Before I begin authoring controversy, I would like to say that, as far as Hannah Arendt is concerned, I have had no interaction with her ideas whatever. That being said, though this dißertation is titled with a phrase of her making, it deals in the general usage of this phrase for serving as an 'analysis' (or excuse for one) of the morality and method of fascism.
First, an introduction comparison question: of two similar events, which one is best described as 'banal'? Hitler giving a speech at a Nuremberg rally or a gathering at the Sportpalast, after which hundreds of arms protrude forward with a monumental 'Heil!', to be carried off by a paramilitary parade filled with claßic and new nationally-glorious marches, or Joe Biden, similarly giving a speech, whether at a campaign rally or the State of the Union Addreß? Now, let us ask the same question of their political technique: brown-tuniced, stiff 'coffee-can' kepi, shined jackboot wearing men marching lockstep in formation, breaking it only to beat social-democrats with a chair leg or baton, or standing in line at a run-down voting place, casting a ballot whilst being surrounded by idiots you would simply love to smash in the (empty) head with a chair leg? Meaningful political propaganda that openly embraces a cause, an ideology, and is unafraid to glorify an event or hero, or an annoying, hollow twenty second advertisement, coupled with a strange coterie of Netflix shows?
No, once again, no. Banality is the incorrect word for what fascism, and most certainly for what National Socialism is. Liberalism is quite literally the status quo of modern post-industrial society. The single question facing us, then, is whether liberalism is evil, and evil to the heights of fascist evil?
Controversy begins with my response that liberalism and fascism are equally intolerable, and not merely bedoes one enables or appoints the other, but more in what they both do as a side-effect of their objectives. Liberalism, in its ruthleß pursuit of profit, and its attempts to seem democratic, ends up destroying the domestic culture of its homeland, and begins with high culture. Without culture or tradition, folc have no basis from which to frame ideas. The system most lauded for democratic proceßes and plurality in reality removes the very capacity for free thought except that which stems from itself. Fascist tyranny is infantile, rudimentary when compared to the scope of its sophisticated counter-part of liberal foundational-suppreßion. After all, how can there be thought-crime when a system has wiped out all alternative modes of theoretical foundation? The drawback to the liberal model is that it takes a much longer time to implement, and herein lies the perceptual key. Fascism only appears more sinister bedoes it is quicker in beginning is evil, plays it out on a larger, more conspicuous, and unwieldy field than liberalism.
Now that I have answered the original question by disproving the original premise, I ought to introduce my own layman maxim to explain fascism. But this, to me, is preposterous and an affront to intellect. So, what is fascism, and what is its relation to liberalism? Here, I must include social-democracy, for it factors into the relationship pivotally. J V Stalin says that 'social-democracy is objectively the left-wing of fascism', or social-fascism. This analysis is partially true: liberalism seeks to have in reserve some conceßions it can make to the proletariat and peasantry in times of crisis. Social-democracy, as observed by Stalin, is the left-wing, or the economic conceßion. Fascism also represents a conceßion. Usually liberalism advocates for the demolition of culture, to increase the authority and singularity of the market. If there is but one culture, and that culture is itself dictated by the market, then one line of cheap products is all that is required to sell to everyone. Fascism presents the conceßion that liberalism will momentarily cease ruining culture so long as it can produce super-profits from deregulation, wartime industry, union-beating, lethal gas contracts (looking at you IG-F), and other novel avenues. Fascism is objectively the right-cultural conceßion of liberalism, whereas social-democracy is the 'left'-economic one.
As a light-hearted preface/postface, in writing this, or rather to the result of writing this, I asked myself one minor question: would I like to watch the latest Biden speech which was making the rounds, or would I instead like to view Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will)? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I chose the non-boring option, the one with the man succeßfully exiting his aeroplane to get into a parade car, not the one of a failure falling up the stairway of his aeroplane. I can now say for the first time that I have watched Triumph of the Will, the first, and quite poßibly the last Nazi filmography I shall ever view (this is not to say that filmography cannot or ethically should not be viewed in spite of whatever dark origins it may have; it is just a fact that fascist films do not rank very high alone on my to-do list).
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