44 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyEXISTENTIALISM AS ANTECHAMBER TO FASCISM
The Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukacs has provided the most detailed study of the
ideological precursors of fascism and National Socialism in his 1952 book Die Zerstörung der
Vernunft (The Destruction of Reason). Lukacs’ summary of the existentialists Heidegger and
Jaspers, both much touted by US and British philosophy departments, may give us some insights
into Obama’s mentality today. Lukacs sums up: “The philosophy of Jaspers as well as that of
Heidegger concludes without any achievements but nevertheless with extremely important social
consequences. Heidegger and Jaspers take extremely individualistic, petty bourgeois-aristocratic
relativism and irrationalism to their most extreme consequences. They end up in the ice age, at the
North Pole, in a world which has become empty, a senseless chaos, nothingness as the surroundings
of humanity; and their despair about themselves, about their incorrigible loneliness is the inner
content of their philosophy. [...] Through this, the general mood of despair in broad layers of the
German bourgeoisie and above all of the intelligentsia was exacerbated, while possible tendencies
towards protest were discouraged, and the aggressive reactionaries received through this a
significant assistance.” (Lukacs 457) If fascism was able to educate wide sectors of the German
intelligentsia into a more than benevolent neutrality, no small amount of the credit was due to the
philosophy of Heidegger and Jaspers.” In the same way that existentialism helped to open the door
for fascism in central Europe, we can see that existentialism served as a kind of prelude to further
fascist developments in Obama’s own mental life.
Lukacs is especially interested in the role of despair in fascist ideology, both before and after- Lukacs writes: “The mere word ‘despair’ as content of this ideology is not enough to explain
it, because we have seen that Heidegger’s despair was actually a direct preparation for Hitlerism.
[...] We are dealing here with something different with something greater and something more
concrete. It is not just general despair about all human activity; just despair has led thinkers from
Schopenhauer to Heidegger into the reactionary camp or at least into collaboration with the
reactionaries. [Post-1945 existentialists] are not only in despair about things in general; their doubts
and their despair are directed above all against those glad tidings which they are supposed to be
proclaiming, namely the defense of the ‘free world,’” understood as the Anglo-American sphere of
world power.” (Lukacs 704) For Lukacs, the pre-1945 fascists displayed cynical nihilism, while the
post-1945 fascists have been characterized by cynical hypocrisy. This is a shoe that may well fit
Obama.
We are arguing, in other words, that Obama’s embrace of the philosophy of academic
postmodernism has constituted an important stage in his development towards fascism. The
postmodernism of which we speak has of course been the dominant intellectual outlook among
most college and university faculties since about the 1970s. Intellectually speaking, it is a thin and
unappetizing gruel, suitable for crabbed little people operating in a phase of imperialist decline.
The starting point of postmodernism is the despair, disorientation, demoralization, and defeatism
which emerged from the collapse of the positive social movements of the 1960s. From its very
beginning, postmodernism has been much more interested in race and gender than in class.
Postmodernism is an unsavory stew of existentialism, structuralism, deconstructionism,
anthropological relativism, and Malthusianism, all thrown together in the cauldron of historical
pessimism and cultural pessimism. The aspect of relativism has been especially important for the
rejection and destruction of classical culture with its indispensable notions of human reason, human
freedom, human greatness, and the heroic sense of the world historical individual. Instead, the
drawings of patients in mental institutions are placed on the same plane as the works of Leonardo
and Rafael, and Athens and Florence are compared unfavorably to hunting and gathering societies