The basic problems we have are (1) primarily the use of the term fascism, and (2) the question of how different things are now compared to other moments in history in capitalist economies.
I agree with you that there are reactionary elements involved in the current wave of repression, but there are also forward thinking elements that are merely being opportunistic.
The situation in Australia (and New Zealand) has some similarities and some differences. In both nations US conservative business-oriented groups have helped set up think tanks to promote "neo-liberal" economic policies. In Australia, there has been the growth of a xenophobic populist mass movement similar to the forces that suport Pat Buchanan in the U.S. At least in New Zealand (I don't know about Australia) there have been tours by Christian fundamentalists concerned about gender and sexuality issues, although this is very different from the power these forces have in the US.
As for the rise of global repression...yes, it is in a period of growth, but historically this has happened before. I am not brushing it off as an issue, I am arguing that while repression is resugent, it is not a new phenomena, and that to see it as "new" rather than "resurgent" is an analytical error. In terms of the US, try looking at:
Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. (1988). Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Boston: South End Press.
Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. (1989). COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. Boston: South End Press.
Cunningham, David. (Forthcoming). "State vs. Social Movement: The FBI's COINTELPRO Against the New Left" In Jack Goldstone, ed., States, Parties, and Social Movements. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Donner, Frank J. (1980). The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Donner, Frank J. (1990). Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gelbspan, Ross. (1991). Break–Ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement. Boston: South End Press.
Glick, Brian. (1989). War at Home: Covert Action Against U. S. Activists and What We Can Do About It. Boston: South End Press.
Goldstein, Robert J. (1978). Political Repression in Modern America, 1870 to Present, 2nd edition. Rochester VT: Schenkman Books, Inc.
Herman, Edward and Gerry O'Sullivan. (1989). The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror. New York: Pantheon.
Schultz, Bud and Ruth Schultz. (1989). It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
The more useful analogy is not to fascism, but to previous periods of political repression in the US. Only by ignoring this history can one seriously suggest that fascism is the proper analogy when so few elements of fascism are actually present, save those related to authoritarian state action.
-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: Saturday, February 16, 2002 4:56 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Bonapartism, Fascism & our new order
>
>
> Chip, we seem to be having some basic problems.
>
> 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.
>
<<SNIP>>
> Greg Schofield
> Perth Australia
> g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au
>