Results 1 to 20 of 26
Right-wing extremism flourishes in the American South
Good lord, this sort of parallels the way radical political Islam swept the Middle East and South Asia. The US is just as much a religiously fanatic reactionary country. Not only believing in religious myths but also nationalist secular ones too, sometimes conflated together making the US a holy nation.
This is what happens when you marginalize, destroy and suppress the left in your country. You can thank COINTELPRO, the counter-counterculture of Reagan and the Clintonian New Democrats.
Now it seems the only thing associated with dissent and anti-establishment politics is going to be right wing conspiracy-laded zealousy.
....and why "socialist principles" ? I never understood that. Why would bankers, corporate elitist and politicians in their back pocket want "socialism"? How can they take all the freedom away and make serfs out of them but then redistribute the wealth? How can you be a homeless peasant ant with no freedoms if you will have free housing, free education, a right to a job, right to unionize, and higher wages?
I mean people please help me understand their mentality if you understand it. Please because I am at my wits end trying to get their logic. Even if it doesn't make sense just how is does it make sense to them?
It's just a simple misunderstanding of socialism. To them it doesn't mean collective ownership of the means of production or the establishment of the proletarian state, it just means big government. And big government = bad because they take their guns away.
In a way I can understand the frustration. It is the natural reaction of the workers to the perceived corruption of the bourgeois state. However, resorting to fascism is, of course, totally wrong and will not solve any of their problems.
This whole thing is really quite frightening, especially to someone who lives in the Southern US like me. We need some kind of anti-fascist fighting force in America for when things become much more serious.
I am originally from a town in the deep South with a huge libertarian (von Mises specifically) following. My god I am glad I got out of there.
And yeah, I've been around people calling Obama a socialist, even my high school econ teacher thought it. It's maddening.
Edit: I guess "even" gives high school econ teachers too much credit haha
It's not just high school, even the economics department of the college I'm enrolled in heavily biased towards neoliberalism. Their official blog on the school website does nothing but criticize any bit of government regulation that exists, and the teachers themselves regularly talk about how unions aren't necessary anymore and how corporations can govern themselves without harming anyone.
But that still doesn't make sense. They believe that "big government" constitutes free education, healthcare, higher wages, and unionization, etc. How will that make them paupers without freedom?
Shit....Does this mean that the US will devolve into a Christian Fascist Theocracy in the future? I hope this isn't the case but the parallels you gave terrifyingly drew a possible accurate picture of what the US is heading towards as if history is actually repeating itself of what happened in the Middle East is going to happen in the US and the scary part there is no left to counter them special thanks to what you have listed as if the capitalists actually wants to have a extreme right wing regime to their place which is of course what Fascism is which is why they destroyed the left to preserve their system with the Right Wing fascists being their 'backup'.
I guess it's pretty clear that the US is a Christian Pre-dominated society which it's Christian part is only dormant which would become full blown in the future like Islam did in the Middle East.
The main problem lies with the US is the "American Dream" or i.e. Individualism, "Making it to the top" which is embedded into USian psychology which is why they hate "Big Government" because it 'interferes with individual's goal of rising to the top'.
The thing is, these people dont' know that socialism means free education, healthcare, better working conditions and the like. Take for example my grandmother, whom I love dearly, when I mentioned socialism to her she warned me that it was the system where "the government rules everything and can fire you whenever they want."
Socialism doesn't mean progress these people. It just means total state control. You can thank the USA's massive propaganda campaign against socialism during the Cold War for this legacy.
The main point from the USian psychology, they see themselves as Bourgeoisie and the their fears of "Big Government" "State control everything" reflects to the bourgeois fears of workers control from them (i.e. the "Individual") which is adopted by the lower classes in the US who see themselves as "Rising to the top" or the "Path of becoming Bourgeoisie".
I'm not sure if I agree with this. I honestly can't think of a single American worker who views his interests as identical to the bourgeoisie, except for a few Libertarians. Most workers I've met are aware that there is a difference between the haves and the have-nots in this country, they just don't know any channel with which to vent their frustrations. Socialism and communism aren't viewed as solutions because the massive ideological campaign waged by the US government against them has made most Americans associate the term with dictatorships, so they either cling to reformism, resign to defeat, or in this case, seek out the far-right, whose populist slogans appeal to frustrated workers during times of crisis.
Then why do these Americans flip out at the thought of universal healthcare, free education and taxing the rich? Whenever someone proposes any of these measures the Tea Party crowd flips out!
How can people really have that skewed of a view of socialism? I mean even when I was a liberal my view of socialism wasn't this bad. It borders on real deal insanity. No joke. Any casual study of it will at least give you a positive view of it, even if you confuse it with social democracy.
I am thinking that people do not even have a basic foundation of history, politics or economics. That's scary! How can you reason with that level of deep ignorance?
The SPLC are a bunch of hysterics. For one, I don't believe that there are, on average, almost 30 anti-government militias or Patriot groups or whatever in every state in the USA ("up an incredible 813 percent since 2009!"). Number two, the whole notion of "calling on Homeland Security" to do anything really rubs me the wrong way.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
I agree with this and almost everything you have said in this thread. The American people in general don't have a clue what REAL socialism is. Many I have talked to think that socialism is the state owning everything, paying the workers as little as possible and keeping the rest for the government bureaucrats, politicians, and their rich friends. They also believe that socialism is slavery, in that the state tells one what courses one takes in school, based on test results not interest. They believe the state will tell them what job they must work at. They believe that they will have to get permission from the state to move or even travel to another city. They believe there will be a curfew and that anyone on the street after curfew will be shot. Most of all they believe the state will take their guns. And why do they believe all of this? Because that is what they believed happened in the USSR, and some of it really did.
And worse yet is that many believe under communism that the state can kill anyone who doesn't produce enough at work, or complains about working conditions. Or kill anyone who talks against the state or any elected officials. Even after telling them the truth, most still have these beliefs about socialism, preferring the lies of their conservative leaders instead.
And this is the reason the right wing is afraid of "big government" as the false conservative created definition of "socialism" scares them to death, so they fight every government program even if it is beneficial to them. There have been Tea Party marches with signs saying "Don't socialize my Medicare." Since Medicare is a social program that further proves that the right wing have no clue what socialism is.
In the USA both the words Socialism and Communism have been heavily tarnished. I don't think either term will bring a workers revolution. That is why I like the Venus Project's Resource based economy that does away with money and provides abundance for all of Earth's inhabitants. Communism by another name that I believe would be positively embraced by most Americans.
Last edited by Green Girl; 6th March 2013 at 09:57.
Let's occupy the world.
I think the growth of the right-wing is mearly part of greater polarization in the US due to the economic instability. I think if you look at consiousness, you'd probably find a growth in more radical left ideas as well. Historically this happens in times of social or economic crisis.
Yeah I really think a lot of these views of an overwhelmingly conservative population are over-represented by both the right and the left. Really it's that the people who supported the "New Right" buy into the idea that they are the "real americans" and the other 80% of the country have also come to believe this! But IMO it's not the actual numbers and views of the population that make one side louder and more confident than the other, it's that the right feels bold and is encouraged to demand a sort of reactionary "maximum program" while the left is always encouraged by the Dems to "moderate" and "compromise". It is also, and fundamentally, a difference in organizational abilities. The right has spent the entire time since the 1960s creating structures and organizations that mobilize people and create propaganda. Since the New Left got pushed back and most fell back into the orbit of the Democratic party, it's been the opposite, Left groups have de-organized, de-emphazied grassroots organizing, and focused on lobbying not propaganda or mobilizations. The unions de-empahsize shop-floor intiatives and power to negotiate behind closed doors with the bosses, meanhwhile the right has been popularizing anti-union ideas and building a base of support for their elitist and undemocratic project.
If the supporters of UNIVERSAL healthcare all spit at once, they could drown all the tea-party supporters. Or, a real example: while the Tea-Party was represneted in the media as the "voice of the people" in the US and unionists as anrchaic pariahs, the Tea Party even with the support of a TV network couldn't muster a counter-protest in Wisconsin when union supporters occupied - the tea partiers were chased out and drown out.
So the far-right is loud, but is only "dominant" because of a lack of independant organization by workers on the left. I think Occupy and Wisconsin show that if people become more confident and can organize something around these much more numerically popular concerns and politics, then a movement can build and spread rapidly... and without funding from the Koch brothers.
Of course trying to come up with a another name for socialism/communism would be like telling someone what they're really eating which they'll gag and throw up meaning they'll send into a panic and "Change it back the way it was". It's best to be honest and educate people.
There is one thing that has always been able to unite every right-wing southern cracker: Good Old Fashioned American Racism. I believe the one true reason for the rise in "conspiracy-minded antigovernment Patriot groups'" (sic) is because there is a black president. Sure, some of them are worked up over proposed ant-gun legislation; some of them are cringing over Obama's healthcare plan; but the one thing they all have in common is that they are people who have had racism passed down to them through the generations. Racism is not natural. It has to be learned. Racism does not spring from a vacuum.
Si tuviera mucho dinero......
No to mention that ANY name we give it would then just become as tarnished if the Psudonym-ist movement gained any ground.
Until there are new movements, we'll probably always have Stalinism and the failures of Social-Democracy as a shaddow over our efforts to some degree. But really I think the negative connotations are a mile wide and an inch thick. The type of propaganda they use only works as well as it does because no one (in the US anyway) has much familiarity with what a workers movement based on these ideas would actually be like. It's like with Islamophobic propaganda: they can get away with these rediculous racist myths of people acting like "savages" with "no culture" only because most Americans are kept pretty ignorent of people in the rest of the world.
Well I explained before what the "American Dream" was which is about the goal of rising to the top which is embedded in USian psychology hence they tend to see themselves as either future bourgeoisie-to-be to be or "failures" as in them ending up in poverty.
I agree that the SPLC has a tendency to overstate certain trends among right wing America and call on the government to quash them right away. I dislike this tendency in this group.
I know you explained it. I just don't think it's true that the majority of American workers possess bourgeois conciousness. Many of them possess basic, unrefined class consciousness which at its underdeveloped state can easily be snatched up by far-right movements, which is why we need to be mobilizing now.
