Fascism

1. We started by looking at the way Mussolini described the distinction between liberalism and fascism.
We focused on the following passage from the course reading.

• Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism-such as party organization, system of education, discipline-can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude (3). Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centred, subject to natural law which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, With common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation  of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.

2. We then turned to a discussion about the Alan Jones debate.

We talked about the affair as an example of social media creating a new form of "talking back".

We talked about "Alan Jones", "2GB", "Jenna Price" and "Destroy the Joint" on Twitter.

We also talked about "Destroy the Joint" on Facebook. (for background on Destroy the joint see Jill Tomlinson). See also an online petition.

For commentary on this phenomenon see:

 Mike Carlton in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Larissa Nicholson in the Sydney Morning Herald

Charis Palmer in The Conversation

Ben Eltham in New Matilda.

There is also good coverage on the ABC here, here and here.

3. Finally we turned to look at Gerard Henderson's commentary on the debate. 

We were particularly intersted in the way Henderson framed the debate as a battle between two competing sets of ideas or dieologies. The point of the exercise was to illustrate how "ideas" shape the way particular event is understood.