Bonapartism, Fascism & our new order & War

Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Feb 19 07:57:31 PST 2002


Chip: Call it a popluar front if you want, and what you sugest is a good idea. But here is the problem. Things can (and probably will) continue to get worse. If we start out calling onerous but limited capitalist political repression--what term do we use when it gets worse? What do we say when a real middle-class fascist movement erupts? What strategies and tactics would change if we really were living under fascist rule? This crying wolf has a bad track record.

CharlesB: The working class forces in the 1920's and 1930's had the same problem we have today in trying to convey the danger of something new in fascsim. This is obviously an inherent problem with conveying the importance of anything new. One always has to try to use some historical precedent to convey the meaning, but augment the historical concept or term to convey that it is new. In the 1920's and 30's "fascism" would not send a strong enough message, because fascism hadn't done its extraordinarily murderous deeds yet. "Hitler is a fascist. " Someone's response to this in 1930 might be "So what ?". So, terms like "barbarism" or "Bonapartism" were used. Today , although the new situation is different than fascism in some ways, if we call it *(^%$#%$#, a completely new word with no historical significance, it will fail to convey the warning of extreme danger that we want to convey. So , of course we must resort to terms like "fascist-like" , "Nazi-like". But for rhetorica! l impact we just say The New Nazism.

The idea of "crying wolf" means that by saying "fascism" all the time, when fascism really comes people won't believe the claim. However, the declaration of wholesale war crimes, the Nazis main crime, has already been made by Bush. It is not crying wolf in that Bush has declared that he intends to "go wolf". We are crying that the wolf is barking and growling and already bit Afghanistan. Do we wait until he bights Iraq to cry wolf ?



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