>
>
> I would be very wary of looking at societies as organisms -- this has
> usually been the approach precisely of fascist ideologists, not
> progressives.
^^^^^^^ CB: Yes, analogy is limited.
I don't know about fascists using this analogy more than progressives. Marx compared his method in Capital to natural history.
>
> But more to the point, the likening of contemporary U.S. to Nazi
> Germany, or even equation of the two, has become something of an urban
> myth among some leftists. All I can say about this is that it seems to
> me that anyone who looks carefully and objectively at Nazi Germany, and
> tries to get a feeling for what the place was *really* like, couldn't
> possibly conclude that there was any significant resemblance.
^^^^^^ CB: This is kind of begging the question. What we are disputing is are there resemblances or not.
An objective look at Germany begins with that it was capitalist. Then state-monopoly capitalist. Similarly the U.S. Then there's the militarism and warmaking. Then there's marked racism. Then there's anti-communism. Then there is the passive population in the face of rightwing shift. These are objective. To say there is _no_ resemblance is winking at things.
^^^^^^
>
> Vague generalizations like "militarism," "racism," and "corporatist
> state" just don't get at the specific characteristics of the two
> societies.
CB: Militarism is not vague. There are giant military machines and warmaking in both. Racism is very specific ,not vague. Corporatist state is sort of state-monopoly. I'll give you that as vague, but that's Mussolini's , so whatever.
^^^^^
Yes, both could be called "militaristic," but Nazi militarism
>
> was a militarization of the whole society, starting with the SA and SS
> terrorizing the whole country and ending up with the Waffen-SS and the
> Wehrmacht.
^^^^^^
CB: The main militarism I'm thinking of is big war machines and making war, wars of conquest. That's very much in the news these days.
^^^^^^
Nazi racism was the Kristallnacht, the Wahnsee Conference,
>
> and Auschwitz. Where are the phenomena of this kind in the U.S. of 2003?
^^^^^^^^
CB: The U.S. prison-industrial complex is disproportionately populated by Black people. We have Native Americans living on reservations. Those are proto- and post-Auschwitz-like racism. We have racist police , death squads that shoot people according to race. We still have the Ku Klux Klan ( which predated the Nazis) , that does a Kristallnacht like thing now and again. We have cops rounding up "middle easterners". And we just had a big bangbang , the culmination of 12 years of genocidal war and blockade against the Iraqi people. Maybe you are not that familiar with what is actually going on in terms of U.S. racism
>
> If you want to discuss history in something like a professional,
> responsible way, you have to get into such specific details.
^^^^^^^^ CB: Do you think there are any generalizations in history ? Or is it all specifics and nothing general ?
>
>
> Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
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