[lbo-talk] 14 characteristics of fascism

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Wed Jun 11 09:00:31 PDT 2003


From: andie nachgeborenen

Our situation is terrible enough without these tedious extended comparisons to the Nazis. ^^^^^ CB: This is a kind of non-sequitur. It doesn't follow from "our situation is terrible enough" , that comparison with the Nazis would be a waste of time. "Tedious" sounds like T.S. Eliot or something. On the below, the Nazis happened to arise when capitalism's mode of destruction had reached Fordist, industrial strength. Witness WWI , when not only the Germans had heavy duty killing machines. No reason to think the Americans wouldn't have exterminated the indigenous peoples at Nazi-speed if they'd have had the technology ( Only good Indian was a dead Indian). Viet Nam and Korea demonstrate U.S. willingness to commit mass murder at a holocaustic level . Iraq over 13 years, for that matter. Slavery was another type of world historic crime , of course, since the subjects had to be kept alive as production units. Nonetheless it was morally equivalent and a form of genocide ( pace the other thread on genocide). The Nazis planned to enslave the Soviets and Slavs, so they weren't going to turn those lights out. They didn't turn the lights out in France either. Of course, German history and culture have a lot of achievements and things to be proud of too, another strand in their history, comparable to what Americans have. I don't have to give a sample list of that for this email list. Sorry, comrade , brother counsel, your thesis in this post is bs.

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The Brits (and we) at their/our ruthless worst weren't a patch on the insane killing machine that Hitler created. They were merely bigoted, self-satisfied, and greedy. The Nazis wanted to turn the lights out all over the world, and came too damn close to doing it too. Yes, we Americans have an ugly heritage of extermination of the Indians, slavery, persecution of dissidents, lynching, racism, aggressive war, etc. That is one strand in our history. It is an important one and cannot be minimized. But it is not the only one. We also have things to be proud of: the Bill of Rights, Abolitionism, Emancipation, the labor movement, the partly successful struggle for civil liberties and civil rights, . . . . The analogues to our dark side in Nazi Germany's brief history are the best things about the Nazis. (The Autobahn and the VW aside.) The worst things about them -- the Einsatzgruppen, Ausch! witz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Maidenek, T4 -- have, thank God, no echo in ours.



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