Are You Leaning Far Enough to the Right to be Considered a Fascist? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 03-03-2008, 02:25 AM

WHAT HAPPENED TO US?

I am asking because I am probably just to the left of center, politically, but I am aware that I am extremely more left leaning than some of the others who post here.

The abuses of our constitutional rights have been so extreme in this era, and the response to it by our representatives in congress, so accomodating, the existing provisions of FISA law, first passed in 1978, and "modernized" at least 50 times in the last 30 years, have started to look reasonable to me.

Keeping the terms of the present FISA laws, sans the revisions of last summer which have expired, and without the addition of the president's push for telecom immunity, seemed to be the most we could hope for.

Supporting this, 30 years ago, was a right leaning postion. Since I am just as resolute in defending my rights against elected leaders' attempts to infringe and reduce them, reading the following gave me pause.

We have sunk very low, and conceded very much. What was "to the right", in 1978, advocacy for the FISA laws, as they were passed then, is considered "extreme left" today.

Is your advocacy for even more transfer of unchecked/unbalanced power to the president (the state) than what the FISA law already cedes to him, symptomatic of your neo-fascist bent, politically?

Why wouldn't it be considered that? Why would many of us, and our congress move so alarmingly far to the right, in just 30 years? Is it due to fear and manipulation?

One senator, Russ Feingold, voted agains the Patriot Acts in Sept., 2001? Is he the sole "left" representation in the senate?

What does this all say about the attraction for Obama's "unity" message? "United" to do what....descend into neo-fascism? Wouldn't "unity" consist of bringing together the "near" left and "near" right? It appears we are already "unified", very, very, far to the right.....

.....or, do the right and left principles actually move? If say, we devolved to a point where only one right of the bill of rights remained, would an unwavering position in favor of restoring just one other right to the list, be an "extreme left" position? Why wouldn't supporting the idea that preservation of all the rights in the bill, unaltered, is the only acceptable status quo, be now and always a moderate, neither right nor left leaning position to hold?

Quote:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...isa/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
Sunday March 2, 2008 08:10 EST
The "liberal" position on the Surveillance State

....The FISA court was long the symbol of how severe are the incursions we've allowed into basic civil liberties and open government.

The FISC is a classically Kafka-esque court that operates in total secrecy. Only the Government, and nobody else, is permitted to attend, participate, and make arguments. Only the Government is permitted to access or know about the decisions issued by that court. Rather than the judges being assigned randomly and therefore fairly, they are hand-picked by the Chief Justice (who has been a GOP-appointee since FISA was enacted) and are uniformly the types of judges who evince great deference to the Government. As a result, the FISA court has been notorious for decades for mindlessly rubber-stamping every single Government request to eavesdrop on whomever they want. Just look at this chart (h/t Arthur Silber) for the full, absurd picture.

Yet now, embracing this secret, one-sided, slavishly pro-government court defines the outermost liberal or "pro-civil-liberty" view permitted in our public discourse. And indeed, as reports of imminent (and entirely predictable) House Democratic capitulation on the FISA bill emerge, the FISA court is now actually deemed by the establishment to be too far to the Left -- too much of a restraint on our increasingly omnipotent surveillance state. Anyone who believes that we should at the very least have those extremely minimal -- really just symbolic -- limitations on our Government's ability to spy on us in secret is now a far Leftist.....

...Back then, the premise that unchecked presidential spying would lead to massive abuses -- as it did for decades -- was just a given, something beyond the realm of what could be reasonably debated. Now, only far Left partisans worry about such silly things.

Even back then, of course, there were the hysterical fear-mongerers who argued that we would all be subjugated and slaughtered by (The Terrorists)The Communists if we imposed oversight on presidential spying, but -- unlike today, when that mentality dominates our political establishment -- it was, back then, a small and irrelevant fringe. From an April 17, 1978 Associated Press report:
...

....Back then -- with a relentless, ideologically extreme Evil Empire threatening our very existence and our freedoms -- GOP fear-mongering was brushed aside. The political establishment overwhelmingly concluded that warrantless eavesdropping presented intolerable dangers, and many believed that FISA's "safeguards" were actually woefully inadequate. Telecoms lobbied on behalf of their customers' privacy rights and against being drawn into government surveillance. Editorial boards were almost unanimously on the side of greater oversight on presidential spying.

That all seems so quaint. The mindset which back then defined the radical, pro-surveillance right-wing fringe has now become the sweet spot of our political establishment. The GOP fear-mongering that back then was laughed away today dominates our discourse and shapes our laws. The secret FISA court which back then was viewed even by some conservatives as an extreme threat to civil liberties is now the outermost liberal viewpoint, one that is about to be ejected altogether by the Democratic Congress from the mainstream spectrum. The political establishment today knows only one viewpoint: literally no limits are tolerable on the power of the loving, protective Surveillance State.

Quote:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,3760112.story
The invasion of America

Creeping intrusions against our privacy rights are an assault on the Constitution.
By Andrew P. Napolitano
February 18, 2008

.....The FISA statute itself significantly -- and, in my opinion, unconstitutionally -- lowered the 4th Amendment bar from probable cause of "crime"to probable cause of "status." However, in order to protect the 4th Amendment rights of the targets of spying, the statute erected a so-called wall between gathering evidence and using evidence. The government cannot constitutionally prosecute someone unless it has evidence against him that was obtained pursuant to probable cause of a crime, a standard not met by a FISA warrant.
Congress changed all that. The Patriot Act passed after 9/11 and its later version not only destroyed the wall between investigation and prosecution,they mandated that investigators who obtained evidence of criminal activity pursuant to FISA warrants share that evidence with prosecutors. They also instructed federal judges that the evidence thus shared is admissible under the Constitution against a defendant in a criminal case. Congress forgot that it cannot tell federal judges what evidence is admissible because judges, not politicians, decide what a jury hears.

Then the Bush administration and Congress went even further. The administration wanted, and Congress has begrudgingly given it, the authority to conduct electronic surveillance of foreigners and Americans without even a FISA warrant -- without any warrant whatsoever. The so-called Protect America Act of 2007, which expired at the end of last week, gave the government carte blanche to spy on foreign persons outside the U.S., even if Americans in the United States with whom they may be communicating are spied on -- illegally -- in the process. Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee last year that hundreds of unsuspecting Americans' conversations and e-mails are spied on annually as a consequence of the warrantless surveillance of foreigners outside the United States.

So where does all this leave us? Even though, since 1978, the government has gotten more than 99% of its FISA applications approved, the administration wants to do away with FISA altogether if at least one of the people whose conversations or e-mails it wishes to monitor is not in the U.S. and is not an American.

Those who believe the Constitution means what it says should tremble at every effort to weaken any of its protections. The Constitution protects all "persons" and all "people" implicated by government behavior. So the government should be required, as it was until FISA, to obtain a 4th Amendment warrant to conduct surveillance of anyone, American or not, in the U.S. or not.

If we lower constitutional protections for foreigners and their American correspondents, for whom will we lower them next?

--Andrew P. Napolitano (former New Jersey Superior Court judge), FOX News

Ustwo · 03-03-2008, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I am asking because I am probably just to the left of center, politically

Sometimes sarcasm does not come out well on the internet.

I just want to make sure my sarcasm detector wasn't malfunctioning here.

Do you seriously think you are 'just left of center'?

ratbastid · 03-03-2008, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Sometimes sarcasm does not come out well on the internet.

I just want to make sure my sarcasm detector wasn't malfunctioning here.

Do you seriously think you are 'just left of center'?

You know, Ustwo, I had a certain reaction when I read that line too. Suddenly what was there for me was a profound insight into human nature.

I think we ALL think that all right-thinking people think the way we do. I mean, I'm right, after all. I wouldn't have deeply held opinions that were WRONG, god knows. So everyone who's right--and I'm an optimist, so I think most people are probably fairly smart and thoughtful, despite daily evidence to the contrary--must clearly think the way I do.

I think I'm moderate. I think host is way left of me. I think you're WAY WAY right of me. But I think I'm in the middle. I think the political center-of-gravity has been right of the mainstream for the last many years. But I think I'm in the middle, and I think most Americans pretty much feel the same way I do.

What I'm realizing is that most people actually think this way about their own views. I'm clear I do, it's clear from what host said here that he does, and I think you certainly do.

ottopilot · 03-03-2008, 06:44 PM

Host - Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept. Centralized government, industry, and social management. The guys that gave fascism a bad name were totalitarians like Mussolini (the fascist party), Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.

Right wingers are characterized as being conservative, small government, free enterprise.

Don't confuse global industrialists with conservatism.

If you want a good laugh, scare, check out George Bernard Shaw and the "Fabian Society". Guys like George Orwell and Woodrow Wilson.

Sorry, but you've totally got this one backwards.

loquitur · 03-03-2008, 06:56 PM

Host, without commenting on your own political self-assessment, let me just say that to make your point cogent you really would have to define what you mean by "fascist." I understand it to mean -- historically, and roughly speaking -- an all-powerful state, driven by nationalism, with large dollops of militarism, and insistence that the individual is submerged to the will of the whole. I don't think anyone here supports anything that matches that description. Of course your definition might be different. But if it is, you may want to consult the words of George Orwell, as far back as 1946, lamenting the distortion of words for political purposes: "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable."" He had more to say about accusations of fascism here (good quote: "it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.").

The term is not an all-purpose catch-all that means "political things I disagree with." It has a specific historical context, meaning and practice, originating in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, originally in Italy under Mussolini, who invented the term. I'm unaware of any American who subscribes to Mussolini's tenets, and I certainly have not seen anyone here who does.

Baraka_Guru · 03-03-2008, 07:13 PM

Isn't this more about the military-industrial complex than fascism?

Ustwo · 03-03-2008, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

You know, Ustwo, I had a certain reaction when I read that line too. Suddenly what was there for me was a profound insight into human nature.

I think we ALL think that all right-thinking people think the way we do. I mean, I'm right, after all. I wouldn't have deeply held opinions that were WRONG, god knows. So everyone who's right--and I'm an optimist, so I think most people are probably fairly smart and thoughtful, despite daily evidence to the contrary--must clearly think the way I do.

I think I'm moderate. I think host is way left of me. I think you're WAY WAY right of me. But I think I'm in the middle. I think the political center-of-gravity has been right of the mainstream for the last many years. But I think I'm in the middle, and I think most Americans pretty much feel the same way I do.

What I'm realizing is that most people actually think this way about their own views. I'm clear I do, it's clear from what host said here that he does, and I think you certainly do.

I'm mostly a libertarian social/economically, and pretty much a neo-con of the Teddy Roosevelt style in foreign policy.

I don't pretend I'm in the center, if I was in the center the US wouldn't be slipping slowly into socialism. I will say I'm more to the center than host is, but thats not saying I'm the 'norm'.

Personally I don't see what the attraction of 'the center' is. If its the philosophical center, then it means pretty much nothing. Thats just an arbitrary a little of column A a little from B. If its the national 'vibe' of what the average is, then the only appeal is that people like when others agree with them. My personal saying is average sucks, and while I applied mostly scholastically, I think it has applications outside of ones GPA as well.

I do think you are correct in your assessment of how people like to see themselves, but I always try to be honest with myself in all my opinions.

guyy · 03-03-2008, 09:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Host - Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept. Centralized government, industry, and social management. The guys that gave fascism a bad name were totalitarians like Mussolini (the fascist party), Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.

Right wingers are characterized as being conservative, small government, free enterprise.

Hmmm... I guess that's why liberals and socialists all supported Hitler and Franco and Mussolini. The pinko Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought for Franco. Correct? And the biggest supporters of Pinochet must have been socialists like Allende himself and everybody's favourite bogeyman, Fidel. Thatcher and Kissinger et al. hated his guts. Right?

And this explains why right-wingers like Nixon and Bush were dead set opposed to the FBI & CIA spying on Americans and chopped the gummint down to the proper, night-watchman size. Yep.

host · 03-03-2008, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyy

Hmmm... I guess that's why liberals and socialists all supported Hitler and Franco and Mussolini. The pinko Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought for Franco. Correct? And the biggest supporters of Pinochet must have been socialists like Allende himself and everybody's favourite bogeyman, Fidel. Thatcher and Kissinger et al. hated his guts. Right?

And this explains why right-wingers like Nixon and Bush were dead set opposed to the FBI & CIA spying on Americans and chopped the gummint down to the proper, night-watchman size. Yep.

guyy, you are correct, of course. Up is not down, but what once was considered "center" has moved visibly to the right, in the political spectrum, over the last 60 years.

A couple of things...I tried to change the title moments after first posting the thread, to "neo-fascists" because I don't want to distract from the core issue I've put up for discussion.

I also tried to make it clear that, for the purposes of the one issue of FISA "reform", I find myself far to the right of where I would have been on the issue in 1978, and where I should be, based on my core beliefs now.

Compared to the folks desrcribed below, two aged and recently deceased veteran's of the 1930's Lincoln Brigade, and Corliss Lamont, my political leanings put me clearly much to the right of theirs.

In a recent historical context, I am, compared to the three of them, of a center-left political persuasion, and they are "leftists".

Almost all of you who claim to be "moderates", are probably of a political bent that puts you to the right of 50s center-right republican president, Dwight Eisenhower.

From the standpoint of their avowed "militarism" and "corporatism", Clinton and Obama are positioned to the right of Eisdenhower, as well. The tax policy Eisenhower accepted and presided over for 8 years was dramatically to the left of anything Clinton or Obama would advocate. Eisenhower's foreign policy was less "hawkish" than Clinton's or Obama's.

On the issue of what should be done now about FISA, and on the idea that America is moving "towards socialism", and on a host of issues involving tax, social, foreign, military, and domestic security policy, some of you who consider yourselves center-right or right, are so far to the right of Eisenhower ans the historical idea of "center", that you embrace, wittingly or not....neo fascist postures,

Quote:

http://www.corliss-lamont.org/#life
The Life of Corliss Lamont
Corliss Lamont (1902-1995) is a 20th century American hero whose independent thinking challenged prevailing ideas in philosophy, economics, religion, patriotism, world peace and the exercise of our cherished civil liberties.

Corliss Lamont was born to Wall Street wealth, yet he championed the cause of the working class, and was derided as a "Socialist" and a "traitor to his class".

Corliss Lamont's Humanist belief that earthlings have evolved without supernatural intervention and are responsible for their own survival on this planet caused traditionalists to label him a "godless atheist".

Corliss Lamont's patriotic insistence that the United States maintain a productive relationship with the Soviet Union in the face of prevailing rabid anti-communist hysteria earned him the accusation by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being "un-American". [See Philip Wittenberg (ed.), The Lamont Case: History of a Congressional Investigation, Corliss Lamont and the McCarthy Hearings (New York: Horizon Press, 1957) for details.]

Corliss Lamont was a philosopher, author and poet who carried several landmark cases to the courts successfully, including a suit [381 U.S. 301 (1965)] against the United States Postmaster General which was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court's decision was in Dr. Lamont's favor.....

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/ob...s/17wolff.html
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: January 17, 2008
Milton Wolff, the last commander of the American volunteers who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War and the longtime commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, died Monday in Berkeley, Calif. He was 92....

....At first a young Communist rabble-rouser on soapboxes in New York City, Mr. Wolff was wielding a machine gun in Spain by the time he was 21. By 22, he was the ninth commander of what is commonly called the Lincoln Brigade; four of his predecessors had been killed, four wounded; none now survive, the archives confirm.

Mr. Wolff found himself holding together the remnants of North American volunteers on a counteroffensive that moved across the Ebro River to the violent Hill 666 in the Sierra Pandols. It was a last gasp by foreign troops supporting the elected leftist government of Spain against the revolt led by Gen. Francisco Franco. The Americans soon left Spain; Madrid fell in March 1939, and the war was over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/ny...=1&oref=slogin
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: August 12, 2007
Correction Appended

Moe Fishman, who as a 21-year-old from Astoria, Queens, fought Fascists in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and was severely wounded, then led veterans of that unit in fighting efforts to brand them as Communist subversives, died on Aug. 6 in Manhattan. He was 92.....

....In an interview with Esquire magazine in 1962, he said: “I’m the organization. If there’s something to decide, I talk it over with the guys and then decide what I’m going to do. Cockeyed, but that’s the way it is.”

The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 after Gen. Francisco Franco set out to overthrow the newly elected leftist government. Americans soon volunteered to fight Franco in what came to be called the Lincoln Brigade.

It was actually a battalion. Officially, Americans joined it or the Washington Battalion. The two American battalions, which informally have come to be known as the Lincoln Brigade, joined with four other battalions of volunteers from other countries to form the XV International Brigade.

In 1937, Mr. Fishman was a college dropout working in a laundry and driving a truck. He was also a member of the Young Communist League, having joined partly to meet like-minded young women at dances the organization sponsored, he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2004.

He also liked how the Communists responded when a family behind on the rent was evicted and thrown on the streets with its furniture. He told The Times that party members would use an ax or hammer to break the lock on the door and put the family back in.....

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...033002075.html

EXECUTIVE EXCESS
Where's Congress In This Power Play?

By Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Huq
Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page B01

Thirty years ago, a Senate committee headed by the late Sen. Frank Church exposed widespread abuses by law enforcement and intelligence agencies dating to the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. In the name of "national security," the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency spied on politicians, protest groups and civil rights activists; illegally opened mail; and sponsored scores of covert operations abroad, many of which imperiled democracy in foreign countries.

The sheer magnitude of the abuses unearthed by the committee shocked the nation, led to broad reforms and embarrassed Congress, whose feckless oversight over decades was plain for all to see. As a result, Congress required presidents to report covert operations to permanent new intelligence committees and created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which squarely repudiated the idea of inherent executive power to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. New guidelines were issued for FBI investigations....

....But Congress now faces an even bigger problem than heightened partisanship. Past presidents have never claimed that the Constitution gave them power to set aside statutes permanently. (Richard M. Nixon was no longer in office when he declared: "When the president does it, it means that it is not illegal.") The Bush administration, however, appears committed to eliminating judicial and congressional oversight of executive action at all costs. This pernicious idea, at odds with the Founders' vision of checks and balances, lies at the heart of many of today's abuses.

In some ways, the "Magna Carta" of this combative ideology was the minority report issued by eight of the Republicans on the Iran-contra committee that investigated the Reagan administration's handling of covert arms sales to Iran and the secret -- and illegal -- effort to finance the contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

Among the report's signers was then-Rep. Dick Cheney, who led the group. They rejected the idea that separation of powers would "preclude the exercise of arbitrary power" and argued that the president needed to act expeditiously and secretly to achieve American aims in a dangerous world. Their solution to executive abuse was to water down congressional and judicial oversight. The minority report referred approvingly to "monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit [presidents] to exceed the law" if Congress tried to exercise oversight on national security matters. Cheney later insisted in an interview that "you have to preserve the prerogative of the president in extraordinary circumstances," by not notifying Congress of intelligence operations.

Cheney's views have not shifted since then. In December 2005, he referred reporters to the minority report for his view of "the president's prerogatives." And for the first time in U.S. history, executive branch lawyers have argued that the president has power to "suspend" laws permanently in the name of national security. In signing statements for new laws, the chief executive has repeatedly asserted this broad power. In internal legal opinions on torture, Justice Department lawyers have proposed that the president can set aside laws that conflict with his ideas of national security. Under this logic, laws against torture, warrantless surveillance and transfers of detainees to governments that torture all buckle.

We do not know precisely which laws were turned aside, because the administration still refuses to reveal Justice Department opinions that define what laws the executive will and will not follow. Such secrecy, which has nothing to do with the legitimate protection of sources and methods of intelligence agencies, cannot be justified.

This crisis of constitutional faith did not begin with the current Republican administration. After a burst of reforms in the 1970s, Congress quickly fell back into Cold War apathy, finding it easier to let standards lapse than to hold the executive branch to account. The Iran-contra scandal was the first warning that the Church Committee's lessons had been sidelined by the executive branch. Attorney generals issued looser guidelines on FBI investigations. The White House became a keen user of unilateral executive orders that bypassed Congress.....

Again, the point is that there is no longer a "left" in America, if Lamont and the two Lincoln brigade vets were the essence of what to be "on the left" was.

Those who think they are "centrist" are predominately significantly to the right of the republican president in office 50 years ago, and the majority of the congress are positioned to the right of this "centrist" group.

But "the right", and the "center-right" is far to the right of "left-lite", perceived by them to be folks like me, and I am someone who, in the 50s would be regarded as center-left establishment.

Neo-fascist is where it was on the spectrum, in the early 30s....the peculiarities of it are "same old", "same old", the difference now is that lots of folks on the right have drifted over to it, are happy with the neighborhood, but just haven't yet glanced up at the street sign. They all perceive a "liberal bias" in the press, though!

Johnny Rotten · 03-04-2008, 01:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Host - Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept. Centralized government, industry, and social management. The guys that gave fascism a bad name were totalitarians like Mussolini (the fascist party), Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.

Interesting -- it is my understanding that Mussolini basically invented fascism, which in its 20th century form at least was absolutely, violently opposed to communist and socialist doctrine. The glory of the state (communism) and the power of the people (socialism) are not in keeping with the power of the corporation backed by military might.

There are certainly many flavors of fascismo, but it is primarily identified as the enemy of civil liberties, civilian governance, and nationalized industry.

host · 03-04-2008, 01:46 AM

Johnny, this "tome" has been edge-umacating the faithful, as of late:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0385511841/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/104-6597636-4273548?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1">Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning</a>

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyy

Hmmm... I guess that's why liberals and socialists all supported Hitler and Franco and Mussolini.

Yes (not all of course, and I never made such a claim), but a significant following of liberals and socialists absolutely supported these movements through their demise.

The OP is associating global industrialism and the "military industrial complex" with conservatism in an attempt label right-wingers as fascists. Like when people call GW a Nazi or labeling Democrats as socialists and communists.

If you really feel the need to use the term fascism, then Globalism and Orwellian-style (1984) philosophy is more than likely the new and improved fascism. The powerful from all political stripes can be found here. You may want to change the meaning of fascism to demonize a political group, but it would be more accurate to use a term based on historical accuracy.

roachboy · 03-04-2008, 05:53 AM

well, comrades there are a couple problems with now the thread is set up. i almost put something up about this yesterday but figured that'd kill it. so i'll do it now.

on the fascism thing: the only reason this:

Quote:

Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept.

limbaugh-worthy non-definition was possible is that there is no working notion of fascism in the op. the problem with that is obvious (well, to me): there are 3 questions (at least)

1. political positions are relational. this is a sociological question--you can make a grid of the range of political options---but it's an analytic construction---you can map terms/labels onto the grid and you can use it to talk about relative ideological power--so if the apparatus particular to conservativeland and its willing resonating chamber in the amurican "freepress" has been able to shift the way folk label political position to the right significantly, it follows that the apparatus has ALOT of ideological power because all (or most) other groups define themselves in the same terms--even against the right. the point here is that the grid shifts.

personally, i think that the conservative media tactic (compulsion?) of projection has worked pretty well for them--you project qualities onto others to disable naming--if you disable naming, you disable orientation--and so and so a function emerges for this

Quote:

Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept.

sublimbaugh bit of nonsense.

2. if the grid that folk rely on to say what their positions are moves around, and if a term like "fascism" is--without speculating as to why--an element within that grid (as a term of abuse even) and you want to make it do something other than be a term of abuse within that grid, then you kinda have to say how you mean the term.

3. the op does offer a de facto definition--but it's limited and strange--it reduces fascism to illegal surveillance. how does that work?

the rhetorical effect of the move is evident enough (if you support this, you're a fascist)...but in a strange way.

so what to do?

loquitur · 03-04-2008, 08:00 AM

Actually, if you're going to be scrupulously honest you'll need to recognize that socialism and fascism have far more in common with each other than either one does with classically liberal capitalism. Both rely heavily on state power and both depend on the wisdom and authority of the person or group running the government to make decisions for the polity. Both (in their pure forms) are all-encompassing, making decisions for individuals for their own good. Both claim to be revolutionary. The differences are primarily in the justifications invoked. To an individual living in a society governed by either system, that's a negligible difference.

And that's why Friedrich Hayek was 100% right. Well, maybe not 100% but a lot more than 50-50. If you believe in human rights you have to believe in both civil AND political freedom AND economic freedom. Otherwise you're on the road to serfdom.

Oh, and Roachboy, you're right about needing a definition of fascism. That was my point above. And I also maintain that if you set up a grid based on characteristics of the system (as opposed to platitudinous justifications - and maybe even then), you'll see that communism and fascism are very, very, very close - not at all on opposite ends.

roachboy · 03-04-2008, 08:38 AM

loquitor---yeah, i have heard these arguments before. i'm assuming that you're repeating them, so what follows is about the argument, not your repeating of it:

classically "liberal capitalism" is an affair of political economy fantasy novels like "wealth of nations"---in actually existing systems, the nation-state, which is a PRODUCT of capitalism--has been engaged in various modalities of repression in DEFENSE of capitalism from the outset. so following your logic, and not straying outside its narrowness, the "conclusion" would be liberal capitalism as it actually exists=stalinism=fascism.

which is useless.
it says nothing.

on the flipside:
capitalist metaphysics....funny stuff.

Willravel · 03-04-2008, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept.

Hehehe....

Fascism can fit into basically any political structure, including but not limited to conservatism and libertarianism. Any time that authority by not just a government but any organization opposes freedom and equality you have fascism to some degree. It's marked by great power with a singular authority.

We can see clearly in the Bush Administration the degenerate marriage of conservatism and fascism. How do those find themselves as bed-fellows? Simple. Conservatism enjoys ideals like patriotism, militarism, corporatism, and populism. Those ideals happen to be shared by fascism, which makes the transition less uncomfortable. Much like putting a frog in slowly boiling water. In addition to this, conservative ideology in it's current state actually seems to want authority. This, of course, is a contradiction with traditional conservatism and is probably the most important point of this thread.

A few years ago I created a thread which basically asked: what is conservatism? I posted what I know to be traditional conservative ethics, beliefs, and ideals... but they didn't look anything like conservatism today. In fact, conservatism today is not conservatism of yesterday at all, it's a new beast: neo-conservatism. Neo-conservatism isn't just far right, it's far right, up and towards fascism. That marriage makes neo-conservatism extremely far from center, so far in fact that it manages to change the entire scale of where the center is.

In a country where liberalism lies on the left and traditional conservatism lies on the right, Host is very much correct that he lies just to the left of center. I'd lie a bit more left, and probably towards socialism a bit more, but I don't know of any radical liberals on TFP in the traditional scale. Now that neo-conservatism is on the board, it's thrown off the scale completely. So yes, compared to neo-conservatism (conservative-fascism), Host is far left. Compared to traditional conservatism, host is just left of center.

Just an aside, those who wish to discuss what conservatism means probably shouldn't do it in this thread but rather in the old thread, located here

loquitur · 03-04-2008, 09:30 AM

roachboy, that is positively staggering in its ipse dixit circularity. Nice little ju-jitsu to try to show that individualism (classic liberalism) equals fascism (submergence of the individual into the state-driven mass). I understand why you want to make that argument but it makes no sense.

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

Quote:

Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept.

sublimbaugh bit of nonsense.

In it's origin, fascism was not BAD or EVIL. It was a concept born out of economic strife which leaned in the direction of a strong central government, highly nationalized economy, and social management. Mussolini was very popular among liberals until the war in Europe. Are these not some of the basic characteristics of liberalism and socialism? Are these not facts?

Like fascism, the concepts of liberalism and socialism are not BAD or EVIL. Only the application of these concepts haven't been too successful (or humane) to date.

To claim that associating fascism accurately with liberal or socialist concepts as a "sublimbaugh bit of nonsense", sounds a bit like an argument I've heard before and I'm assuming that you're just repeating it. Your comment is probably an amusing one-liner among the faithful, but it doesn't make it true.

dc_dux · 03-04-2008, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

WHAT HAPPENED TO US?

I am asking because I am probably just to the left of center, politically, but I am aware that I am extremely more left leaning than some of the others who post here.

The abuses of our constitutional rights have been so extreme in this era, and the response to it by our representatives in congress, so accomodating, the existing provisions of FISA law, first passed in 1978, and "modernized" at least 50 times in the last 30 years, have started to look reasonable to me.

The fascist label is subject to interpretation and just doesnt interest me.

One interesting phenomenon that occurred during the debate of the Patriot Act was the odd coalition that came together to oppose it....the ACLU and the American Conservative Union....the National Rifle Association and the American Library Association. Unfortunately, it was short-lived when it came to FISA reform and other constitutional threats.

The problem is that the guy in the White House with the greatest access to the bully pulpit to spew whatever furthers his ideological agenda always has the advantage to influence those not on either extreme. Roosevelt did it with the New Deal (many considered these programs unconstitutional), LBJ did it with Vietnam (an undeclared war), Reagan did it with Iran/Contra (an illegal act to "promote democracy in Central America), and Bush has done it for the purpose of expanding the powers of the President but in the guise of national security

And I am just left of center too.

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Hehehe....

Fascism can fit into basically any political structure, including but not limited to conservatism and libertarianism. Any time that authority by not just a government but any organization opposes freedom and equality you have fascism to some degree. It's marked by great power with a singular authority.

Are we talking about the meaning of words or are we talking about what politicians claim to be? If perception is reality, then I see where you're coming from. But the fundamental concepts of conservatism and libertarianism don't work in classic fascism.

Willravel · 03-04-2008, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Are we talking about the meaning of words or are we talking about what politicians claim to be? If perception is reality, then I see where you're coming from. But the fundamental concepts of conservatism and libertarianism don't work in classic fascism.

Traditional conservatism, or post WWII conservatism, probably doesn't work with fascism. Neo-conservatism clearly does. It's the tie between true conservatism and fascism.

If you look at Bush, though, you can't call him liberal or socialist. He cut spending on libraries, cut spending on pediatric training for doctors, cut spending on renewable energy, stopped research into cleaner automobiles, reduced the CAP program budget by 86%, cut funding for the Boys and Girls club by $60m, cut $200 million from workforce training programs for dislocated workers, eliminated prescription contraceptive coverage (cept viagra), cut $700m in funds for public housing repairs, cut $500m from the EPA, and cut $15m from programs dealing with child abuse and neglect... just in his first year. He's a conservative through and through, but he's also a fascist.

He's been a VERY strong purporter of nationalism, he's actively worked against human rights, he's named phantom enemies as a unifying cause, he's created a much stronger military and executive, we've seen clear evidence of the government controlling a great deal of media, an obsession with national security, we've seen the reemergence of religion in government, corporate power is protected, labor is suppressed, obsession with crime and punishment, etc.

roachboy · 03-04-2008, 11:47 AM

a type of radical nationalism.
typically at the ideological level, fascism works around a continual re-definition of the national body-politic through the definition of an internal Other: in germany of the 1930s, the Other was the Left, homosexuals, the physically or mentally impaired, and, obviously, the jews.
the Other enables a sense of purification of the body politic, which in turn enables that body to become healthy and in turn embark upon its Historical Mission, which is generally expressed in military terms.

legally, you have a dictatorship which takes shape in the context of a state of emergency or exception: generally this legal situation dovetails with the ideological formation, makes it operational. the ideological form in turn enables the state of exception.

sound familiar?

at the level of state structure, there is considerable variation between types of fascism--the german example hinged around the fabrication of a "dual state" one formal, the other less formal--relations between the healthy body politics and the state were directed toward the informal institutions--the formal ones became instruments of repression--the spanish state structure was different, the italian, the argentine, the portugese--all different one from the other.

none of this has any relation to stalinism---even if both ended up being a kind of genocidal regime, the parallels between them at the level of ideology are so shallow as to make then analytically worthless, and the relations between the state and outside the state were also entirely different. there are multiple pathways to genocide--the american system is itself another (remember the extermination of the native americans?)---often you read that "analysis" on this level is linked to and justified by a concern about massacre or genocide--but if you think about it, these arguments don't even start: they basically serve a therapeutic function--genocide is a possibility that arises from Outside the "center" which is the viewpoint from which the analysis departs.

so if you want to talk about anything--really--using the term fascism, you end up being pushed back onto its characteristics as an ideological formation first of all--and that ideological formation looks a whole lot like the post 9/11/2001 worldview of the american political right. then you have to think in terms of the various usages of the state of emergency or exception--another post 9/11/2001 parallel.

does that mean the american system has **been** fascist since 9/12/2001: no. it means that it has slid dangerously close to it. that's all. parallel, not identity. why? the state of emergency has remained largely rhetorical. and then there was iraq, which crumbled the regime politically. now the bush people couldnt be fascist if they wanted to be: they dont have the consent.

conservatives might not like that, but it's of no consequence to me.

as far as the argument i made against you, above, loquitor, its easy peasy: if you work off the op as a "definition" of fascism, it comes down to illegal surveillance. i dont think that's a defining characteristic of fascism at all, so i think it a red herring.
insofar as captialism cannot possibly be fascist, i think that's idiotic.
actually existing capitalism has depended and will continue to depend on the functionality of the state, on its repressive arm--but generally, capitalism also requires the procedural legitimacy of the state to remain intact because its own procedural legitimacy to some extent derives from that of the state.

Johnny Rotten · 03-04-2008, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

In it's origin, fascism was not BAD or EVIL. It was a concept born out of economic strife which leaned in the direction of a strong central government, highly nationalized economy, and social management. Mussolini was very popular among liberals until the war in Europe. Are these not some of the basic characteristics of liberalism and socialism? Are these not facts?

Like fascism, the concepts of liberalism and socialism are not BAD or EVIL. Only the application of these concepts haven't been too successful (or humane) to date.

To claim that associating fascism accurately with liberal or socialist concepts as a "sublimbaugh bit of nonsense", sounds a bit like an argument I've heard before and I'm assuming that you're just repeating it. Your comment is probably an amusing one-liner among the faithful, but it doesn't make it true.

Well, Jonah Goldberg, of all people, was cited in this thread as equating liberalism with fascism. He's an editor at NRO, an organization that needs no introduction, and his wife was the former chief speech writer and senior policy adviser for John Ashcroft. If that's not enough, Goldberg also hosts a Web-based TV show with a TNR editor as well. The man is hardly a disinterested party on the issue of liberalism.

Moving on, I would contend that no form of government is "good" or "evil." It would be more accurate to say that every form of government is "good or evil." What we can tell from fascism at a glance is that, no matter its approach to private industry or military strength, what all branches of it have in common is the reduction of civil liberties, to the point of elimination. Historically, fascism has been the doctrine of so many violent dictatorships that it can't really be argued as a viable approach, in comparison to other governmental forms.

Take Argentina, for example, whose despot is serving time in prison for murder and whose regime is officially responsible for the murders of 35,000 people and the torture of thousands more. Take East Timor, where 200,000 died and whose government was accused of genocide. You may think I'm cherry-picking, so I'll put this a different way: Can you think of a single fascist regime that has worked? I would have to resort to Wikipedia -- and to say that these bloody cabals are well-known by sheer sensationalism is not a strong defense. By and large, the concentration of forceful power that fascism represents drives inevitably to bloodshed; remember how often it's said that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

loquitur · 03-04-2008, 12:17 PM

roachboy, I'll have more to say when I'm home and can devote to your last post the time it deserves, but let me just say this: any kind of big institution will have certain fascistic impulses, and that includes big corporations as well as big government. How they translate into practice may vary. But you can't just equate big business with capitalism in making your argument, which I think is one of the main premises of your post. Big business may or may not operate in a classically liberal/capitalist way. In regulated economies it often doesn't.

roachboy · 03-04-2008, 12:26 PM

actually, loquitor, that wasn't my intent at all--i didn't mention corporations or corporate structures--->i talked only about the state--and that only because of the op.
my last post was mostly a quick-and-exapserated outline of a defintion of fascism.

the short tag at the end was aimed more at you.

i was trying to erase the space this sternhell left=right move, mostly.
it's crap.

but please, we should continue so post more when you've a chance.
i'm in the middle of stuff as well.

host · 03-04-2008, 12:27 PM

roachboy, in an attempt to "shore up" the example of the "shift" in political reaction since 1978 to a shift towards neo-fascism in the US, there is this to consider, a Dec., 2007 opinion piece by former CIA man Ray McGovern:

Quote:

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern12282007.html

Editorial Column: Creeping Fascism - Lessons From the Past

“There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater...Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later…”

These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as “Geschichte eines Deutschen” (The Story of a German). The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages—in English as “Defying Hitler.” I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to “write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America…this is almost unbelievable.”

More about Haffner below. Let’s set the stage first by recapping some of what has been going on that may have resonance for readers familiar with the Nazi ascendancy, noting how “odd” it is that the frontal attack on our Constitutional rights is met with such “calm, superior indifference.”

Goebbels Would be Proud

It has been two years since top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. The Times had learned of this well before the election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information.

In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen’s book, “State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” revealing the warrantless eavesdropping was being printed, Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate no longer. It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen’s book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs’ trademark criterion: All The News That’s Fit To Print. (The Times’ own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper’s explanation for the long delay in publishing this story “woefully inadequate.”)

When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times. The truth would out; part of it, at least.

Glitches

There were some embarrassing glitches. For example, unfortunately for National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag. So on Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old talking points in assuring visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt (D-N.J.) that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.

Still possessed of the quaint notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed to lie to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering letter to Gen. Alexander after The Times, on Dec. 16, front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” But House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) apparently found Holt’s scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.

What followed struck me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article, the president of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense. Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Bush Takes Frontal Approach

Far from expressing regret, the president bragged about having authorized the surveillance “more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks,” and said he would continue to do so. The president also said:

“Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.”

On Dec. 19, 2005 then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet unnamed surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a “backdoor approach.” He answered:

“We have had discussions with Congress...as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.”

Hmm. Impossible? It strains credulity that a program of the limited scope described would be unable to win ready approval from a Congress that had just passed the “Patriot Act” in record time. James Risen has made the following quip about the prevailing mood: “In October 2001 you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America." It was not difficult to infer that the surveillance program must have been of such scope and intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn’t have a prayer for passage.

It turns out we didn’t know the half of it.

What To Call These Activities

“Illegal Surveillance Program” didn’t seem quite right for White House purposes, and the PR machine was unusually slow off the blocks. It took six weeks to settle on “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” with FOX News leading the way followed by the president himself. This labeling would dovetail nicely with the president’s rhetoric on Dec. 17:

“In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.... The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September 11 helped address that problem...”[emphasis added]

And Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed NSA from 1999 to 2005, was of course on the same page, dissembling as convincingly as the president. At his May 2006 confirmation hearings to become CIA director, he told of his soul-searching when, as director of NSA, he was asked to eavesdrop on Americans without a court warrant. “I had to make this personal decision in early Oct. 2001,” said Hayden, “it was a personal decision...I could not not do this.”

Like so much else, it was all because of 9/11. But we now know...

It Started Seven Months Before 9/11

How many times have you heard it? The mantra “after 9/11 everything changed” has given absolution to all manner of sin.

We are understandably reluctant to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us negligent. After all, we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that drastic changes were made in U.S. foreign policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and toward Iraq at the first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001. Should we not have anticipated far-reaching changes at home, as well?

Reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and court documents and testimony in a case involving Qwest Communications strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to suborn AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest to spy illegally on you, me, and other Americans. Bear in mind that this would have had nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on the new administration’s radar screen until a week before 9/11, despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved extremely high priority.

So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us. We know that the Democrats who were briefed on the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (the one with the longest tenure on the House Intelligence Committee), Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and former and current chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA). May one interpret their lack of public comment on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11 as a sign they were co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?

It is an important question. Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of George W. Bush’s first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me, despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment?

Are They All Complicit?

And are Democratic leaders about to cave in and grant retroactive immunity to those telecommunications corporations—AT&T and Verizon—who made millions by winking at the law and the Constitution? (Qwest, to it’s credit, heeded the advice of its general counsel who said that what NSA wanted done was clearly illegal.)

What’s going on here? Have congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake? Lately the adjective “spineless” has come into vogue in describing congressional Democrats—no offense to invertebrates.

Nazis and Those Who Enable Them

You don’t have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep.

In his journal Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the “sheepish submissiveness” with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances “saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened, and one’s desk might be broken into.”

But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?

In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the “cowardly treachery” of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power.

Haffner adds: “It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight.”

The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers—“for the most part decent, unimportant individuals.” In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.

The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month, and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that “legalized” Hitler’s dictatorship.

As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: “Oh God,” writes Haffner, “what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward… They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews.... They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested.”

In sum: “There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders...At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown… The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.”

This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.

Our Founding Fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison:

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”

We cannot say we weren’t warned.

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

roachboy, in an attempt to "shore up" the example of the "shift" in political reaction since 1978 to a shift towards neo-fascism in the US, there is this to consider, a Dec., 2007 opinion piece by former CIA man Ray McGovern:

Even more reason to protect the 2nd amendment! Amen brother! To arms! (just a little opportunistic humor )

guyy · 03-04-2008, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

In it's origin, fascism was not BAD or EVIL. It was a concept born out of economic strife which leaned in the direction of a strong central government, highly nationalized economy, and social management. Mussolini was very popular among liberals until the war in Europe. Are these not some of the basic characteristics of liberalism and socialism? Are these not facts?

Socialism = more gummint = "liberals" = fascism.

Indeed, by that definition you're absolutely right.

Of course, by your definition you cannot even begin to account for the 20th century's most significant events. Small price to pay for being "right". Carry on!

I spent some time after 2001.9.11 thinking about what to call the Bush regime. At the time, the Bush cabal was being compared to the Nazis, even in the mainstream press. After kicking the idea around for a while, i decided that the label "fascist" didn't really help define our current situation. Whereas in classical fascist regimes (fascist Italy, say, or Japan from 1931-45) the body politic as imaginary incorporation of the national-totality mattered, in contemporary America, it doesn't. It mattered to Hitler that you brushed your teeth, because you could bite a Russian on the ass if it came to that. Women mattered, workers mattered, and what they did mattered because the entire population was engaged in a total war.

This is no longer true. Our connection to the war is mediated by money and television. It's not coporeal, not even in an imaginary sense. The war is no less real for that, and we are no less connected to it.

People are sick and can't pay for health care? Their teeth are falling out? Bush & Cheney couldn't care less. People are opposed to the war? So what? We'll have it anyway, with Blackwater!

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyy

Socialism = more gummint = "liberals" = fascism.

Indeed, by that definition you're absolutely right.

Of course, by your definition you cannot even begin to account for the 20th century's most significant events. Small price to pay for being "right". Carry on!

My definition of what? Accounting for which events of the 20th Century? I'm guessing you're unhappy with the association of terms like fascism with liberalism. My point is that it is inaccurate to simply characterize conservatism or right-wing as fascism. I think what host is concerned about falls more into the category of abuse of power.

->edit<- looks like you added more to your post... uhh, this has nothing to do with what I've been saying. Sorry.

Do you want to break it down as it applies to the topic?

Willravel · 03-04-2008, 07:13 PM

It's called tyranny. It's a combination of corporatism, fascism, and a few other things.

Johnny Rotten · 03-04-2008, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

My definition of what? Accounting for which events of the 20th Century? I'm guessing you're unhappy with the association of terms like fascism with liberalism. My point is that it is inaccurate to simply characterize conservatism or right-wing as fascism. I think what host is concerned about falls more into the category of abuse of power.

I think putting liberalism in the same zip code as fascism is pretty inaccurate. To be honest, my opinion is much stronger than that, but in the interest of reasoned debate, I'll just say I disagree, and I'm not sure where the connections can be made.

Hanxter · 03-04-2008, 07:21 PM

deleted

Willravel · 03-04-2008, 07:25 PM

I'm left wondering what fascism really means in 2008.

Hanxter · 03-04-2008, 07:28 PM

exactly

seems i'm surrounded by media writers...

being a repub, i'm repulsed by my party and going obama...

i'm sick of the repub arrogance
i can't stand that whiney spoiled brat bitch
so i'm going the lesser of the evils

but to get edited because someone doesn't like my approach to a user's non-stop abuse... yes, abuse... of this forum, after having been warned more than once upsets me... seems the liberal party travels far and wide

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Rotten

I think putting liberalism in the same zip code as fascism is pretty inaccurate. To be honest, my opinion is much stronger than that, but in the interest of reasoned debate, I'll just say I disagree, and I'm not sure where the connections can be made.

How so (your much stronger view that is)? You seem very reasonable and I'm not looking for a confrontation. We may have a simple misunderstanding of context. I believe my position lies closer to loquitur and Baraka_guru in posts 5 & 6 (except they possess eloquence).

I admit purposely bringing up the historical association of fascism to counter the supposition that fascism is relative to right-wing conservatism. I'm not saying my doing so was inaccurate, but it also illustrates how associating inflammatory language (correctly or not) incites such strong reactions... and that we should be careful about applying destructive labels with devisive intent.

Willravel · 03-04-2008, 07:44 PM

Everyone read Baraka's post. It's pretty good.

Baraka_Guru · 03-04-2008, 07:47 PM

Doesn't anyone use Wikipedia anymore?

Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.

--Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism.

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

...a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination."

--Robert O. Paxton, former professor at Columbia University.

Stanley Payne's Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism; anti-conservatism.

--Wikipedia: Fascism.

Basically, fascism is a monstrosity of an entity that has all but completely been left behind in the 20th century. Neither neo-liberalism nor neo-conservatism resemble fascism as we should know it.

This is not to say that some government practices don't infringe on rights and freedoms. In doing so does not a fascist make. China isn't fascist. Russia isn't fascist. America isn't fascist. They might be militaristic and/or expansionist. They might be lured through capitalist channels to partake in rampant globalization at an unsavory cost. They might also do unjust things protecting these interests. But, seriously, none of this is fascism. If it were, we'd be more mobilized to put a stop to it.

Perhaps a period of hyperinflation and a reactionary fallout will once again lead to this, but for now, let's keep perspective.

ottopilot · 03-04-2008, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

It's called tyranny. It's a combination of corporatism, fascism, and a few other things.

OK... I buy that.

wait... was that response for me? If not, I'd like to buy a vowel.

Let us know how the protest goes.

roachboy · 03-05-2008, 05:31 AM

host · 03-05-2008, 12:23 PM

Scroll down the linked page about 52% to view this excerpt:

Quote:

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffma.../mussolini.htm
THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM

BENITO MUSSOLINI (1932)

(ONLY COMPLETE OFFICIAL TEXT ON THE INTERNET)

(This article, co-written by Giovanni Gentile, is considered to be the most complete articulation of Mussolini's political views. This is the only complete official translation we know of on the web, copied directly from an official Fascist government publication of 1935, Fascism Doctrine and Institutions, by Benito Mussolini, Ardita Publishers, Rome, pages 7-42. This translation includes all the footnotes from the original.)

.....A party governing a nation “totalitarianly" is a new departure in history. There are no points of reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as "the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, <h3>a century tending to the " right ", a Fascist century..... </h3>

IMO, the context around which the reference to "the right" appears, fully supports the premise that neo-fascism is a condition located on the extreme right of the political spectrum, the antithesis of marxism, communism, socialism, all traditionally associated with extreme left ideology.

An explanation for invading Iraq, in the first place, with no adequate post invasion planning as "icing on the cake" for this comparison:

Quote:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?...izarro_history

...As Umberto Eco put it, the fascist insistence on action for its own sake means that "it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation." In this worldview, the instincts of the fascist leader are always superior to the logic and reason of puling intellectuals...

03-03-2008, 06:44 PM	#4 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	Host - Fascism is inherently a liberal/socialist concept. Centralized government, industry, and social management. The guys that gave fascism a bad name were totalitarians like Mussolini (the fascist party), Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. Right wingers are characterized as being conservative, small government, free enterprise. Don't confuse global industrialists with conservatism. If you want a good laugh, scare, check out George Bernard Shaw and the "Fabian Society". Guys like George Orwell and Woodrow Wilson. Sorry, but you've totally got this one backwards. __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 03-03-2008 at 07:10 PM..

03-03-2008, 07:13 PM	#6 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Isn't this more about the military-industrial complex than fascism? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

03-04-2008, 08:00 AM	#14 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Actually, if you're going to be scrupulously honest you'll need to recognize that socialism and fascism have far more in common with each other than either one does with classically liberal capitalism. Both rely heavily on state power and both depend on the wisdom and authority of the person or group running the government to make decisions for the polity. Both (in their pure forms) are all-encompassing, making decisions for individuals for their own good. Both claim to be revolutionary. The differences are primarily in the justifications invoked. To an individual living in a society governed by either system, that's a negligible difference. And that's why Friedrich Hayek was 100% right. Well, maybe not 100% but a lot more than 50-50. If you believe in human rights you have to believe in both civil AND political freedom AND economic freedom. Otherwise you're on the road to serfdom. Oh, and Roachboy, you're right about needing a definition of fascism. That was my point above. And I also maintain that if you set up a grid based on characteristics of the system (as opposed to platitudinous justifications - and maybe even then), you'll see that communism and fascism are very, very, very close - not at all on opposite ends. Last edited by loquitur; 03-04-2008 at 08:10 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

03-04-2008, 08:38 AM	#15 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	loquitor---yeah, i have heard these arguments before. i'm assuming that you're repeating them, so what follows is about the argument, not your repeating of it: classically "liberal capitalism" is an affair of political economy fantasy novels like "wealth of nations"---in actually existing systems, the nation-state, which is a PRODUCT of capitalism--has been engaged in various modalities of repression in DEFENSE of capitalism from the outset. so following your logic, and not straying outside its narrowness, the "conclusion" would be liberal capitalism as it actually exists=stalinism=fascism. which is useless. it says nothing. on the flipside: capitalist metaphysics....funny stuff. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 03-04-2008 at 08:52 AM..

03-04-2008, 11:47 AM	#22 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	a type of radical nationalism. typically at the ideological level, fascism works around a continual re-definition of the national body-politic through the definition of an internal Other: in germany of the 1930s, the Other was the Left, homosexuals, the physically or mentally impaired, and, obviously, the jews. the Other enables a sense of purification of the body politic, which in turn enables that body to become healthy and in turn embark upon its Historical Mission, which is generally expressed in military terms. legally, you have a dictatorship which takes shape in the context of a state of emergency or exception: generally this legal situation dovetails with the ideological formation, makes it operational. the ideological form in turn enables the state of exception. sound familiar? at the level of state structure, there is considerable variation between types of fascism--the german example hinged around the fabrication of a "dual state" one formal, the other less formal--relations between the healthy body politics and the state were directed toward the informal institutions--the formal ones became instruments of repression--the spanish state structure was different, the italian, the argentine, the portugese--all different one from the other. none of this has any relation to stalinism---even if both ended up being a kind of genocidal regime, the parallels between them at the level of ideology are so shallow as to make then analytically worthless, and the relations between the state and outside the state were also entirely different. there are multiple pathways to genocide--the american system is itself another (remember the extermination of the native americans?)---often you read that "analysis" on this level is linked to and justified by a concern about massacre or genocide--but if you think about it, these arguments don't even start: they basically serve a therapeutic function--genocide is a possibility that arises from Outside the "center" which is the viewpoint from which the analysis departs. so if you want to talk about anything--really--using the term fascism, you end up being pushed back onto its characteristics as an ideological formation first of all--and that ideological formation looks a whole lot like the post 9/11/2001 worldview of the american political right. then you have to think in terms of the various usages of the state of emergency or exception--another post 9/11/2001 parallel. does that mean the american system has been fascist since 9/12/2001: no. it means that it has slid dangerously close to it. that's all. parallel, not identity. why? the state of emergency has remained largely rhetorical. and then there was iraq, which crumbled the regime politically. now the bush people couldnt be fascist if they wanted to be: they dont have the consent. conservatives might not like that, but it's of no consequence to me. as far as the argument i made against you, above, loquitor, its easy peasy: if you work off the op as a "definition" of fascism, it comes down to illegal surveillance. i dont think that's a defining characteristic of fascism at all, so i think it a red herring. insofar as captialism cannot possibly be fascist, i think that's idiotic. actually existing capitalism has depended and will continue to depend on the functionality of the state, on its repressive arm--but generally, capitalism also requires the procedural legitimacy of the state to remain intact because its own procedural legitimacy to some extent derives from that of the state. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-03-2008, 06:56 PM	#5 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Host, without commenting on your own political self-assessment, let me just say that to make your point cogent you really would have to define what you mean by "fascist." I understand it to mean -- historically, and roughly speaking -- an all-powerful state, driven by nationalism, with large dollops of militarism, and insistence that the individual is submerged to the will of the whole. I don't think anyone here supports anything that matches that description. Of course your definition might be different. But if it is, you may want to consult the words of George Orwell, as far back as 1946, lamenting the distortion of words for political purposes: "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable."" He had more to say about accusations of fascism here (good quote: "it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."). The term is not an all-purpose catch-all that means "political things I disagree with." It has a specific historical context, meaning and practice, originating in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, originally in Italy under Mussolini, who invented the term. I'm unaware of any American who subscribes to Mussolini's tenets, and I certainly have not seen anyone here who does.

03-04-2008, 01:46 AM	#11 (permalink)
host Banned	Johnny, this "tome" has been edge-umacating the faithful, as of late: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0385511841/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/104-6597636-4273548?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1">Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning</a>

03-04-2008, 09:30 AM	#17 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	roachboy, that is positively staggering in its ipse dixit circularity. Nice little ju-jitsu to try to show that individualism (classic liberalism) equals fascism (submergence of the individual into the state-driven mass). I understand why you want to make that argument but it makes no sense.

03-04-2008, 12:17 PM	#24 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	roachboy, I'll have more to say when I'm home and can devote to your last post the time it deserves, but let me just say this: any kind of big institution will have certain fascistic impulses, and that includes big corporations as well as big government. How they translate into practice may vary. But you can't just equate big business with capitalism in making your argument, which I think is one of the main premises of your post. Big business may or may not operate in a classically liberal/capitalist way. In regulated economies it often doesn't.

03-04-2008, 12:26 PM	#25 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	actually, loquitor, that wasn't my intent at all--i didn't mention corporations or corporate structures--->i talked only about the state--and that only because of the op. my last post was mostly a quick-and-exapserated outline of a defintion of fascism. the short tag at the end was aimed more at you. i was trying to erase the space this sternhell left=right move, mostly. it's crap. but please, we should continue so post more when you've a chance. i'm in the middle of stuff as well. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-04-2008, 07:13 PM	#30 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	It's called tyranny. It's a combination of corporatism, fascism, and a few other things.

03-04-2008, 07:21 PM	#32 (permalink)
Hanxter The Griffin	deleted Last edited by Hanxter; 03-04-2008 at 07:47 PM..

03-04-2008, 07:25 PM	#33 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	I'm left wondering what fascism really means in 2008.

03-04-2008, 07:28 PM	#34 (permalink)
Hanxter The Griffin	exactly seems i'm surrounded by media writers... being a repub, i'm repulsed by my party and going obama... i'm sick of the repub arrogance i can't stand that whiney spoiled brat bitch so i'm going the lesser of the evils but to get edited because someone doesn't like my approach to a user's non-stop abuse... yes, abuse... of this forum, after having been warned more than once upsets me... seems the liberal party travels far and wide Last edited by Hanxter; 03-04-2008 at 07:34 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

03-04-2008, 07:44 PM	#36 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Everyone read Baraka's post. It's pretty good. Last edited by Willravel; 03-04-2008 at 08:04 PM..

03-04-2008, 07:47 PM	#37 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Doesn't anyone use Wikipedia anymore? Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State. --Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism. Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." ...a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination." --Robert O. Paxton, former professor at Columbia University. Stanley Payne's Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism; anti-conservatism. --Wikipedia: Fascism. Basically, fascism is a monstrosity of an entity that has all but completely been left behind in the 20th century. Neither neo-liberalism nor neo-conservatism resemble fascism as we should know it. This is not to say that some government practices don't infringe on rights and freedoms. In doing so does not a fascist make. China isn't fascist. Russia isn't fascist. America isn't fascist. They might be militaristic and/or expansionist. They might be lured through capitalist channels to partake in rampant globalization at an unsavory cost. They might also do unjust things protecting these interests. But, seriously, none of this is fascism. If it were, we'd be more mobilized to put a stop to it. Perhaps a period of hyperinflation and a reactionary fallout will once again lead to this, but for now, let's keep perspective. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 03-04-2008 at 07:51 PM..

03-05-2008, 05:31 AM	#39 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	__________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite