File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9707, message 74


Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1997 02:44:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: To Malecki and Sparrow (Was Re: M-I: "Bourgeois Freedoms")


Jim,

I thank you for your post. I have a question for you (and anybody else). 
Let me give you a concrete example. In the United States, several years
ago, a white supremacist wrote a book called the *Turner Diaries*. The
book advocated violence against minorities and against the government
believed to have been taken over by outside forces. The book describes the
bombing of a US federal building. The Oklahoma City bombing was strikingly
similar to that depicted in the book. Not to mention that all sorts of
white supremacists organizations sprang up around the book, or adopted it
as a sort of blueprint for action. My question is this: should that book
have been banned? Should the author be prosecuted for having planted the
idea in Timothy McVeigh's head to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma? 
Based on your assertion that fascists can't meet and speak except with
violence in mind (which is a categorical imperative the equivalent of
which would be saying that revolutionary Marxists can't meet without
violence in mind, which I see as fallacious), what would you do about such
books and fascist organizations who read this book? 

Andrew Austin



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