What new thing?
Political repression? Authoritarian demagoguery? Globalization on behalf of corporate interests? Unilateral warmongering? Roundup of residents based on ethnicity?
All of this has happened before. It is completely ahistorical to say this is all a new thing.
Don't buy the media hype.
Was it fascism when the US rounded up Japanese residents and put them in camps during WWII?
Was it fascism when Italian and Russian residents were rounded up and deported during the Palmer Raids in 1919-1920?
Was it fascism when the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882?
Was it fascism when in 1798 the US passed the Alien & Sedition Acts primarily aimed at Irish radicals.
All of these were examples of political repression based on ethnicity. None of them are examples of fascism.
So I reject the idea that we "start-off with fascism as an initial analogy and find the real historical differences underneath."
How about agreeing the debate is pointless as long as a substantial number of the participants refuse to even seriously discuss any of the recent scholarship on fascism that result in a range of new definitions--none of which are applicable to the current situation?
Pick any recent scholar: Griffin, Eatwell, Postone, Fritzsche, Lacquer. How do their theories relate to the claim that were are in a period of fascist reaction? They don't! Their varied and sometimes competing definitions do not show any serious analogy that could be stretched to fit these arguments.
We should oppose government repression under capitalism, but not pretend that only fascism--not ordinary capitalism under stress--could bring us political repression based on ethnic scapegoating.
When you argue that only fascism could explain the current level of political repression you end up as an apologist for the repressive potential of capitalism. Gee, this couldn't happen under capitalism...only fascism can explain it. Huh?
Furthermore, at a time when actual fascist political and social movements exist in the world and are aligned against corporate globalization, using the term fascism with such a lack of clarity creates more problems than it solves.
As is pointed out, some of the same features behind interwar European fascism exist today:
> The present period
> is clearly not just a periodic conservativism, there is
> nothing very conservative about it, it is active reaction.
> There are the cross-class demogogic characteristics, the
> reliance of force, the rampant anti-liberalism, the
> promotioon of anti-reason, the disregard for the rule of law,
> the scapegoating and public hate campaigns.
But these are all elements that can be found in several different systems and styles of politics, especially right-wing populism. I do not think it is as much a reactionary moment of proto-fascist barabarism as a coalition of several tendencies each using 9/11 to opportunistically advance its agenda.
Militarism Unilaterialism Corporate expansion The "Terrorism" Industry indentified by Herman and O'Sullivan Christian conservatism & fundamentalism anti-tax anti-regulation (anti-envionmentlaism)
Bush is paying off all his campaign debts.
All of the draconian laws and regulations that have taken effect have been proposed for years ever since Congress penalized the FBI and CIA for wretched excesses in the 1960s.
But none of this can lead to a serious debate unless there is a willingness to discuss the contemporary scholarship on what fascism was and is, and how these new definitions make a huge difference in how progressives should be analyzing the current crisis.
-Chip Berlet
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Greg Schofield
> Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 8:25 PM
> To: lbo-talk
> Subject: Bonapartism, Fascism & our new order
>
>
> Reading the thread on New Nazism it would seem the debate is
> a little stuck.
>
> On the one hand those saying that there is a contempary
> "Nazism" and those who cannot see the application of the term.
>
> Both agree that something "new" is happening, something very
> bleak indeed. Clearly also we are seeing no mere hiccup but a
> determining trend in political life - the debate seems to
> assume this also.
>
> So what is the debate?
>
> That this new thing, whatever it is, can or cannot, be
> legitamely termed Nazism/Fascism seems to miss the point.
>
> Elements of Bonapartism become became founding concepts of an
> understanding of Fascism. The point of departure was what had
> developed within capital between times (the rise of finance
> capital and imperialism). It was this that created some of
> the defining characteristics of fascism, but the concepts of
> Bonapartism did not go away they where incorproated into this
> understanding.
>
> Today's "new order" and past socially organisied reaction
> (fascism - bonpartism) all share general characteristics. In
> fact they all can be generally classed culturally as forms of
> emergent barbarianism (not that this helps us particulairily).
>
> The question is really which way is best to proceed along?
>
> Michael Pugliese gives a number of references which target
> the misleading aspects of rer-using an older concept for a
> new problem. The references are illuminating but also miss
> the point that by developing the concepts of Bonapartism was
> part and parcel of recognising the then new phenomena of Fascism.
>
> It is difficult if not impossible to try and grasp what is
> going on under such a general rubric as "ÿt is something
> new". Rather we need concrete analogies to begin with and
> hence Fascism seems to fit the bill. The course then is
> whether the concept is developed beyond itself to properly
> grasp what is in fact new, or whether it languishes as a
> reductive device which forestalls analysis.
>
> Both approaches live within mobolising an old term, and I do
> not believe there is any shortcut.
>
> Hence to deny the application of the term because it does not
> tally with historical experience does not in itself move
> things forwards but tends towards a scholastic debate.
> Adopting the term and going no further is just as fatal for
> the same reason.
>
> I don't believe comrades are doing either exclusively, but
> the tendency is there.
>
> In general terms Bonapartism, Fascism and our "new order"
> share too much in common to be dismmissed. The present period
> is clearly not just a periodic conservativism, there is
> nothing very conservative about it, it is active reaction.
> There are the cross-class demogogic characteristics, the
> reliance of force, the rampant anti-liberalism, the
> promotioon of anti-reason, the disregard for the rule of law,
> the scapegoating and public hate campaigns. And yes the
> beginings of concentration camps (illegals imprisoned
> indefinately) which recall all too strongly the period
> leading to WWII.
>
> All three forms of reaction also share on origin of being
> stuck, France overshadowed by Britian, threatened by a rising
> Germany and economically in a vice. Germany, Italy and Japan
> locked out of serious Imperial competition (Spain playing the
> same game at a more local level - a society so anchronistic
> that the left-wing threat sweated out of its every existence).
>
> Likewise the USA and its allied states. World superpower
> without any where to go by the old means, creates its own
> enemies (as puny as these are by any scale) and dreams of a
> world order that exists merely to maintain that supremacy.
>
> Barabarism, reactionary action without reason (same ends
> being achieved by less nasty means systematically
> negelected), militarism, secret police, hate, repression and
> death. General tendencies found whenever the same general
> nexus is encountered.
>
> By all means let us start-off with fascism as an initial
> analogy and find the real historical differences underneath.
>
>
>
> Greg Schofield
> Perth Australia
> g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au
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