Fight Club (careful! Profanity!)

I'm including some scenes from the film Fight Club to augment your reading on Occidentalism. Buruma asserts that occidentalists hate, among other things, the bourgeoisie. What does it mean to be bourgeois? What does it mean to be heroic? Think about those two concepts (bourgois and heroic) as you watch the following clips.

Modern Living


Single Serving Friends


The things you own


Pain


Spiritual War


What do these men hate? What do they want? Are they occidentalists?

What's So Great?

For tomorrow, you'll be responding to the following prompt:
"According to Dinesh D'Souza, what is the most serious "intellectual attack" against America that our enemies possess? What intellectual defense does he offer as a response?"

The video below won't answer the entire question, but it lets you see who D'Souza is as he responds during an interview. He does seek to explain what makes America unique and worthy of defending.

Can't we all just get along?

Here are some responses to Jonah Goldberg's recent book, Liberal Fascism. One is on cable news, and I question whether anything on cable news can do a subject justice. Note that Goldberg argues that the Nazis considered themselves "revolutionary" and that conservatives were "anything but". However, he's playing fast and loose with the way he chooses to define conservatism. He wants us to accept that "conservative" in 1920 meant the same thing it does now. In fact, most right-wing German conservatives were opposed to free market economics in the 20s (as you'll read later this fall). Goldberg wants to point out possible connections between 20th century American "liberalism" and fascism, but much of it is superficial.

Here's a piece Goldberg wrote for the National Review.

A supportive Sean Hannity interviewing Goldberg:



Here is a hostile review of Goldberg's text.

There are a number of other video clips and reviews of Goldberg's work. Also, he has a blog here.
About two years ago, Chris Hedges published American Fascists. Here he is on a Canadian program called The Hour.



Finally, this is another interesting interpretation of "American Fascism" from a British critic:



Regardless of what you think about the individual interpretations of fascism, it's interesting to note which characteristics recieve the most attention.