According to the good folk at Wikipedia the sack of Rome that occurred on this day in 1527 is considered at least by some to mark the end of the Renaissance. This battle and the ensuing sack was a nasty affair, where notably some one hundred, forty-seven Swiss guards died in the fighting, which allowed the pope, Clement VII, to escape.
Of course such markers are arbitrary and usually not the actual event precipitating something as great a cultural paradigm shift as great as that from the Renaissance into the Enlightenment. But, even those categories are the stuff of convenience, trying to mark out some larger movements of cultural history. I’m past certain that in many parts of early sixteenth century Europe life wasn’t substantially different than the epoch prior to the Renaissance, what in my childhood was usually called the Dark Ages, and today is more usually called the Middle Ages. And no doubt Renaissance sensibilities would continue on for some time in various places among various people.
But, also, there was a great shift taking place, which these days in my circles is often maligned, but to which we owe more than can be said for our own move toward respecting the individual’s rights within our communities. And along with that reason and the beginnings of what we can legitimately call science. Vastly important things.
And now, here we are. Things are not going well. Some forty percent of Americans rely on some form of government relief just to get by. The rich are in fact getting richer while the middle class is shrinking and living ever more precariously. For the first time and with justification Americans do not believe their children’s lives will be better than theirs. On top of that we seem to not be able to extricate ourselves from the many catastrophes and wars raging around the world, although mainly at this time in the Middle East, some of which we have had a hand in starting. We see our money and lives being expended for unclear purposes while the wealth generated by our own domestic economy is going to fewer and fewer people.
In the wake of this reality our American political scene has degenerated to the point where a real estate developer and reality television personality has captured the nomination of the Republican party to run for president of the United States on a platform of building a wall between this country and Mexico to protect us from rapists and murderers on the other side, and putting a “moratorium” on allowing foreign Muslims entry past our borders. Frankly on the other side of the political aisle there is also discontent, and the front runner is castigated as at best more of a bad same and at worst as a murderous imperialist adventurer advocating a neocolonialist world-view, in the pocket of multi-national corporations and banks too big to fail.
For the moment my concern is to see what is actually happening in response to the current chaos, and particularly within the American Republican party that has allowed Donald Trump to take them over. It is of the many things going on one I find particularly chilling.
The Hungarian philosopher Gaspar Miklos Tamas has coined a term I find useful, Post Fascism. Now, I find his analysis all gets bogged down in his Marxist or neo-Marxist assumptions and with that what he rejects or embraces as the solutions to the problem. For instance his rejection of multiculturalism as part of the cure to the problem as simply the cooption of good-will by the forces of oppression. That said, I think he has put his finger on a real issue we’re facing today. He may not see the cure, but he names the problem. Or, at least a big part of it.
Mr Miklos observes:
‘Before the Enlightenment, citizenship was a privilege, an elevated status limited by descent, class, race, creed, gender, political participation, morals, profession, patronage, and administrative fiat, not to speak of age and education. Active membership in the political community was a station to yearn for, civis Romanus sum the enunciation of a certain nobility. Policies extending citizenship may have been generous or stingy, but the rule was that the rank of citizen was conferred by the lawfully constituted authority, according to expediency. Christianity, like some Stoics, sought to transcend this kind of limited citizenship by considering it second-rate or inessential when compared to a virtual community of the saved. Freedom from sin was superior to the freedom of the city. During the long, medieval obsolescence of the civic, the claim for an active membership in the political community was superseded by the exigencies of just governance, and civic excellence was abbreviated to martial virtue.
“Once citizenship was equated with human dignity, its extension to all classes, professions, both sexes, all races, creeds, and locations was only a matter of time. Universal franchise, the national service, and state education for all had to follow. Moreover, once all human beings were supposed to be able to accede to the high rank of a citizen, national solidarity within the newly egalitarian political community demanded the relief of the estate of Man, a dignified material existence for all, and the eradication of the remnants of personal servitude. The state, putatively representing everybody, was prevailed upon to grant not only a modicum of wealth for most people, but also a minimum of leisure, once the exclusive temporal fief of gentlemen only, in order to enable us all to play and enjoy the benefits of culture.”
Elsewhere he writes that he uses the term fascism “to refer to a break with the enlightenment tradition of citizenship as a universal entitlement; that is to say, with its assimilation of the civic condition to the human condition.”
And, with that he coined the term Post Fascism or sometimes post-fascism “to describe a cluster of policies, practices, routines and ideologies which can be observed everywhere in the contemporary world. Without ever resorting to a coup d’etat, these practices are threatening our communities. They find their niche easily in the new global capitalism, without upsetting the dominant political forms of electoral democracy and representative government.”
This post-fascism, or, maybe its simply neo-fascism, is a pulling back from our Enlightenment values holding up the individual and the institutions that support the individual through a renewed sense of tribal identity, ultra nationalism, and with that articulated fear of various “others.”
I don’t claim to have an answer to the problem. But, I think this is a significant element of that problem.
People are afraid. Legitimately. And in response a significant number among us are looking to anti-Enlightenment principles as the fix.
Are we waiting on a new sack of Rome, and a significant shift to some new, and from my perspective, dark era? Possibly. Possibly.
But, if we read the currents right, we have a chance to go in other directions.
And, I have to admit, I tend to be a hopeless optimist.
I think we can…
I sure hope we can, because the alternatives… Well…
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