From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
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.)
^^^^^^^ CB: If you don't think the Dems are, how about the Republicans ? They are the ones that stole the last pres election and mentioned cancelling the next one. They have a lot of extreme rightwingers and racists in their ranks, etc. They have a lot of the most reactionary, most chauvinist sector of the finance capital controlling them.
How about the Republicans being like the Italian Fascists ? Or do you consider that Italian Fascism was not really fascism ?
^^^^
> 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?
^^^^
CB: I don't follow you. What do you mean why bring up this history ? It is to show what the U.S. has done recently that is in a fascist direction, and therefore disabuses of the American exceptionalist notion that "it can't happen here ." The fact that the U.S. has had lots of dribbles of fascism often means there is potential that the dribbles could become a flow, the flow a current. The American national character is not immune to fascist conduct or anything.
^^^^^
(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?
^^^^ CB: Yes. You don't think they can't happen again, do you ?
^^^
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.
^^^^^^ CB: So would you ask me why am I bringing up this history ?
^^^^^^^
> 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.
^^^^^ CB:
Yea, but most were not denouncing the fascists the way the Communists were. There is a reason that the saying was specifically, "FIRST they came for the Communists..."
You are saying that plenty of people knew in 1931 that the Nazis were going to murder 6 million Jews ? Twenty million Soviets ? Cause a war killing 50 million ?
It's not clear to me that you have studied history more than I have.