First I stressed that fascism was an analogy for some of the things going on. In fact I tried to draw out general propositions all along the way. An analogy is only useful to a limited degree, then it must be dispensed with. Hence while I have sympathy for those who percieve the fasciod tendencies emerging, I am far from satisified that this is adequate.
Now of course there is nothing new with political repression, but niether can the present period which has roots well beyond S11 simply a worse form of what we had before.
In my own country (Australia) for the first time our intelligence agencies have been given the powers of secret police. The security forces became directly involved supporting a the rightwIng governement during the last election (not all that new but a clear departure from the more sbtle support of the past). American think-tanks have over the last few years been directing through the same governement much of our domestic policies. After decades of tolerant multi-culturalism, ethnic divisions and especially hate of the small number of refugees that turn up on our shores has gained widespread support and has been sponsored by the state.
We have set up concentration camps for refugees, keep them in indefinite detention and subject them to extreme isolation - this is new and apparently spreading across the world.
Now compound that to the last decade or so with the commercialisation of our university system, the creeping of directly fascist philosophies which has greatly damaged the humanities (post-modernism), the renouncing of international law where it protected ordinary people, the dragooning of the unemployed into work gangs and cheap labour sources, the corruption of our education system along the same "progressivist" lines of the old style fascists.
How are we to think of these phenomena except as new, new in scale and directed for purposes not always clear, nor even clear in whose interest they are being carried out. S11 certainly acted as a spark for an offensive, but the lines this would take were already established within the social and political fabric.
Now I don't think these things can be called a result of media hype, in fact I cannot see how you could come that conclusion, unless of course you simply mean that the media has been hyping globalisation and something I have said appears to echo this. If that is so then I confess, there has been a shift in the economic and political order over the last decade which even the media has become aware.
Now your points that in the past certian things were done which cannot be termed fascism, well in isolation this is obviously true. It is not isolated acts of repression which support this association but when repression is generalisied, aggressive and something an end in itself. Where the current situation differs from the immediate past is in this general push which appears to be on a world wide scale and most presently pronounced in the USA.
Now my proposition was that using the concept of fascism we could start to uncover the distinguishing characteristics of this period of emerging repression. But if you do not like this, then cast it as a broader question - what is motivating force behind this turn towards active reaction?
What I cannot accept, as it flys in the face of all the great accumulation of facts daily taking shape, is that there is no difference then what existed in the immediate past.
By the way you have responded it seems that is your proposition, I prefer at this stage to think it merely a result of overstatement (which we all fall victim to).
I have to admit that I am not familiar with recent scholarship about historical fascism, however, whatever was specific in this historical context must also deal with what is non-specific, that is do any of this recent scholarship give a definition which shows that the tendencies which brought about fascism also lived past its demise, or are they purely contigent theories?
I would not compound Bonapartism with fascism, they are historically separate and the intensity and nature of the repression different because of this, but at the same time the theory of Bonapartism is incorporated into the concept of fascism (as developed in the 1930s by Marxists) I cannot see why this process should come to a sudden halt for surely the tendential movement lies within the development of capital.
Now your explanation at the end of your post suffers from too much contingency. An event sparking opportunitistic moves by a number of related/unrelated forces (Australia is following the same direction but fundementalism here is a very minor thing), only allows us to shrug our shoulders as if these developments were but a passing phase and a thing of little regard.
I cannot accept such a premise, history is not a circular process. We may dispute the lables but if the direction now establishing itself continues we enter a nightmare. Already the liberal democrats (a general term not a faction of the US party system) have collapsed, social democracy has evoporated and as for the left well the less said the better. The two former groups have been the stablising influences in advanced capitalism for more than a century in a decade they have been thrown aside, shades of the end of Wiemer if you ask me, but even without such an analogy the portents are bad - that is my point, not the rise of the right but the collapse of the liberal democratic and social democratic bastions of capitalism.
--- Message Received --- From: "Chip Berlet" <cberlet at igc.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 23:33:53 -0500 Subject: RE: Bonapartism, Fascism & our new order
Hi,
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
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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