Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Fascist Dictatorship 1915-1945 by R.J.B. Bosworth

     Mussolini's Italy is the sequel to Mussolini, which I read a few months ago. In the second book, Bosworth explores everything else that wouldn't really fit in his biography of Mussolini without being much longer. So while the two books could theoretically be combined for one epic biography of Mussolini (which I would of loved), Bosworth instead gave us a book that focused on the man, and another that focused on the country, partly a social history, and partly a political history of Italy, but not going as far back as Mussolini's childhood in the 19th century.

The Fascists' Rise to Power

    Like in Mussolini Bosworth uses the First World War and the siege of Fiume as two of the biggest political events that would shape Italy prior to the rise of Mussolini. The First World War comes across as a huge event for the educated and middle classes in Italy, but something that did not interest the poor and the peasants. Their men were drafted to fight and suffered in a war that meant little to them, as they were not nearly as nationalistic as the middle classes. Fiume refers to the proclamation by the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio of the "Free State of Fiume" in the modern town of Rijelka, Croatia, which was known as Fiume in Italian. He led a band of passionate Italians to take the city and declare it to be Italian, and held it for several years. This gross act of illegal, nationalist occupation was considered by many to be a sort of precursor to Fascism. Mussolini himself saw it and apparently felt that time was passing him by to become a political leader, since he had been preempted by d'Annunzio.

    At the turn of the century, Italy was expelling emigrants en masse. Departures peaked in 1913 with 407,000 Italians going to North America, 148,000 to South America, and 307,000 to elsewhere in Europe. Sicily alone lost 146,000 inhabitants. Italians were mostly part of chain migration where they followed family members to developing immigrant communities, and mostly intended to return after some years of sending money home from abroad. In that same peak year of 1913, 111,000 Italians returned home from North America and 64,000 from South America. It was conceived of similarly to service in the army, when an Italian did their duty before returning home. So things weren't good going into World War One.

    WWI gave the Italian economy an artificial boost from governmental spending for the war effort, but the economy collapsed right after. Italy's GDP contracted by 14.5% in 1918, 7.6% in 1920, and 1.8% in 1921. The cost of living in 1918 was more than double what it was in 1914 and quadruple in 1921. It is probably no coincidence that Mussolini entered Parliament for the first time in 1921. The 1921 elections followed the Biennio Rosso, a period of intense social conflict between socialists, anarchists, the liberal government, and the nascent fascist movement. Mussolini would end up marching on Rome and being named Prime Minister in 1922. I think it is a real truism of politics that when liberal democracies fail to provide a strong economy for the majority of people, fascists or socialists will prevail. It is really the ultimate abdication of responsibility when liberal governments impose austerity in recessions, almost guaranteeing a massive toxic reaction. A lot of the reason the Fascists were successful, I think, was because they were the main party (that was not socialist or communist) that advocated to a return to the economic interventionism that kept everyone busy during the war. They called for bringing the war economy into peacetime, which must have been attractive with the economy basically dead to start the 20s.

    The period from the end of the First World War through Mussolini's seizure of power four years later seems like a time in Italy when violence was rewarded. In most cases, the first to resort to violence was the winner, which reminded me of Lenin's situation in Russia around the same time. In the May 1921 elections, the establishment National Bloc won 275 seats, which would have been a thin majority, but was split and not loyal to the reliable ex-Prime Minister Giolitti. The Socialists lost some seats but remained the next biggest, and the People's Party (the Catholic Party) made a strong showing. There were only 35 Fascists in the chamber of over 500, but would end up leading all by the end of the next year.

    Who made up the new Fascist party? They were largely soldiers returned from WWI, who formed fasci di combattimento or fighting bands/leagues. Fasci comes from the same root as the English word "factions" and referred to the groups that combat veterans formed to advocate for themselves after the war. The fasci united to create the Fascist Party, which ballooned from 20,000 members at the end of 1920 to 151,644 in 1921. 57% were returned soldiers, 24% were peasants, 15% were workers, 13% students, 12% landowners, 10% white-collar, 9% artisans and traders, 6.6% lawyers, doctors, and other professionals, 5% bureaucrats, 3 percent big businessmen, and 1% seamen. I would say not knowing what proportions each of these groups made up of the total population that the returned soldiers and the students stand out to me as the most disproportionately represented in the Fascist movement. In March 1921, just two months before the election that brough Fascists into Parliament, the Fascists were strongest in Trieste, followed by Ferrara, Milan, Bologna, Cremona, Verona, Naples, and Bari. There were very few in Turin. The Fascist heartland was basically the Po Valley. As of December 1921, 2% of Fascists were in Northern Italy, 13% in Central Italy, 19% in the mainland Southern Italy, and 6% in the islands.

    The Fascists won an enormous victory in 1924, coming to lead the government with two-thirds of the votes, and putting Mussolini at its head. I am not totally clear on the reasons for this and the shifting votes, but the election was marred by allegations of fraud that seem not entirely clear to me and allegations of violent intimidation by the Fascists that appear to be absolutely true. When socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti made these allegation in Parliament, he was assassinated by Fascists. It was a massive scandal and could have brought down the government, but it didn't. Bosworth writes:

In most liberal democracies it might be hoped that the kidnapping and killing of a leading opposition Member of Parliament would at once precipitate the collapse of a government whose chief, at a minimum, bore moral guilt for the death. In Italy in 1924, however, the government, after a reshuffle on 17 June, ... soldiered on. The King, the Vatican, the army chiefs, business, the academic world, all the old elites, contemplated the crisis and preferred not to swing decisively against the Prime Minister.

I think that is another common feature of Fascist movements: they come to power without major opposition by elites, and often with some tacit sanction, which could never be granted to left-wing revolutionaries. And so instead of toppling the government, just the opposite occurred and Mussolini declared the dictatorship in January 1925, issuing orders that no one may hold spontaneous "meetings, assemblies, parades, or other public demonstrations." Local governments were curtailed, and cities no longer elected their own mayors, who were instead appointed by Mussolini to five-year terms. There were also significant press controls and other changes that locked in Fascist power at this point.

What is Fascism?

    Wikipedia says Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy."

    I would say this is a pretty good definition, and basically every one of these facets is present in the first Fascist movement in Italy. The only difference in Italy from later forms of Fascism is that there was less emphasis on scientific racism, and more focus on a spiritual or mythical nation, likely because Italy's history is one of many groups merging together. The nationalism is maybe the most important element. One example is how in April 1922, Trieste banned the use of Slovene in any local proceedings, and closed down about 500 Slovene schools between 1919 and 1928. Another major aspect is illegality or just "alegality," since Fascists simply don't care to follow the law. The movement rose to power in Italy through "squadrism," sending squads of thugs into cities and the countryside to simply beat up those who opposed them. Fascists are not interested in logic. They like words that deal with emotion, and will quickly resort to violence when words fail. They also focus on the physical health of the nation and the need to procreate to create more members of the nation and to conquer their neighbors and replace them.

    While Fascism is generally associated with conservatism, there are some currents running against it. Fascists don't really love the church, and that is evidenced in the conflict that occurred between Fascists and the Pope in Italy in the 1920s. But they were able to eventually accommodate one another, reflecting the fact that the far right and religious institutions often have more in common than not and will unite with each other. Fascists are also not very conservative in the sense that Fascists are radicals who want to change things. They are conservative in the sense of promoting hierarchies, not in the sense of standing athwart history yelling "stop!" It is that love of radical change that led to Mussolini to call elections in April 1924 and passing the Acerbo law, which "made the nation more governable" by giving a reward to the political grouping with the most votes; that victor would receive two-thirds of the seats in Parliament with the other third distributed proportionally. What I don't understand about this is why establishment politicians like Salandra, Giolitti, and Orlando all approved the Acerbo law. Maybe they thought they would be its beneficiaries. But I am also tempted to believe that there is or at least was some natural affinity of vaguely nationalist moderates and conservatives in favor of Fascists, as they are the ones likely to protest that they don't "really" support the Fascists, but "look how much they love the country." The Acerbo law, however, wasn't even necessary since the Fascists won by so much in 1924. A huge amount of votes came from Catholics, who abandoned the Catholic parties (as the Church had earlier for reasons I don't know) and went to the Fascists, who they believed would bring Bismarckian success to Italy.

    But Fascism is still conservative. The way that it is most conservative is that unlike left-wing revolutions, the right-wing does not usually attempt a "root-and-branch" removal of the ruling class. Fascist rule in Italy left much intact from the past. It did not assault the family, it did little to alter the existing distribution of property, it remained constitutionally a monarchy, and it successfully accommodated the Church. Whatever cultural revolution occurred in Italy was not nearly as ambitious as what was attempted in France in the 1790s, Russia in the 1920s, or China in the 1960s. Moreover, Mussolini portrayed himself as fiscally conservative, preoccupied with cutting waste, but willing to assist capital interests by denationalizing the telephone network and cancelling investigations in to excessive war profits that might have revealed some inconvenient culprits.

    A major argument of Bosworth's about Italian Fascism is that it had a lighter touch than most historians acknowledge. Bosworth points out that most of the legal framework of Mussolini's state was written by ex-Nationalists, and the Lateran Pacts, some of the regime's biggest triumphs, were not solely Fascist-drafted. Similarly, Fascist secret police were not like Nazi secret police. In Italy, police played a more "normal" role under dictatorship. Bosworth writes, "Himmler believed in the weirdest Nazi mysteries; Bocchini believed in nothing except a satisfying coitus and a succulent lobster." Nazism was dominated by ideology, Fascism seems by comparison almost bereft of it. For a government that sought to describe itself as totalitarian, Fascism was very incomplete.

    In it's most simple forms, Fascism is described by Mussolini as requiring only "a single party, a single youth organization, a single institution binding employers and their workforce, a dopolavoro," and a Duce. Or even more succinct, Mussolini told Franco that Fascism was "authoritarian, social, and popular." One thing that seems absent from Fascism is ideas. Bosworth points out that other scholars argue that Fascism should be understood by its ideas, but Bosworth seems to indicate to me that he disagrees. My impression is that Italian Fascism had few ideas, especially as compared to Communism, and even when compared to German fascism. When Michael Mann says that Fascism is "the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism," I think he is right, and I think there is not much more than that. Fascism doesn't need ideas because they get in the way of power, since somtimes power would have to be sacrificed in pursuit of ideals. I don't see that happening very often in Fascist Italy.

The Economics of Fascism

    The Fascists did not succeed in making the trains run on time. In fact, their economic impact on Italy seems slight. Wages went down, and through the 1930s, Italy's contribution to West European GDP went from 8.2 to 8.0 %. The national growth rate between 1922 and 1938 was an anemic 1.9% while the rest of Western Europe averaged 2.5%. Under Prime Minister Giolitti (before Fascism), Italy had actually outperformed German growth 2.7% to 2.6%. Meanwhile, the deficit grew to 6.6% of GDP in 1934, 16% in 1936, and 28% in 1940. Military expenditure made up two-thirds of public works spending. By the early 1930s, the Fascists had little to show for a decade in power. 62% of dwellings lacked a separate kitchen, just 52% had electric light, only 44% had running water, 42% had a toilet, and only 4% had a bath and 1% central heating. 

Women in Italy

    In a country that remained backwards compared to the rest of Europe, women were even further behind. While illiteracy among women fell from 81% in 1860, but remained as high as 42% in 1911. Women still frequently died in childbirth or abortions and female life expectancy only reached male life expectancy in the 1920s. Women also knew little of the outside world. When the men of the relatively modern Piedmont were drafted to fight Austria in World War One, peasant women, writes Bosworth, would not have understood where Austria was, merely understanding that their men would have to spend many days in a train or on foot to get there. Such ignorance made the peasants largely uninterested in the war effort compared to the bourgeoisie, who were excited by it and agitated for it.

    When the Fascists came into power, they quickly attempted to control the women of Italy and encourage them to have more babies. Fascists worried about the rise of feminism pushing women into work, and the resulting "full freedom in choice of reading, the freedom to flirt, to smoke, to cut short their luxuriant locks, to wear masculine-looking clothes, to engage in violent sports like football, fencing, javelin-throwing, and skiing," as Federico Maconcini (a fascist academic) warned. Fascists prosecuted women for abortions, and one series of trials resulted in a tabulation of the gruesome ways that women resorted to illegal abortions: 

falling off a bicycle, subjection to heavy work, immersion in fast-flowing water up to the stomach, imbibing large quantities of purgatives (bitter salt, laxative pills, taurine tablets, castor oil, manna [a mould on rye] ... ; then there was the use of mechanical means (bone crochet-hooks with the head removed, knitting needles, parsely stalks, bone hairpins), taking hot baths and various kinds of douches...

But Fascism also brought modernity into girls' and women's lives. Bosworth writes that dressing in uniforms, walking to Fascist functions alone or with a female friend the same age, and just breaking up family life through attendance at Fascist events exposed girls to a wider world than they would have otherwise seen in the countryside.

Falling Into Hitler's Orbit and The Second World War

    By the mid-1930s, Mussolini had very clearly brought Italy into Nazi Germany's circle. This seemed to stem from two factors. One was that Fascism had made no friends among the European superpowers. This failed foreign policy of brash imperialism, cynicism, and illegality (most especially in the invasion of Ethiopia and use of poison gas there) left Italy alone. And from the other end, Germany was forcing Italy into a subordinate role, which Anschluss confirmed. Through massive aggression, Germany became larger and larger and could have seized Italian lands if it wanted. So there was a carrot and stick that turned Italy into Germany's sidekick. 

    More acceleration came with the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when Italy and Germany joined forces to support General Francisco Franco. The war was a disaster for Italy, which lost more casualties than it did in Ethiopia, with 3,819 dead and 12,000 wounded. Italy also lost 759 places, 157 light tanks, 6,791 trucks, and 3,436 machine guns. This collaboration with Spain was what lead most directly to the formation of an "axis," the product of a visit by the young Foreign Minister and Mussolini-son-in-law Ciano to Berlin. By the end of 1937, Italy left the League of Nations along with Germany and Japan.

    Italy was not ready for World War Two. Since Fascism had failed to modernize the country or even keep it on the same pace as liberal Italy under Giolitti, the country was forced into World War Two after losing serious amounts of equipment and casualties in Spain, not having been successful at replacing them. Even as they geared up for a "war economy," over a half a million Italians remained unemployed in 1940 according to official figures. Even the well-educated couldn't find work, with only one in every hundred law graduates being admitted to the bar, and half of engineering graduates not working professionally. Unable to stimulate the market economy, the only answer was to employ people in government posts, tripling the number of employees in government services from 1930 to 1943.

    At the dawn of the war, Italy's air force had only six weeks of fuel, and the Italian fighter made by Fiat was considered the least effective fighter of the war. Engines routinely failed in flight and manufacturers fabricated different test results. In 1939, Italy had just 840 (many of which could not fly) while it claimed publicly to have 8,538. And by 1943, Italy could produce just 1,600 per year while the USA produced 85,898. So the USA was making more planes in a week than Italy did in a year. Italy foolishly joined Hitler in the Second World War on June 10, 1940, managing to stay out for just 273 days against the 296 days of the liberal government that joined WWI. And they joined the wrong side!

    During the war, the Fascist Party's footprint expanded, peaking at over half the population either being party members or attending some events. However, Italy was unable to develop the total war economy necessary to win the war let alone survive it. Italy's spending on the war effort peaked at just 23% of GDP in 1941, an especially weak figure considering that Italy had one of the weaker economies of the great powers. Those great powers also committed more of their greater resources to the war, as a percentage of GDP: Germany 64%, the USSR 61%, and Britain 52%). Mussolini talked of running a parallel war, separate from the Nazis' plans, but that was just a euphemism for disorganization. He invaded Greece without telling the Nazis, maybe as payback for them only informing him 15 minutes before their invasion of Poland. But he only gave his own generals two weeks' notice for that invasion, so maybe it was just incompetence. In some ways, Italy's incompetence during the war helped it to escape retribution after the war. Italy never had any public trials like those in Nuremberg and Tokyo, and the country's elites were able to largely continue their business.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• In 1914, Naples was still the most populous city in Italy. Today it is third, after Rome and Milan.
• The 1908 Messina earthquake killed as many as 100,000 people in the city and the surrounding area at a time when the region (Calabria) averaged 5,000 dead yearly as a result of natural disasters. Messina had been Italy's fourth-largest trading port and was completely destroyed, with the first shock alone lasting 37 seconds. Because the earthquake came at night, there were more fatalities since more people were inside their homes, which collapsed. 
• The word "totalitarian" was born in Italy to criticize Fascist government, and was appropriated by the Fascists themselves after 1925.
• I was pretty stunned to learn that there is an 80-meter obelisk that says MUSSOLINI DUX that still stands in Rome.
• Bosworth discusses how Mussolini differed from other dictators of the time in that he didn't relish in killing or purging his opponents. He actually paid money to Matteoti's family and would deny accusations of being a killer, something Hitler and Stalin never felt they had to do.
• Fascists also led campaigns in linguistics. Apparently lei was not as manly as voi and Fascists tried to make a replacement to the second-person pronoun.
• Italy banned interracial marriages between whites and blacks in 1937.
• Italy's post-war republic is known for passing leggine, or little laws. The result is that by the 1990s it was estimated that Italy had 90,000 laws while France and Germany had just 7,325 and 5,587, respectively.

Governing the World without World Government be Roberto Mangabeira Unger

     In this very short book, Unger determines that since there will be no world government anytime soon (both because it is unfeasible and undesirable), it is important to order the world even without any decider of last resort. What Unger believes works best is the system of coalitions of the willing, in which individual countries work with each other in voluntary organizations such as the G7, G20, ASEAN, and others. While the UN can serve as a valuable umbrella under which countries can join together to deal with global risks, the General Assembly is limited by the fact that it is dominated by small individual states without power, and the Security Council by the veto power and the unrepresentativeness of its members. Unger makes an interesting proposal that the Security Council should only have two members: the USA and China, and the rest should be determined by a vote; he would also eliminate veto power and impose rule by supermajority.

    There are three types of international organization going forward for Unger that are of use. One is the special-purpose organization, which is a group established by dissimilar countries to solve a specific problem, like solar energy use or air travel regulations. Another is the similar-state coalition, like the G7 or BRICS, in which similarly-situated states can discuss a wide range of issues. And then there are regional coalitions, like the African Union or the Organization of American States, which solve issues in one geographic area over a wide range of topics.

    There is also the possibility of a fourth international organization: an entente. This would be an organization in imitation of the 19th century Concert of Europe, an organization in which its members pledge to rally against the aggression of any one state against any other, thereby deterring aggression. This, he says, should be the goal of Europe and the developing states that depend on China and the United States avoiding conflict. These countries, he writes, should rally together to eventually announce an intention to punish any aggressor between the two, using their aggregated power to hopefully prevent a war. Writing of the process to get this done, Unger says, "Liquid before solid: understandings before commitments, and commitments before treaties and international institutions. The statesmen who conceived and implemented concerts among states have always understood the need to advance in this sequence." The end goal would be to govern the use of force and tie down the two largest powers to stop them from fighting each other.

    Unger also distinguishes between three historical traditions in how to approach relations among states: the Metternichian, the Wilsonian, and the Bismarckian. As for Metternich, which I understood the best, is the greatest commitment. This system turns "present advantage into vested right" and it is based on stability and legitimacy. Unger writes that its proximate enemy is revolution, and its ultimate enemy is time, since all political constructions eventually fall to dust. Wilsonian tradition seeks universal national self-determination, which it hopes to use as a tool to propagate the values and institutions of the great power(s). It favors pluralism of power, but struggles with conflict between the great powers that can uphold the system and the national interests that seek self-determination. Its chief instruments, writes Unger, are international law and international organization, along with wars that serve as ideological crusades. The Bismarckian tradition tries to avoid the consolidation of hegemony, and tries to prevent any one great power from crowding the others out. It is skeptical about associations between power and ideology, and tries to draw major and minor powers into concerted action, and prefers to concentrate on initiatives in the middle zone between war and law. Unger favors this tradition, and says its greatest strength is its "openness to correction in light of experience and changed circumstance." This last one perplexed be the most since I'm not sure about the historical context of this and it does not comport with my limited understanding of Bismarck. Unger does acknowledge that Bismarckian tradition unfortunately also featured "unaccountable autocrats, secret protocols, and territorial ambitions." Those seem like big things to wave away.

Antisemitism (Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism) by Hannah Arendt

     This was a very thought-provoking book, but often the thoughts provoked were those of disagreement with the author. However, as I write, I am feeling like I understand it a lot more. One of the main arguments that Arendt didn't explain enough for me was how she believes "modern antisemitism grew in proportion as traditional nationalism declined." This is partially based on the assertion that the Nazis were not simple nationalists- since Arendt says the Nazis had a major international aspect to their movement. But I am unconvinced by this since irredentism is a major facet of nationalist movements, and doesn't turn them into some sort of different internationalist movement. Arendt's explanation of why there was no Holocaust in France was even more baffling. She writes that it has to do with the fact that France's antisemitic parties had no supra-national ambitions. That makes sense since the worst parts of the Holocaust came about in the ethnic cleansing of eastern Europe. But then she says that French 19th-century antisemitism was defeated there because "it remained a national domestic issue without contact with imperialist trends, which did not exist there." Like what? I guess I can see how this could be referring to antisemitism not being directly connected to imperialism, but this seems like such an unclear way to see this.

    She does however make good criticisms of two common theories of antisemitism. One is the "scapegoat explanation," which says that the Holocaust happened because Jews were made the scapegoat for no other reason than being different. While there is truth in this, it doesn't really explain the ebbs and flows of antisemitism, or why the Holocaust happened in Germany at the time that it did. The other side is "eternal antisemitism," which says that since Jews were always discriminated against, the Holocaust was just a continuation of that past trend, an outburst that needs no special explanation because it is the natural consequence of an eternal problem. But this has the same problem of failing to actually explain why antisemitism emerges in one place or time or the other.

    Arendt offers that antisemitism emerged in the 19th century not as a result of nationalism, but as a result of emancipation. Prior to emancipation, court Jews tied the Jewish community to society by binding them to the aristocratic heads of state. By loaning money to princes and kings, court Jews were able to negotiate protections for their unemancipated communities. They were prime allies to the aristocracy because they were outside "the people" and had no interest in politics that would cause them to enter alliances for reasons other than financial gain. It was a key aspect of this relationship that the Jews had no actual power. While they could lend money, they could also have their property confiscated, and court Jews did not attempt to exercise influence over state policy beyond what affected their narrow communities. But this disappeared in the 19th century. Then, Jews were emancipated and no longer tied themselves to the state because the privilege it could grant to an individual already belonged to all of the Jewish individuals as of right. Arendt says that modern antisemitism evolved from the connection between Jews and the state, and that any class of society that came into conflict with the state became antisemitic. The most immune to antisemitism were the workers, who came into conflict less often with the state, but with the bourgeoisie.

    An idea of hers that I struggled with is what she says about how "political antisemitism developed because the Jews were a separate body, while social discrimination arose because of the growing equality of Jews with all other groups." So I understand this to mean that 20th century antisemitism came about from a dangerous combination of those two, since Jews shared equal individual rights as citizens of the state while not belonging to the nation. And so I think Arendt says that political equality is dangerous when "society leaves little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous," meaning that different groups can live together when they are unequal, but if they get equality, there needs to be a matching growth of tolerance. And so now we need to develop that tolerance, because the inequality of political rights served as a protection. The demand of equality for all, therefore causes group conflicts to take on "such terribly cruel forms." But the issue with this for me is that how does this grapple with medieval discrimination against the Jews? Maybe her argument isn't meant to be that the prior position of inequality was anything good, but that it at least avoids an eliminationist effort between groups. If groups can live together in inequality, they can at least live together. If they must live together in equality, then there is a greater temptation to completely eliminate one another, since equality may be intolerable (if they're racist, antisemitic, etc.). This makes a lot more sense in context of immigration. Just in writing this paragraph I think I'm getting it now. Similarly dangerous for Jewish people was how "Jewishness" came to transcend Judaism, so that people were still considered Jewish even after converting or becoming secular. This turned Jewishness into a fundamental aspect of someone's person, once again creating more need for total elimination in the minds of antisemites.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Because the system of privileges and restraints on Jews required there to be Jewish people to provide some support to the state, Frederick II was once said to remark that he hoped the Jews wouldn't convert to Christianity, likely because that would threaten state functioning.
• Arendt calls Zionism "the only political answer Jews have ever found to antisemitism and the only ideology in which they have ever taken seriously a hostility that would place them in the center of world events."

(Re-Read) Facing East From Indian Country: A Native History of Early America by Daniel K. Richter

     This is an amazing book that I read back in 2016 and rediscovered on my Kindle. I read it again and was reminded of how good Richter's writing and perspective is. The point of Facing East is for the reader to see the colonization of North America (mainly the northeastern United States but also some of Canada and the southern colonies) through the eyes of the native people. Mostly, the book focuses on the mid-15th century to the mid-18th century, with a little more at the end until the mid-19th. 

    Richter writes that in 1492, there were about 2 million people living east of the Mississippi River. Those numbers would start to shrink rapidly, but by 1700, there were still just 250,000 Europeans living in the area, exclusively in coastal enclaves and along some rivers, so the natives still predominated. The shift occurred between 1700 and 1750, by which point there were only about 250,000 Native Americans east of Mississippi and 1.25 million Europeans and Africans. However, at that time the area between the Great Lakes, the Appalachians, and the Mississippi remained in Indian hands, and would stay that way until after American independence and the early 19th century. Only around the time of US independence would the area that is now the eastern United States recover to hold 2 million people, but of course they were very different people. Richter writes that in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America, places where the Spanish settled saw epidemics that slashed Native populations by 75 to 95 percent during the 16th century, but that the evidence in North America is far shakier.

    The first major population collapses were happening by the middle of the 16th century, with disease being the likely cause of the breakup of nearly every chiefdom in the Mississippi Valley and the southeast at that time. Mounded cities were abandoned and political organization fractured into less hierarchical groups that would eventually form the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. The opposite happened in the north, where Great Lakes peoples coalesced to form the Iroquois Confederation and the Huron (later the Wyandots), as refugees from tribes destroyed by disease gathered into larger towns along the Susquehanna and Potomac River watersheds. These consolidations left large swathes of territory in New York and Pennsylvania empty of permanent inhabitants. There were also major epidemics right after colonists arrived in Massachusetts and Virginia in the 1600s. There was a pandemic in New England from 1616-18 that Europeans estimated left just one in fifteen alive in nearby villages, with an overall estimated 75% fatality rate. There was simultaneously a "great mortality" in the villages around Jamestown. And down south, at least 15 separate nations in the early 1500s had declined into just four groupings in Spanish Florida by the late 1600s.

    The book's best chapter's are its earliest ones. In chapter 1, Richter has us imagine three different perspectives, Stadacona (on the St. Lawrence River), Cofitachequi (South Carolina), and Cahokia (St. Louis). The imagined narratives are useful for getting the reader in the right frame of mind, although very limited by the lack of written records, and therefore largely fictional. In chapter 3, Richter tells three narratives through the eyes of real native peoples: Pocahontas, Kateri Tekakwitha, and King Philip (Metacom), who varied in how they dealt with Europeans. Pocahontas was used as a child-bride to forge a marriage alliance with the Europeans. Kateri Tekakwitha was a convert to Catholicism who fled from her native culture. And Metacom was a Wampanoag chief who made war against the colonists. The inclusion of their stories enhances the book a lot.

    Richter also describes some of the ecological impacts of the arrival of Europeans, which would also have an effect on the native inhabitants. For example, massive demand for beaver pelts led to regional extinctions of beavers, which had large ripple effects due to the ways that beavers transform their environments. Moreover, European methods of farming damaged the environment. Native Americans in the eastern part of North America had adapted an ingenious method of farming using the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) to sustainably harvest more crops in a smaller area than Europeans could as they exhausted the soil. All that was needed was a digging stick to make a hole to plant seeds and a hoe to build up a hill around the growing plants. No weeding or other tending was necessary once squash vines began to grow, and the process was much less labor-intensive than the plow-and-sickle agriculture Europeans used. the resulting diet of Native Americans, supplemented by fruit and wild game, was far healthier than European standards. However, Native American agriculture depended on a semi-nomadic lifestyle and use of the landscape that was incompatible with how the colonists farmed. It was even more affected by the Europeans not fencing in their livestock so that cows, chickens, and pigs wandered and ate everything they saw. The pigs were the worst, and essentially starved out everyone else by eating everything in their path.

    There was a broader period of peace in the first half of the 18th century, in which Richter argues that Native Americans were able to coexist with the European powers by balancing them against each other. The French held the St. Laurence and the Mississippi and the Spanish held Florida. The English held the east coast, leaving the middle to the Indians. The tribes that had no European support failed, as did those that only counted on one European power, which always abused them. But tribes that could play their position well and keep the Europeans competing for alliances with them did well and earned trade goods. However, Indians quickly became dependent on those trade goods, and therefore could not risk fighting the Europeans. One colonial official wrote in 1761 that "A modern Indian cannot subsist without Europeans and would handle a flint ax or any other rude utensil used by his ancestors very awkwardly. What was only conveniency at first is now become necessity." Richter writes that apart from food and shelter, every aspect of Indian life depended on material goods from Europe at the dawn of the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War). Without open ties to at least one colonial power, a tribe was doomed. And so it was especially bad for the Indians when the French lost in the Seven Years' War, resulting in uncontested English power that would gradually push them completely off their lands. The era of diplomacy was over, and Indians faced colonists greedy for land and an English government with no reason to restrain them since there were no Europeans who would be upset by expansion.

    The massacres by colonists of Indians sound like they could be right out of a book about the Holocaust. This is just one example:

In August British agent Matthew Elliot showed up with a party of Wyandot warriors to convince the Moravians that they should move, for their own protection, to the British-allied Indian population centers on the Sandusky River. When they refused, the Wyandots treated their missionaries, Heckewelder and David Zeisberger, as captives and forced everyone to relocate to the Sandusky. After a half-starved winter, the Moravian Indians received permission to return to the Muskingum and harvest the corn they had left standing in their fields the previous autumn. As they settled into their houses at Salem and Gnadenhütten, Washington County, Pennsylvania, militia under the command of David Williamson appeared and convinced some forty-two men, twenty women, and thirty-four children to gather at Gnadenhütten, from which he promised to escort them to Fort Pitt for their protection.

    At least some members of Williamson’s militia were said to be former Paxton Boys; nearly all shared that group’s attitudes toward Indians who claimed to be the friends of Whites. Once the militiamen had collected the Moravian Indians at Gnadenhütten and convinced them to give up anything resembling a weapon, they announced that the Indians would all be killed. Surely, the Pennsylvanians claimed, the Gnadenhütten people had harbored—if they were not themselves—murderers of Whites. Moreover, the “clothes, children’s caps, tea-kettles, pots, cups and saucers, etc., saws, axes, chisels, pewter basins, porringers, etc.,” found in the homes of these hard working Indian disciples of their missionary teachers could not possibly have belonged to them. In the racially bifurcated vision of the militiamen, these “were only made use of by White people and not by Indians,” and so must have been plundered from frontier victims. Thus condemned, the Indians spent the night praying and singing hymns. In the morning, Williamson’s men marched over ninety people in pairs into two houses and methodically slaughtered them.

That could be a description of Babi Yar with the names changed.  

Miscellaneous:

• A central feature of Iroquois life was "Mourning Wars," in which Iroquois bands would raid other tribes for captives, who would become Iroquois and replace the deceased.
• Something this book got me interested in is the Native Americans who travelled to Europe and what they thought about it. There were a lot of people who got to make the colonization voyage in reverse and it must have been so surreal.
• Something I thought was interesting about the decline of feudalism and the European "empires" is that they all used "governors" in the New World, and seemed to only rarely name lords. I would like to read more about how the colonization of the New World strengthened kings against their nobility.

The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic by Stephen Vladeck

     The Shadow Docket was a great book for lawyers and people with an interest in the law, although it gets a little detailed at times in ways that were tough for even me to follow. The term "shadow docket" refers to the non-merits docket of the Supreme Court, where decisions are made on an emergency basis, often about whether or not to stay a lower court decision, and are issued without opinions attached. Often, it is unclear how many justices even favored the majority decision, unless we can determine from the number who join a written dissent. In his book, Vladeck traces the history of the Court's power to make decisions not based on the merits of a case, and forcefully argues that such a power is harmful to the health of our republic. 

    I don't know what happened but all my notes that I took on my Kindle have disappeared. I am so disappointed. I am too depressed about this to write a blog post right now.

    Okay I'm back. I'll just sum up for my own edification that emergency rulings are now being used more than ever before, not just for issues would cause "irreparable harm" if not ruled on by the Supreme Court. And the Solicitor Generals, who are Justice Department officials charged with representing the United States, started acting in more partisan ways under the Trump administration. The result is that the court has started "pre-ruling" on cases, like the abortion case in Texas that showed that Roe would be overturned before Whole Women's Health was ruled on the following year. Vladeck says it's harmful because the greater use of the shadow docket enables the Court to set more policy with fewer justifications, as it doesn't generally issue opinions in these cases and goes outside normal rules of procedure.