<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox@ilstu.edu> >Charles: So it is with the history of fascism. We look to general patterns in > it that may give insight into fighting "open terrorist dictatorship by > the most reactionary sectors of capital" should it develop in the > present or near future. Carrol: My point is that focusing on the history of fascism is potentially as misleading as to the present as focusing on the anatomy of rabbits would be to the understanding of a species of mammal hitherto unknown. In every field of thought it is misleading to mix levels of generality.</BLOCKQUOTE> Charles: Myself, I am not focusing on the history of fascism, but only not ignoring it, paying attention to it as I would other histories that might shed light on current events. Upon analogy to biology, we are in the species capitalism which has had populations bourgeois democratic republic and fascism, the former transforming into the latter in certain crises.  If we are in a bourgeois democratic republic now, it might transform into fascism again in a crisis, or some population with some of the characteristics of fascism from the past , given the similar factors in the crisis. Of course, analogies to biology are limited, heuristic. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Carrol: You won't avoid a speeding train by having your eye peeled for low-flying helicopters.</BLOCKQUOTE> Charles: Since a train is also "low" , one might see it looking for "low" heliocopters, if the heliocopters are low enough.  <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Most of the dangers to civil liberties which threaten in the U.S. look very different from the mode of operation of fascism -- and we can't fight them in the ways that an earlier generation fought fascism. If you want a historical parallel, don't look to Germany & Italy. Look to the post-reconstruction south. That too would probably confuse as much as it illumined, but it would be less confusing than the fascist model.</BLOCKQUOTE> Charles: You have not demonstrated that the fascist model is confusing today. You mainly assert it. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Carrol </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>