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What Penguindrum Can Teach Us About Extremism

For reasons that still baffle experts, a rabid brand of far-right extremism has recently taken the world by storm.

Quote:

For reasons that still baffle experts, a rabid brand of far-right extremism has recently taken the world by storm.

What is baffling about people reacting to being told that most everything they and their ancestors within memory believed in is both wrong and immoral?

Piglet the Grate wrote:

Quote: For reasons that still baffle experts, a rabid brand of far-right extremism has recently taken the world by storm. What is baffling about people reacting to being told that most everything they and their ancestors within memory believed in is both wrong and immoral?

For that to be applicable to your statement, you'd have to believe that the tenants of white, male, Christian, heterosexuality superiority are commonly taught for generations and facing any kind of resistance to those beliefs leads to further radicalization.

...For that to be applicable to your statement, you'd have to believe that the tenants of white, male, Christian, heterosexuality superiority are commonly taught for generations...

Some see the world as essentially progressive, that over time we grow more advanced technologically, more confident in our abilities to control our destinies, more sure of our moral and ethical ascendence.
[...]
Others see human society as essentially governed by chance, by capricious and arbitrary
rulers who evoke hope, but govern through fear and the steel fingers of coercion.
[...]
Eric Hoffer, in his seminal work, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), viewed the post-war world at mid-century with trepidation. He found it difficult to explain the forces that had channeled the disillusion of trench warfare and poison gas, had established the foundation of Nazi fascist excess, perpetuated the prison of Soviet totalitarianism, painted the Red Sun of the People’s Revolution in Maoist China, launched nuclear destruction, or assembled the factories of death during the Holocaust. So much had depended on the creation of mass movements, coalitions of the willing, led by fanatics who preached a glorious future, yet preyed on the vulnerabilities of the frustrated and disengaged. This remains a controversial book, because Hoffer did not limit himself to political or nationalist movements, but also examined religious and social organizations that were subject to the same principles of mass identity. For Hoffer, those lost souls on earth, the poor, the sinners, the misfits, who listened to the witching song of an eternal future in a thousand-year Reich, a life after death in heaven, a jihadist martyrdom, who subordinated their individuality into the communal grey of a mass movement,* they themselves became the essential force for change.

What is alienation?
The philosophy of Karl Marx (1818-1883) has been hugely influential throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. One of his best known concepts is the idea of “alienation” that describes how, in capitalist societies, human beings get estranged from their work and from themselves because of the way the production of goods is organised.

In the industrialised West, we now enjoy more freedom and more material wealth than ever before. But are we therefore happier?
This is the question that Fromm uses as his starting point. Think about it for a moment. If suddenly a genie came out of an Arabian lamp and granted you total freedom from all restrictions that society imposes upon you, how would this feel? Would this only be a source of happiness?

No, says Fromm. Freedom comes with another, often overlooked side. Being free also means having to take responsibility. It also means being more isolated and alienated from others. There is comfort in being unfree. Think of a small child, having no possessions, no own dwelling, not even the ability to make its own food or to decide how to spend its time. Every hour of its life is planned and managed by parents, schools, uncles and aunties, by the needs of its body, by the incomprehensible rules of a world that the child cannot even begin to understand. Still, as long as they are not suffering from extreme deprivation or poor health, small children are generally some of the happiest human beings: cheerful, relaxed, entirely free from anxiety and stress. How can this be?

Being embedded in a bigger world that takes away our decisions from us gives security and peace to our lives, says Fromm. The less we have to decide, the less we are to blame if things go wrong. Often, the low-paid employees in a company are the most cheerful and friendly people, while its managers are plagued by fear of failure, by stress, heart attacks, anxiety and sleeplessness.
[...]
More and more, we realise that freedom is not only a blessing but also a heavy burden. And if we cannot handle it, we might wish to “escape from freedom,” which is the title of one of Erich Fromm’s books.
[...]
Ways of escape
Fromm identifies three ways in which many people try to escape from that unwanted and threatening freedom.

One is authoritarianism, the attempt to give up one’s individuality and to become part of a collective, an authoritarian system that will tell us what to do. This can happen in two ways: we can either submit to the power of others, becoming passive like children and following the instructions that we are given. Or we can ourselves become authorities in such a system, the people who will lead others. In both cases, we would escape our own, separate identity and we would become part of a larger group that would either dictate or validate our choices.

The second way is what Fromm calls destructiveness. Being afraid of what the world might do to harm them, some will strike out against it, in order to destroy it first. We see examples of that all around us: in everyday brutality, vandalism, humiliation, crime and terrorism, says Fromm. Of course, we should probably not judge every kind of terrorism and crime in the same way. A father who steals food from a supermarket in order to feed his children is not a destructive vandal. And neither is a terrorist who is attacking a military installation in order to free his country from foreign occupation. But we all know the kinds of people Fromm has in mind here.

The third way of escaping from freedom is automaton conformity, as Fromm calls it. “Automaton” here means “robot”. This kind of escape is particularly suited to our modern, Western societies, which don’t offer many authoritarian hierarchies in which one could hide. So we hide in our mass culture instead. This is the same observation that we already saw in Richard Taylor’s book chapter: that for some people, life consists only in dressing like others do, in watching the same TV programs (Breaking Bad?), reading the same books (Harry Potter) and consuming the same culture as everyone else.

“If I look like, talk like, think like, feel like… everyone else in my society, then I disappear into the crowd, and I don’t need to acknowledge my freedom or take responsibility,” writes Fromm.

He found it difficult to explain the forces that had channeled the disillusion of trench warfare and poison gas, had established the foundation of Nazi fascist excess, perpetuated the prison of Soviet totalitarianism, painted the Red Sun of the People’s Revolution in Maoist China, launched nuclear destruction, or assembled the factories of death during the Holocaust.

Ghost in the Shell anyone?

Kanba and Shoma suffer a similar fate when they give their lives to save Himari and Ringo. The anime ends with a shot of the boys discussing the meaning of Campanella's actions.

I also have to say, reading this reminded me that Zac was going to do an essay on Penguindrum, but never did. And now I am sad.

If you'd like some episode-by-episode interpretations, I remembered this now long-defunct blog's excellent write-ups that came out as each episode did. Helped a tremendous amount with decoding all the symbolism.

If you'd like some episode-by-episode interpretations, I remembered this now long-defunct blog's excellent write-ups that came out as each episode did. Helped a tremendous amount with decoding all the symbolism.