> CB: Not to compare myself to him, but was Dimitrov in jail in 1931 or
> '32 ?
> No. Was Germany on the verge of fascism at that time ? Yes. Dimitrov
> was a
> more prominent radical than I am. As a matter of fact, the Left in
> Germany
> was freely running for national leadership of the country when it was
> on the
> verge of fascism. For that reason, would you and Carrol be saying in
> 1931
> that Germany was not on the verge of fascism ?
A more pertinent comparison between late Weimar Germany and present-day U.S., if we want to play that game, might be: is there an equivalent to the Nazis running around today?
(Yes, I know you guys will say that there is -- the Democratic Party. Ho-hum.)
> If leftists being jailed is a test, was the U.S. in "fascism" in 1970
> because Angela Davis was in jail ? Or "worse" when Jackson was killed
> in
> prison.
>
> Was the U.S. in fascism in 1948 (?) when the entire Executive
> Committee of
> the Central Committee of the Communist Party was jailed under the
> Smith Act
> ? And Attorney George Crockett from Detroit was jailed by Judge Medina
> for
> contempt in defending them ? What would you call that ? Tiddly Winks ?
>
> Was it fascism or on the verge when Paul Robeson's passport was
> revoked and
> W.E.B. Dubois was threatened with criminal prosecution in the fifties
> ? When
> Robeson was threatened by rightwing mobs in the Catskills ?
>
> How about the 40 years of Detroit City Red files on everybody from the
> CP,
> Martin Luther King to the Panthers ( white and black) and Erma
> Henderson ?
> How about when the head of the White Panthers was sent to prison here
> in
> Michigan ?
Why bring up this history? (By the way, you forgot the WW II internment of Japanese-Americans, and -- I recently learned -- some Italian-Americans were at least surveilled too.) Are you suggesting that because these events occurred in U.S. history, they could happen again? Sure, even the most "democratic" states get nasty from time to time -- that's part and parcel of their being monopolies of "legitimate violence" in their respective territories, and government types being congenitally paranoid about revolutionaries. But I continue to maintain that anyone who seriously wants to compare late Weimar Germany with contemporary U.S. needs to go back to the history books.
> One trouble with "fascism" is that right before its fullblown advent,
> "everything" is still bourgeois democratic. It was historically a
> quantum
> leap, sudden, unexpected, but if you have a trend in that direction ,
> you
> might anticipate a leap. Who in 1931 in Germany was saying "we are on
> the
> verge of 'fascism'! " ? Only the Communists, maybe ?
Again, please study your history a bit more. Plenty of non-Communists were quite aware of what lay ahead in 1931 -- starting with Thomas Mann and continuing with quite a few Jews who got out while the getting was good. Germany in 1931 looked much, much different from the U.S. in 2004.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax