Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>>
> ``...It's not productive to throw about Nazi/fascist as all-purpose
> epithets for view we don't like...'' Justin
>
> I know it's not productive. But there is some serious affinity going
> on there. They have a kind of subliminal link. I do think some hint of
> that linkage explains the latent racism that seems to pervade Bush's
> bridge between the East Coast elitist crew and the Southern bible belt
> crew.
I have argued this point before, but I think it's worth repeating. "Bourgeois" democracies are unstable, and that instability generates a built-in slide towards authoritarian rule of different forms. Several observations departing from that.
(1) The word "Nazi" connotes a sort of absolute or metaphysical evil, going beyond all human social relations. It ought not to -- Germany of the 1920s/1930s was not outside history, but it does, and hence the mere casual invoking of it simply kills political discourse.
(2) Bourgeois democracy _at its best_ is capable of ruthless repression of resistance -- and without ceasing, for that reason, from _being_ a bourgeois democracy, with all the advantages that that form gives to resistance. Most of us on this list would either be perfectly good tin soldiers or dead under an actual fascist/Nazi regime of the '30s.
(3) Authoritarianism (police state, whatever generic term one wants to use) does take _many_ forms, some of which we probably have never yet experienced anyplace in the world. Capitalism generates great variety and constant change, in politis as in the production of commodities. If we keep crying fascism or Naziism, we may be blindsided, in fact I think we _will_ be blindsided, by repression, and perhaps a radical change of regime, from some unexpected direction. The cry of fascism lulls us to sleep rather than awakens us to danger.
(3) Of course there is an affinity -- it was to call attention to that that I cited Plato in an earlier post. If you read Gould (or the works he relies on here) you will find out that the mollusc eye, the arthropod eye, and the vertebrate eye _all_ go back to a common ancestor: they did not evolve separately to the same end as had been thought up to 20 or so years ago. (That is discussed late in the book and I'm less than half way through on my second reading. More on another day.)
(4) So nothing is gained, and much may be lost, by applying the labels "fascism" or "Naziism" to all repressive policies of the state. The heirs of Alexander were utterly brual (and efficient) in crushing any deviation -- but it would dissolve history (and therefore marxism) in moralistic slush to call them fascist.
(5) U.S. racism far predates Hitler -- the u.s. is in fact the cradle of modern racism. Hitler learned from "us" if anything. Racism is simply the mode of existence of politics in the u.s. It is really absurd to go abroad to find a source for any racist element in u.s. politics.
(6) And a lot more, but I've gone on long enough.
Carrol