> Mass murder just goes with Nazism.
hmm. historically this was true. but there's no NECESSARY connection. for example, some neo-nazi orgs simply want to ship everyone off somewhere else right? in germany, they started out by sterilizing the insane, the mentally disabled, and hardcore criminals of *German* nationality. they were seen as completely useless and contaminating to the purity of the German race/nation. then they started killing them. communists were also locked up as insane. they ratcheted up the terror in an effort to secure greater power economically and politically. in other words, extermination of certain peoples in the interest of purifying a 'race' could be targeted at all manner of possible "groups" singled out for their "impurity"
the point: races are socially constructed, they are historically specific--there is no such thing as biological race. that jewish people were once considered a race, as were aryans, is ample evidence of that.
your examples of the KKK are precisely my point. I am suggesting that a great number of people are attracted to such groups because they have some insight that capitalist society is fucked up in some way. (alienation) but they don't have access to political struggles and a language through which to grasp the 'true' enemy. resentment of the well-to-do and successful isn't particularly acceptable because the ideology of success is so pervasive and powerful. a more acceptable, allowable and common "vocabulary of motives" is racism. and *that* charles is significant and exactly what i've been saying from day one. that's my guess as to why they did what they did. there's the necessary connection to racism. that's how i tie racism in and connect it to class analysis.
tangentially, it's also important to think about the issue of power here, to get theoretical for a bit: genocide is an interesting case insofar as the move toward genocide means that the reviled group has to be defined as completely useless and so disposable. Erik Olin Wright makes this point: enslaved people have a bit more power than those who are the target of genocide. [hegel made the point too, of course....] i bring this up because what disturbs me about these facile characterizations of nazism and fascism are tossed about so easily, and the connection w/ capitlism seems to get lost. capital had an interest in the rise of fascism.
"It must be the duty of racial hygiene to be attentive to a more severe elimination of morally inferior human beings than is the case today....We should replace all factors responsible for selection in a natural and free life...In prehistoric times of humanity, selection for endurance, heroism, social usefulness, etc. was made solely by hostile outside factors. This role must be assumed by a human organization; otherwise humanity for lack of selective factors, be annihiliated by the degenerative phenomena that accompany domestication."
Konrad Lorenz, 1940 quoted in Jay Lifton's _The Nazi Doctors_ p 134
kelley
“touch yourself and you will know that i exist.” ~luce irigaray