Sceptic Watch: Order and Chaos

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Order and Chaos

Order, the known, appears symbolically associated with masculinity …
This is perhaps because the primary hierarchical structure of human society is masculine, as it is among most animals …
It is because men are, and throughout history have been,
the builders of towns and cities,

the engineers, stonemasons, bricklayers, and lumberjacks,

the operators of heavy machinery.
Order is:
God the Father, the eternal Judge, ledger-keeper and dispenser of rewards and punishments. …

the peacetime army of policemen and soldiers. …
Chaos, the eternal feminine, is … the crushing force of sexual selection.

— Jordan Peterson (1962), 12 Rules for Life, 2018.

Fascists did not value masculinity per se – only that of some male members of the dominant race.
Socialists and communists (despite their own macho inclinations) were seen as the fomenters of ‘feminine’ indiscipline – while the fascist revolution was characterized by manly order.
The Nazis saw the Jews and Poles as ‘feminine’ races, achieving their goals through devious plots rather than masculine openness.

— Kevin Passmore (1962), Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, 2002.

[The] Western subjugation of the female is … a function of biblical thinking.

— Joseph Campbell (1904 – 87), Love and the Goddess, The Power of Myth, Episode 5, 1988.

The overthrow of mother right [with the advent of farming and pastoralism] was the world historic defeat of the female sex.
The man took command in the home [and] the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.
This degraded position of the woman … has gradually been palliated and glossed over, and somewhat clothed in a milder form; [but] in no sense has it been abolished.

— Friedrich Engels (1820 – 95), The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884.

[Even] the most thoughtful and fair-minded of [men] fall back on conservative assumptions about the inevitability of present:
gender relations, and

distributions of power,
calling on precedent or sociobiology and psychobiology to demonstrate that male domination is natural and follows inevitably from evolutionary pressures.

— Peggy McIntosh (1934), White Privilege and Male Privilege, 1988.

Kevin Passmore

Proto-fascists drew on contemporary science (or rather pseudoscience) as well as irrationalism. …
Social Darwinists feared that the comforts of modern society, coupled to assistance to the poor, would lead to social degeneration and decadence.
They preached ‘eugenicism’ as the answer …

It is no accident that doctors and lawyers were prominent in the far right.
[They feared] that professions were overcrowded with Jews and women, and [disliked] government plans to introduce ‘socialist’ health-care programmes.
Doctors and lawyers espoused eugenicist theories, which they thought gave them the right to play god. …

This was all the more significant given that it was within the framework of eugenics and racism that many of the elites confronted the advance of democracy at the turn of the century – the much feared ‘age of the masses’.
Racist and eugenicist ideas represented, for some, a new, more effective means to govern and control the dangerous masses. …

[After the Great War, governments became preoccupied with ensuring that their nation was fit to survive in the difficult international situation of the post-war world. …
In its most radical form, adopted by fascists everywhere, national strength implied:

economic self-sufficiency behind tariff walls,
repression of socialism and incorporation of the workers into the national community,
encouragement of women to abandon careers and equality in favour of having babies for the nation,
assimilation or expulsion of ethnic minorities, and
the introduction of eugenic social welfare schemes designed to improve the physical fitness of the nation.