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Black Shirts in Red China
Beijing today is more fascist than communist.
As President Bush, just back from Beijing, got up close to the rulers of China, he must have had conflicting feelings.
We are told that the Chinese have helped us fight terror, which is cause for satisfaction. On the other hand, the CIA has recently revised sharply upward its estimate of Chinese military power in the near future, which is cause for concern. As he ponders what China is and may be, Mr. Bush might reflect that the People's Republic is something quite unique, and therefore very difficult to understand.
China is not, as is invariably said, in transition from communism to a freer and more democratic state. It is, instead, something we have never seen before: a maturing fascist regime. This new phenomenon is hard to recognize, both because Chinese leaders continue to call themselves communists, and also because the fascist states of the first half of the 20th century were young, governed by charismatic and revolutionary leaders, and destroyed in World War II. China is anything but young, and it is governed by a third or fourth generation of leaders who are anything but charismatic.
The current and past generations of Chinese leaders, from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, may have scrapped the communist economic system, but they have not embraced capitalism. To be sure, the state no longer owns "the means of production." There is now private property, and, early last June, businessmen were formally admitted to the Communist Party. Profit is no longer taboo; it is actively encouraged at all levels of Chinese society, in public and private sectors. And the state is fully engaged in business enterprise, from the vast corporations owned wholly or in part by the armed forces, to others with top management and large shareholders simultaneously holding government jobs.
This is neither socialism nor capitalism; it is the infamous "third way" of the corporate state, first institutionalized in the 1920s by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, then copied by other fascists in Europe.
Like the earlier fascist regimes, China ruthlessly maintains a single-party dictatorship; and although there is greater diversity of opinion in public discourse and in the media than there was a generation ago, there is very little wiggle room for critics of the system, and no toleration of advocates of Western-style freedom and democracy. Like the early fascist regimes, China uses nationalism--not the standard communist slogans of "proletarian internationalism"--to rally the masses. And, like the early fascisms, the rulers of the People's Republic insist that virtue consists in sublimating individual interests to the greater good of the nation. Indeed, as we have seen recently in the intimidation and incarceration of overseas Chinese, the regime asserts its right to dominate all Chinese, everywhere. China's leaders believe they command a people, not merely a geographic entity.
Unlike communist leaders, who extirpated traditional culture and replaced it with a sterile Marxist-Leninism, the Chinese enthusiastically mine the millennia of Chinese thought to provide legitimacy for their own actions. No socialist realism here! Indeed, this open embrace of ancient Chinese culture is one of the things that has most entranced Western observers. Many believe that a country with such ancient roots will inevitably demonstrate its profound humanity in social and political practice. Yet the fascist leaders of the 1920s and '30s did the same. Mussolini rebuilt Rome to provide a dramatic visual reminder of ancient glory, and Hitler's favorite architect built neoclassical buildings throughout the Third Reich.
Like their European predecessors, the Chinese claim a major role in the world because of their history and culture, not because of their current power, or their scientific or cultural accomplishments. Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge historic wounds. China even toys with some of the more bizarre notions of the earlier fascisms, like the program to make the country self-sufficient in wheat production--the same quest for "autarky" that obsessed both Hitler and Mussolini.
It is therefore wrong to think of contemporary China as an intensely unstable system, riven by the democratic impulses of capitalism on the one hand and the repressive instincts of communism on the other. Fascism may well have been a potentially stable system, despite the frenzied energies of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. After all, fascism did not fall as the result of internal crisis; it was destroyed by superior force of arms. Fascism was alarmingly popular; Hitler and Mussolini swept to power atop genuine mass movements, and neither Italians nor Germans produced more than token resistance until the war began to be lost.
Since classical fascism had such a brief lifespan, it is hard to know whether or not a stable, durable fascist state is possible. Economically, the corporate state may prove more flexible and adaptable than the rigid central planning that doomed communism in the Soviet empire and elsewhere (although the travails of Japan, which also tried to combine capitalist enterprise with government guidance, show the kinds of problems China will likely face). And our brief experience with fascism also makes it difficult to evaluate the possibilities of political evolution.
Although Hitler liked to speak of himself as primus inter pares, the first among racial equals, he would not have contemplated the democratization of the Third Reich, nor would Mussolini have yielded power to the freely expressed will of the Italian people. It seems unlikely that the leaders of the People's Republic will be willing to make such a change either. If they were, they would not be so palpably concerned that the Chinese people might seek to emulate the democratic transformation of Taiwan.
To be sure, the past is not a reliable guide to the future. China has already amazed the world with its ability to transform itself in record time. Many scholars believe that China's entry into the World Trade Organization will bring further dramatic change, as the Chinese have to cope with freer competition and a greatly enhanced foreign presence. They may be right, but I have doubts. For the most part, politics trumps economics when the survival of a powerful regime is at stake, and the Chinese leaders have often said they have no intention of following Mikhail Gorbachev's example.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush has to contend with the present state of affairs, and must evaluate the risks and challenges of contemporary China. Classical fascism was the product of war, and its leaders praised military virtues and embarked upon military expansion. Chinese leaders often proclaim a peaceful intent, yet they are clearly preparing for war, and have been for many years. Optimists insist that China is not expansionist, but optimists pooh-poohed Hitler's imperialist speeches too, and there is a lot of Chinese rhetoric that stresses Beijing's historic role, as if there were a historic entitlement to superpower status.
Thus, classical fascism should be the starting-point for our efforts to understand the People's Republic. Imagine Italy 50 years after the Fascist revolution, Mussolini dead and buried, the corporate state intact, the party still firmly in control, the nation governed by professional politicians and a corrupt elite rather than the true believers. A system no longer based on charisma but on political repression, cynical not idealistic, and on formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the "great Italian people," endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.
That is China today. It may be with us quite a while.
Mr. Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, is author of "The War Against the Terror Masters," forthcoming from St. Martin's Press.
We are told that the Chinese have helped us fight terror, which is cause for satisfaction. On the other hand, the CIA has recently revised sharply upward its estimate of Chinese military power in the near future, which is cause for concern. As he ponders what China is and may be, Mr. Bush might reflect that the People's Republic is something quite unique, and therefore very difficult to understand.
China is not, as is invariably said, in transition from communism to a freer and more democratic state. It is, instead, something we have never seen before: a maturing fascist regime. This new phenomenon is hard to recognize, both because Chinese leaders continue to call themselves communists, and also because the fascist states of the first half of the 20th century were young, governed by charismatic and revolutionary leaders, and destroyed in World War II. China is anything but young, and it is governed by a third or fourth generation of leaders who are anything but charismatic.
The current and past generations of Chinese leaders, from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, may have scrapped the communist economic system, but they have not embraced capitalism. To be sure, the state no longer owns "the means of production." There is now private property, and, early last June, businessmen were formally admitted to the Communist Party. Profit is no longer taboo; it is actively encouraged at all levels of Chinese society, in public and private sectors. And the state is fully engaged in business enterprise, from the vast corporations owned wholly or in part by the armed forces, to others with top management and large shareholders simultaneously holding government jobs.
This is neither socialism nor capitalism; it is the infamous "third way" of the corporate state, first institutionalized in the 1920s by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, then copied by other fascists in Europe.
Like the earlier fascist regimes, China ruthlessly maintains a single-party dictatorship; and although there is greater diversity of opinion in public discourse and in the media than there was a generation ago, there is very little wiggle room for critics of the system, and no toleration of advocates of Western-style freedom and democracy. Like the early fascist regimes, China uses nationalism--not the standard communist slogans of "proletarian internationalism"--to rally the masses. And, like the early fascisms, the rulers of the People's Republic insist that virtue consists in sublimating individual interests to the greater good of the nation. Indeed, as we have seen recently in the intimidation and incarceration of overseas Chinese, the regime asserts its right to dominate all Chinese, everywhere. China's leaders believe they command a people, not merely a geographic entity.
Unlike communist leaders, who extirpated traditional culture and replaced it with a sterile Marxist-Leninism, the Chinese enthusiastically mine the millennia of Chinese thought to provide legitimacy for their own actions. No socialist realism here! Indeed, this open embrace of ancient Chinese culture is one of the things that has most entranced Western observers. Many believe that a country with such ancient roots will inevitably demonstrate its profound humanity in social and political practice. Yet the fascist leaders of the 1920s and '30s did the same. Mussolini rebuilt Rome to provide a dramatic visual reminder of ancient glory, and Hitler's favorite architect built neoclassical buildings throughout the Third Reich.
Like their European predecessors, the Chinese claim a major role in the world because of their history and culture, not because of their current power, or their scientific or cultural accomplishments. Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge historic wounds. China even toys with some of the more bizarre notions of the earlier fascisms, like the program to make the country self-sufficient in wheat production--the same quest for "autarky" that obsessed both Hitler and Mussolini.
It is therefore wrong to think of contemporary China as an intensely unstable system, riven by the democratic impulses of capitalism on the one hand and the repressive instincts of communism on the other. Fascism may well have been a potentially stable system, despite the frenzied energies of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. After all, fascism did not fall as the result of internal crisis; it was destroyed by superior force of arms. Fascism was alarmingly popular; Hitler and Mussolini swept to power atop genuine mass movements, and neither Italians nor Germans produced more than token resistance until the war began to be lost.
Since classical fascism had such a brief lifespan, it is hard to know whether or not a stable, durable fascist state is possible. Economically, the corporate state may prove more flexible and adaptable than the rigid central planning that doomed communism in the Soviet empire and elsewhere (although the travails of Japan, which also tried to combine capitalist enterprise with government guidance, show the kinds of problems China will likely face). And our brief experience with fascism also makes it difficult to evaluate the possibilities of political evolution.
Although Hitler liked to speak of himself as primus inter pares, the first among racial equals, he would not have contemplated the democratization of the Third Reich, nor would Mussolini have yielded power to the freely expressed will of the Italian people. It seems unlikely that the leaders of the People's Republic will be willing to make such a change either. If they were, they would not be so palpably concerned that the Chinese people might seek to emulate the democratic transformation of Taiwan.
To be sure, the past is not a reliable guide to the future. China has already amazed the world with its ability to transform itself in record time. Many scholars believe that China's entry into the World Trade Organization will bring further dramatic change, as the Chinese have to cope with freer competition and a greatly enhanced foreign presence. They may be right, but I have doubts. For the most part, politics trumps economics when the survival of a powerful regime is at stake, and the Chinese leaders have often said they have no intention of following Mikhail Gorbachev's example.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush has to contend with the present state of affairs, and must evaluate the risks and challenges of contemporary China. Classical fascism was the product of war, and its leaders praised military virtues and embarked upon military expansion. Chinese leaders often proclaim a peaceful intent, yet they are clearly preparing for war, and have been for many years. Optimists insist that China is not expansionist, but optimists pooh-poohed Hitler's imperialist speeches too, and there is a lot of Chinese rhetoric that stresses Beijing's historic role, as if there were a historic entitlement to superpower status.
Thus, classical fascism should be the starting-point for our efforts to understand the People's Republic. Imagine Italy 50 years after the Fascist revolution, Mussolini dead and buried, the corporate state intact, the party still firmly in control, the nation governed by professional politicians and a corrupt elite rather than the true believers. A system no longer based on charisma but on political repression, cynical not idealistic, and on formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the "great Italian people," endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.
That is China today. It may be with us quite a while.
Mr. Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, is author of "The War Against the Terror Masters," forthcoming from St. Martin's Press.
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It is, in particular, the latter tradition which has gone through a rich development in our century, beginning in Russia and in Czechoslovakia during the first decades, then encountering a new vigour in France and Italy in the fifties and the sixties, and finally diffusing over the whole world, notably to Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and Spain, in Europe, and to USA and Latin America. With the single exception of Denmark, the Nordic countries have been newcomers to this game. At present, in the best work, the philosophical rigour of Peirce has been intimately united to the empirical approach found in Saussure.
Above all, semiotics is a peculiar point of view: a perspective which consists in asking ourselves how things become carriers of meaning. Thus, the task of semiotics involves the determination of criteria which may help separate different sign types and other kinds of signification. Well-known instances of such typologies are Peirces trichotonomy icon/index/symbol and the opposition between the analogue and the digital. Both these distinctions turns out to be insufficient, if not inadequate, when they are confronted with actually existing system of signification.
One reasons for this is that one and the same sign instance may play several different parts at the same time: a picture may represent something, express something, refer to its own material character, allude to something, be a metaphor or constitue some other type of indirect sign for something. Since semiotics is interesting in finding general rules and regularities, it tries to describe these phenomena as generic functions in some kind of system.
But it must be admitted that these generic functions are modified by the contexts in which they appear. Therefore, semiotics is not only called upon to describe similarities and dissimilarities between different ways of conveying signification, but equally the different ways in which several systems of signification collaborate at the transmission of meaning (spoken and written language, gestures and facial expression during a chat or as part of a theatre representation or a film; that which may be conveyed by new media such as the computer, etc.). In contrast to the abstract approach characterising earlier semiotics, semiotics of culture looks at similarities and convergences between different systems of signification in historically existing cultures.
See also Målbeskrivning semiotik (only in Swedish)
Bildsemiotikens system och historia
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current research
We take our point of departure in a critical reception of the so-called semiotics of culture, initiated by the Tartu school in the early seventies, mostly with a view of interpreting Russian history, and which was then developed by mostly German and North American semioticians. Our aim, however, is to apply this point of view to the differences between pre-modern and modern forms of communication in the widest sense of the term, and to their modification in recent times. We are particularly interested in the spatial expression of these forms of communication, for instance the shape of the city. Another focus of our interest is the influence of new media, such as television and computers, and the increasing importance of some old sign types, such as pictures.
Another line of reasoning which we are pursuing has to do with the position of the art sphere within culture, as a specific, but ever-changing, part of the wider domain of picture production. We have also taken an ever more acute interest in the difficulties of contact between Swedish culture and other cultures, those outside its domain of spatial extension, naturally, but also those which nowadays occupy the same space, that is the immigrant cultures.
See "Semiotica cultural de la sociedad de la imagen" (also in Swedish)
"Bridging culture and nature in cultural semiotics"
"The limits of nature and culture in cultural semiotics"
"The pencils of nature and culture"
"The concept of text in cultural semiotics"
"The life of signs in society — and out of it"
"The multimediation of the lifeworld"
"In search of Swedish Nature. Beyond the Threshold of the People's Home"
"The Culture of Modernism"
"Interacción y identidad. Para una semiótica de la inmigración"
"Dos modelos de la globalización"
"On modelling the complexity of cultural models"
A schematic overview of the problems addressed by cultural semiotics
Also see, Anders Marner:"Musikvideo och semiotik"
Also see Ximena Narea: "Migración y transformación cultural. Artistas latinoamericos en Suecia"
This interest has developed from an earlier preoccupation with the more formal differences between the potentialities of verbal language and pictures for conveying information. This research interest in now pursued, partly in the sense of a revision of visual rhetoric, and also as a study of the different potentialities of pictorial and verbal vehicles for conveying specific types of information such as, most notably, narrativity. The two dominant strains of this research have been, on the one hand, a critique of the critique of iconicity (as conduced by Eco and Goodman, among others):
"Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays"
"Models and Methods in Pictorial Semiotics"
See "Pictorial semiotics"
"The semiotic function and the genesis of pictorial meaning"
"The ecological foundations of iconicity"
"Iconicity in the ecology of the Lifeworld"
"That there an many kinds of iconic signs"
"Le mythe de la triple articulation"
"Mute narratives"
"La iconicidad en un marco ecológico"
"De l'iconicité des images à l'iconicité des gestes"
"Semiotics of Photography — On tracing the Index"
"Visual signs in the age of digital production"
My bibliography of visual semiotics (from 1990: will soon by updated)
And on the other hand the development of a model for pictorial semiotics, which is based on visual rhetoric, itself founded on concepts of indexicality and opposition:
"Pictorial semiotics"
"Tjugofem års soppa på Panzanis pasta"
"Bildens yta och djup. Grunder för en bildsemiotik"
"Notes sur la macchia de Kandinsky; le problème du langage plastique"
"Le silence parlant des images"
"Quadrature of the hermeneutic circle"
"Fantasins ankarfästen. Någon om bildavbildningar och andra overkligheter"
"Approaches to the Lifeworld core of pictorial rhetoric"
"Les rondeurs secrètes de la ligne droite. A propos de Rothko"
"De la estructúra a la retórica en la semiótica visual"
"Postphotography and beyond"
"Global and local constraints in picture production"
"The Culture of Modernism"
"De la retórica de la percepcion a la retórica de la cultura"(also in Swedish)
"El lugar del rito en la semiótica del espectáculo" (also in Swedish)
"Action becomes Art. 'Performance' in the Context of Theatre, Play, Ritual – and Life Action becomes Art"
"Rhétorique du monde de la vie"
"Indexicality as perceptual mediation"
"An essay concerning images"
Also see, Anders Marner:"Rhetoric in the double discouse of surrealism"
My bibliography of visual semiotics (from 1990: will soon by updated)
This work started out long ago as an attempt to study linguistic problems in an integrated semiotic framework, meant as a substitute for the "pragmatic waste-basket". This attempt was extended, during my Paris years, into a semiotics of gestuality. Since I have recently taken up this line of study again, I reproduce here some of my earliest articles.
"A plea for integral linguistics"
"Hermeneutics of the linguistic act"
"Du corps propre à la grande route"
"Bodily semiotics and the extensions of man"
"The Multiple Bodies of Man. Project for a semiotics of the body"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reports of the Semiotics Project
Some of the reports "published" by the Semiotics Projects, during the late eighties, but never widely accessible, will here be made available in PDF format. The first report is in Swedish, but they others are in English. Viewing and/or printing the PDF files requires the Acrobat PDFViewer plugin, distributed free of charge by Adobe.
"Bildbetydelser i informationssamhället" (only in Swedish)
"Models and Methods in Pictorial Semiotics"
"Semiotics of Photography — On tracing the Index"
Some other PDF files
"Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt theory, and the ecology of perceptiion"
"Varieties of interpretation. A view from semiotics"
"In search of the Swedish model in semiotics"
"An essay concerning images"
"Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays"
"On modelling the complexity of cultural models"
"Global and local constraints in picture production"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semiotic bibliography
My bibliography of visual semiotics, elaborated in 1990, has now been made available on the net, courtesy of Visio, and it will soon be actualised
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also, what's to make fun of about computer modeling of hurricanes?
America is not, as is invariably said, in transition from a totalitarian to a freer and more democratic state. It is, instead, something we have never seen before: a maturing fascist regime. This new phenomenon is hard to recognize, both because American leaders continue to call themselves freedom loving, and also because the fascist states of the first half of the 20th century were young, governed by charismatic and revolutionary leaders, and destroyed in World War II. America is no longer young, and it is governed by a third or fourth generation of leaders who are charismatic only to the ignorant masses.
The current and past generations of American leaders, from Franklin Rooselvelt to GW Bush, may have scrapped the old English kings and parliament but they have not embraced democracy. To be sure, the state no longer owns "the means of production." There is private property for the wealthy, and, early last June, businessmen from the Enron Corp. were formally admitted to energy policy talks in the White House. Profit is not taboo; it is actively encouraged at all levels of American society, in public and private sectors to the benefit of the elite class. And the state is fully engaged in business enterprise, from the vast corporations owned wholly or in part by the armed forces, to others with top management and large shareholders simultaneously holding government jobs.
This is neither socialism nor capitalism; it is the infamous "third way" of the corporate state, first institutionalized in the 1920s by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, then copied by other fascists in Europe.
Like the earlier fascist regimes, America ruthlessly maintains a single-party dictatorship disguised as a two party system; and although there is greater diversity of opinion in public discourse and in the media than there was a generation ago, there is very little wiggle room for critics of the system, and no toleration of advocates of true freedom and democracy. Like the early fascist regimes, America uses nationalism--not the standard democratic slogans of "liberty equality fraternity"--to rally the masses. And, like the early fascisms, the rulers of the United States of America insist that virtue consists in sublimating individual interests to the greater good of the nation. Indeed, as we have seen recently in the intimidation and incarceration of overseas Americans (such as John Walker), the regime asserts its right to dominate all Americans, everywhere. America’s leaders believe they command a people, not merely a geographic entity.
Unlike communist leaders, who extirpated traditional culture and replaced it with a sterile Marxist-Leninism, the Americans enthusiastically mine the war waging past of American thought to provide legitimacy for their own actions. No socialist realism here! Indeed, this open embrace of Manifest Destiny is one of the things that has most entranced Western observers. Many believe that a country with such warring roots will inevitably demonstrate its profound humanity in social and political practice. Yet the fascist leaders of the 1920s and '30s did the same. Mussolini rebuilt Rome to provide a dramatic visual reminder of ancient glory, and Hitler's favorite architect built neoclassical buildings throughout the Third Reich.
Like their European predecessors, the Americans claim a major role in the world because of their dominant warring past, despite their current power, or their scientific or cultural accomplishments. Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, America is made to feel betrayed and humiliated (World Trade Center, Pentagon, etc..) , and seeks to avenge historic wounds. America has toyed with some of the more bizarre notions of the earlier fascisms, like the program to make the country self-sufficient in wheat production (which it has done)--the same quest for "autarky" that obsessed both Hitler and Mussolini.
It is therefore wrong to think of contemporary America as an intensely unstable system, riven by the democratic impulses of capitalism on the one hand and the repressive instincts of fascism on the other. Fascism may well have been a potentially stable system, despite the frenzied energies of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. After all, fascism did not fall as the result of internal crisis; it was destroyed by superior force of arms. Fascism was alarmingly popular; Hitler and Mussolini swept to power atop genuine mass movements, and neither Italians nor Germans produced more than token resistance until the war began to be lost.
Since classical fascism had such a brief lifespan, it is hard to know whether or not a stable, durable fascist state is possible. Economically, the corporate state which works in conjunction with a fascist regime may prove more flexible and adaptable than the rigid central planning that doomed communism in the Soviet empire and elsewhere (although the travails of Japan, which also tried to combine capitalist enterprise with government guidance, show the kinds of problems America will likely face). And our brief experience with fascism also makes it difficult to evaluate the possibilities of political evolution.
Although Hitler liked to speak of himself as primus inter pares, the first among racial equals, he would not have contemplated the democratization of the Third Reich, nor would Mussolini have yielded power to the freely expressed will of the Italian people. It seems unlikely that the leaders of the American State will be willing to make such a change either. If they were, they would not be so palpably concerned that the American people might seek to emulate true democratic transformation.
To be sure, the past is not a reliable guide to the future. America has already amazed the world with its ability to transform itself in record time. Many scholars believe that America’s creation of the World Trade Organization brought about dramatic change, as the Americans have begun to control what could have been freer competition and a greatly enhanced presence from the rest of the world. They may be right, but I have doubts. For the most part, politics trumps economics when the survival of a powerful regime is at stake, and the American leaders have often said they have no intention of following Mikhail Gorbachev's example.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush has to contend with the present state of affairs, and must evaluate the risks and challenges of contemporary America. Classical fascism was the product of war, and its leaders praised military virtues and embarked upon military expansion. American leaders often proclaim a peaceful intent, yet they are clearly preparing for war, have been for many years, and are just now beginning to implement their war machine. Optimists insist that America is not expansionist, but optimists pooh-poohed Hitler's imperialist speeches too, and there is a lot of American rhetoric that stresses Washington’s historic role, as if there were a historic entitlement to superpower status.
Thus, classical fascism should be the starting-point for our efforts to understand the American Republic. Imagine Italy 50 years after the Fascist revolution, Mussolini dead and buried, the corporate state intact, the party still firmly in control, the nation governed by professional politicians and a corrupt elite rather than the true believers. A system no longer based on charisma but on political repression, cynical not idealistic, and on formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the "great Italian people," endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.
That is America today. It may be with us quite a while.