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View Full Version : We Have to Move Fast: The Fascists Are Coming



MarxistPC
22nd June 2014, 22:56
I have become increasingly concerned over the past few months about the growing Fascist trend in the United States and throughout the world. There are dark, right wing forces of old, that we as the Left thought we had relegated to the trash bin of history during WWII. As many of you know the Nazis were an extension of the Catholic Right that had been festering in European Counter-Enlightenment thought for quite some time. They were well connected with the National Socialist Party of Germany and with the Corporate sector. But with the "Left" at the helm in the Soviet Union and Anti-Fascist Communists in Europe willing to fight the Nazis to the death, we finally could declare victory.

Now, however, as we look at America we are seeing these trends doing the same thing over again, and as an Anarchist, I urge my Communist, Socialist, Social Democratic, and Leftist brothers and sisters to unite our line against these forces.

I was reading a book called, "Invisible Hands: The Businessman's Crusade Against The New Deal", and it explained how Franklin Roosevelt, himself a capitalist but a social democrat, saw that Fascism was a grave threat to the Left's dream of what a capitalist Democracy would look like and so he forged, in what must have seemed in diamond to his right wing opponents, the New Deal Coalition. With the Industrial workers of the North, Farmer's of the West, poor of the South, and the newly created middle class, he created one of the most powerful political coalitions in modern history, causing Democratic victory after victory, and yanking the Republicans to the Left. But powerful heads of corporations like the head of Milton Steel, the DuPont Family, U.S. Steel and Oil, in conjunction with professors of economics from the Austrian School like Ludwig Von Mises, Hayek, and Milton Friedman, began associations and round tables for devising a way to "get our message out... tell the world our side of the story". Several of these groups were founded and nearly all of them failed, but beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s with the general strikes in the United States and around the world for higher wages they received large amounts of money from Coors Beer, U.S. Steel, G.M. and DuPont Chemical in order to break the strikes, and unfortunately for us they won.

They began to use Public Relations Industry for what Chomsky calls their, "true function... they proclaimed themselves in the 1920s the industry that controlled the minds of mankind", to push their Neo-Liberal message. We all know what the religion says, "markets are efficient, the public should be subject to market discipline, but not for the rich they need a powerful nanny state in order to bail them out". It's also very anti-union, and against what they call big government. That has meant for the population a major assault on social spending and the destruction of one of the only places where the working class can get together to have ideas in their class interest: Union meetings. But once again the hypocrisy, markets are good for you but not good for the rich, as union meetings are bad for the middle class and "kill jobs", but for the rich being able to meet together through meetings, dinners that cost more than their workers monthly salaries, retreats, and associations such as the American Enterprise Institute, The John Birch Society, The Heritage Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce, and Bilderberg Group, along with many others, this is just what's best for you.

But as suspected if you tell a middle class that has been, according to the Wall Street Journal "pampered for far too long",meaning that they must give up their health care, their children's college education, pension funds, strike and work environment protections, they are likely to put up some resistance. But what was the tranquilizer of the solution to be? As Marx recorded a century earlier in this response to Hegel's Theory of Right and probably the most misunderstood Marxian quote ever, "Religion is the opium of the people... not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and destroy it". And here came the Valium in the form of the Religious Right, the Jerry Falwell's, Pat Robertson's, John Hagee's, and Mike Huckabee's of the world. After over a decade under the Civil Right's Act of 1964 and the 1970s economic crisis, the New Deal Coalition was on the ropes and the seemingly strange bedfellows of the godless "Libertarians" and the Religious Dominionists got together to exploit the insecurities and fears of a racist and increasingly xenophobic poor southern industrial worker class in conjunction with the "law and order" policies in Northern Cities with the promise of stopping the fleeting of jobs into the third world. Forged in the policies of busing and integration, The Christian Right formed when many whites moved their kids out of public schools and into private christian academies where their "values" were upheld. Convinced that the old New Deal style preachers that engaged in the Vietnam War protests were apart of the problem of their children going out into the streets and protesting against their country which they had grown up in, which gave rise to feminism and LGBT Liberation, they switched around their churches and soon they became vehicles of profit as well.

The Religious Right offered the population answers to what must have seen an apocalyptic situation, their cultural station as "White Christians" had been stripped away by the Civil Rights Act, abortion had just been adjudicated to be legal, the LGBT community refused to be intimidated anymore demanded equal rights and dignity, along with their communities growing poorer, and beginning to resemble third world countries. So they turned their backs on the Left's message of worker solidarity and went with Nationalism, characterized as a Right Wing Ideology due to it's need of an outside force, namely the rest of world, in order to draw social ties. They began to, "confuse the iconography of the Christian religion with the patriotic symbolism of the United States" according to Chris Hedges in his book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America". Jingoism came in style and everyone was wearing it on their sleeves. Meshing together the Free Market Religion with that of the Christian Religion on the lines of it's protestant work ethic and need for Universal Truths such as responsibility (a mask for the laziness of blacks and minorities), and morality (their version of who you should go to bed with and in what position and what to do with a child if it is conceived), these forces found themselves in total control in the 1980 elections winning a landslide victory for the White House and Congress. Giving us our worst enemies in the Cabinet of the Reagan Administration, coming from Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, the Oil Industry, the Arms Industry, and some of the most religious ceremonies and events in modern political history.

Holding God and Country Rallies, which were so disturbing to those who lived under the threat of the Swastika they were talked about in a very serious tone in intellectual circles and in the media throughout Europe. They pushed free market tenants, the Christian Religion, and what Forbes has called a "a culture of ignorance... that states my ignorance of the facts is just as valid as your informed opinion", as an assertion against intellectualism, internationalism, secularism, and a tolerant socially democratic open society. The things that we all hold dear as the Left, they have cast into the fire and are generating their political and social power with them.

Their economic policies have destroyed and alienated the middle class from one another, destroyed the hope of college education for most of society, impoverished the third world, and removed the Left as a incompetent force. Their Christian militarism in conjunction with the military industrial complex have created Christian soldiers out of the South that believe that they are fighting a war not against an ideology, but called upon by God to wage a Holy War against the Muslim infidels. Their social policies, best said by Christopher Hitchens, "have relegated women to a station not much above animals in that they are forced to have and carry children they do not want, destroyed the lives of homosexuals through lies and distortions, of whom they know nothing about, and created an atmosphere so toxic to intellectualism and unfettered investigations that in the 21st Century we are having to teach the equivalent of Alchemy in the form of Creationism". All of this has melded together in the radical snatching of the American Political spectrum to Right and incarnation of these forces in the Republican party. Opposed to the opening up of and connecting of the world, they have a long list of people they hate, including blacks, homosexuals, feminists, Muslims, the impoverished, Jews, intellectuals, liberals, and "Illegal Aliens", Republicans and their radical insurgency known as the Tea Party have come to claim the conversation and our former proletariat.

Fascism is always hard to understand and to conceive, mainly due to the fact that when you hear it, it's rhetoric sounds so much like the Left. If you go back to see Hitler's Speech he's often speaking about how in Germany under the National Socialist Regime,"it's not the rich who should take care of the poor, or the poor to the rich, but it's the job of every citizen to consider that every other German might me less fortunate than those above and below them". Along with many other ways that Fascism might take hold past the sort of co-opting of Left speech, in the eyes of Mussolini ,fascism meant the corporate sector taking over the State directly. When he came to power he dissolved the Parliament, and instituted in it's place the Fascistas Corporatisas Assembly, which was a governing body of the heads and representatives of Italian Corporations. Though this is what every Marxist, Anarchist, any person who has ever read and understood the Communist Manifesto, or any Leftist for that matter, calls their worst nightmare we must look to our own country today in order to understand what is happening and hopefully how we can stop it. There is a convergence of these two different conceptions of Fascism, both involving putting into control of the State the two utmost authoritarian institutions in human history: the Corporation and the Church. One in which orders come from the top down and if you don't carry them out you're fired and someone else far less nicer than you will carry them out and so on, in the latter case orders come from God and if you don't follow them you're damned to hell. But we are facing two branches of Fascism that openly embrace each other and want the same thing: Corporate control and Christian dominance in every conceivable social arena and corner of ideological casuistry.

In his essay on Fascism and what it is, Leon Trotsky identified some of it's characteristics that he described while he witnessed the rise of Fascism during the 1930s. He characterized it as Chris Hedges did, a failed revolution, one in which power employs the petty bourgeois as in order to assert their power and authority that comes from land owning in a State-Capitalist society, against social deviants in a Christian lens. In America's case it is homosexuals, blacks, feminists, along with all religions and denominations that do not as they. We must understand that this counter-revolution can come from a crisis of national security in the form of a terrorist attack which could happen at any time and be exploited by them.

We live in a time that corporate power has for all intents and purposes performed a coup d'etat of the State. They get what they want when they want irrespective of the public's needs. What's that, you want Universal Health Care? I'm sorry that's politically unpalatable or impossible because only the American Public wants it, now what about those tax breaks we were talking about? The Religious Right has been weakened greatly though, they have lost their Holy War that they labeled a "Culture War", against Gays, Abortion, Illicit Drugs, and daily through the actions of their last vestiges in the form of NOM (National Organization for Marriage) show how disillusioned the vast majority of the country has become to their casuistry. But in the form of the Tea Party it has stayed alive and with it's racist roots has become one of the most verbal and outspoken forces in American politics. It has become the source of outlet for a befuddled and angered working class and middle class that has found themselves in a world where they cannot survive in modern society on their own wages. So they have created Boogeymen out of undocumented workers who have taken their jobs and who are criminals just by being human in an area that we haven't allowed them into, violent lazy blacks who want your daughters even more than their welfare checks, and the homosexuals that are out to ruin their last social structure: the family. They want to restore honor and truth and responsibility to the country of which they feel has been taken from them.

This is documented quite well in modern political history. With what has been called the shocking defeat of the House Majority Leader Eric Cantor which is the first defeat of a sitting House Majority Leader in his own primary in history, by someone who calls himself a Tea Party Candidate, David Brat. White, straight, and rich he claims to be the voice of the people of those who were shut out of an earlier vote in the primary process. It goes without saying that the decisive issue in this campaign was immigration or what is called Asylum in Right-Wing circles, as if it was something terrible. But he was against the already condemned to fail immigration bill that might work its way through Congress and might get signed after it gets much worse. David Brat Tea Partyer and a professor of economics said repeatedly that he has his best to converge the three together: economics + religion +politics is his recipe for success in his case. Constantly going on about how "Universal Truths" should guide every function of political and social life, surprise surprise, they're all Christian tenants of faith melded together with a commitment to the "Free Market.... where all people are treated equally". Once again reaching back to truths that were laid down at the beginning of time, "Natural Law", as it's known.

But we all know that once he ascends to Congress and among the "responsible men" according to James Madison, he will likely follow in the same footsteps that his incumbent and the Congress as a whole, serving the rich and powerful. They have bred the Tea Party and modern Right-Wing in their laboratories of deceit and with the genes to be blissfully ignorant of the world around them, they march to the tune that their corporate masters have sounded off. As Emma Goldman stated about the majority that the bourgeoisie hypnotized in her day, "It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution". They pray for a coming of Jesus Christ just as they wish for a "truly" free-market system that will unchain of itself of the only apparatus that could contain it, the State. Leaving it to maraud every corner of society tearing asunder every human relation that is left even in the R.E.C.D. (Really Existing Capitalist Democracy) we have today.

But to close with a warning and a hopefully the beginning of a fruitful conversation leading to action against the greatest threat to the world in human history. Though first that sounds from Mars in it's exaggeration, understand what the goals of the Corporate Fascists are, to have access to, exploit, and sell every commodity, natural resource, and human on the planet. If we assume that the Earth resources are infinite or that Climate Change isn't as drastic as scientists are saying then we have some time to figure out a plan of attack against the immense wealth, power, and ignorance that lie ahead. But with the continuing warning of scientists that are now filling up entire scientific journals weekly now with dire warnings growing worse every week, time is quickly running out. This isn't ozone, this is a global climate crisis caused directly by humans releasing billions of ton of CO2 into the atmosphere for the greater part of the past 300 years, and in recent years with continuing compound growth things are guaranteed to only get worse. Make no mistake Capitalism must go and they will fight us with all of the resources they can reach for in order to distract, distort, and stupefy the public who if they knew that they were joyously marching over a cliff would try and do something about it.

The greatest example of this is the Koch Brother's who themselves claim to be Christians and are the poster boys in American politics who funded the entire Republican/Tea-Party ticket in 2010, 2012, and intend to do even more damage in 2014 and 2016. They have funded the bus's that drew the Tea Party into the Capital dressed in costumes like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Musket men, they are those who head Koch Industries who are trying to outright maim the last carbon sinks in the world in Alberta,Canada, in the form of the Keystone XL Pipeline. They have fed and funded the Fox News network along with the right wing media in order to distract the proletariat from the real dangers in the world. And now that they have been exposed by people like Rachel Maddow and Cenk Uygur, they are running a massive propaganda campaign on the financial and Fox News Networks in order to keep the classes who matter to their cause in the dark. They are the embodiment of the Fascist threat that we face and they are directly engaged in what Christopher Hitchens called, "everything I love versus everything I hate".

Brothers and Sisters I call you to your feet in joining me in the fight against the Fascists and their aims. Our minds, our species, and our planet are on the line. If we do not fight now we might not have the chance. The Earth and our fellow proletariat who are in Plato's cave watching these machinations are calling us to their aid. Do not laugh at them, they are our working and middle classes, our brothers and sisters, the only place we can call home, they are lost looking for answers. We cannot be free, until they are free.

Realize that your chains are freely worn. Life has no inherent meaning. All meaning is man made. The canvas is blank, so paint your own. To The Daring Belongs the Future.
No Gods, No Masters, No States, No States, No Wars.

ckaihatsu
26th June 2014, 04:47
Is this published anywhere -- it's rather well-written.

Small note: It's 'tenets' instead of 'tenants'.

MarxistPC
26th June 2014, 13:39
Is this published anywhere -- it's rather well-written.

Small note: It's 'tenets' instead of 'tenants'.

Thanks, but unfortunately no not yet. I'm revising it and hopefully it will be. If it gets shot down then I'll probably open my own political blog.

exeexe
27th June 2014, 13:00
i wonder why its in the trashcan too
http://www.revleft.com/vb/we-have-move-t189418/index.html

Sinister Intents
27th June 2014, 13:03
This is pretty interesting, I read the trashed one. Wanna read an essay I wrote?

Per Levy
28th June 2014, 20:25
i have several problems with this essay, one of wich is that "we" should ally ourselves with pro-capitalists(social-dems and other pro-capitalism leftists[liberals?]) to fight followers of an other pro-capitalist ideology. wich implies that fascism is somehow on the outside of capitalism and not a direct result of capitalism in crisis.

another one would be the praising of roosevelt and the new deal, something followers of keynes would love but not people who want the abolition and destruction of capitalism.

one more would be the amount of love the "middle classes" get in this essay, even though the author does notes that the petit-bourgeoisie is the natural basis of fascism, yet somehow the "middle-classes" are our "sisters and brothers"? wich leads to a weird situation, why would the small capitalists ally themselfs with communists and anarchists? the small capitalists have a completly different class interest then workers after all.

another problem would be that this essay reads like its meant for liberals not for commies, anarchs and the likes, hence all the talk about how bad the tea party/repubs are and all the praise of the "middle-classes".

the essay also ignores that the usa, as a bourgeois democracy, was and is quite able to kill striking workers, rebelling minority groups and use the military and other institutions to keep order. or in other words, the usa does quite well with its kind of democracy and wont go fascist.


Realize that your chains are freely worn. Life has no inherent meaning. All meaning is man made. The canvas is blank, so paint your own. To The Daring Belongs the Future.
No Gods, No Masters, No States, No States, No Wars.

i also wouldnt want to use cheap, meaningless slogans that feel, after reading an essay like that, completly out of place.

MarxistPC
28th June 2014, 22:22
i have several problems with this essay, one of wich is that "we" should ally ourselves with pro-capitalists(social-dems and other pro-capitalism leftists[liberals?]) to fight followers of an other pro-capitalist ideology. wich implies that fascism is somehow on the outside of capitalism and not a direct result of capitalism in crisis.

another one would be the praising of roosevelt and the new deal, something followers of keynes would love but not people who want the abolition and destruction of capitalism.

one more would be the amount of love the "middle classes" get in this essay, even though the author does notes that the petit-bourgeoisie is the natural basis of fascism, yet somehow the "middle-classes" are our "sisters and brothers"? wich leads to a weird situation, why would the small capitalists ally themselfs with communists and anarchists? the small capitalists have a completly different class interest then workers after all.

another problem would be that this essay reads like its meant for liberals not for commies, anarchs and the likes, hence all the talk about how bad the tea party/repubs are and all the praise of the "middle-classes".

the essay also ignores that the usa, as a bourgeois democracy, was and is quite able to kill striking workers, rebelling minority groups and use the military and other institutions to keep order. or in other words, the usa does quite well with its kind of democracy and wont go fascist.



i also wouldnt want to use cheap, meaningless slogans that feel, after reading an essay like that, completly out of place.

First off that all I want to is a Leftist man, so... and I'm a guy too....

Anyway to some of your first points: we must be reasonable. As Chomsky notes if you are looking to create a stateless society within our lifetimes, then your off in some seminar somewhere. Though yes we should be working towards an authority free society in the every political moment that we can, we must be reasonable that without the social democrats you have lost a major part of the Left for the rest fearing you would be "too extreme".

Though as an Anarchist I'm less than thrilled that Roosevelt's main goal in his presidency was to "save capitalism", the lives that he enhanced, the poverty that was snuffed out, and the Capitalists that he put in their place was remarkable. We mustn't forget that we're not moving ideological logic around like chess pieces on a board, these are people's lives and freedom (which are kind of inseperable) that we are met here to discuss. Which is why though Chomsky (Acclaimed Anarchist and lecturer) or David Harvey (World Renowned Marxist) are nothing what the "left" (msnbc liberals) might recognize as a logical and quite accurate extension of their thinking, they still do punch in Democrat on voting day. Not because they believe any of the bourgeois claptrap, as I don't, that voting will change our situation, but that they know that in the form of the American Right are the Fascists. Mitt Romney was an obvious corporate and religious fascist pushed into one, but to the "Liberals" in America he was just the somewhat dubious and sinister Republican candidate, he had to be beaten at all costs. Note that that's not to say that Barack Obama should have kept power.

I don't mean to say, "get real", because I think that everyone that says that has just accepted the status quo and wants to absolve themselves of guilt for their inactivity. But there is a real and present threat of Fascism here in America, today. There is no time to bicker about what brand of Leftist ideology should come to the forefront, they are our anithesis and must be wiped out no matter who we are fighting with. As Frederick Douglass said, "I will stand with anyone to do right, but with none to do wrong".

Though yes your point of us working with pro capitalists to defeat pro-capitalists is a quagmire that in mind my seeks deeper reflection on, for ideological, logical, and philosophical grounds, and is quite poignant. We have no time, literally no time to fight amongst ourselves over squabbling, climate change could wipe out the planet in the next 50 years and the way the Fascists are talking and moving they want the Earth destroyed pronto for their mindless profit making. If the Social Democrats were to have a resurgence and they were slowing down Climate Change rapidly so that we say 100 years, under a more restrained Capitalism I'd go for it, for now.
Then move on from them to other fights in order so that we can eliminate the causes of both Climate Change, poverty, and authority: Capitalism, then the State.

I think we agree on most of what I'm saying it's that we are caught up in the old Marx-Bakunin struggle. One of us wants it right now and the other sees that as impossible. Of course Marx's reasons were dubious at best as to why he wanted to keep the State so bad at first, but as an Anarchist I see that yes Capitalism is the problem in the world today. The way it has usurped State power is obvious in it's reality and deadly in it's consequences if we don't act fast. However the State, as dangerous as it is, can be pressured by ever more democratic and anit-authoritarian power, unlike say a Corporation. States can be taken by democratic insurgency, and used to relegate power to the communities that need and want control over their own lives. But in order for that to happen we need people as educated as we are on these topics and as curious and open minded about the world as we are in order so that it can be successful. Though not a perfect plan, I'm an Anarchist not a fortune teller, it stands much better than the one that states we musn't cooperate with Social Democrats because they are procapitalists as much as the Fascists are, for all intents and purposes according to your logic. Or the Capitalist-Corporate, Religious, and Fascists tautologies that sincerely seek the destruction of the Earth.

By the way my slogan isn't cheap or meaningless, the struggle against authoritarian forces aren't just getting in the streets or shutting down Capitalism. It's the everyday struggle that we must fight, i.e. how can we act towards each other without the monied relation, how do you organize a society without undue or unjust authority that is egalitarian and responsive to the community that is a part of, not ruling over. Those struggles of the mind are emblazoned in those quotes. As Jefferson said it is the revolution of the mind that is the important and the first step towards a new and more perfect world. Freeing yourself from religion, consumerism, and away from jingoistic ideology by the state is the the most important step we have today. Asserting ourselves against the mullahs, the priests, the rabbis, the politicians, the state, the capitalists, and fascists, is what we are doing by shaking the chains and crumbling the walls of the invisible prison that man finds his mind in today in capitalistic society.

Basically if you want to infight between ourselves then fine we can do what we have been doing over the past 150 years while Capitalism has gripped the entire world, along with the minds in it. But if you want to tell the public how we got here in order so that they can see who is screwing them and if they'd like to join them or see what we have to say on the topic, then that's where I'm at. Having the "Liberals" distance and shame others that went further Left than they did while they maintain control over the conversation, them and their reactionary counterparts that is, instead of working together to change minds in order so that we can cultivate productive, creative, and like minded people as ourselves, is a waste of time to do over differences in thought. I was 15 when I first heard Chomsky or Harvey, as someone who is now 17 their ideas are just revealing themselves in their structure and ability to see the world. For the proletariat with the stresses of daily life, i.e. recessions, kids, job(s) (insecurity), spouses, and the bourgeois form of robbery in the form of "bills", they have little time to contemplate dialectics and how to understand the differences between Marx and Bakunin and why they matter so much today for them. Not that they are stupid, just different than us, we find our love in this venue, as responsible intellectuals we should inform the public about what is happening, and as Leftists need to string together coherently the struggles of gay rights with the environment and how it ties into the prison industrial complex, and on and on, in order so that we can bring about a revolution of the mind and hopefully one in the political arena. Otherwise we're just a bunch of smart people wasting our time with silly casuistry as we fight back in forth on the finer points of "class struggle" and "I'm more Left than you..."

Sea
7th July 2014, 19:42
the poverty that was snuffed outGood heavens, what on earth are you talking about?

bcbm
8th July 2014, 05:15
I don't mean to say, "get real", because I think that everyone that says that has just accepted the status quo and wants to absolve themselves of guilt for their inactivity. But there is a real and present threat of Fascism here in America, today. There is no time to bicker about what brand of Leftist ideology should come to the forefront, they are our anithesis and must be wiped out no matter who we are fighting with.

i think you are scare-mongering and this kind of thinking was very prominent in the 20s and 30s and saw the more radical left thrown under the bus or shot to death by firing squads. also in the real live fight in the streets against fascism today, liberals and such don't want to work with radicals anyway because they find their methods abhorrent.