Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 11:46:28 -0700
From: William Mandel <wmmmandel-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: USA mistaken ideological portrayal. NOT FASCIST


By Murphy's definition [see his post below], the empire "on which the
sun never set" -- the British Empire of the 19th century -- was fascist.
There are plenty of Englishmen alive when that empire ended with the
independence of India in 1947. Find me one of them -- Labour,
Conservative, or for that matter Communist, who thinks 
their country was fascist, although all will agree it was imperialist.
The same is true of the Netherlands, which owned Indonesia until about
the same date. Ditto Belgium, which owned the stupendous and fabulously
rich "Belgian Congo." Ditto France, which owned Indo-China (Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos). Ditto even tsarist Russia, which until 1917-18 owned
Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the
Islamic countries we now call the "stans." 
  Even in their colonies, the word "fascist" does not apply, although in
most of them government was extremely repressive, as it had been when
they were independent countries before seizure by imperialism. So,
certainly, was Russia itself.
  What makes fascism distinct is that it comes to power via citizen
organizations whose members are willing to use violence against their
fellow citizens to deprive them of civil rights and liberties: Fascisti
(Italy), Storm Troops (Germany), Falange (Spain), etc. So long as they
do not gain control of the central government, the country is not
fascist. As American experience with the Ku Klux Klan shows, that
remains true even if such an organization dominates a part of the
country.
  The reason this definition is important is that crying wolf always
makes it impossible to see the real wolf when it comes along. Fascism is
not synonymous with repressive government. All governments are
repressive to a greater or lesser degree, in some cases very much so, as
with police states or military dictatorships. But fascism elevates
terror to a universal. E-mail could not exist. Anyone writing what you
and I are writing would be in jail or concentration camp or shot or
tortured or a combination of several of the above.
   Books disagreeing with present policy could not be published.
Speakers could not be heard, because permits would not be granted for
public gatherings and hall owners would fear to rent their spaces.
Papers and magazines would be driven out of existence. Academics would
be driven from their profession. Everything in the present paragraph
existed in the U.S. during the McCarthy Era, and I personally suffered
from each of these things. But because the basic principle of democracy,
elective government, was not abolished, and because we, including myself
personally, stopped fascism physically -- the organized mass assault by
2,000 on Paul Robeson's outdoor concert at Peekskill, N.Y., in 1949 --
it became possible to eliminate McCarthy and, later, HUAC, by the normal
workings of democracy: resistance, exposure, organization, and finally
votes of the Senate and House.
					Bill Mandel
> Tim Murphy wrote:
> 
> Well I beg to differ with you.
> 
> I think it is Nazi/Fascist but that it is different to previous forms.
> This is a new Nazi/Fascism. Much more sophisticated and concealed by
> layers of media renormalization.
> 
> I have heard it called "Gucci Fascism" because it is not the old sepia
> tinted or grey and openly bloody Fascism from the past. It is now
> projected in Technicolor with Hollywood special effects and has a
> scientifically executed psychological masking using the techniques of
> public relations rather than crude political propaganda. So it looks
> like modern liberal capitalism on the surface but has a core of very
> ramified clandestine activities with murderous consequences that make
> it much more than liberal and much more than capitalist.
> 
> Now that the USA has burnt the constitution and the bill of rights and
> abolished the power to vote by technical manipulation of the ballot
> and other political and judicial interference with the franchise there
> is no Democracy left. This is clear as far as the policy of the USA to
> the rest of the world and most of its own citizens is concerned.
> 
> The world is held in slavery though the armed might of the USA and its
> institutions: UN, IMF, World bank etc. The American revolution itself
> started with the demand for no taxation without representation. Since
> the USA now assumes the power to tax all the people of the world by
> its economic and institutional control, a simple reversion to an
> honest voting system in the US will not suffice to embed genuine
> democracy in that country or the rest of the world. Every person on
> the planet would have to have the right to vote in the USA elections
> for them to be fair.
> 
> In the past when the USA was liberal capitalist the politicians were
> drawn from competing constituencies. Now there is no pretence. The
> businesses don't just buy influence and engage in corruption as they
> did. They can move seamlessly between the boardroom, the think tank
> and the cabinet and by controlling the means of communication they
> produce the modalities of law and the social cognition and perception
> to allow this. Stripped of the media skin the USA is enslaving,
> looting and killing and making aggressive wars of conquest and
> expropriation.
> 
> After all it was Mussolini who said "Fascism should more appropriately
> be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate
> power".
> 
> I doubt that most Americans can even see that the USA is Nazi/Fascist.
> Even some of the progressive elements are so brainwashed that they
> can't understand the psychopathology of their own society. They say
> things like..."Yes the USA is bad sometimes, its human nature but it
> is still the greatest country in the world". When actually it is
> merely the most armed, the most aggressive and the wealthiest. What is
> wrong with Anti-USA propaganda as long as it is accurate? We need more
> of it not less. There is no need to make it up or put any spin on it.
> There is plenty of soundly researched material to reveal. There should
> be a complete global economic boycott of all American businesses and
> institutions until the USA agrees to work though a system of
> enforceable international law.
> 
> Left wing people are not generally Anti-American as such.They respect
> great Americans like MLK and Malcolm X etc. They love much of American
> culture like the blues and the popular democracy that inspired the the
> American revolution and gave so much to the world but Americans have
> now a responsibility to sort out the Junta that has usurped their
> government before things fall over the edge.
> 
> America's imperial ambitions will be defeated eventually but in these
> times of rabid religious psychopathy and crypto Gucci Fascism we will
> not suddenly get anything better than the US Empire. Things will go
> from very bad to much worse before they improve. All the more reason
> for Americans to save themselves and their nation by turning away from
> the imperial path. It is the path to perdition.
> 
> For example: Does anyone really believe that the "Middle East Road
> Map" is anything other than a shallow deceit? It is just psychopathic
> lies and that is all. The real intention is clear, to expand Israel
> further and to use the issue of Israel to destabilise the region and
> the whole world. It is an opportunity to loot oil and sow discord and
> despair. The father of Islamic terrorism is the USA. The silly fuckers
> who blow themselves up do not know who is pulling their strings. In
> the end both the Israelis and the Arabs will be sacrificed by
> America's clandestine Nazi/Fascism (My enemy's enemy is my enemy and
> my friend is my enemy as well but he does not know it yet).
> 
> I hope I am wrong and mistaken and that you are right but I feel we
> are missing something by not understanding how far things have
> deteriorated.
> 
> Please correct me further if you feel like it :)
> 
> Just an aside... We have to laugh, I was very amused by Gore Vidal's
> characterisation of the US Supreme Court as "The Ouija Board"...
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
>      -----Original Message-----
>      From: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
>      [mailto:SOCIALIST-REGISTER-AT-YORKU.CA]On Behalf Of Olena
>      Kobzar
>      Sent: 17 May 2003 04:37
>      To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER-AT-YORKU.CA
>      Subject: Re: USA mistaken ideological portrayal
> 
>      I agree with your critique of USA's record of dealing with
>      prisoners, however to simply dismiss their political rule as
>      neo nazi or fascist is not correct either politically or
>      ideologically they (USA) are neither. If we are to
>      mistakenly label them as such now our critique of them when
>      and if they should become such state would be dismissed as
>      some typical left anti - USA propaganda. USA is an
>      imperialist capitalist state ruled by elite and driven by
>      profit in a wave of neo -liberalism among other things with
>      a terrible record of treating it's own prisoners in their
>      jails, courts, streets and etc., but it is neither neo
>      nazi nor fascist.
> 
>      Olena Kobzar.
> 
> 
>      >From: Tim Murphy
>      >Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its
>      articles
>      >To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER-AT-YORKU.CA
>      >Subject: Re: Castro feels your pain
>      >Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 18:21:56 +0100
>      >
>      snip
> 
>      >In the USA they don't execute people after one week. They
>      torture them in a
>      >metal cage for 12 years (12 years is the actual time served
>      for a life
>      >sentence in most civilised countries) and then execute them
>      anyway even if
>      >they are not guilty or were mentally ill or were children
>      at the time of the
>      >offence or have since shown genuine remorse and been
>      rehabilitated and been
>      >forgiven by their victims relations.
> 
>       snip
>      >
>      >Let us face it... that the USA is a Nazi/Fascist
>      neo-colonial entity and
>      >those who launch political attacks on its victims like Cuba
>      are part of its
>      >cultural apparatus.
>      >

-- 


=======================================================  
The title of my autobiography, SAYING NO TO POWER (Introduction by
Howard Zinn), is based on my demolition of Sen. Joe McCarthy and later
of HUAC in hearings of 1953 and 1960. It is a history of how the
American people fought to defend and expand its rights since the 1920s
(I'm 85) employing the form of the life of a 30s AND 60s activist, one
who was involved in most serious movements: student, labor, 45 years of
efforts to prevent war with the USSR and Cuba, civil rights South and
North, women's liberation [my late wife appears on 50 pages], 37 years
on Pacifica Radio [where I reinvented talk radio, of whose previous
existence I had been unaware], civil liberties, and opposition to
anti-Semitism and to Zionism. You may hear/see my testimony before the
three different McCarthy-Cold-War-Era witch-hunting committees [used in
six films and a play]) on my website, http://www.billmandel.net  I am
the author of five books in my academic field, have taught at UC
Berkeley, and earlier held a postdoctoral fellowship, by invitation, at
Stanford's Hoover Institution.  
 The book may be ordered through all normal sources. For an autographed
copy, send me $24 at 4466 View Pl.,#106, Oakland, CA. 94611
=======================================================