When fascists were frank: Another look at “We were the first fascists”

Talk of fascism is in the air; fascist violence, masquerading as opposition thereto, in the streets. Its appeal crosses racial lines, and it isn’t the first time. It seems opportune to republish “‘We were the first fascists’: from Garvey to Farrakhan.” — Anthony Flood

“We were the first fascists”: from Garvey to Farrakhan

First published February 21, 2019

Marcus Garvey (August 5, 1924)

On August 13, 1920 Marcus Garvey presided at the convention of the United Negro Improvement Association held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There he promulgated the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Its 54 points comprise the farthest thing from a fascist manifesto.

And yet, as my friend Hugh Murray noted a quarter-century ago, Garvey “admired . . . leading anti-communists, such as Mussolini. Indeed, in 1937 Garvey proudly proclaimed of his Universal Negro Improvement Association, ‘We were the first fascists.'”[1]

Here’s the full quote:

We were the first Fascists, when we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown. Mussolini copied our Fascism.[2]

He said this in 1937, after Mussolini consolidated his rape of Ethiopia.

While many liberals [Murray continues] are the first to hurl the word “fascist” at those with whom they disagree, they usually ignore the fascism of blacks, even when publicly advocated.[3]

A few years after Hugh wrote those words, King’s College Professor of American and English Literature Paul Gilroy came out with “Black Fascism” (Transition, Indiana UPress, 2000, 70-91), a scholarly monograph on Garvey’s boast, the first instance of Black public advocacy of fascism. I recommend it to students of this overlooked chapter of Black American history.

George Lincoln Rockwell, center

On June 25, 1961 American Nazi Party Commander George Lincoln Rockwell sat in the Uline Arena, Washington, DC (where the Beatles would give their first US concert a few years later). He was there at the invitation of Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Elijah Muhammad. Thousands were in attendance. During the collection, Rockwell shouted:

George Lincoln Rockwell gives $20!

Continue reading “When fascists were frank: Another look at “We were the first fascists””

G. Edward Griffin: Prophet with Honor

G. Edward Griffin

I was so impressed by the video John A. Lancaster posted today that I feel compelled to join him in getting the word out. He entitled his post “Is the Current Unrest a Communist Prophecy?,” but I decided to drop the rhetorical question mark.

The presenter is G. Edward Griffin (b. 1931). When he delivered this talk, so calmly, so professionally, the Left called him a “Red baiter.” Today he’s called a “conspiracy theorist.” Both are empty tags signalling the tagger’s determination not to have a conversation.

Griffin’s topic is a conspiracy—the Communist conspiracy, its self-understanding and its exploitation of America’s racial tensions. As you watch and listen, ask yourself whether the violence, mayhem, and frank advocacy of communism you see nightly on television is not exactly what Griffin was warning Americans about.

Color, Communism, and /Common Sense is an eight-minute YouTube video, excerpted from Griffin’s full presentation, also on YouTube, More Deadly Than War The Communist Revolution in America.

The film has the “look-and-feel” of the early ’60s. At the 2.47 mark, Griffin holds up and quotes from The Nature of Revolution, a 1959 pamphlet by Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker (for whom I worked as a research assistant in the early ’70s). That made me think the film is earlier than 1969, the date given for Griffin’s pamphlet on Amazon. (In 1969, would he cite something from 1959?) I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who can settle the date of the original filmed presentation.

Otis Q. Sellers: Prophetic Prayers about God’s Kingdom

“I will be a king over you.” Ezekiel 20:23

The cumulative effect of the following 25 prophecies is the conviction that God is going to govern this planet. What they pray for has not occurred, but will. Yes, they express happy thoughts—“Wouldn’t it be great if God one day governed the earth . . . ?,” but they do much more. They speak God’s word authoritatively. And that’s what it means to prophesy.

Like the prayer Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-13), these prayers are prophecies that are also predictions. Not one describes present conditions. They all await realization. God’s word never returns to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

I’ve excerpted the following from This I Believe, a 1963 pamphlet by Otis Q. Sellers, the subject of a biography I’m working on.

—Anthony Flood

As the pages of the Old Testament are turned, one reads of a time to come when the entire flow of satanic evil will be overwhelmed by a greater flow of righteousness from one who is the seed of the woman, even Christ (Genesis 3:15).  He goes on to read of a time when

  • All the ends of the earth will remember and be turned to the Lord (Psalm 22:27)
  • All the earth will fear the Lord and all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him (Psalm 33:8)
  • The meek will inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psalm 37:11)
  • The streams of God’s river will make glad the city of God (Psalm 46:4)
  • Wars will cease and God will be exalted among the nations (Psalm 46:8-10)
  • God’s way will be known upon the earth and His saving health will be the portion of all nations (Psalm 67:2)
  • God will judge the peoples righteously and govern the nations upon the earth (Psalm 67:3-4)
  • God will bless Israel and all the ends of the earth will fear Him (Psalm 67:7)
  • all nations will call Him blessed and the whole earth be filled with His glory (Psalm 72:17, 19)
  • The world will be established so that it cannot be disrupted (Psalm 96:10)
  • The nations will fear the name of the Lord (Psalm 102:15)
  • One generation will praise His works to another and declare His mighty acts (Psalm 145:4)
  • God will turn His hand upon Israel and purge away her dross (Isaiah 1:25)
  • The mountain of the Lord’s house will be established in the top of the mountains and all nations will flow unto it (Isaiah 2:2)
  • Nations will beat their swords into plowshares and turn all instruments of destruction into instruments of peace (Isaiah 2:4)
  • The wolf will dwell with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6)
  • None will hurt or destroy, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9)
  • God’s judgments will be in the earth and the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:9)
  • The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf be unstopped
  • The lame will leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing (Isaiah 35:5, 6)
  • the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh will see it together (Isaiah 40:5)
  • God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, put His law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts (Jeremiah 31:27,33)
  • God will fulfill His great promise to Israel to seek them out, bring them out from all peoples and all countries and bring them to their own land, and to set one shepherd over them, even David (Ezekiel 34:11-24)
  • Out of Bethlehem will come One to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5:2)
  • The Lord will be king over all the earth (Zechariah 14:9)

Check out related posts
Here are a few short studies on the Kingdom by Otis Q. Sellers (PDFs at Seed&Bread.org)
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in his library and recording studio

Diana West: The Conscience of a Conservative

With journalistic skills honed over decades, skepticism toward received opinion, a graceful literary style, and considerable courage, Diana West has been contributing to the preservation of America’s heritage of liberty against its enemies, foreign and domestic. She’s been doing this by defending American philosophy, culture, and history—and common sense—in essays, books and, lately, videos.

Her contribution, unfortunately, is not as widely known as its high literary quality would lead one to predict. The Left have mainly ignored her, but false friends on the Right have vilified her, arrogating to themselves the right to determine how far the defense of liberty may go and whose sacred cows may not be blasphemed along the way.

In the words of ex-Communist journalist and novelist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), West detects a red thread of continuity between his era and ours:

. . . [R]ecounting his experience as a German Communist in the 1930s, [Arthur] Koestler is nonetheless describing the post-Communist, postmodern, post-9/11 American condition. It is the sinister overhaul of language and thought . . . that he personally engaged in, and that was and is the primary tool of Marxist and Islamic subversion. “Not only our thinking, but also our vocabulary was reconditioned,” he explains. “Certain words were taboo.” Certain other words became telltales by which to identify dissenters or enemies. Literary, artistic, and musical tastes, he writes, were “similarly reconditioned” to support the renunciation of independent thought and logic necessary to submit to ideology.[1]

Sounds familiar? She calls for a “cultural reexamination” of the process by which Americans were force-fed one “blue pill” of lies after another and, for the most part, they swallowed them willingly, casting into outer darkness those who spit them out and sought the “red pill” of unpleasant truth.[2] Continue reading “Diana West: The Conscience of a Conservative”

“Why did you not give me better evidence?,” the atheist would ask God, as though his demand for evidence were not itself evidence.

A little over fifty years ago, when my interest in philosophy was budding, I encountered Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. (My edition was the 1957 Simon & Schuster paperback, the one pictured below).

I was a recent Marxist convert; Russell was no Marxist, but this rebellious teenager welcomed his criticisms of theism in general and Christianity in particular.

Upon reading his obituary fifty years ago this past February, I marveled at the longevity some enjoy—he died age 97—and therefore how long ago a contemporary of mine might have lived. A Victorian, Russell grew up in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli. He had John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty I was then reading, as his godfather.

Recently I stumbled upon words attributed to Russell, words I’ve read many times over the years, but could never find in his writings. An internet search turns up many reflections on these words, but their authors never source the quote. I was beginning to think them apocryphal until a more precise query yielded its source in, not an essay, but an interview.

The initial search string was <Russell not enough evidence>. It yielded, among many other hits, Emily Eakin’s imagined post-mortem exchange, in a 2002 essay for the Times’s arts section, between the sage and God, whose existence he says he could not affirm.

Asked what he would say if God appeared to him after his death and demanded to know why he had failed to believe, the British philosopher and staunch evidentialist Bertrand Russell replied that he would say, “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence.”[1]

Philosopher of science Wesley C. Salmon (1925-2001) created this version for a footnote to a 1978 journal article:

If I recall correctly, Bertrand Russell was once asked if there were any conceivable evidence which could lead him to a belief in God. He offered something similar to Cleanthes’s suggestion. He was then asked what he would say if, after dying, he were transported to the presence of God; how would he justify his failure on earth to be a believer? “I’d say, ‘Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!’”[2]

This game of telephone has one final (for now) regression. It’s from an interview of Russell by humorist and Yiddish lexicographer Leo Rosten, conducted “many years” (Rosten says) before 1974, the year in which this memoir was published.

I asked, “Let us suppose, sir, that after you have left this sorry vale, you actually found yourself in heaven, standing before the Throne. There, in all his glory, sat the Lord—not Lord Russell, sir: God.” Russell winced. “What would you think?” “I would think I was dreaming.” “But suppose you realized you were not? Suppose that there, before your very eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was God. What would you say?” The pixie wrinkled his nose. “I probably would ask, ‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’[3]

With the origins of the story fairly nailed down, what do we make of Russell’s quip?

Continue reading ““Why did you not give me better evidence?,” the atheist would ask God, as though his demand for evidence were not itself evidence.”

The Problem OF Philosophy

Obligations are currently limiting my free writing time to the books I’m working on; lately, and unfortunately, that has meant republishing older posts. Today’s falls into that category. At the end of it, I’ve appended a list of links to posts germane to the problem OF philosophy. I hope to generate fresher material soon.—Anthony Flood

Aristotle’s School

There are problems of philosophy, which philosophers have perennially asked and attempted to answer.  What really exists? What can (and do) I know?  What is the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful?

But there’s also the problem of philosophy, one that philosophy raises implicitly but cannot answer directly. That’s the problem of worldview. Do my answers to those philosophical questions comport or clash with one another? How much about the world must I “take for granted” when I ask my first question? Can I query those takings?

When one is adverting to the problem of “background” worldview one is not trying to solve problems that arise on its terms. And one’s worldview must be able to acknowledge worldview-diversity. But where is one standing when one entertains that problem?

As my interest in the worldview problem has increased, that in philosophical problems has decreased.  That’s because philosophical problems now seem to me a function of one’s basic, non-negotiable stance toward the world. When philosophers pay attention to it, they’re not “doing” philosophy.  When they don’t, their philosophical work is exposed to worldview-level criticism.

It’s not that philosophical questions are unimportant. The almost fifty years I spent studying them were not wasted time. Philosophical questions are endlessly interesting culturally and historically. But worldview questions have supplanted philosophical ones in my mind, perhaps because my worldview is of paramount importance to me and, going forward, I wish to advert to it explicitly. Worldviews assign various values to cultural and historical importance and hence to philosophy.

Philosophers who profess the same worldview can agree or disagree fruitfully about, for example, the veridicality of sense perception. Those who do not profess the same worldview, but are not conscious of that disparity, may misunderstand both their agreements and disagreements, even if when they use the same natural language correctly.  If they are conscious of that disparity, then it is not clear what their apparent agreements or disagreements could mean. “God exists,” affirms the Christian, who thinks the idea of God important. “Yes, God exists!,” answers the Buddhist, who deems it a distraction from the main issue of living.

If philosophical problems are embedded in a worldview, then worldview conflict-adjudication is not a philosophical problem. The attempt to resolve the conflict also operates at the level of worldview. There is no worldview-neutral stance from which to make that attempt.

That one’s philosophical system is one’s final court of appeal for all questions was my assumption. Glancing at my life’s clock and calendar, however, I no longer care to do that. I’ve achieved enough clarity about my position to give myself permission not to.

The implications of the Christian worldview, the one that permeates the pages of the Bible, exhausts my philosophical interests. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do. (Indeed, what we all do at the inception of our every predication, even our silent ones.)

I further claim (as an implication of my worldview) that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operate implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview.  It’s the birthright of all those created in the image of God.

I prefer exploring the Christian worldview, as Biblical exegesis reveals it, to burrowing down the tunnel of worldview-justification. For life is short, and justification tends to be a long-winded if not also interminable affair. Still, as my position is in need of clarification, I will try to clarify it in future posts.

Postscript, July 21, 2020: Here are those “future” posts, i.e., subsequent to November 26, 2018, when the essay above was first published:

The Apostle Paul preaching to the philosophers. Acts 17:16-34

The spiritual preconditions of rational debate: Eric Voegelin’s diagnosis revisited

The “national conversation” Leftists urge us to have about social order is about as genuine as  Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers Campaign and, for patriots tempted to participate, about as safe. Debate has spiritual conditions, and the Left-dominated academedia complex guarantees that they’re rarely, if ever, met (except perhaps among family, friends, and trusted associates, at least for now).

No one made that point with greater profundity and learning than Eric Voegelin. On November 2, 2018 I posted a vignette of my interaction with the great philosopher of consciousness, enriched by extensive quotes from his classic essay, “On Debate and Existence.” Our perilous times call for reposting it. Those who vaguely remember it should take another look; it’ll be new for those who don’t.—Anthony Flood

Eric Voegelin: no debate without accord on existential order

(First published November 2, 2018)

“What ‘banged’?”

That was the derisive reaction of Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) to someone’s mentioning the prevailing cosmology, the Big Bang theory (not to be confused with the television comedy whose theme song’s lyrics encapsulate the disordered cosmology Voegelin analyzed*).

He asked that rhetorical question on March 26, 1983 in Newton, Massachusetts during a Friday night-Saturday afternoon conference arranged by organizers of the annual Lonergan Workshops. (During that year’s meeting in June I’d meet Bernard J. F. Lonergan, SJ, whose mind I revered as much as Voegelin’s.)voegelin

Being a Rothbardian libertarian, I could hardly resist asking Voegelin about the seminars that Ludwig von Mises led in Vienna in the twenties. Smiling, Voegelin said he appreciated learning from Mises that inflation is not an increase in prices but rather the central bank’s increase in the money supply not commensurate with an increase in production of commodities. (A government may politically “freeze” prices, but then the economic effect of the inflation, that is, of the physical increase, is a shortage of the goods whose prices were frozen.)

At the cocktail hour I asked Voegelin (I paraphrase from memory) how he could communicate with scholars whose grasp of the historical material was far below his (among whom he did not number Father Lonergan, but I certainly include myself). “With a kind of controlled irony,” he deadpanned.

Continue reading “The spiritual preconditions of rational debate: Eric Voegelin’s diagnosis revisited”

Brand Blanshard on wisdom

Brand Blanshard. Photo by Richard P. Lewis, published in “Man of Reason: In Memoriam Brand Blanshard.” “A memorial service in honor of Brand Blanshard was held December 16, 1987, in Dwight Memorial Chapel of Yale University. The memories and appreciations spoken that day and some from letters are printed in this booklet,” which Roberta Yerkes Blanshard, his widow, mailed me on May 5, 1992.—Anthony Flood

The wisdom that American philosopher Brand Blanshard (August 27, 1892-November 18, 1987) sought was not intelligible in terms of his rationalism and determinism. (Of course, wisdom is no more intelligible in terms of the empiricism and indeterminism Blanshard opposed.) In the perennial pendulum swing between the static block universe of Parmenides and the endless flux of Heraclitus, Blanshard unambiguously favored the Eleatic thinker over the Ephesian. As Van Til memorably put it, however, one chooses between these anti-theistic options as one chooses hats.[1]

His doctrines could not help him account for the epistemological (or metaphysical or ethical) “hat” he chose. He gave reasons for his choosing, but the deterministic worldview to which he was committed could not ground an account for reason-giving itself.

Nevertheless, it is ironic, pleasantly so, to note that Blanshard articulated precisely and elegantly almost everything one might want to say about wisdom. Today I want you to know, in his own words, what I think he got right.

In my opinion, what he got wrong (and in this he was not alone) was his presupposing, as all non-Christians do, that pursuing wisdom occurs in an impersonal context (rather than in a divinely personal creation). For Blanshard (again, not just for him) wisdom is a possible achievement of the human being. The human being, in turn, is regarded as the ultimate point of reference (or background or “atmosphere”) of that pursuit (or, indeed, of any predication whatsoever). This presupposition of autonomy leads only to one or another species of foolishness.[2]

As followers of this blog know, my work-in-progress is entitled “Philosophy after Christ”—after not only in the sense of temporally subsequent to Christ’s earthly ministry, but also in the sense of “according to” the Wisdom and Truth that Christ is. This post may be taken as another occasional progress report. Continue reading “Brand Blanshard on wisdom”

Yielding to Scripture outwardly and inwardly

A friend sent me an image of Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, vested as Pope Benedict XVI, his title from 2005 to 2013, the year he retired, now living a life of prayer, meditation, and Scripture study. Inscribed on it is an exhortation:

I urge you to become familiar with the Bible, and to have it at hand so that it can become your compass pointing out the road to follow.

It comes from his April 9, 2006 message to on World Youth Day. The Scripture chosen for his address is from Psalm 119:105.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.“

In his homily, Benedict doesn’t consider the internal resistance some Christians have to letting the Word of God operate as a compass, light, and lamp unto their feet. To understate things, God’s speaking can wrench one out of one’s comfort zone and bring one into conflict with one’s neighbors, business associates, friends, family, and even fellow believers. Continue reading “Yielding to Scripture outwardly and inwardly”

“By any means necessary” revisited

That linguistic barbarism continues to spoil America’s discursive landscape. Once a mere hint of violence sporting the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability, it has evolved into a preferential option for “direct action” exercised by wide swaths of the populace, with its predictable vandalism, firebombing, assault on person and property, and usurpation of legitimate authority.

Below is this blog’s first post, dated October 3, 2018. Reference to the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh dates it only slightly (in my opinion; you may disagree). The logic of the deranged behavior that was on display two autumns ago is now being played out to its dystopian conclusion. I continue to hope that a majority of Americans will pull the country back from the brink this coming November 3rd—indeed, that they will be permitted to pull it back—but events have not allayed my fear that “we are probably living through the run-up to a civil war.”—Anthony Flood

“By any means necessary”: pragmatism on stilts

First published October 3, 2018

Malcolm X’s contribution to the erosion of American political rhetorical standards lives on, most recently in President Trump’s speech at a rally in Tennessee. But at least he was characterizing the expediency of his enemies.

In 1963 Communist-sympathizer Jean-Paul Sartre penned the words that in English become “by any means necessary.”

Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Ernesto Che Guevara, 1960, Cuba

Their African-American popularizer employed it to everlasting effect the following year. (He was assassinated the next.)

 

 

 

Conflating the necessary with the sufficient, it’s literally nonsense. “Any” doesn’t go with “necessary.”

There is, for example, more than one way to get to Times Square from Grand Central. One can walk a few blocks; or hop on the westbound M42 bus; or take the subway, either the shuttle (one stop) or the No. 7 (two). Each of them will do, but none is necessary.

The seductive power of the phrase overrides logic. “By the one means necessary” or “by any means sufficient” lacks punch. What the hackneyed phrase’s users mean is: “What I want is imperative, and whatever achieves it is permissible.” “Whatever it takes,” or “The end justifies the means,” which evacuates “justifies” of meaning.

Continue reading ““By any means necessary” revisited”