Padilla

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Jun 14 14:50:22 PDT 2002


Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> [Justin]
> >>So, better fascist than free?

[Wojtek]
> >I do not think this is a real possibility in this country in any meaningful
> >sense. If this country faces any real danger, it is anarcho-individualism
> >of the I-have-the-goddam-right-to-do-whatever-I-want-and-do-it-in-your-face
> >variety.

This further firms my belief that the practice of the last 50 years in calling all authoritarian or despotic state actions "fascist" or "Nazi" has been an exceedingly bad habit. There continues to be serious danger of right-wing authoritarianism (and of state terror), and this danger will last as long as capitalism lasts, but there is virtually no danger of "fascism" or "Nazism," any more than there is danger of divine-right royalism. Those movements were a function of inter-war political conditions. Moreover, the next time some state casually slaughters some 5 million or more people, it will not be a formal program with death camps, it will not be called the "final solution," and it will even be denied by the murderers that it is a racist policy. Actually, the next time is already the last time. Surely the U.S. has casually slaughtered at _least_ 5 million non-combatants in illicit wars in the last 40 years or so.

Carrol



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