Subject: Re: M-TH: Fascism, who is and who isnt.
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 97 23:13:22 -0000
From: Bill Cochrane <bc1961-AT-xtra.co.nz>


Comrades, sevens and others,
Hugh writes,
>Can't do the cyrillic in this primitive medium, but in Serbian latinica
>it's Bil (or Viljem -- for some reason they use V not U) Kokren. In
>Croatian it's Bill Cochrane. Fascist in ex-Yugoslavia is spelt Chetnik in
>Croatia and Ustasha (actually Usta  s with a hook over it  a) in Serbia. In
>Bosnia it's spelt both ways. 
All right Hugh I'm impressed, I thought it a fair bet that no one on this 
list would know anything about serbo croatian. Next time I'll be more 
resourceful in my selection, though as always I borrowed the crack about 
Shaikh from a citation in Howard and Kings 'History of Marxian Economic 
Thought'.
Andrew asks
>Bill are you sure?. NZ first have all the Maori seats , hardly the place to
>develop fascist tendencies. I would say Prebbles ACT is the place where
>these tendencies might exist.

Ok I use the term electoral fascist to refer to those parties that have 
appeared, particularly since wwII that operate as legal electoral parties 
but are;
-    authoritarian
-    have a 'leader'
-    are popularist
-    nationalist
-    draw on a mythologized past/national identity
-    present themselves as opposed to an alien 'other'.
Basically the LePenn's of this world.
NZ first to me represent a nostalgia for the authoritarian keynesianism 
of Muldoons National party, have a 'leader' in Winston Peters, were 
opposed to foreign ownership of resources, opposed particularly asian 
imigration and frequently appeal to some mythological New Zealand 
identity. Their orginality lay in finding the 'other' in an external 
group, the asians.
In the sense outlined above I think this makes NZ first 'weakly' tending 
toward electoral fascism. Somewhere I have a copy of a paper that argues 
this at some length which if I find I'll forward to you.  As to the 
'fascist' propensities of the Maori MPs why would the fact that someone 
was Maori prevent them from being a fascist? Perhaps fascism places to 
ideological a gloss on what amount to a bunch of self serving 
authoritarian goons.To me the NZ first Maori MP's serve the interests of 
conservative tribal elites who have no interest in democracy, are only to 
happy to embrace capitalism and just want to claim a place at the trough 
with the rest of the capitalist class.

Bill Cochrane
Ngaruawahia
New Zealand



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