The Aristos by John Fowles

Author:John Fowles [John Fowles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

FASCISM

68 Fascism maintains that it is the duty of the powerful and intelligent to gain control of the state so that the Many may be organized and controlled. At its Platonic best it is the most realistic of political philosophies. But it always breaks on the same rock: the individual.

69 It is the individual in us that makes us suspect measures of which we approve. We can always put ourselves in the place of those who disapprove. Individuality is a channel, a medium through which all individuals can communicate. It is a passport to all other individuals. But it is this essential intercommunicability of individualized intelligences that fascism sets out to destroy. Fascism and imagination are incompatible.

70 Fascists attempt to found a unipolar society. All must face south, none must face north. But in such societies there is a fatal attraction towards the counterpoles of whatever is commanded. If you order man to look to the future, he looks to the present. If you order him to worship God, he worships man. If you order him to serve the state, he serves himself.

71 Society needs some conformities, as a machine needs oil and rounded edges. But many societies demand conformity in precisely the matters where nonconformity is needed, and allow nonconformity where it should be banned. Nothing is more terrible in a society than this wastage or abuse of the desire to conform.

72 The good human society is one in which no one conforms without thinking why he is conforming; in which no one obeys without considering why he is obeying; and in which no one conforms out of fear or laziness. Such a society is not a fascist one.

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