Why bother with fascism? The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa

 Fair warning:  I will grumble about this book.  I have gushed about several books lately, but this time, I'm-a-gonna grumble.  Anyway, Yoko Ogawa first published The Memory Police in Japanese in 1994, but the English translation didn't become available until 2019, so from my perspective, it is recent, and I just finished it.  It is highly regarded, but I did not like it, as you may infer by now.  That does not mean I have nothing to say about it, in my political scientist voice, but I'm gonna have me a little rant.

You know those books that grab you by the lapels and yell, "I AM ART!"?  This is one of those books.  A book can be art, and indeed, high art, whatever that may mean, without the lapel-grabbiness and yelliness.  A book can be highly enjoyable without being high art.  Last Sunday, I wholeheartedly recommended Space Opera, by Catherynne Valente, which had no such pretensions.  But the "I AM ART!!!" thing?  Kind of annoying, actually.  And that's a bit of the issue here.  Ogawa's book really does grab you by the lapels and do the art-yell.  Show, don't yell.

So I'm beatin' 'round the bush here.  What the hell is this book?  Here's the premise.  There's a mysterious island.  No Dr. Moreau, no Smoke Monster, frozen donkey wheels or mysterious numbers.  Here's what happens there.  Periodically, something "disappears."  It doesn't vanish into thin air.  Rather, the people on the island forget why it matters.  So, they gather whatever it is together, toss it, destroy it, burn it, whatever.  And forget the thing ever existed.

Yet there are a few people who don't forget.  Why?  Who knows?  But that's where the titular Memory Police arrive on the scene.  They exist to find the people who don't forget and get rid of them, so that the disappearances complete themselves.

The POV character is a novelist who discovers that her editor is someone who doesn't forget, so she hides him, Anne Frank-style.

As soon as I say, "novelist," you can figure out that among the things that will disappear will be... novels.  Hence, a whole Fahrenheit 451 book-burning thing.  Basically, the book is Fahrenheit 451 meets 1984.  But, it's done in a more surrealist, atmospheric, "I AM ART!!!" kind of way.

There's nothing wrong with having strong influences.  Being a blatant ripoff?  Well, harder, but last week, I recommended Space Opera, which if I'm completely honest, is such a blatant ripoff of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that there's even a Guide analog within the novel.  "Goguenar Gorecannon's Unkillable Facts."  But, a) Valente was so blatant that she was lampshading it, which allowed her to get away with it, and b) Gorecannon's Unkillable Facts were funnier than silly nonsense about towels anyway.  Yeah, towels became a meme before memes were a thing, and we can all do the geeks identifying each other thing, but... really?  That's a thing?  "Goguenar Gorecannon's Unkillable Facts" are funnier.  There.  I said it.  Have you read Space Opera yet?  No?  Go.  Read it.  It doesn't take that long.  It's short, and breezy.

Point being, is there any such thing as being truly original?  Yeah, but it's, like, hard, 'n stuff.  So it is fine to be "influenced," as long as you do it well.  Basically, though, Ogawa said, what if I took Bradbury and Orwell, mashed 'em together, and wrote it in an abstract, dreamy sort of way so that it grabs you by the lapels to yell in your face about how arty it is?

You know, I don't like punk music, but this is the kind of thing that makes me appreciate the concept.

Anyway, so basically, stuff "disappears."  Why?  'Cuz.

What's the point of the novel?  To say that, like, memories are precious, 'n stuff.  Also, fascism is bad.

Whoa, man, that's deep.

Wait, no it's not.  It's totally superficial.  Even when you do it in a dreamy, "arty" way.

I did not like this book.

But let's talk about fascism.  Fascism is bad.  Did'ya know?  It's one of those things.  Also, we like to accuse each other of it.  But it's also a real thing.  Mussolini and Franco are kinda fascism-classic, with Hitler being new fascism, hence some fascism purists claiming that he isn't the real fascism because he changed the recipe, and how dare they change the recipe, but going back to fascism classic made the cans look cooler, because come on, isn't that new font groovy?  But you can go read about the history of terminology elsewhere.  I don't feel like doing that particular digression today.  Rather, let's just be broad and use the term for the kind of brown shirt/gestapo authoritarian shit that one may properly conceive as being within that general flavor of beverage.

I never liked cola anyway.  Tastes like ass.  Get it?  Franco would.

Anyway, moving on.  Why bother?  What's the point?

Spoiler alert:  The Memory Police is a pointless book.  Wanna know the end?  You can probably figure it out, to some degree, although to Ogawa's credit, she pulls off part of it with some style.  The POV character-- unnamed, 'cuz there's something majorly disappear-y with names-- wakes up one morning towards the end, and her left leg has "disappeared."  It is still there, but she feels as though her left leg no longer matters.  It is like extreme body dysmorphia.  She has no impulse to chop it off, although there is a discussion of that.  Instead, she and everyone else go along hopping on their right legs.  Even her dog decides that its left hind leg no longer matters.  This sequence is the only truly well-done thing in the book.

It goes from there.  Bu-bye people.

So what's the fuckin' point of the Memory Police themselves?

Let's be blunt.  The end, where people just "disappear" in some fashion is predictable and inevitable.  That leaves "R" (the POV character's Anne Frank-hidden editor), and perhaps a few others to wander an island stuck in eternal winter (because calendars disappeared mid-winter, so seasonality got stuck on winter), maybe to find a way off?  What, in the end, were the Memory Police accomplishing?

So there is a potential political commentary here, but a bad one.  Fascism accomplishes nothing.  Except that in reality, authoritarianism usually has a real goal, and if you aren't seeing it, you aren't paying attention.  If you are looking at the other side, and calling them "fascist," and asserting that they are doing a thing for the sake of control... you are probably wrong.

The titular Memory Police in Ogawa's novel are utterly pointless.  They exist for a kind of illusory control on a bleak island where nothing matters, not just because people forget why objects matter, but because the end makes everything irrelevant.  Including the Memory Police themselves.  That's really why I didn't like the novel.

But in reality, when a government acts in even vaguely fascistic ways, there's usually a purpose, even if selfish.

I have limited capacity to comment on the state of Japanese politics leading up to 1994.  The LDP was not a fascist dictatorship imposed on a country with Western-liberal traditions, but corruption?  Hell, yeah.  Regardless, go read a Japan scholar if you want some real analysis of the LDP and its history.

Rather, I'll comment on how common it is to elide motive beyond the generic, "control."

What's so odd is that people can be so calmly rational about Issue A, and then completely lose perspective on Issue B, particularly as our political dialog gets ever more blinkered.  I make an effort to pay attention to anyone who may have anything intelligent to say, given that so few people do, and that means listening to a wide variety of people across the ideological spectrum.  Yeah, weird, right?

So here's a thing I'll do.  I'll listen to someone being interviewed, while handling some annoying, mindless repetitive task, like cleaning out some fountain pens.  (Music is actually bad for that, because it might instigate movement in my hands and arms.)  Anyway, so perhaps there is a conservative who starts talking about... crime.  Just to pick an issue.  If the conservative being interviewed is intelligent (I don't bother listening to fools), the person will make intelligent points, and arguments.  I may agree with some, disagree with others, but there is value in listening.  There is nobody with whom I agree completely.  If there is somebody with whom you agree completely, one of you isn't thinking for yourself.

Anyway, so I listen to the hypothetical conservative wax empirical about crime.  Then a question comes about... say, masks.  Now here's the tricky thing.  Masks have become tribal identifiers, attached not to scientific data, but to political tribes.  You wear them if you belong to Tribe Blue, and object to them if you belong to Tribe Red.  So our very same commentator, capable of waxing empirical about crime, not only objects to masks, but when asked why he thinks Biden and other Democrats are proposing masks, says the following:  "they want to control us!"

Um... why?  What's the point of getting you to wear a mask?

OK, you self-satisfied lefties.  Time to take your medicine.  Let's turn this around.  Why do you think conservatives want to limit or ban abortion?

They want to control women's bodies!

Um... no.  What would that gain them?

True or false:  women support fewer restrictions on abortion than men?

False.  We've been collecting data on this for decades.  False.  Every year, every survey, false.  Why?  Because it isn't about "control of women's bodies."  Abortion, as a policy question, comes down to the following question of philosophy and biology.  When does life begin?  If you believe that life begins at conception, and that humanity is imbued into a fertilized or implanted egg, then abortion at any stage is murder.  Whatever point at which you believe that cluster of cells is imbued with humanity, that's the stage at which the act becomes "murder."  And it wouldn't matter whether we are talking about women's bodies or men's bodies.  All that matters is when you believe that humanity is imbued into the undifferentiated or differentiated organic material.  That's it.  When those who oppose abortion say "murder," they really do believe that it's "murder."  And whether or not it is murder depends on the point at which that thing goes from glob of organic material to "human."  Your answer differs from theirs.

But if you refuse to listen, or believe that they are being sincere, then you are doing the same thing that they are doing when they assert that mask mandates exist for some mindless, pointless goal of control-for-the-sake-of-control.

And neither masks nor abortion restrictions are fascism.  This should go without saying, but unfortunately, we live in a political environment where things that shouldn't need to be said do, in fact, need to be said.  The Memory Police are fascist.  Mask mandates?  No.  Abortion restrictions?  No.  And none of this stuff exists without a purpose.

When we move to true fascism, true authoritarianism... we find purpose there too, most of the time.  It may be purely selfish for an authoritarian dictator.  An authoritarian dictator may seek to hold power, and nothing else.  There's no dictator in The Memory Police, though, and as stuff disappears, it gets harder for them to maintain the superior material comforts that they have, even though they don't appear to suffer the extreme body dysmorphia thing.  Still, they don't appear to be Big Brother, precisely.  And many of the policies that get lumped into this kind of accusation really gain nothing for the powers that be or want to be.

So we come back to the question.  Why bother with fascism?

I don't merely mean to say that fascism is pointless.  Rather, if you can't see the point, and you fall back on calling something "fascism," and merely accusing someone of engaging in a quest for control for the sake of control, you probably haven't made a good faith effort to understand their arguments or reasons.

The titular Memory Police are pointless.  Most policies are not.  Many are stupid and vile, but not pointless.

"Because control!"

That's... rarely ever the reason.  Not never.  There are people who just want to make you jump through hoops, to fuck with you.  Individuals with various personality disorders who get off on bullying.  That's a thing.  But policy?  Policy doesn't generally exist for the sake of bullying.  It can exist for the sake of stupidity, greed, racism, and plenty of other evil things, but rarely does it exist merely for the sake of bullying.

But if that's all you see, you will ask, "why bother with fascism?"

The answer is probably, "because it isn't really fascism."  You just haven't made an effort to understand the arguments.

[He types, as democracy in America continues to collapse...]

Music.  I thought I had the perfect choice:  Jeff Lang's "Some Memories Never Die," but there isn't a youtube upload.  Oh, well.  Go listen to a fuckload of Jeff Lang.  He is among the greatest guitarists ever.  Instead, here's Tigran Hamasyan, "A Memory That Became A Dream," from A Fable.  If I can't post Jeff, it better be another incomparable genius.