Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> Hi,
> [clip]
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org>
> FDR appears to have suffered
> the same malady,
> > but then he didn't have the advantages of social science
> hindsight :)
>
And why should we not take advantage of social science hindsight? I always thought taking advanage of accumulated knowledge was sort of what science of any sort was about. Without knowing too much about it, I would say the odds were overwhelming that anyone directly confronted with fascism in action, as Dimitrov and FDR were, would be wrong in their historical assessment of it. That is nothing against either of them, but to cling to their positions puts us in the same boat Einstein would have been in had he refused any theories that conflicted with Newton.
Someone quoted Trotsky in calling Hitler a bonapartist. Clearly that was an understandable but disastrous misunderstanding. I'm still worried that applying _any_ definition of fascism to _any_ current condition risks the same kind of error. Bonapartism was specific to a certain historical juncture. Fascism was, ALSO, specific to a particular historical juncture -- that very odd and precarious armistice between the two halves of the Great War. History really does not repeat itself, and those who think it does are doomed not to repeat it but to make stupendous new errors. The most important reason for a deep knowledge of history is to find out that it has no direct lessons for us. For example, it can create the illusion that the way to prevent a future revolution from self-destruction through authoritarian error is to understand Stalin. But we couldn't repeat Stalin's errors and/or crimes today (or tomorrow) if we tried to -- history has passed on. To try to avoid Stalin's errors is to guarantee that we will make brand new errors that will lead to similar results by a new and different path.
Carrol