Geez, you folks have more tangents than a high school geometry textbook. On top of that, there is an alarming slipperiness of language. This is an attempt to put one thread back in the needle.
Populism, Fascism, Corporatism, Oppression, and Repression are different concepts. This is a long response, but just wait, next year Guilford Press is publishing Right Wing Populism in America by me and Matthew N. Lyons. We will really bore you to tears. But seriously, folks, I think it is too important a topic to let get frittered away with omphaloskeptic references to ethereal writers and descents into internal left squabbles.
When I said I agreed with Jeffrey and Carrol on a narrow point, this was the text:
> > Clinton is a far worse menace to
> > individual freedoms then all the militia men combined.
>
> On that, Carrol, we are in complete agreement. And I would add that
>Clinton is more of a menace than Reagan, as well. Since what passes for the
>Left was willing to stand up and fight Reaganism, but rolled over like a
>willing supplicant when the same meanness came dressed as Clintonism.
>
Under Clinton we have secret courts and other outcomes of "anti-terrorism" legislation passed by fanning hysteria that TWA flight 800 was bombed by terrorists and that the "militias" blew up the Oklahoma federal building. Both claims are false. So even just looking at this mess, "Clinton [has been a] far worse menace to individual freedoms then all the militia men combined." We are not talking potential here, just outcome.
I can say this while also believing that the populist militias are a proto-fascist movement that in different historic/economic circumstances would be a far worse menace to individual freedoms than a neoliberal government with its repressive powers and penchant for oppressive scapegoating.
For those who celebrate the direct populist will of the people, I would suggest reading The Ox-Bow Incident. Lani Guinier and Derrick Bell are two analysts who have examined the dilemma of majoritarianism.
There is much dispute in academia as to what populism is and how it works. Goodwyn described the original Populist movement as "the flowering of the largest democratic mass movement in American history." This and other romanticized views see populist movements as inherently progressive and democratizing. It is as overly optimistic as the negative view of populism by some academics such as Lipset and Bell is overly pessimistic. As Canovan observed "like its rivals, Goodwyn's interpretation has a political ax to grind." So an analysis that is neither demonized nor romanticized is what is in order.
Several people rushed in to say fascism was a far greater danger than Clinton. True, but that wasn't on the table if one looks at the above text. Right now, the militias are relatively tiny and weak. Buchanan poses a far greater danger of building a mass movement with fascistic elements, in which the militias and the broader patriot movement would merely be part of the larger coalition. Again, for those who are skeptical, I suggest reading:
Peter Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Fritzsche showed that distressed middle-class populists in Weimar launched bitter attacks against both the government and big business. This populist surge was later exploited by the Nazis which parasitized the forms and themes of the populists and moved their constituencies far to the right through ideological appeals involving demagoguery, scapegoating, and conspiracism.
Fritzsche: "The Nazis expressed the populist yearnings of middle-class constituents and at the same time advocated a strong and resolutely anti-Marxist mobilization. . .. Against "unnaturally" divisive parties and querulous organized interest groups, National Socialists cast themselves as representatives of the commonweal, of an allegedly betrayed and neglected German public. . .. [b]reaking social barriers of status and caste, and celebrating at least rhetorically the populist ideal of the people's community. . ."
This populist rhetoric of the Nazis, focused the pre-existing "resentments of ordinary middle-class Germans against the bourgeois 'establishment' and against economic and political privilege, and by promising the resolution of these resentments in a forward-looking, technologically capable volkisch 'utopia,' " according to Fritzsche.
For the modern moment, see: Mary Rupert, "The Patriot Movement and the Roots of Fascism," in Susan Allen Nan, et. Al. eds., Windows to Conflict Analysis and Resolution: Framing our Field, (Fairfax, VA: Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 1997).
What these and other analysts understand, is that fascism is the most militant form of autonomous right wing populism, not some puppet of the repressive state or late-stage capitalism. Fascist movements become co-opted by the corporatist state. I agree with Johannes Schneider that the Party Line on fascism was a disaster. As he wrote:
>What about the failure of the German CP to build a united front with the
>SPD by calling the 'social-fascists'?
>What about the Spanish CP subordination under bourgeois forces and thus
>allowing the fascist success?
>What about the purges in the Red Army leaving the Soviet state almost
>defensless in 1941?
>Considering all those zig-zags of the party line, wouldnt it be more
correct
>to say the victory of the Red Army was achieved despite the party line?
The brilliant article by Umberto Eco summarizes the core themes of fascism from a unique but quite persuasive perspective. As he points out:
Eco: "Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism."
Charles Brown, however, sees creeping fascism in the Republican Party:
>One piece of evidence is Russ Bellant's book _Old Nazis, the New Right,
>and the Republican Party_ with an Preface by none other than
>Chip Berlet. In that book Detroit Bellant lays out much
>evidence of a very big network of WWII era Nazis and other
>European fascists who were an important component of the
>U.S. Republican Party in 1988. There is no evidence
>that they have been purged.
Well, actually, most of them died. But the point is that citing Bellant to argue that the Republicans under Reagan and Bush were closet fascists is an error of intentional fallacy. Since I not only wrote the introduction to the Bellant book, but was co-editor of the text with my late colleague Margaret Quigley, I can say with some assurance that the theme of the book was NOT that Republicans were closet fascists.
The theme of the Bellant book was that in the rush to destroy communism the US collaborated with ethnic fascists and Nazis from Europe; that some of these people found a home within the Republican Party under the banner of anticommunism, and that their racist and militarist proclivities (and sometimes rank antisemitism) pulled the Republican Party to the right and distorted US domestic policy as well as foreign policy. A related theme is in the excellent book:
Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Collier Books, 1988).
So while recognizing the awful result of the Reagan-Bush years, I would argue that they were not a form of fascism, and, at the same time, argue that the coded racism, sexism, and xenophobia of the Democrat Clinton, as well as his infringement of civil liberties through legislation and regulation, has the potential of being far more damaging to democracy in the long run than the Reagan/Bush catastrophe, which at least generated some counter response from liberals.
Nor is corporate power, even global corporatism, the same item as fascism, either as a mass movement or in state power. And recall that there were three flavors of fascism in interwar Europe: corporatist, master race, and clerical. Corporatism can be an element of fascism, but it is insufficient alone to establish fascism. Friendly Fascism (Bertram Gross, 1980) is an oxymoron. Clever book title, not very useful analysis. It has been adopted by the libertarian and populist right as an indictment of the liberal corporate state as fascist.
Check out amazon.com and you will see that others who bought this book recently also bought books by David Icke (antisemite conspiracist booted out of the Greens), John Robison (1790's conspiracy theorist about freemasons/Illuminati), Murray N. Rothbard (libertarian paleocon racialist), Gary Webb (conspiracy theorist). Here is a good stew for the Third Position concept of "beyond communism and capitalism." In fact, comparing Third Position fascist texts (railing against the corporate state, the tyranny of liberal hegemony, and imperialism) with the writings of Alex C. is a very amusing exercise. Of course Tom Metzger beat Alex C. to the call for a left/right coalition in his White Aryan Resistance newspaper some years ago.
Still, the potential of a mass fascist movement can be damaging to a society that aspires to democratic process, because even if the fascist movement (or repressive right wing populist movement) never gets near to state power, it spreads demonization, scapegoating, and conspiracism throughout the political system. So I would agree with Carrol Cox:
>Let me illustrate what I mean from u.s. politics. In the article from
>Alex Cockburn that Lou posted the other day, Cockburn explicitly
>expresses his "hopes of a populist coalition of left and right on basic
>issues of liberty." Now *that* is serious political ignorance. It as
>much a pipedream as Chris Burford's hopes for an alliance with progressive
>elements of the big bourgeoisie and far more of a pipedream than
>Doug's illusion that the admittedly derivative Butler has anything to
>say about the initiating or organizing of collecive action. And it is
>serious political ignorance because Cockburn asks us to pursue an alliance
>with a sector of the u.s. working class which is anti-black, anti-woman,
>and nationalistic.
A major attempt to build a coalition of left and right to smash the corrupt regime was called national socialism. Weimar, me worry? It is a shame that Alex C. seems incapable of distinguishing between socialism and fascism, or democratic populism v. repressive populism. He appears ignorant of the fact that throughout US history there have been movements of angry White men with guns that, to some, sounded progressive at first blush, but usually ended up stomping on the rights of indigenous Indian nations, Blacks, Asians, Jews, immigrants, socialists, anarchists, etc. Often left out is the routine sexism and homophobia of these movements. But when your writing perspective is male eurocentric privilege I suppose these facts seem trivial when compared to the right to own priapic firearms in a post-industrial society. Of course you can kill a rodent on your farm with a .22 rifle, you do not need an AR17a. I suppose the fantasy is that an armed population can resist state tyranny, but I stopped reading Robert A. Heinlein as a teenager.
So now we have Lenora Fulani endorsing Pat Buchanan. The red-brown...oh, sorry, left-right coalition Alex C. pines for. Let's see what they have in common. A crude anti-elite conspiracy theory of history in which Jews are stereotyped as having disproportionate power. That's certainly attractive. Incredible egocentric opportunism. Demagoguery.
This brings me back to my four fronts where progressives need to be organizing opposition:
***The rise of reactionary populism, nativism, & fascism with roots in white supremacy, antisemitism, subversion myths, and the many mutating offspring of the Freemason/Jewish banker conspiracy theories.
***Theocracy and other anti-democratic forms of religious fundamentalism, around the world, which in the US is based in White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with its subtexts of patriarchy and homophobia.
***Authoritarian state actions in the form of militarism and interventionism abroad and government repression and erosion of civil liberties at home.
***The antidemocratic neocorporatism of multinational capital with its attack on the standard of living of working people around the globe.
I refuse to be forced to choose which is the more important. They are part of a package. I certainly am not foolish enough to suggest forging a coalition with right wing populists against authoritarian state repression.
When I think of a night of the long knives, I want to be talking about a nice roast beef...not socialist en brochette.
-Chip Berlet
p.s. Incidentally, despite the claims of Wilcox and other detractors, I've never been interested in being a member of a cadre organization, which I feel free to say in the post cold war era. I think democratic centralism is an oxymoron. I simply don't like Leninism, much less Stalinism. I also have never been a government agent, as various conspiracist leftists have claimed; nor a Soviet spy, as Irwin Suall of ADL once implied in public.
Wilcox once asked me to join with him in denouncing ADL for creating antisemitic incidents in the US. His threat was that unless I joined him on his hideous "Hoaxer" project he would expose my role in the Albania Friendship group. I walked away in disgust. I am a critic of ADL, but not willing to promote antisemitism through careless criticism. This principled caution is what Alex C. blasted in the Nation when he said I was soft on ADL. I guess an op-ed in the New York Times (cowritten with Dennis King) criticizing ADL for its neoconservative slide and inappropriate interface with countersubversive spy networks was not bold enough. Twice I have successfully twisted arms at the Nation to get Cockburn to retract false statements he has made about me.
So, Jeffrey, I don't think you are going to find "hysterical" writing by me about the militias, since the source of those claims are rightists who misrepresent what I have actually written. We can agree to disagree on what the militias represent.
;-)
-CB