Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 08:59:19 -0800
From: Tom Messmer <messmer-AT-endpage.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Remove Scott from this list!


Ilan,
I believe that using words like fascist to describe political 
tendencies can be helpful, but that the word fascist actually has a 
useful technical meaning that has become lost over time due to its 
associated gut level usefulness as an insult. A working definition 
might be a movement characterized by extreme xenophobia and leader 
worship. The party associated with the leader represents palingenetic 
ultra nationalism as against any sort of liberal(little l liberal) 
current, usually including Capitalism. There is an inevitable drive 
towards totalitarianism and against public discourse. Party support may 
arise from any and all classes of society, except the identified 
"Other" which the social rebirth seeks to expunge. This may include 
political dissidents, racial and sexual minorities, etc. 

Many movements in the last couple hundred years have included some or 
all of these elements, but lack others. The mythic social rebirth to me 
is the part that often seems to me to seperate authoritarian currents 
of the left and right from all out fascist movements. I'm with Orwell 
(http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html) in that I think 
precision in language is very important politically. Not that I 
practice it myself all the time...

Also, in terms of Scott, or any individual, it is important I think to 
distinguish expressed individual attitudes from social movements. 
Opposing Scott's Personal Opinion Of the Week is a far cry from 
opposing Authoritarianism. In fact, I get the impression from this 
whole discussion that he is way more of a shit disturber than anything 
else(I think shit disturber is in the Axis II section of the DSM-4R) 
and cannot help himself but to aggravate just about everybody. Still, 
my personal opinion is its far better to err on the side of tolerance 
than rigidity. I think irritations and conflict can serve a useful 
function in destroying complacency and forcing groups to reach common 
solutions for better or worse. 

Tom


On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 12:02:19 +0200, Ilan Shalif wrote:
> Hi People
> Comrades differ with regard to understanding and feelings towards
> the authoritarians of the left.
> 
> May be I am over sensitive emotionally, but I think that my classification
> of authoritarians of the left as "red fascists" is based on facts
> and analysis, and not on emotional explosion.
> 
> As research of many years ago into the dimensionality of political
> trends and affiliations show, it is a multifaceted thing.
> 
> The Californian F scale - the fascist personality dimension is about
> 50 years old already.
> 
> The fact that affiliation to political trends is not dependent solely
> on reasoning is not much younger.
> 
> For complicating things in contradiction to what common sense claim,
> there is no such thing as unitary personality, and every one have lot of 
> non compatible and even contradicting opinions that are not in a fixed 
> hierarchy. (Systems of some people in some situations are more stable,
> with all of us, in some situations, the whole configuration change.)
> 
> Thus, we do not have in the real world of human opinions dichotomous
> demarcation lines - only continua. 
> 
> In a nutshell I regard the authoritarian-elitist tendency when overcoming
> the basic human solidarity - as expressed in the apologetics for
> harsh suppression of people, as fascist. 
> 
> It does not mean that such people cannot develop a fine analysis of
> social systems like the modern capitalism...
> 
> I even have warm feeling to some of the oldies we used to struggle
> together against Israeli naZionism in spite of their authoritarian
> elitist opinions....
> 
> However, as I regard the authoritarian-vanguardist-elitist opinions
> as the most contradicting of the libertarian communism, I regard them
> as the main enemy. 
> 
> For sure I understand not all the people who are for libertarian
> communism share my opinions, and many good people who are on 
> our side of that continuum are not so decisive either....
> 
> Any way, I do not preach a physical attack on such people as advisable
> unless they are organizing and/or preaching - like the Nazist, physical 
> attacks.
> 
> I will feel much much more comfortable not have in my mail box
> texts of the red fascists like Scot and texts of good people
> who find the discussion with these as worth the efforts.
> Ilan 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> chris wright wrote:
>>  
>>  I wasn't going to say anything, but since I usually post more than most
>>  people and since I piss off somebody all the time and most everyone
>>  sometimes, I felt like chirping in.
>> 
> 
> 
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