The Clare Spark Blog

For about twenty years I addressed the arts community and others on “The Sour Apple Tree,” an hour program that I performed on KPFK-FM, a Pacifica program from Los Angeles, in which I questioned all arts institutions, especially their politics ). Of course I covered with great interest the controversy over the art works of Robert Mapplethorpe (a gay man who died of AIDS,) and Andres Serrano, the creator of Piss Christ. This blog is about the issues raised in a collection of documents published by Richard Bolton, entitled Culture Wars that cover the uproar over the “obscene” art produced and exhibited during the period from late 1989-1990 (mostly in 1990).

The dispute raised important cultural problems that remain unresolved, which is why I address it today. First, the fight over the changing meanings of “obscenity”(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law. It mentions Pacifica, which P lost) The sensitive ears of children must be protected!)

Clearly, leftists both reds and social democrats were pitted against conservatives, a situation which persists today in the hotly contested question of the “impeachment” of President Trump.

Generally, l line up with the classical liberals in this matter (the question of censorship of art or more general ideas of morality such as abortion and divorce).

It was to be expected that Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photographs would raise a rumpus, as the gay rights movement was relatively new; furthermore the AIDS epidemic was raging. But how to explain the Catholic Serrano’s images of Christ on the crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine? (Although Serrano supposedly interrogated his own Catholicism, was Christian America to take this obscene portrayal of God lying down?)

Again, the unresolved “obscenity”matter. Was Serrano guilty of an act of social irresponsibility? Although the fight seemed to about government funding of the arts (and humanities), it was not about that; rather it was about a matter that is currently roiling the nation: I was a government grantee myself.

Will we have a thoroughgoing pluralism or not?

I have been reading Richard Miller’s Bohemia: The Protoculture Then and Now (1977). RM. listed as not a scholar, but a journalist (It was not assigned in graduate school, though it does have copious footnotes. RM has read many of the same books as I did, including more than I have done about fascism, often using Nazi/German sources.)

This blog is about my reaction to RM’s thesis, which fits right into the Democratic Party since the New Deal. The book and its claims hit me like a revelation since it identified the pre-conservative Clare when I was a good social democrat, ambiguously in cahoots with the Old Left, though we differ on the sources of fascism (RM imagines that the protoculture of Germany after WWI was presaged by the Wandervogel movement, which he sees as one source of his much-praised contemporary model bohemia, which should move us into “anarchy.”

This is how I read RM: as I have recounted many times, the event of the 1960s, which energized my loyalty to Pacifica listener-sponsored radio, was the New Left emphasis on black liberation/civil rights, emphasized by RM as the claim that all music was black (clearly controversial).

RM imagines that Pacifica-FM radio in Berkeley was an outpost of acceptable bohemian thought. And a model of the tension between technology (the Bomb) and typical counter-culture protest Until the last chapter, I thought that RM was a technophobe for he disses some of Hitler’s projects, (i.e., the Volkswagen).

In some ways, RM was a typical populist, blaming “romantic Nazism” for elevating “finance capital” for the rise of Hitler. Also, he attributes “compassion” for everything good in the world, just like today’s Democratic Party liberals, while hard-heartedness is a quality of the hated conservatives.

I have not mentioned RM’s taste for gore, dwelling on the horrors of war in World War I, easily transferred to his case against US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. RM’s environmentalism is possibly located here, rather than being a proto- Green.

Finally, RM is a Francophile, locating his type of proto-cultural bohemian in the early 19th C. among the Parisian artists and poets, and reflected in his detailed discussion of the Commune (a common favorite of the Left, seen as precursor to full-blown Communism).

/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter. Read this Wiki bio first. As Wiki describes, though RH started out as a Red, he soon switched to social democracy. His negative opinion of Darwin was rejected by later Red graduate students at UCLA: I don’t know why (see below), especially as RH rejected materialism and the abuse of science here.

Indeed, RH wrote this early book in the tradition of Charles Beard (see https://clarespark.com/2018/05/29/progressive-legacy-to-democratic-party/), and other confusing Progressives, and yet was an inspiration to later Red historians and the New Left generation who similarly denounced racism, imperialism, expansionism, and the Industrial Revolution that exploited immigrants. And like the Progs, RH embraced pragmatism (Peirce, William James, and John Dewey). 

I suppose that Darwin became fashionable during the climate change offensive, though his views on marriage were retrograde. (See https://clarespark.com/2011/04/14/darwin-and-the-climate-change-debate-the-greens-have-it//)

If I became a sort-of conservative, it was no thanks to my graduate training at UCLA.

The four books are Nazi Culture by George L. Mosse (1960, 1981), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer (1960), Der Fuehrer by Konrad Heiden (1944). and by Georgi Dimitroff The United Front: the Struggle Against Fascism and War (1938). [Guess which one parroted the Russian Soviet line and was discarded by my Stalinist dissertation advisor, Alexander Saxton!] I have listed them in the order read (not by date of publication).

The Heiden book was my favorite, because I appreciate the amount of detail he brought to Hitler and his friends/enemies, for instance, the emphasis on obedience as opposed to racism. Sadly, his book ended after the hair-raising “Blood Purge” of the S.A. and others of Hitler’s compatriots. Also, unlike Shirer or Dimitroff, he did not blame all industrialists (or finance capital) for financing National Socialism, but specified particular individuals for helping Hitler on his way. Heiden was also unique in distinguishing the peace period (that may account for the support of the U.S., France, and Britain in ’34, when Hitler seemed more benign. He brought an ultra-Freudian analysis to Hitler’s childhood and early adult psyche, while Heiden’s portrait does not entirely jibe with the later Hitler’s amazing persona.

I don’t remember other than the popular Wisconsin professor George L. Mosse making an issue of “race,” although everyone (except the Stalinist) discussed the Aryan myth. Of course, all these histories noted the persecution of the Jews except for Dimitroff who was more interested in class struggle (bourgeoisie vs. the working class) directed against both Communists and acceptable social democrats (anti-pluralists).

The F word I don’t mean the common word for sexual intercourse that I used to spell “phuque” out of a surfeit of gentility unlike the constant use of that word in a bewildering variety of contexts, perhaps giving witness to the coarsening of our culture.

Rather, the f word refers to “fascism,” which is bandied about without thought to precision. I have asked if we are there yet, given the current direction of the Democrat Party. Although numerous pundits on the Left (including social democrats) used to label free market advocates with that insulting moniker in the 1930s; the accusation continues today in Democrat punditry and common usage alike.

I do not pretend to be a specialist in European history but am somewhat obsessed on the “fascism” word, partly because I lived through the beginning of World War II as a child. I have read a lot about the F word, and know that there is no generic term for “fascism.” Scholars take care to distinguish between Hitler-style fascism; Corporate State fascism (see the 1960s New Left term for capitalism (ever repressive to the working class); Mussolini-style fascism (some see the syndicalist type of fascism in Italy); or precursors such as the Action Francaise. Then Franco-style repression in Spain, aided by Germany and Italy.

I have objected in the past to the twinning of communism and fascism. That was a no-no to the Left (of which I was once a part) but Ludwig von Mises noted in his book Socialism that fascism in Germany entailed price controls, defying the free market laws of supply and demand. Taking a similar tack, Ernst Nolte in Three Faces of Fascism describes Marxism as the indispensable precursor of fascism (for which, I believe, Nolte has taken a lot of abuse from the Left in the “Historian’s Debate” in Germany,1986).

And although I generally line up with Trump-supporters, I hold fast to doing history: which means that racism, sexism, antisemitism, and imperialism are part of our US history. Despite their sharp differences, German and Italian fascisms were both racist, sexist, antisemitic, and imperialistic. Of course, few would deny that. But George Orwell objected to its promiscuous usage in Tribune, (1944) writing to accord “fascism” only to Germany and Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism, quoting George Orwell: “the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else … Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathisers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist” That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.”

This blog argues that The Loudest Voice on Showtime is a predictable showdown between anti-Trump New Left liberals or even Never-Trumpers vs. conservatives who watch Fox News Channel. It took me a while to see this.

The Loudest Voice with its emphasis on private property is better seen as communist propaganda, meant to take down capitalism. The series, starring Russell Crowe as the contemptible Roger Ailes, might be seen otherwise as social democracy by casual non-historians, for it contains the usual liberal talking points: white male supremacy, upward mobility, hypocrisy, and paternalism, even “Roger Ailes”/Trump as Hitler  

It was historian Richard Hofstadter who emphasized private property as the linchpin of capitalism and the series highlights property rights (as say, in anti-“democratic” zoning laws). Property is way more important than, say, blow jobs, suggestive fondling, marital infidelity, autocratic behavior, or the other sins imputed to (Catholic) Roger Ailes.

I have watched four episodes so far; when is Showtime going to treat Fox News Channel as “fair and balanced”—the “moderate” cable channel, paired with the equally “moderate” Wall Street Journal ?

As it stands so far, the series, emphasizing private property is vintage anti-American and communistic, not social democratic.