> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Wanzala [mailto:jwanzala at hotmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 12:49 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Bohemian Grove
>
> think it has to do with the way in which 'conspiracy
> politics' has moved
> from the margin of political discource toward the center
> since November
> 2000. I think there is simultaneously a growing public dread for and
> acknowledgement of the unofficial, even criminal, channels
> through which
> state power is exercised and subverted and a bizzare
> fascination with and
> veneration of it.
This is a creepy echo of the fascist explanation of how power is exercised in a "corrupt" society; and recalls the process in Weimar Germany where anti-government populist politics was used to claim the government was controlled by secret, criminal (Jewish) elites and needed to be purged of its decadent and subversive elements.
Of course, this masks how capitalism works, and creates scapegoats, and displaces debate over actual structural, institutional, and systemic changes to society that would benefit more people, but, what the heck, think of the huge coalition when right and left join to fight the corrupt regime!
Somewhere Otto and Gregor Strasser are smiling.
Joe, I realize you are sincere, but your political line is far more likely to build a mass base for fascism than a mass base for progressive movements.
-Chip Berlet