kind of separatism is a crime which we shall not pardon. The existing Constitution, to the degree that it encourages disintegration, weakens this common destiny of Spain. Therefore we demand its annulment in a thundering voice.
3. We have the determination to build an Empire. We affirm that Spain's historic fulfilment lies in Empire. We claim for Spain a pre-eminent position in Europe. We can tolerate neither international isolation nor foreign interference. As regards the countries of Hispanic America, we favour unification of their culture, economic interests and power. Spain will continue to act as the spiritual axis of the Hispanic world as a sign of her pre-eminence in worldwide enterprises.
4. Our armed forces- on land, sea, and in the air- must be kept trained and sufficiently large to assure to Spain at all times its complete independence and a status in the world that befits it. We shall bestow upon our Armed Forces of land, sea, and air all the dignity they merit, and we shall cause their military conception of life to infuse every aspect of Spanish life.
5. Spain shall once more seek her glory and her wealth on the sea lanes. Spain must aspire to become a great maritime power, for reasons of both defence and commerce. We demand for the fatherland equal status with others in maritime power and aerial routes.
STATE - INDIVIDUAL - LIBERTY
6. Our State will be a totalitarian instrument to defend the integrity of the fatherland. All Spaniards will participate in this through their various family, municipal, and syndical roles. There shall be no participation in it by political parties. We shall implacably abolish the system of political parties and all of their consequences- inorganic suffrage, representation of clashing groups, and a Parliament of the type that is all too well known.
7. Human dignity, integrity, and freedom are eternal, intangible values. But one is not really free unless he is a part of a strong and free nation. No one will be permitted to use his freedom against the nation, which is the bulwark of the fatherland's freedom. Rigorous discipline will prevent any attempt to envenom and disunite the Spanish people or to incite them against the destiny of the fatherland.
8. The National-Syndicalist State will permit all kinds of private initiative that are compatible with the collective interest, and it will also protect and encourage the profitable ones.
ECONOMY - LABOUR - CLASS STRUGGLE
9. Our conception of Spain in the economic realm is that of a gigantic syndicate of producers. We shall organise Spanish society corporatively through a system of vertical syndicates for the various field of production, all working toward national economic unity.
10. We repudiate the capitalistic system which shows no understanding of the needs of the people, dehumanises private property, and causes workers to be lumped together in a shapeless, miserable mass of people who are filled with desperation. Our spiritual and national conception of life also repudiates Marxism. We shall redirect the impetuousness of those working classes who today are led astray by Marxism, and we shall seek to bring them into direct participation in fulfilling the great task of the national state.
11. The National-Syndicalist State will not cruelly stand apart from man's economic struggles, nor watch impassively while the strongest class dominates the weakest. Our regime will eliminate the very roots of class struggle, because all who work together in production shall comprise one single organic entity. We reject and we shall prevent at all costs selfish interests from abusing others, and we shall halt anarchy in the field of labour relations.
12. The first duty of wealth- and our State shall so affirm- is to better the conditions of the people. It is intolerable that enormous masses of people should live wretchedly while a small number enjoy all kinds of luxuries.
13. The State will recognise private property as a legitimate means for achieving individual, family, and social goals, and will protect it against the abuses of large-scale finance capital, speculators, and money lenders.
14. We shall support the trend toward nationalisation of banking services and, through a system of Corporations, the great public utilities.
15. All Spaniards have the right to work. Public agencies must of necessity provide support for those who find themselves in desperate straits. As we proceed toward a totally new structure, we shall maintain and strengthen all the advantages that existing social legislation gives to workers.
16. Unless they are disabled, all Spaniards have the duty to work. The National-Syndicalist State will not give the slightest consideration to those who fail to perform some useful function and who try to live as drones at the expense of the labour of the majority of people.
LAND
17. We must, at all costs, raise the standard of living in the countryside, which is Spain's permanent source of food. To this end, we demand agreement that will bring to culmination without further delay the economic and social reforms of the agricultural sector.
18. Our program of economic reforms will enrich agricultural production by means of the following:
By assuring a minimum remuneration to all agricultural producers.
By demanding that there be restored to the countryside, in order to provide it with an adequate endowment, a portion of that which the rural population is paying to the cities for intellectual and commercial services.
By organising a truly national system of agricultural credit which will lend money to farmers at low interest against the guarantee of their property and crops, and redeem them from usury and local tyrants.
By spreading education with respect to better methods of farming and sheep raising.
By ordering the rational utilisation of lands in accordance with their suitability and with marketing possibilities.
By adjusting tariff policy in such a way as to protect agriculture and the livestock industry.
By accelerating reclamation projects. By rationalising the units of cultivation, so as to eliminate wasted latifundia and uneconomic, miniscule plots.
19. Our program of social reforms in the field of agriculture will be achieved:
By redistributing arable land in such a way as to revive family farms and give energetic encouragement to the syndicalisation of farm labourers.
By redeeming from misery those masses of people who presently are barely eking out a living on sterile land, and by transferring such people to new and arable lands.
20. We shall undertake a relentless campaign of reforestation and livestock breeding, and we shall punish severely those who resist it. We shall support the compulsory, temporary mobilisation of all Spanish youth for this historic goal of rebuilding the national commonwealth.
21. The State may expropriate without indemnity lands of those owners who either acquired them or exploited them illegally.
22. It will be the primary goal of the National-Syndicalist State to rebuild the communal patrimonies of the towns.
NATIONAL EDUCATION - RELIGION
23. It shall be the essential mission of the State to attain by means of rigorous disciplining of education a strong, united national spirit, and to instil in the souls of future generations a sense of rejoicing and pride in the fatherland.
All men shall receive pre-military training to prepare them for the honour of being enlisted in the National and Popular Army of Spain.
24. Cultural life shall be organised so that no talent will be undeveloped because of insufficient economic means. All who merit it shall be assured ready access to a higher education.
25. Our Movement incorporates the Catholic meaning- of glorious tradition, and especially in Spain- of national reconstruction. The Church and the State will co-ordinate their respective powers so as to permit no interference or activity that may impair the dignity of the State or national integrity.
NATIONAL REVOLUTION
26. The Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las JONS demands a new order, as set forth in the foregoing principles. In the face of the resistance from the present order, it calls for a revolution to implant this new order. Its method of procedure will be direct, bold, and combative. Life signifies the art and science of warfare (milicia) and must be lived with a spirit that is purified by service and sacrifice.
As can be seen, in the Spanish example, religion was mentioned, but suppressed as subordinate to the overall goals of the state.
Italian fascism did not even go that far, but regarded, oddly enough, the Church as a sometimes intellectual ally in that Italian fascism, while radical in many ways, argued for a return to cultural traditionalism, even though it did not regard that as supporting a religious state. Essentially, to a relatively small degree, Italian fascism regarded some of the Church's emphasis as traveling on a somewhat intersecting road.
That's not the point of this article here, however, but it serves to point out that while something is going on in the entire Western World right now, it's not really the same every place it pops up. Consider again the clip we had of Meloni from the other day.
That's one of the most Un-American speeches you can imagine, although a lot of Americans wouldn't realize it. Not that Meloni would deliver an American speech, she's Italian, but she's not only complaining of the post 1968 liberal changes to the accepted culture, which she is, she's blaming it principally on consumerism.
This view isn't completely unheard of in the United States. People will take shots at consumerism, but it's usually people on the left that do it, and they don't link it to feminism and the LBGQT movement like Meloni is. Not usually. About the closest I've ever heard of that is the essay that somebody wrote some time ago, I've forgotten who, that homosexuals were regarded as the prefect citizens by liberal elites, as they consumed, but didn't reproduce, and lacked the messy personal nature that the 98% of those with normal inclination have. That approaches this statement, but it doesn't go anywhere near as far as Meloni did.
Meloni is definitely tapping into something here, however, in that what she's espousing is the concept that post 68 liberalism is at war with human nature, and she's not wholly incorrect in that either. That's also what partially, but only partially, given rise to populism in the United States. The part of her speech here that doesn't deal with economics would find a sympathetic ear in some parts of the far right.
Indeed, it finds a sympathetic, if surprised, ear from some who are in the Chestertonian camp, or more appropriately at his stammtisch. One twitter commentator, for example, noted upon hearing this that in his view he wasn't saying anything that was fascistic, but rather a string of things in line with Catholic social teaching, with which he approved. This definitely isn't the case for the American Trumpist wing of the GOP.
Is she therefore not a fascist, but rather somebody who would be more comfortable with Chesteron and Belloc?
Frankly, we really don't know. She hasn't been in power, yet, and her party hasn't been, either. What may distinguish it is its willingness to act democratically. That, in the end, has tended to be the defining matter distinguishing very far right political parties from fascist ones, even if the former does not really meet the overall fascist definition. The Falangist and Italian fascist were hostile to democracy, there's no two ways about it. Is the modern FdI? We don't know yet.
For the same reason, we can't say if the FdI is in favor of Illiberal democracy. Progressives could look at this and immediately say that of course it is, but it's really not that simple at all The FdI may be very far right, without being favoring Illiberal democracy. Favoring political progressivism and having a liberal democracy are not the same thing, even though progressives seem to feel it is.
At the end of the day, Meloni may end up being a flash in the pan. As Italy is a parliamentary democracy, her party, while gathering the most votes, only has about 25% of them. The center left party has nearly as many. The remaining 25%, more or less, of votes she needs from other Italian right wing parties do not all come, by any means, from ones that have the same outlook.
But this will prove interesting.
All over Europe, this trend has been occurring. Just last week, the Sweden Democrats, which have neo-Nazi roots, became the second-largest governing partner in the Swedish government. It's a very hard right nationalistic party. We've already discussed Viktor Orban's Hungarian government and it's espousing of Illiberal Democracy. Poland's largest party is the Law and Justice Party, which is a right wing populist party. Slovakia's largest party is the right wing populist Ordinary People and Independents Party. And France, of course, has the National Rally Party which threatened to take office during the last French election and which is the second-largest party in the government, only slightly behind that of the largest party.
Then we have the current GOP.
Perhaps the real distinguishing thing about the current Trump wing of the GOP, which is the dominant branch right now, is that these other parties, which are not all the same, are at least pretty open about their views, which they can be as they're in a parliamentary system. In the case of the Trumpist, the views remain partially camouflaged. And the other major factor right now is that these European parties save for one, Orban's, all seem to be comfortable with full democracy, although I'd certainly hold the question open for the Sweden Democrats on that query as its history would suggest that it wouldn't be, if it were in power.
So, once again, what's that tell us?
It's hard to say, but as noted earlier on this blog, it seems to be an upset with the results of the post 1968 liberalization of the Western World. People feel it's taken from them and forced them into things they don't agree with and don't want to be. And to at least some extent, they feel that it's brought about a culture that's at war with natural culture.
In short, people feel what Meloni expressed:
Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.
All of that were things that conservative parties already held, however. They weren't, however, very successful at doing anything about their views in a massive way. All of these groups promise to.
And maybe they actually would. . . but in the American case, what does that actually mean and do people really know what they're suggesting? We'll look at that next.
Today in World War II History—September 27, 1942: During the withdrawal from Matanikau on Guadalcanal, Signalman 1C Douglas Munro uses his Higgins Boat to shield Marines at the cost of his life;.
So notes Sarah Sundin on her blog.
Douglas Munro.
Munro had dropped out of college to enter the Coast Guard in 1939 as he saw the threat of war looming, doing so as its primary mission was saving lives. He's been born to a Canadian mother and American father, in Canada, but his father had relocated the family to the United States as a child. Munro was very slight of build, as the photograph above shows, and had to eat heavily to meet the Coast Guard enlistment weight.
Sundin also notes that today saw the last performance by Glenn Miller before he entered the service. At the time he was making $15,000 to $20,000 per week, which seems like a lot now, but which was the equivalent of $250,000 to $333,000 per week in today's' dollars, a vast sum indeed.
Fratelli d'Italia, the "Brothers of Italy", have won the Italian election.
Not outright, but with 26% of the vote. Enough of a command that, together with another right wing party and a center right party, Giorgia Meloni's neo-fascist party will govern.12 The party, in second position, is the Italian center left Democratic Party, but it can't put together a ruling coalition.
This gives Italy, when in the 1945 to early 1970s period teetered on the edge of falling into Communism, its most right wing government since Mussolini was strung up.
The Fratelli d'Italia is nativist, anti-immigrant, anti-European Union, and traditionalist. It's leader, Giorgia Meloni has said of herself; "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I’m Christian". The slogan is sufficiently popular that it's been set to techno pop with her saying those things, in Italian, and it's pretty effective. You can also find clips of her saying, but to members of the Spanish Vox party, in Italian;
Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology... no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration... no to big international finance... no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!"
So where is she basically coming from: Well, here:
It's impossible at this point not to see that something is going on in the Western World. It's not just Orban, or Trump.
Its the entire Western World.
Indeed, if anything, Trump's version of this is the most decayed and perverted. Meloni's may be the most open and honest.
So how did we get here?
This might be the reaction, long delayed, to 1968, and all it brought about.
Indeed, it almost certainly is. The question is what form that takes, and where that form takes shape. In Italy, Meloni, running from the hard populist right, will form a coalition government in a parliament in which, perhaps ironically, nobody is claiming a minority government reflects corruption in the vote, whereas in our country, with a Federal democracy that's designed to work slow and defeat "coalitions", or parties, one side is. Therefore, ironically, Italy, which has a history of fascism but never endured de-fascism, democracy may actually be less imperiled.
At any rate, we noted here earlier that in post Boomer generations, liberalism was waning and conservatism building. What we missed is that it's waning quicker than we anticipated, and the reaction to 1968 seems to be very widespread, and increasingly strong.
Footnotes
1. "Meloni" means just what it sounds like.
Indeed, Meloni in a short video clip, can be seen holding two cantaloupes chest high making a joke about it. Something that's somewhat unique to Italian politics, which remains occasionally ribald.
2. The FdI denies that it's neo-fascist, and while we've referred to them here that way, this wants again raises the topic of "what is a fascist". It's not as easy to answer as it might at first seem.
The FdI may have a point here, although I frankly don't know. At the end of the day, fascism implies an element of totalitarianism. The Italian fascists of the 1920s through 1940s made no bones about not approving of democracy. The Spanish fascist were of the same mind set. By and large, neo-fascist have also been anti-democratic.
This contrasts with the Illiberal Democrats, who tolerate a degree of democracy, but within a preset framework. They're okay with the vote, up to a point, and that point is the point at which a society is supposed to have a cultural set of concepts upon which it operates. That's not up for a vote. That concept has a lot of sympathy, it seems, all over the Western World right now.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
The Royal Air Force raids Oslo, Norway with four de Havilland Mosquitos. The target was the Gestapo headquarters, but the target was missed, and civilian houses were hit instead. One of the Mosquitos, one of the more amazing aircraft of World War Two, was shot down.
Mosquito B, Mark IV, 1942.
The RAF nonetheless claimed the raid as a victory, which in some ways, it was.
The plywood bodied Mosquito was on of the great aircraft of the war, serving both as a light bomber and a twin engined fighter.
British General Sir Charles Harington, who had to deal the prior year with 50,000 Greek troops being deployed to Thrace, now had to deal with Turkish troops who were threatening the neutral zone. In the first crisis, the Turks offered 20,000 troops to help, which were declined, and in the second, the Greeks offered 20,000 troops, but declined.
Today, a century ago, Harington issued an ultimatum to the Turks to withdraw from the neutral zone.
General Harington, with Selahattin Adil Paşa, before his final departure from Istanbul, Dolmabahçe wharf
The British were in a bad way, in reality, as their government was not ready to fight without the Dominions, and Canada had refused.
The New York Giants won the National League pennant with a 5 to 4 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals
Scenes from around Boulder Canyon taken on this day, as geologist from the USGS made an epic trip.
Caldville Ruins below the Boulder damsite. Note the geologist wearing a "wife beater" t-shirt, and hatless. Very unusual photo for the era.
The blog was excellent, and we've drawn from it as a source here frequently.
Comments on the blog trailed on for some time after that, but have stopped updating.
Something happened. There was no indication at all the blog would be shut down, and none of the comments that were put up were replied to. The fact that comments were put up for almost two years suggests that somebody continued to monitor it, as spam comments did not appear.
These blogs are put up by people, most of whom do this as labors of love. This blog demonstrated a colossal amount of labor going into it. The sudden end of the blog likely means the death or severe health crisis of the author.
Some blogs disappear that way.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Adolph Hitler, demonstrating increasing concern of the increasingly slow rate of advance on the Eastern Front, and thereby demonstrating a better understanding of the tactical situation than he is sometimes given credit for, sacked Franz Halder of the Chief of Staff of the OKH.
Long term, this proved to be a lucky break for Halder who had a role complicit with German atrocities in the East. Losing his position in 1942, he became a favorite of Western militaries post-war and was involved in the creation of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth. He lived until 1972.
He was replaced by Kurt Zeitzler. Zeitzler was a professional staff officer who grew increasingly frustrated in his role and came to be estranged from Hitler. He sought to resign in 1944 and ultimately was allowed to do so, to be followed by Hitler cashiering him from the German Army in January 1945. Zeitzler was somewhat unusual in that he did not serve any time at all after the war unlike most very senior German generals. He was called as a witness for the defense in the Nuremberg Trails. He died in 1963.
The German Army broke through at Stalingrad, advancing to the Volga, and cutting the Red Army 62nd Army in two.
The Japanese landed on Maliana in the Gilberts.
The last entry on the excellent World War Two Day-By-Day Blog, linked in down in our disconnected blog's thread, was on this day, which provided:
Day 1120 September 24, 1942
In the North Atlantic 300-500 miles East of the tip of Greenland, U-432 sinks American SS Pennmar at 1.44 AM (1 man is crushed between a raft and the ship and another drowns, 59 survivors picked up later in the day by US Coast Guard cutter USCGC Bibb), U-617 sinks Belgian SS Roumanie at 1.58 PM (36 crew and six British gunners killed, chief engineer Suykerbuyk is found on a raft and taken prisoner by U-617) and U-619 sinks American SS John Winthrop with 5 torpedoes and the deck gun (all 39 crew and 13 gunners lost).
At Stalingrad, German 94th Infantry and 24th Panzer Divisions wipe out the Soviet defenders in the pocket in South of the city. Furious at the delay in taking Stalingrad and lack of success reaching oilfields in the Caucasus, Hitler dismisses General Halder as OKH Chief of Staff, replacing him with General Kurt Zeitzler.
In the Mediterranean, Greek submarine RHS Nereus sinks small Italian freighter Fiume 7 miles Southwest of Rhodes. At 11.35 PM 36 miles Southwest of Tiros, Lebanon, U-561 sinks Egyptian Sailing ship Sphinx with 22 rounds from the deck gun.
Off the coast of British Guyana, South America. American SS Antinous (torpedoed yesterday by U-515) is taken in tow by British rescue tug HMS Zwatre Zee (most powerful tug in the world at 4200 Horse Power) but is sunk at 6.25 PM by U-512. At 9.24 AM, U-175 sinks American SS West Chetac (22 crew and 9 gunners drown trying to abandon ship, 17 crew and 2 gunners on 3 rafts picked up on October 1 20 miles off Trinidad by US destroyer USS Roe and landed at Port of Spain).
At 1.30 PM, a Japanese fighter spots Australian destroyer HMAS Voyager beached at Betano Bay, East Timor. At 4 PM, Japanese bombers return and damage HMAS Voyager beyond recovery (no casualties) but the 400 Australian commandos (2/4th Independent Company) have already landed safely.
On Guadalcanal, Japanese General Kawaguchi has regrouped 4000 troops (following the failed assault on Edson’s Ridge 10 days ago) in the Matanikau Valley, 5 miles West of the US positions at Henderson Field. US Marine General Vandegrift sends out 2 battalions to ‘mop up’ what he believes are only 400 Japanese in Matanikau Valley (Colonel ‘Chesty’ Puller 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment will go inland over 1200-foot high Mont Austen while 1st Raider Battalion under Colonel Samuel Griffith takes the coastal route into the Valley).
US bombers Douglas Dauntless dive bombers from Henderson Field (Marine squadron VMSB 231 and Naval squadron VS 3) attack Japanese destroyers Umikaze and Kawakaze on a “Tokyo Express” run, bringing troops and supplies to Guadalcanal from Shortland Island at the Western end of the Solomon Islands. Umikaze is damaged by a near miss (8 killed) forcing the convoy to abort landings and causing Umikaze to be repaired Truk. USAAF B-17 bombers raid the Japanese naval base on Shortland damaging Japanese seaplane carrier Sanuki Maru.
British destroyer HMS Nizam sinks a Vichy French merchant ship Southwest of Madagascar.
220 miles West of the tip of India, Japanese submarine I-165 sinks US freighter Losmar (3 killed, 14 survivors rescued by British ship Louise Moller on October 5 and another 7 survivors reach the West coast of Ceylon on October 17).
That entry came a decade ago, and then the entries suddenly ceased.
The Greek Army rebelled in the 11 September 1922 Revolution (Επανάσταση της 11ης Σεπτεμβρίου 1922) so named as Greece remained on the Julian calendar at the time.
This confusing event followed in the wake of public upset at the loss of the Greek effort in Anatolia, proving if nothing else that defeated armies are dangerous to their own governments, if to nobody else.
The rebellion led to the abdication of the king, who was on his second reign, having suffered from military discontent during World War One as well. He'd opposed entering the war. The Greek monarchy would be restored a few days later and King George II would take over, who would also have two reigns, one ending in 1924, and a second running from 1935 to 1947.
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