This is a prime example of your tendency to manipulate reality to fit you preconceived ideas.
The first lines of the essay you posted actually read:
= = =
"Do we live now in a fascist state? Do the Americans? No. But in the last four months we have moved another step - a giant-sized goose step - further in that direction."
"It is true, of course, that fascist tendencies are always alive in the repressive nature of capitalism; that fascism is a product of imperialism; and that the dividing line between capitalism and fascism is never entirely clear."
--David Lethbridge
= = =
The section you posted by the author, David Lethbridge, is part of a complex analysis that is--when read in full and in context--a more complicated analysis than that of Dimitrov or Gross.
Chip Berlet Senior Analyst Political Research Associates Webmaster http://www.publiceye.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Wanzala [mailto:jwanzala at hotmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 3:11 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] anti-fascist agitation/full spectrum dominance
>
>
> Chip Berlet wrote: "Using the term fascism to describe
> capitalist state
> repression or transnational corporate power is an abuse of
> the term. These
> realities are bad enough without self-righteous
> hyperbole."
>
http://bethuneinstitute.org/documents/fullspectrum.html
All too often it is suggested that the defining quality of fascist state
power is, in the classic 1935 definition of Georgi Dimitrov, "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital" that substitutes "terrorist dictatorship" in place of "bourgeois democracy." But, as Dimitrov himself understood, such a description refers more to the appearance than the essence of fascism.
It may be that the core of fascism is simply "reactionary repression at home and expansion abroad" as the American radical Bertram Gross once wrote. Indeed, as Dimitrov himself put it, "the ruling bourgeoisie more and more seeks salvation in fascism, with the object of taking exceptional predatory measures against the working people (and) preparing for an imperialist war of plunder."
In short, the whole point of fascism is to ensure increasing mega-profits for the ruling class - through neo-colonialism and militarized global plunder - while consistently destabilizing and ultimately crushing the militant organizations of the working class. Is this not the path that US imperialism has now entirely embarked upon? US imperialism does not refer to this vicious project as "fascism," nor can it for a whole variety of reasons. Instead, the newly minted term currently being employed in the White House is "full spectrum dominance."
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