By chance, in thinking about a comment made by RMJ, the perfect example of what I was talking about came to mind in the extreme right-wing, Olin propaganda professor, racist advocate of apartheid and cheerleader for state inflicted death, Ernest van den Haag. His story, as commonly told, is a good example of one who took the great leap from Marxism to outright fascism, American style, in one baby step.
He was born in Holland, raised mostly in Italy, he became a Marxist, allegedly a prominent one, though I haven't been able to confirm the extent of his renown. He is said to have been shot and almost killed, imprisoned for several years under the fascist regime of Mussolini, endured long periods of solitary confinement* but who, somehow, got out and tramped it to Portugal and then the United States. Here, though he spoke no English, he somehow got into the University of Iowa where he took a degree in economics. He went back to New York City, met up with Sidney Hook who converted him to the far-right. He began a career which included him getting shrunk by a psychotherapist and as many who took that route, saw the opportunity of becoming something often mistaken as a medical professional and become one himself, went into far right journalism and used all of that to become an expert witness AGAINST school integration arguing that the notably not equal school system was BENEFICIAL for black children, especially those who were intellectually gifted. The quality of his concern for black children is probably best shown by his conclusion - based on natural selection, I guess, that different racial groups were of different intellectual capacity, you can accurately guess which ones went where and that he was also proponent of America support for the fascist apartheid regime in South Africa. And he was one of the most repulsive of the intellectual supporters of capital punishment here. It's in that last capacity that I first came across him one lazy, certainly rainy afternoon on William F. Buckley's program on the liberal PBS, Firing Line, where my mouth kept falling open that someone so clearly insane could be presented as a responsible intellectual who was praised for his reasoning ability.
Other than his documented associations with such right wing academic luminaries as Sidney Hook, his resulting advocacy for racism and apartheid here and in the notably violent and fascist regime in South Africa and his role in pushing state murder here, arguing that the innocent victims who have been and certainly would be put to death by it are a price worth paying so his sense of retribution could be fulfilled - really, listening to him enthuse over the state killing people was one of the creepier experiences I had that decade, his claims would seem to be the source of his early biography that I have access too. But I will take him and those who knew him at his word that he did cross over from Marxism to fascism rather easily based on meeting up with Sidney Hook. Reading several obituaries, all of them noted that van den Haag was, like Hook, an atheist who was derisive of religion - one of the right wing encomiums to him speculated that he had a death bed conversion but it wasn't based on much of anything I could see. Kind of late in the day for someone who had been such a sleaze and bigot for so many decades.
Obviously there was nothing in van den Haag's Marxism or atheism that kept him from rather easily going so whole hog to fascism. I will note that his fascism is a lot harder to square with the Gospel of Jesus and the other prophets than it is with materialism. While you can, of course, just lie about that as such folk as William F. Buckley had no problem doing, you do, at least, have to lie about it. Nothing in atheism presents even that barrier, so easily pushed over when it's profitable to those with no effective belief that will lead to them acting against their own self-interest. Something I will be addressing as I concentrate more on fascist materialism.
Sidney Hook, as well, could be another example of what I'm talking about as he, also, went from the atheist left to the atheist far right. He even fits in, somewhat, with the Trotsky to neo-con pattern I noted the other day. But I don't have that much time to go into his even more complex record.
In my researches into the atheist "left" I've noted the trust fund Stalinist Corliss Lamont several times, who shares with the right wing Sidney Hook the fact that his early intellectual claim to fame was that he'd studied with John Dewey, at Columbia, which makes me curious to look into Dewey's intellectual descendants. Dewey is sort of looked on as an atheist saint of some kind, a figure in the Humanists and one of the forces behind the old, first Humanist Manifesto - from before the time his rich student, Lamont, bought them out when they were on hard times and turned it into the soft side of his propaganda machine, which lives on in many of the prominent venues of organized atheism. But that's all for the future, as well. I do wonder at how many of those who claim Dewey's influence went on with it, some of them seem to have turned his famous advocacy of democracy, above all, into something far different. If there's something in his thinking that led to that or if it's just the result of him teaching the Ivy League class of folks who populate the over-class that gives itself that kind of attention, that's an unanswered question. So many questions, so little time to go into them.
* That alone, when taken into his consideration of his decades long enthusiasm for state oppression of other people, black people in Africa and the United States, even innocent people wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, is worth thinking about very hard. There is nothing in atheism that requires that rules be equally applied, there is nothing in atheism that mandates that we even try to do anything like justice. The ease with which materialists have not only advocated but set up things rigged unequally might have something to do with how they can make that step from Marxism to fascism, often based on nothing more apparent than who has the money and power or who pays the best.
I doubt van den Haag would have made out nearly as well if he'd joined up with the civil rights movement and the movement to abolish execution. He might have remained in the menial jobs he reportedly had to take as an immigrant who spoke no English but who had opportunities in the early 1940s he would have no problem denying to black people who spoke perfect English and had lived here as citizens their entire lives not two decades later. Van den Haag was also in favor of racial discrimination in immigration policy, calling for even more restrictions on those who weren't, like him, coming here from Europe. He was, truly, one of the most repulsive people I've ever encountered who has been represented as a public intellectual.
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