Going Nazi

Charles Jannuzi jannuzi at edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp
Sun Jan 27 23:12:56 PST 2002



>Chip B:
>The wave of authoritarianism >and government repression we >are
experiencing needs to be >challenged, but this overly->simplistic level of analysis is not >helpful. The US is not going >NAZI. There are echoes of
>fascism in all forms of >authoritarian government
>repression, but the level of >state action under fascism to >repress
dissent is a different >order of magnitude from what >we are experiencing.

Fascist is as fascist does.

Of course historians or sociologists, like economists, are terrible at predicting the future in any detail that proves useful.

However, if the US doesn't draw back from its rampant cultural imperialism and economic nationalism, and if the world does plunge into an economic depression as deep as say the Great Depression, historical perspective tells me anything is possible.

Backing up: Hitler hardly had uncontested military power. He didn't have the physical means to end human existence on the planet. Nor did he have his naked economic and political ambitions on the world confused with some form of dynamic market ideology. And in some ways his elected path to office was clearer than Bush's.

If the US had to face crises on the magnitude of Germany between the wars, or , let's say, the Soviet Union in the 1980s, just how stable and safe would the responses within the government be?

Is the US national security state going to back down and say, hey, you know, 9-11 happened because we really fucked up and we owe a sincere apology to all the Americans affected and all the families of the internationals who also died in 9-11?

In short, the reactionary dynamism so far on display is breathtaking.

Charles Jannuzi



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list