> CB: Because of WWII, this section of German history is focussed on by
> many
> Americans , including by me. For example, I read a biography of Hitler
> when
> I was about 12 - as the essence of evil of course, because my father
> had
> been in the infantry fighting German soldiers in Italy ( by which he
> became
> a student of Italian history) Then I have studied the period because
> the
> Communist Party and the Social Dems had as much support as the Nazis.
> Then
> there's Einstein's biography. Then there's regular old World History
> in high
> school and college. Then there are numerous threads on this and other
> list
> in which quite a bit of scholarship is adduced and alluded to.
>
> Ad hominem is neutralized on this issue. Stick with presentation of
> theory
> and facts.
Sorry if I appeared to be getting ad hominem, but I just wanted to point out that folks who try to suggest some sort of resemblance between Weimar Germany and the U.S. in the early 21st century (the more you push them, the less of a resemblance they are usually willing to claim) don't seem to me to have a very vivid mental picture of what Weimar Germany is really like -- the great differences between that society and political system and ours. The resemblances claimed are usually pretty superficial.
(BTW, if the KPD and SPD had as much support as the Nazis -- actually, when the Nazis started out they had much more popular support, since the Nazis were only a handful -- what is your explanation for the fact that they were eclipsed in a few short years by the Nazis, and ultimately crushed by them?)
> Whatever fascism is the current situation in the U.S. is not enough
> different from previous historical bourgeois tyrannies, whether
> fascism or
> Bonapartism or Jim Crow to say there is no threat of "fascism".
What I want to assert is that this is a very sloppy way of using the term "fascism," which in the interests of clear speaking and thinking should be used to refer only to the Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and movements which are very similar to them. Such movements (neo-Nazis, etc.) do exist today in the U.S., but only miniscule ones of scattered loonies, and I don't see any likelihood that they will grow the way the German Nazis did.
> The Left has a responsibility to carry out anti-fascist agitation in a
> "secular" way in the economists' sense ( I just learned a new word).
> That is
> we should do it continuously. Always pointing to trends and changes
> that are
> in a fascistic direction, such as the stealing of the Presidential
> election.
> It is not the Left's task to tone down the anti-fascist rhetoric
> because
> some ultra-leftists have from time to time called out "fascist pigs"
> when it
> wasn't technically correct, tone down in embarrassment because it
> offends
> parlor radical sensibilities or whatever.
>
> Reds are continuous and vocal vigilantes against all fascist
> tendencies,
> from the KKK to the Reaganite presidencies.
Of course there are should certainly be continually active in defending and improving the democratic aspects of our society, but misapplying terms like "fascism" doesn't seem to me to be a very effective way of doing it. This is particularly a vice of ML parties, whose vocabularies and conceptual apparatus seem to have been set in concrete around 1930.
To me, the way to understand what is happening in 2004 U.S. society best is to put our efforts into studying the here and now, not poking around in the past for presumed "resemblances." My political guru at the moment is Thomas Frank (_What's the Matter With Kansas?_), who has produced what I think is the most insightful analysis of what we have to deal with that I have seen in a long time. What he describes is quite dangerous and difficult to cope with enough, but no reasonable definition of "fascism" I know of describes it. Using that term in a sloppy way just confuses and misdirects us, I think.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt