Fw: It's time to use the F-word-

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Freeland"
To:
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 11:07 PM
Subject: FW: It's time to use the F-word




-----Original Message-----
From: Luz Ogarrio [mailto:ogarrioluz@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 6:20 AM
To: Ogarrio
Subject: It's time to use the F-word


It's Time to Use the F-word
By David Martin

Many political theorists so narrowly define fascism that it is seen as an
historical anomaly tossed in the dustbin of history in the 1940s. Given
these theorectical blinders, they fail to recognize the current rise of
fascism in the United States. But to describe the current political context
as anything other than fascist is merely wishful thinking.

Do we still live in a "bourgeois democracy"? From purging voter rolls and
the Supreme Court intervention in 2000 to voter suppression and electronic
vote rigging in 2004, the last two presidential elections have clearly
violated bourgeois democratic principles in what can best be described as a
fascist coup. We may still have the illusion of bourgeois democracy but its
substance has been gutted. Remember fascists commonly hold elections as long
as they can control their outcomes (as electronic vote rigging now has made
that simple.)

The Bush Administration's assault on civil liberties from the Patriot Act to
the recently passed Intelligence Reform Bill also signals the end of
bourgeois democracy. But we can still protest in the streets, right? I don't
know if you have been to a protest lately, but from the Feb 15th anti-war
protest to the FTAA protest in Miami and the RNC protest in NYC, the police
attacked, trapped and detained masses of protesters, dirupting and
marginalizing the protests. Of course, the suspension of the Bill of Rights
in these cases was justified by the pretext of a "terrorist threat."

And, yes, we can have our websites and email too, but
forget about having a mass audience, since the Big Media marginalizes
dissent and acts as a propaganda arm of the Bush Administration. In return,
they reap the benefits of the Administration's pro-concentration media
policies.

The fascist movement has a mobilized mass social base formed by the
reactionary elements within the (especially white) working class, christian
fundamentalists, the petit bourgeoisie, and, of course, wealthy and
corporate elites. This is a classic fascist ruling bloc: an alliance of Big
Business, the Church and the State (with the usually strong ties between the
war/resource industries and the state policy makers).

Their policies are obviously fascist from attacking labor rights and
regulations on industry at home to expanding the empire through the use of
military force abroad (overturning the international law in the process).
From the politics of fear and scapegoating of Arab/Muslims to
super-nationalism and militarism, the ideology of the Bush Administration is
fascism wrapped in an American flag, as Huey Long predicted. The fascists
have tapped into the rivers of American white supremacy that flow through
"Manifest Destiny" and "making the world safe for democracy" to cloak their
fascist rule in the myths of American exceptionalism (or is it "immaculate
conception"?). Is there really any difference between the Nazis claiming to
bring civilization to the benighted Slavs and Bush Administration claims to
bring democracy to the unfortunate Arabs of the Middle East?

Big Business turns toward fascist rule when faced with a crisis. In this
case, the crisis began in the 1970s with declining profit rates. The
solution at the time was global neoliberalism. But by the late 1990s, global
neoliberalism had lost momentum and a global resistance was gathering
against it. For powerful sectors of Big Business, the solution to the crisis
of global neo-liberalism is global neo-fascism.

Moreover, global neo-liberalism was not opening up the Middle East's
largest, last remaining oil reserves to US control, at a time when as these
reserves' strategic value sharply increased as reserves in other regions
were depleted. The Middle East was never going to submit to the tutelage of
the IMF. For Big Business, the solution to the crisis of global oil
depletion/peak oil production was to install a permanent military presence
in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, where largest reserves remain, and
therefore the US can exercise control over these reserves.

The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an opportunity for such an
imperial expansion, while the rising industrial power of China posed a
threat that could be contained if its oil supply was controlled by the US.
So in this case, fascism was less a reaction to domestic threat (such as the
strength of the Communist party in Weimar Germany)than to a global threat to
US hegemony as well as an opportunity to reconstitute it through military
force.

For this reason, the violent political repression commonly associated with
fascism has appeared less often at home and more frequently abroad. The
Arab/Muslim population stands in the way of US global designs to control the
world's last remaining oil reserves, so therefore they have become the
principal target of US fascism. The torture policy is the most poignant
example of this, but other examples include mass detentions/deportations of
Arab/Muslim immigrants in the US, the creation of a global gulag system, and
Guernica-style aerial bombing and destruction of whole cities, massacres,
assassinations and other means to terrorize Iraqis into submission to Bush
Administration's will.

The fascists have also constructed a powerful police state apparatus at
home, so if a social movement ever arises that poses a potential domestic
threat to their rule, then fascists can and will dirupt and destroy it.

The violent political repression generally associated with fascism is a
symptom, not a cause. Just because a symptom may not have fully developed
does not mean that the disease has not. Stroomtroopers react to potential
political threats, and have always been sporadic under fascist rule. The
lack of stormtroopers kicking doors and silencing dissent is not a sign of
the lack of fascism, but rather it signals that dissent is so successfully
marginalized that it does not pose a threat to fascist rule.

Why do is it so important to describe the current political context as
fascism? Well, the political context determines what are the best strategies
for progressive social change. If social movements organize based on the
assumption that we live in bourgeois democracy at time that we live under
fascism, then the result will be utter disaster and fascism will easily
defeat such movements. But on the other hand, if we organize to fight
fascism, then we at least have chance.

=====
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." -Albert
Einstein



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