Well, in the simplest sense, if you are organizing against a Christian Right or other ultraconservative group, there are ways to force a compromise in a public setting, but if you are organizing against a fascist group, there is no compromise, because they would prefer to exterminate you because they think you are a form of parasitic contagion.
I know this sounds glib, but in a sense it is getting to Yoshie's impatience with the issue. When a group is fascist, it requires all decent people to get rid of it. This is not just the ethical thing to do, it is a survival necessity. The only question is how? I don't like US bombing runs, but other techniques through the UN and world courts have merit.
When I organize in Black communities, this is totally obvious to the audience. They understand that some people are worth talking to, and others require armed self-defense. I support armed self defense against fascist and other race hate or bigoted terrorist groups. In other settings I promote creative militant non-violence.
Ever try non-violence with a neonazi? Only corpses know the answer.
When I organize in some areas, I travel with someone who is armed. This isn't a game. I know people who have been beaten up. I know people who have had their spouses killed. I have been seriously threatend with harm several times. I have been injured twice at race hate rallies that turned violent, and one leg injury still requires medical attention and surgery which means I am currently walking with a cane. I had one public speech interrupted by a group of neonazi and KKK thugs, the leader of which actually threatened to not only kill me but also the whole audience. (OK, probably bravado, but it was creepy.) I had to teach my son how to hide in the bathtub in case someone fired shots into the house.
So you can imagine how it is irritating to have people suggest that I am some armchair intellectual who only cares about some conference paper, when I have a long history of community-level organizing against fascists and race-hate groups. And I wonder how many other White anti-racist organizers actually took the advice of SNCC and moved into a White working class community for ten years to do anti-racist work?
I use the research to help formulate effective strategies and tactics for organizers. That's what Political Research Associates has done for the past 20 years. It is why I was hired. I have been doing the work for 30 years. It's not some intellectual game to me. I don't have any academic degree. I dropped out of college to do antiwar and student organizing in the early 1970s. I started to read sociology again when I was living in my Chicago neighborhood being organized by fascist race hate groups. The multiracial group my wife was helping run asked me for strategic help in the early 1980s. Social science research helped us figure out what was going on...that we were not up against some "lunatic fringe" of "wing nuts" but skillful organizers who were mobilizing resources and exploiting political opportunites.
Remember that scene in the Blues Brothers when they drive the neonazis off a bridge in a park? That's Marquete Park. My neighborhood for ten years. It's also the neighborhood that welcomed Martin Luther King and his open housing march in the 1960s with stones and bottles. But there was a difference between relatively prejudiced and conservative White working class families and organized fascist race hate groups, and that gave us room to organize. It took ten year but we kicked out the fascists. Now Marquette Park is an integrated neighborhood.
In the late 1990's I started getting invited to present papers at ASA conferences and write for peer review sociology journals because of how my practical experience was supplemented by scholarly research into right-wing social and political movements.
This isn't about taxonomy, it is about finding an effective solution to a problem that if misdiagnosed results in people getting injured or killed. I saw race riots, beatings, and firebombings of Black families' homes in my neighborhood because of just such a misdiagnosis by "experts" from groups like ADL who claimed expertise on the question of how to handle fascist race hate groups. And I worked with socialists and communists and labor union activists and progressive religious people willing to rethink their ideas about what fascism was and how it worked in actual practice.
Want to see some pictures from my neighborhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s?
http://www.publiceye.org/gallery/chicago/chicago.html
I don't see how I have not offered enough context for my definition of fascism since I have now posted many paragraphs from the work of Griffin who is considered by many to be the world authority on the question. When I post cites to books or URL's I am dismissed as arrogant. When I post actual excerpts, I am criticized anyway.
I have lots of disagreements with Carrol Cox, but when he engages me in a serious discussion, I find it useful and challenging, and I take the time to answer. Besides, I like him because we can roast each other and get over it and have a perfectly sensible conversation in the next post.
But do not for a second think this is all about scoring points in some academic department meeting.
-Chip
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kelley" <kwalker2 at gte.net> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 10:54 PM Subject: Re: Clerical Fascism & Totalitarianism
> At 11:17 AM 10/18/01 +0900, Charles Jannuzi wrote:
>
> >Second, I'm not saying the terms you use have no meaning. I'm questioning
> >whether or not your use of them has anything but taxonomic function at
> >conferences about clerical fascism--sure, that's rather ungenerous, but
> >look at what you yourself have just written. Classify o.k. But then use
> >them in sufficient context and use them to explain the phenomena they
> >describe (more on this at another time).
>
>
> i would like to reiterate what charles has said here. that's what i have a
> problem with. the term clerical fascism is descriptive. what's lacking from
> what i've seen is an attempt to explain fascism. i started to write
> something a bout this when perelman brought up the economic angle but
> figured it would be like arguing with a vegetarian about how to grill a steak.
>
>
> kelley
>