notice that there's no attempt to present or defend arguments, only complaints about "media portrayals" when the fact is that thanks to faux news and people like glenn beck this incoherent far right "movement" has managed more television exposure than left political organizations have been able to get from the same media outlets at any point since the rise of television. and the teabaggers owe everything to this coverage. it's the reason there is a "movement"---because it appears that there is one, now there is one. doesn't matter that it's incoherent. doesn't matter that groups right libertarians with milita movement people--you know like those fine fellows from stormfront---with "promise keepers" (rebrand) with isolationists (so 30s) with xenophobes (so republican) with petit bourgeois types who have watched capitalism reorganize itself away from providing for anything remotely like what they expected for themselves and who know that something is really really wrong but haven't got the political tools to be able to articulate what that might be except that something Bad has happened and ideological mercenaries on the order of roger ailes and the faux news combine are more than happy to tell these people what it is that they're afraid of and in the process to help shift the republican brand away from its own record of disaster, positioning them as some kind of independent movement.
but that's how neo-fascism works as a tactic. these groups are always right there to tell you what it is that you are afraid of. it cant be capitalism. it cant be privatization. it cant be class stratification. it cant be the american preference for diverting massive resources into technological systems that kill others in great number. it cant be the unhinging of stock performance from anything remotely like a socio-economic well being for most people (hell EVERYONE is a holder of capital, right?)
so it has to be the state. wait no. it has to be illegal immigrants. wait no. it has to be terrorism. wait no. it has to be taxes because that is taking my shit and giving it to someone else. probably a parasite. no wait. it has to be some Outside Force that Persecutes the Salt of the Earth and Doesn't Respect Nations or Flags or other symbols of the outmoded good ole days. it has to be change. anything that seems out of control.
so we're gonna mobilize and say: we're pissed and afraid.
and we're going to say these things from some old-school nativist isolationist reactionary position even though no-one can quite say what it is.
neo-fascism kids.
like it or not.
so clearly the thing to do is to deny that it's neo-fascism. because what matters is appearance, not reality. o yeah, and stop showing the people who are part of the tea party thing. stop letting them talk. they make the rest of us look bad.
whatever They say we are, we aren't.
sheesh.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
Last edited by roachboy; 02-17-2010 at 10:16 AM..
|