>
>Micheal, you miss the whole point of my post by assuming a
>non-democratic state is a fascist state.
i didn't assume that! (you are assuming that i assumed that).....authoritarian + capitalism+ expansionism...according to mussolini = fascism. (i'm over simplifying to avoid dissertation) though it really doesn't matter. it is naturally
common knowledge that the U.S. isn't socialist or pacifistic or isolationist. i just don't want to go into a lengthy dissertation every time i speak of foriegn policy. i'm not in any way attached to the use of that word. in a more formal situation
i wouldn't use it
>That assumption blinds you to where _new_ forms of authoritarianism
>might come from or what forms they might take.
??? i wasn't assuming anything...... read mussolinis definition and tell me what part of that doesn't fit with U.S foriegn policy:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html
he defines it as a reaction against democracy, "marxian socialism" and pacifism. these are the basic ideologies............i'll quit refering to it as "fascism" i'll just call it those grand ideas that "charming italian fellow" had.
>I have some sharp disagreements with Chip Berlet, but I can't think of a
>better place to begin an analysis of threats to democratic rights than
>his papers on (and lbo posts, which cite the papers) on fascism,
>conspiracy theory, and populism.
>
>Our thought will be clearer if we (mostly) keep our use of the words
>"fascism" and "nazism" confined to the particular historical conditions
>of the 1920s-40s.
well....the fascists came up with that word to label what ancient rome descended into often like with ceaser augustus and what not. the fascists just came up with a name for it. i don't know about this coming up with new names for essentially the same thing applied to various historical conditions. following your logic then we should'nt use the term "democracy" except only in reference to ancient athens. that's how i see "fascism", an institutional ideology applicable to a number of different historical conditions or situations.
>We do not know that Hitler is the worst that can happen. So if we
>prepare for every threat to democracy as if it were a nazi or fascist
>threat, we may find ourselves asleep at the switch.
just because someones uses the word fascism doesn't imply any dismissal of anything. i don't think that word or really any word forces that on anyone.
>And also, do not underestimate the horror that a _really truly good_
>bourgeois democracy can impose on the world or on its own people.
i don't underestimate anything.
If you
>count every atrocity committed by the ruling class through the state it
>more or less controls as a "fascist" threat you are accepting a nursery
>school understanding of bourgeois democracy.
i don't count every threat as "fascist"...... the domestic "threat" is not fasicst.......it is quasi fascist.
~M.E