>>> Max Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> 04/06/99 11:51AM >>>
Oh bosh Charles.
> Fascism is open terroist rule of the most chauvinist,
> racist sector of imperialism (imperialism today being
> monopoly capitalism). The main imperialist power in
> the world today is the U.S. Serbia is not an
Max: These two sentences are contradictory. First one says 'most racist' and second one says 'main.' In 1930's, US/UK was 'main' but not 'most racist.' Today US is 'main' and 'racist,' whereas Serbia is merely racist/fascist in re: assorted non-Serbians.
Chas: Oh goodie, Max, now I can start going over your posts with a fine tooth logical comb ! Do you think I will find contradictory sentences somewhere in all that you write ?
But on your comment, why do you say that in 1930 US/UK was less racist than Germany ( I assume you mean) ? Jim Crow was roaring in the U.S. South and real racist in the North. The entire land mass of the country was stolen based on a genocide committed against the Indigenous peoples at least equal to that committed against the Jews in the 1940's by the Nazis. . I would argue that in Jim Crow the U.S. had fascism before Italy in. It was open terrorist rule FOR Black people only.
The UK ! As the Chinese said, "the sun never set on the British Empire because God didn't trust the British in the dark" ; one might add among the darker races of humankind. Colonialism was the main form of racism, my friend, and Germany didn't have the colonial empire that Britain did. Anglo-Americo favoritism will throw you off on racism even in 1930.
But your statement above is, alas, in logical error itself. There is no contradiction between the general definition of fascism as a time of the dominance of the most racist sector of an imperialist country's bourgeoisie and the notion that the U.S. is the main imperialist country today.
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> imperialist nation. Yoshie is opposing imperialist
> war. Those arguing against Yoshie and in favor of
> U.S. imperialist war are much closer to fascism than
> Yoshie. But I guess things get confused and turned
> upside down easily when the bombs start falling.
Max: Indeed she is, but is she looking clearly, or at all, at what she and her compatriots are blocking with?
Chas.: She doesn't say she is blocking with the Serbs. You do. Again , the problem is your failure to differentiate between imperialism, which is only the U.S. and its assistants today and which is the main source of danger for larger war and colonialism... between imperialism and other state violence and terror. Basically, my idea is not to support the greater evil, imperialism. The fact that we cannot do anything about the lesser evil doesn't imply support for it.
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Max
Even so, there are no fascists on these lists, social or otherwise, Burford notwithstanding. Nobody in the U.S. is any 'closer' to fascism than any Serbian who isn't attacking Muslims in Kosovo. Serbian assault on Kosovo is imperialist war too, albeit from a pint-sized, not very accomplished imperium.
Chas: Well, those of us in the U.S. are closer to the center of fascism or fascist tendencies in the world today in the sense that it will be U.S. actions and policy that cause fascism or terrorist rule in smaller countries to recur if it does. The U.S. dominance of the globe makes it the main cause of just about anything major that goes on. By being such a global control-freak, the U.S. ends up with enormous responsibility. This routine of creating a dictatorship to prevent communism and national liberation and then "saving" the country from the U.S. generated dictatorship occurred in the Phillipines, Panama and Iraq, for example.
Technically, no, Serbia is not an imperialist nation, because it doesn't have monopoly capitalism, exploited colonies. Of course, "imperialism" has looser definitions too, but I'm being somewhat rigorous, contra your claim that I am being logically loose.
But this is not just formal logic. It is also very important for political economic analysis to make the distinction between the true imperialist powers in the world today and the other nations. This analytical distinction does not entail endorsing everything non-imperialist nations do. Ultimately, the sense of the distinction is that it is the imperialist powers that perpetuate capitalism in the whole world. Serbia and Yugoslavia would probably be socialist by now if not for the Cold War and imperialism's success in destroying the first historic efforts to create socialism in Europe. It is important to be wholistic in this analysis, although that's dialectical more than formal logic. (((((((((((((((((((
Chas.:
> Totalitarianism is , as Michael Hoover says, bourgeois
> anti-communist , anti-Soviet rhetoric (Hannah Arendt)
> from the Cold War . Speaking of totalitarianism , Big
> brother controls your mind by having you watching him
> in totalitarian U.S. 1999. The mind control works so
> good, he has Anglo-American chauvinist/jingoists
> "leftists" calling the socialists "social fascists".
Max: Careful. Only one leftist (Burford) called Y a social fascist, and even so he was talking about her ideas, not herself.
Totalitarianism is real and it sucks. What purposes it served as doctrine on behalf of US imperialism is pertinent in one sense, but also a resort to moral blindness with respect to the practices of really-existing communists in power. Saying US imperialism is to blame for all the crimes of Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism is a dodge. It is implicated, but the perpetrators share responsibility.
Chas.: Critique of the usage "totalitarianism" does not mean the crimes of the first efforts at socialism can't be criticized. It is a refusal to "block" with the imperialists' "critique" of socialism. Also, it is an effort to point to the totalitarianism or control of mind and body in the U.S. and West. Totalitarianism is definitely real, but its main locus today is right under your nose. Chomsky and Micheal Parenti demonstrate this.
Here Kelley used it in the typical red-baiting way by saying it is a peculiar problem of Marxists. However, my experience is that liberals and pluralists are as intolerant as Marxists and communists. For example, liberals were complicit in McCarthyism.
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Max: All U.S. residents can readily sample the experience of totalitarianism: just join a tightly-run cadre organization or cult and try to function as a loyal opposition. It helps to be a masochist. There is no comparison to being a fellow-traveler, no disrespect intended to the latter.
Chas.: All U.S. residents are living in the most successful and sophisticated totalitarian regime yet: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie beyond compare and challenge. Commodity fetishism ,the rule of money and intermittent terroism are the most efficient method of mind control. Most people (you?) don't even realize it.
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> The attack on Yoshie is true "left" conservatism.
Max: This is the mirror-image of red-baiting, but in view of the nature of other users (e.g., Judy Butler, etc.) of this term, I take it as a blessing.
Chas.: The political spectrem is not symetrical. There is no left equivalent to red-baiting. Red-baiting is rightwingers trying to use the fact that being red is politically repressed by U.S. bourgeois totalitarianism to shut up a red because the red fears retaliation by loss of job or the like. Conservatives face no such repression under U.S. totalitarianism , so being called conservative does not compare to being called "red".
Charles Brown