Fascismo, nazismo, comunismo, socialismo, democrazia, social-democrazia…
Noi siamo talmente abituati a vedere come contrapposte queste ideologie che non riusciamo più a coglierne l’affinità profonda. Ci viene in aiuto Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn con il suo libro “Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse”: sono tutti sistemi di governo di “sinistra”. Nel suo libro si usa il termine “leftism” per esprimere meglio il senso lato della parola.
Il libro ha uno scopo ben preciso: mostrare come queste ideologie non siano tra loro nemiche ma solo in competizione…
… The purpose of this book is to show the character of leftism and to what extent and in what way the vast majority of the leftist ideologies now dominating or threatening most of the modern world are competitors rather than enemies… In the political field today this distinction, unfortunately, is less obvious and largely obscured by a confusion in semantics…
L’autore si presenta…
… I am a Christian: I am emphatically not a democrat but a devotee to the cause of personal liberty. I would thoroughly subscribe to the words of Alexis de Tocqueville when he wrote, “Despotism appears to me particularly to be dreaded in democratic ages… It is precisely the unwarranted identification of democracy with liberty which has caused a great many of the recurrent tragedies of American foreign policy…
Insomma, Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn è un esemplare raro, vero rappresentante di un’umanità residuale: uomo di vecchio stampo, conservatore, monarchico, libertario, cosmopolita, erudito, élitista, demofilo… Mai vista roba del genere.
Ma torniamo al merito.
Le lusinghe del pensiero di sinistra sono seducenti all’inizio, e nella trappola che tendono sono caduti come salami illustri pensatori. Ancora oggi riescono nell’impresa di realizzare, specie in Europa, forme di schiavitù nonviolenta…
… Even Burke welcomed the French Revolution in the beginning. Eminent Americans praised it. But it all ended in a forest of guillotines. Mr. Woodrow Wilson enthusiastically welcomed Alexander Kerensky’s government which was to make Russia “fit for a league of honor.” But how long did it last? The Weimar Republic, the near-republican Italian monarchy, the Spanish republic, the “decolonized” free nations from Haiti to Tanzania, from North Vietnam to Indonesia, Latin America from Santo Domingo to Buenos Aires—all have been grievous disappointments to “progressive” Americans, all terminating in dictatorships, civil wars, crowded jails, confiscated newspapers, gallows and firing squads, one-party tyrannies, sequestrations, nationalizations, “social engineering.”… Yet beyond these obvious failures, besides the brutal and open elimination of liberty and decency, there is also—so clearly foreseen by de Tocqueville—the democratic evolution towards nonviolent slavery…
C’è un anno fatale che segna l’ingresso nella storia di queste ideologie…
… One should not be surprised about this, because the roots of the evil are historically-genetically the same all over the Western World. The fatal year is 1789, and the symbol of iniquity is the Jacobin Cap. Its heresy is the denial of personality and of personal liberty. Its concrete realizations are Jacobin mass democracy, all forms of national collectivism and statism, Marxism producing socialism and communism, fascism, and national socialism, leftism in all its modern guises…
Una concezione dell’uomo/formica è al centro della rivoluzione…
… The issue is between man created in the image of God and the termite in a human guise. It is in defense of man and in opposition to the false teachings which want to lower man to the status of an insect that this book has been written…
L’uomo sente dentro si sè sia una spinta verso l’originalità che una spinta verso il conformismo. Il pensiero si sinistra punta tutto su quest’ultima…
… We can all experience a mood during which we feel the desire to be in the company of people of our own age, our own class, our own sex, conviction, religion or taste…
E’ l’istinto del gregge. Un sentimento che si rinforza con l’ostilità verso l’estraneo e che si collega con un sentimento identitario: sentiamo la nostra debolezza e cerchiamo il gruppo in cui riconoscerci…
… This sort of conformist herd instinct was the driving motor of the nationalistic gymnastic organizations of the Germans and the Slavs… Identity and identitarian drives tend towards an effacement of self, towards a nostrism (“usness”) in which the ego becomes submerged. Of course, nostrism (a term created by the Austrian Nazi Walter Pembaur) can be and usually is a clever multiplication of egoisms… all identitarian drives not only take a stand for sameness and oppose otherness, but also are self-seeking…
Il sentimento contrario è di tipo romantico: l’uomo si vede come unico, la curiosità per esperienze sempre nuove diventa il traino della sua vita, un animale è distante mille miglia da un simile sentimento: desiderio di cambiamento, fame di novità…
… Luckily man in his maturity and in the fullness of his qualifications has not only identitarian but also diversitarian drives, not only a herd instinct but also a romantic sentiment… A dog neither wants to travel, nor does he particularly mind getting the same food day in and day out, if it is healthy fare…
La meta di questo desiderio è Dio, ovvero l’alterità per eccellenza…
… All higher theist religions rest squarely on this longing, this love for otherness. Though I would not subscribe to Karl Barth’s formula of Gott als der ganz andere (God as the totally different One), no theist will deny God’s otherness…
Qui bisogna vigilare sui termini per scoprire che parole come “pluralismo” appartengono alla cultura del conformismo così come parole come “identità” appartengono alla cultura dell’egalitarismo”…
… In another book we have dealt with the dishonesty in the use of the fashionable term “pluralism.” As a matter of fact all modern trends point to the specter of a terrifying, bigger and more pitiless conformity…
Oltre all’istinto del gregge il pensiero di sinistra si appella ai complessi d’inferiorità…
… There exists a dull, animalistic leaning toward identitarian gregariousness, but we encounter also a programmatic, passionate, fanatical drive in that direction. Nietzsche knew of it, so did Jacob Burckhardt.4 It has fear as its driving motor in the form of an inferiority complex engendering hatred and envy as its blood brother…
La crudeltà dell’inferiore (che soffre di un complesso d’inferiorità) puo’ essere spaventosa, la storia ne reca traccia indelebile e ripetuta. Per evitare queste tensioni il pensiero di sinistra propone la ricetta egalitarista…
… In order to avoid that fear, that feeling of inferiority, the demand for equality and identity arises. Nobody is better, nobody superior, all can relax, all can be at ease, nobody feels challenged, everybody is “safe…. These sentiments, these emotions, this rejection of quality (which can never be the same with everybody!) explain much of the spirit of the mass movements of the last 200 years…
Un altro fattore è l’invidia sociale. Nasce dall’illusione ottica per cui le risorse disponibili sono necessariamente finite…
… I am poor because he is rich… This inner, often unspoken argument rests on the assumption that all goods and good things in this world are finite…
ma anche dall’esigenza di “compensare”: “… è bravo ma anche cattivo”…
…The second aspect of envy lies in the superiority of another person in an important respect. The mere suspicion that the other person feels superior on account of looks, of brain-power, of brawn, of cash, etc., can create a burning feeling of envy. The only way to find a compensation lies in a successful search for inferior qualities in the person who figures as the object of envy. “He is rich, but he is evil,” “He is successful, but he has a miserable family life,” “He is well born and well connected, but, oh, so stupid.”…
L’imprenditoria politica su questi sentimenti distorti è stata fervente nel novecento. Complottismo (“storie compensative”) e invidia sociale sono stati i suoi punti di leva. Talune minoranze particolarmente meritevoli venivano sistematicamente emarginate, dopodiché, nel momento in cui si rivolgevano all’esterno in cerca di un aiuto o comunque di percorsi alternativi, venivano tacciate di tradimento e il gioco era fatto: ci si poteva avventare senza riserve su di loro...
… In the last 200 years the exploitation of envy, its mobilization among the masses, coupled with the denigration of individuals, but more frequently of classes, races, nations or religious communities has been the very key to political success… Everything special, everything esoteric and not easily understood by the many becomes suspect and evil (as for instance the increasingly “undemocratic” modern art and poetry). Of course there is one type of unpopular minority that cannot conform and therefore is always in danger of being exiled, suppressed or slaughtered: the racial minority… The nonconforming person or group sinning against the sacred principle of sameness will always be treated as a traitor, and if he is not a traitor the envious majority will push him in that direction. (As late as 1934 there were German Jews who tried to form a Nazi group of their own: naively enough they considered anti-Semitism a “passing phase.” Yet can one imagine a German Jew in 1943 not praying in his heart for an Allied victory?…
Un temperamento cristiano sa bene che non siamo tutti uguali: Dio ama le sue creature in modo diverso…
… Since this book is written by a Christian let us first deal with the well-known cliché according to which, even though we are neither identical nor equal physically or intellectually, we are at least “equal in the eyes of God.” This, however, is by no means the case. None of the Christian faiths teaches that we are all equally loved by God…
Se il male è una prova perché mai dovremmo essere posti di fronte a prove tanto differenti? Evidentemente perché siamo differenti l’uno dall’altro.
Cristo aveva i suoi discepoli preferiti.
… Nor does any Christian religion maintain that grace is given in equal amount to all men… everybody is given sufficient grace to be able to save himself, though not to the same extent…
Il marchese De Sade e San Francesco non sono la stessa cosa per Dio…
… It is obvious that the Marquis de Sade and, let us say, St. Jean Vianney or Pastor von Bodelschwingh were not “equals in the eyes of God.” If they had been, Christianity no longer would make any sense, because then the sinner would equal the saint and to be bad would be the same as to be good…
Eppure l’egalitarismo ha fatto breccia anche tra i teologi. Va bene, tutti abbiamo un’anima ma se è per questo abbiamo anche un naso e il naso è differente da persona a persona.
Nelle sacre scritture l’eguaglianza non è mai menzionata come un valore mentre la libertà ripetutamente.
C’è chi parla di “eguaglianza davanti alla legge” ma anche questo principio soffre di molte eccezioni…
… It is obvious that a child of four having committed manslaughter (it does happen!) should be dealt with differently from a child of twelve, an adolescent of seventeen, or a mature man of thirty…
Le circostanze sono decisive…
… When the Germans were freezing in the winter of 1945-1946 Cardinal Frings of Cologne told the faithful that, under the circumstances, to steal coal was no sin…
L’uguaglianza davanti alla legge spesso è ingiusta…
… Equality before the law might be highly unjust: witness the outcry, Summum ius, summa iniuria. Indeed, justice is better served by Ulpian’s principle which we have already quoted, Suum cuique, to everybody his due…
Altri invocano l’uguaglianza di opportunità: missione impossibile…
… In the narrow sense of the term it can never be achieved and should not even be attempted. It would be much wiser to demand the abolition of unjust discrimination, arbitrary discrimination without a solid “factual” foundation…
Il tentativo di di perseguirla realizza storture importanti…
… “Just discrimination,” in other words, “preference based on merit” is conspicuously absent in a process which, in our society, has a deep and wide influence as a sanctified example—political elections. Whether it is a genuinely democratic election in the West or a plebiscitarian comedy in the East, the one-man-one-vote principle is now taken for granted. The knowledge, the experience, the merits, the standing in the community, the sex, the wealth, the taxes, the military record of the voter do not count, only the vegetable principle of age—he must be 18, 21, 24 years old and still “on the hoof.” The 21-year-old semiliterate prostitute and the 65-year-old professor of political science who has lost an arm in the war, has a large family, carries a considerable tax burden, and has a real understanding of the political problems on which he is expected to cast his ballot—they are politically equal as citizens… “Equality of opportunity.” In a concrete sense, not even a totalitarian tyranny could bring this about, because no country could decree that a child upon entering this world should have “equal parents.”…
E’ dalla ricerca di centrare questo obbiettivo utopico che deriva l’ossessione per la scuola unica e di stato…
… The cry for an identical and equal education has been raised again and again in democracies, totalitarian or otherwise, and the existence of various types of schools has been deemed “undemocratic.” Just because parents are so different (every marriage offers another “constellation”) egalitarians have advocated not only intensive schooling, but boarding schools for all. Children should be taken out of their homes and collectively educated twenty-four hours a day…
Detto tutto questo, c’è anche un’eguaglianza necessaria…
… However, as Friedrich August von Hayek has pointed out, a certain equality of treatment is necessary in a free society.5 Only by treating people equally do we find out who is superior to whom… By treating people equally (we are back at the adverb) we are not making them equal…
Accettare le diseguaglianze significa accettare i propri fallimenti, operazione non facile. L’immaginazione complottista ha il sopravvento…
… The man in a free society must either blame himself (which leads to the melancholia of those plagued by inferiority complexes) or will be bound to accuse imaginary conspiracies of ill-wishers and downright enemies… we would not be surprised to find that the number of psychological disturbances, “nervous breakdowns,” and suicides among males increases with social mobility…
Uguaglianza e libertà sono incompatibili, al tempo stesso compaiono entrambe nel motto della rivoluzione francese. Una contraddizione che è possibile evitare solo pervertendo il significato dei termini…
… If A is superior to B—more powerful, more handsome, more intelligent, more influential, wealthier—then B will feel inferior, ill at ease, and probably even afraid of A. If we subscribe to the famous “Four Freedoms” and accept the formulation of “Freedom from Fear,” then we can see how inequalities actually engender fear—and envy, though envy is rarely mentioned in this connection…
L’ideologia democratica è schiettamente di sinistra, cerchiamo di definirla…
… “Democracy” is a Greek word composed of demos (the people) and krátos (power in a strong, almost brutal sense)… Hence “monarchy” is the fatherlike rule of a man in the interest of the common good, whereas “monocracy” is a one-man tyranny… Here it must be remembered that, later on, aristocracy also came to mean not a form of government but the highest social layer. The term republic came to mean every (external) form of government that is non-monarchical and “public.”…
Da non confondere il democratico con il demofilo…
… It is wrong to say, “Mr. Green is very democratic; on his trips he sits down for lunch with his chauffeur.” He is, rather, a friend of simple people, and so is appropriately called demophile, not democratic…
La democrazia era annoverata dagli antichi, in particolare da Aristotele, tra i sistemi di governo perversi. Ecco della famosa tassonomia…
… GOOD FORM: Monarchy, the rule of one man in the interest of the common good. BAD FORM: Tyranny, the rule of one man to his own advantage. GOOD FORM: Aristocracy, the rule of a group in the interest of the common good. BAD FORM: Oligarchy, the rule of a group for their own benefit. GOOD FORM: Republic or Polity, the rule of the better part of the people in the interest of the common good. BAD FORM: Democracy, the rule of the worse part of the people for their own benefit…
Lo spettro democratico è vastissimo, si va dai sostenitori della democrazia diretta agli oligarchi proto-fascisti…
… One school insists that only direct democracy is real democracy, whereas elected delegates form an oligarchy with a time limit. There exists a so-called “oligarchic school” of this interpretation of democracy and its foremost opponents were Vilfredo Pareto, Gaëtano Mosca and Roberto Michels (an Italianized former German Socialist). All three might conceivably be called fascist sympathizers, but it is probably the intellectual and realistic climate of Italy, so hostile to all forms of illusions, which influenced their critical thinking…
Nella cultura occidentale esiste un significato storico dei termini “destra” e “sinistra”. La “destra” è la parte del giusto mentre la “sinistra” è la parte demoniaca…
… Right and left have been used in Western civilization from times immemorial with certain meanings; right (German: rechts) had a positive, left a negative connotation. In all European languages (including the Slavic idioms and Hungarian) right is connected with “right” (ius), rightly, rightful, in German gerecht (just), the Russian pravo (law), pravda (truth), whereas in French gauche also means “awkward, clumsy,” (in Bulgar: levitsharstvo). The Italian sinistro can mean left, unfortunate, or calamitous. The English sinister can mean left or dark. The Hungarian word for “right” is jobb which also means “better,” while bal (left) is used in composite nouns in a negative sense: balsors is misfortune.1 In Biblical language the just on the Day of Judgment are to be on the right2 and the damned on the left. Christ sits ad dexteram Patris (on the right hand of the Father) as the Nicene Creed asserts…
Dal punto di vista politico, la confusione cominciò quando i nazisti tedeschi si accomodarono all’estrema destra del parlamento…
… In Germany after World War I, most unfortunately, the National Socialists were seated on the extreme right because to simpleminded people nationalists were rightists, if not conservatives—a grotesque idea when one remembers how antinationalistic Metternich, the monarchical families, and Europe’s ultraconservatives had been in the past…
A questo proposito giova sempre ricordare la diversità tra nazionalismo e patriottismo…
… Nationalism, indeed, has been a by-product of the French Revolution (no less so than militarism). After all, nationalism (as the term is understood in Europe, though not in America) is identitarian, whereas patriotism is not. In Central Europe nationalism has a purely ethnic connotation and implies an exaggerated enthusiasm about culture, language, folklore, ways of life. Patriotism, on the other hand, puts emphasis on the country. A patriot will be happy if there are many nationalities living in his Fatherland, whose keynote ought to be variety, not uniformity… The nationalist is hostile toward all those who do not ethnically conform. Thus nationalism (as understood on the Continent) is the blood brother of racialism…
Il pensiero politico moderno per uscire dalle contraddizioni in cui si era cacciato cominciò ad utilizzare la formula idiota “gli estremi si toccano”…
… The misplacing of the Nazis in the Reichstag has thus hardened a confusion in semantics and logical thinking that had started some time earlier. The Communists, the Socialists, and the Anarchists were identified with the left, and the Fascists and the National Socialists with the right. At the same time one discovered a number of similarities between the Nazis on the one side and the Communists on the other. Thus the famous and perfectly idiotic formula arose: “We are opposed to all extremism, be it from the left or the right. And, anyhow, Red and Brown are practically the same: extremes always meet.”…
In realtà gli estremi non si toccano affatto, sono i simili che si toccano.
… Asked whether Mussolini’s Repubblica Sociale Italiana was a reactionary or a leftist establishment, he will again mumble something about those paradoxical extremes…
In realtà quella che passa per “la destra” del novecento non è altro che una delle tante incarnazioni della sinistra, ovvero del pensiero politico moderno post rivoluzione del 1789. Il filo rosso che lega i vari movimenti di sinistra è un attacco alle libertà della persona sferrato facendo leva su teorie complottistiche e risentimenti sociali…
… all the great dynamic isms of the last 200 years have been mass movements attacking—even when they had the word “freedom” on their lips—the liberty, the independence of the person. Programmatically this was done in the name of all sorts of high-and even low-sounding ideals: Nationality, race, better living standards, “social justice,” “security,” ideological conviction, restoration of ancient rights, struggle for a happier world for us all… the driving motor of these movements was always the mad ambition of oratorically or at least literarily gifted intellectuals and the successful mobilization of masses filled with envy and a thirst for “revenge.”…
La “destra” è l’opposto: tollera le diseguaglianze in nome della libertà personale…
… it stands for free, organically grown forms of life. And this in turn implies a respect for tradition…
La sinistra rivendica il primato della politica sulla natura, sente la necessità di fare tabula rasa per stabilire una giustizia artificiale…
… an utopianism which almost always demands—as in the Internationale—to “make a clean sweep” of the past, du passé faisons table rase: dyelayem gladkuyu dosku iz proshlago!…
Per l’uomo di destra siamo nani sulle spalle dei giganti, fare “tabula rasa” ci riporterebbe in basso…
… Bernard of Chartres said that generations were “like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants, thereby capable of seeing more things than their forebears and in a greater distance.”… The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true… Old truths can be rediscovered… The right stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking, a readiness to preserve traditional values (provided they are true values), a balanced view of the nature of man, seeing in him neither beast nor angel, insisting also on the uniqueness of human beings who cannot be transformed into or treated as mere numbers or ciphers…
Il conformismo è l’ingrediente base di tutte le utopie di sinistra: la diversità è il nemico perché non consente la manipolazione sociale attraverso la statistica…
La destra invece invoca l’auto-governo: poiché le diversità sono profonde è giusto dividersi e auto-governarsi…
… The rightists are “federalists” (in the European sense), “states’ righters” since they believe in local rights and privileges, they stand for the principle of subsidiarity…
La prova del nove è la scuola: l’uomo di sinistra diventa isterico al solo pensiero che la la scuola unica di stato possa perdere il suo primato. Per l’uomo di destra invece una cosa del genere è auspicabile e da favorire: andrebbe incontro alla diversità delle persone.
… look at education. The leftist is always a statist… “At this moment in 5,431 public elementary schools they are writing an essay on the joys of winter.”…
Se cio’ che più teme la sinistra sono le autorità alternative si capisce bene come la religione sia mal vista…
… Leftism does not like religion for a variety of causes. Its ideologies, its omnipotent, all-permeating state wants undivided allegiance. With religion at least one other allegiance (to God), if not also allegiance to a Church, is interposed… The other is the transformation of the Church into a fully state-controlled establishment…
Per l’uomo di sinistra l’autorità centrale deve farsi carico di tutti bisogni materiali sostituendosi al concetto religioso di Provvidenza. Il totalitarismo è per sua natura lo sbocco delle ideologie di sinistra. Tocqueville, come al solito, fu anche in questo facile profeta.
… Leftism is basically materialistic. The Provident State, Hilaire Belloc’s Servile State, is obviously a creation of the leftist mentality… We will not call it the Welfare State because every state exists for the welfare of its citizens; here a good name has been misused for a bad thing. In the final prophecy of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America the possibility, nay, the probability of the democratic state’s totalitarian evolution toward the Provident State has been foretold with great accuracy…
COMMENTO PERSONALE
Un libro di parte ma anche di grande stile. E poi, nella sostanza l’obbiettivo è centrato. Tanto è vero che nella distinzione proposta ci si puo’ ritrovare agevolmente anche il “nemico” ideologico. Inoltre mi ci ritrovo anch’io: la contrapposizione destra/sinistra non è politica. Il pensiero di destra è pre-politico e l’uomo di destra fondamentalmente un in-politico. Nell’agone politico la sua presenza si caratterizza solo per opporsi ai progetti della sinistra, non ha nulla da proporre a sua volta se non un “lascia che sia”, un “laissez faire”. Non ha un progetto politico per il semplice fatto che invoca la natura per sciogliere i nodi più intricati della nostra esistenza. Adesso, tornando all’inizio, capiamo meglio cosa abbiano in comune “Fascismo, nazismo, comunismo, socialismo, democrazia, social-democrazia…”: sono ideologie che configurano un progetto politico, e quindi sono tutte ideologie di sinistra.
