<html> <head> <style> P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma } </style> </head> <body>> OK I'm still amused, so I'll make a few more points below. > Tahir   You're not 'amused' about anything, old son, so cut the crap and stop pretending to be a Bond villain.   > Tahir: A better approach would have been to ask me what I meant by > ultra-nationalism. I do think that the petit bourgeois connection is not > correct. I think that the p.b. are susceptible to the > fascist/nationalist message, but the nation is always bourgeois in its > origins, precisely because it is always an element in capitalist > accummulation.    I don't understand the 'but' here.  If the petit-bourgeois are susceptible to the fascist 'message', (as I originally stated), then what has the nation's "bourgeois" origins to do with it? > But what I had in mind with ultra-nationalism is a movement of national > salvation. It comes about when the ruling class is in a crisis of > legitimacy (third world countries are often perpetually in this kind of > crisis). The fascist is the national saviour. He emerges as a shining > light to the nation and promises to restore their pride.    Yes, but that's exactly what I thought you had in mind - and what I am suggesting is that requires supplementing.  One could imagine a 'national saviour' who was not, in fact, a fascist: Peronism was not fascism, for instance, and neither was Maoism.   > Islamist > ideology is full of this shining light stuff when describing their > heroes.    Yeah, absolutely, but this is not unknown among other kinds of movements as I say.   > And BTW the idea that the working class are not susceptible to > this is just junk - no mass movement could survive without worker and > lumpen support. I did mention the lumpenproletariat, and I did not say that the working class are invulnerable to fascism: I am not, to put it another way, an imbecile.  You seem to be extrapolating a great from what I do say in order to engage with what I don't. > Tahir: Give me one counter example with details. I thought we agreed that there feminist, liberatory, marxist and other kinds of Islamic politics.  So, by definition therefore, not all 'Islamic' forms of government are necessarily repressive. > Tahir: The incoherence was yours not mine. I have already told you that > I don't buy the argument of fascism as the ideology of the petit > bourgeoisie. That is some mechanistic stuff.   First of all, I did not say that it is the "ideology" of the petit-bourgeoisie, so again you are engaging with what I don't say.  I indicated that the ideology lacks coherence and takes on different forms depending on audience and vector.  But the relationship I did advert to doesn't *have* to be mechanistic.  Recognising the correlation with a particular agency - which is, by the way, firmly empirically established - doesn't mean that the petit-bourgeois exclusively and automatically produces fascism in a crisis of capitalism.  But why, for instance, is it the case that in Britain, the BNP's biggest successes have been among lower middle class areas - those Tory-voting regions outlying working class areas?  Is it not a reasonable inference from the mountain of available data that the   > A crisis of the nation > affects different individuals differently and many p.b. types become > communists. In fact a great many historically have become leninists! Or indeed Jacobins or Fifth Monarchists. > Tahir: You lead with your chin, pal, by identifying yourself as a > leninist. Now that leninists do not have secret police and gulags to > back them up so much, that chin is all the more tempting. But you are conflating Leninism with Stalinism.  I am a Trot, dear, and one with a libertarian bent at that, but you go ahead and swipe away if you think that's my chin you're aiming at. > Tahir: My point is precisely that I don't trust "anti-imperialist" > movements for this very reason. Without exception (you go ahead and try > me on this one too) they end up becoming paternalist and authoritarian, > whether or not they end up being "imperialist", whatever that means.   Well, it would be refreshing to know exactly what you think you mean by anti-imperialism even if you don't know what you mean by imperialism - but the revolutions that overthrew the Stalinist regimes were anti-imperialist in a fashion.  The Aristide movement was anti-imperialist.  The overthrow of apartheid was surely anti-imperialist, since it overthrew a regime sustained by imperialism.    > In > other words "anti-imperialist" beginnings have never been a basis for > liberal democracy, social democracy, socialist democracy or any other > kind of democracy. Your claims on this point are entirely bogus.   I don't know what "claims" you suppose you are referring to, but hostility to imperialism was precisely the basis for > Tahir: It never expanded its borders by an inch. So there you go, > fascism without expansion. So drop that criterion. There appears to be some misunderstanding on your part.  I have not suggested that expansionism is an invariant aspect of fascism.  I have suggested that it is one of the tendencies in fascist governments, (I might add, particularly those in developed capitalist states). > Tahir: Have you read any history of Islam? How do you think it got as > far as China, West Africa, Turkey, Spain. Through the fucking sword, > man, not through wandering mystics!!! One could apply that rationale to Christianity, but I suspect you would be more circumspect here. > Tahir: I was talking about the earlier period. Obviously not now, it > would be political suicide in the present global situation.   Oh, but excuse me, I thought you said that modern Islamic movements would be expansionist too?  Or are you embarrassed by that little bit of essentialism?   > But in a > different situation? There you need to look at the past for clues. BTW I > like your respectful "the Islamic Republic". Do you also speak about > "the People's Republic" as well? It's a formality, but it also adverts to the Jacobin revolutionary aspects of the revolution (if any aspect of the title needs to be dropped, it is 'Islamic', since all of the 'Islamic' trappings carefully dress up a developmental capitalist state with bureacrats in religious drag and the Council of Guardians operating as the executive arm of the bourgeoisie).  If you can bring yourself to avoid trying to prosecute before your imaginary tribunal, I would be grateful. > Tahir Oh I get it they're Islamic when they're busy with some things, > then they revert to being Persian again when they are busy with other > things. The one doesn't sanction the other. How very odd.   No, that isn't what I said and again, I must caution you to pay attention to what you purport to be engaging with.  Do you suppose the Ahwazis are not also Shi'ites?  They are, and that being the case, it is preposterous to suppose that their repression (which dates back to the Shah) is about pre-Mahdist Political Islam or the vilayet e-faqih.  The Ahwazis have always been repressed because the area is an economic and strategic asset to the nation-state as a whole and aspirations of independence therefore present a serious problem.  If the Iranian nation-state is defined by anything, it is a kind of Shi'ite nationalism (this is actually supported by several aspects of the constitution - have a look at Sami Zubaida, �Is Iran an Islamic State?�, in Joel Beinin and Joe Stork eds, Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report, 1997. > Tahir: You were the one said Islamic regimes were not dominative. Class > domination and nationalism are utterly inseperable. No, I said that the forms of nationalism espoused by Arab nationalist regimes or even by the Islamic Republic were not and are not dominative in the sense that the racism inherent in fascist ideology is dominative (rather than merely aversive).  Once again, and I'm sorry to have to keep saying this, you would have been better advised to read and think about what you think you are commenting on before setting fingers to keyboard. > Tahir: No it's your dogmatic leninist position in general. They're all > taking this position on the obscurantist regimes at present. So you're > just a type to me; can't be any other way. I mean how else can I relate > to someone who takes lenin's name as his list name? I ask you. Try pretending to be an adult.  Try not clotting your prose with cliche (everyone else is dogmatic while your thought is deliciously supple).  Try responding to what you are reading rather than inferring what you want to based on this 'type' that you have in mind. > Tahir: Ah but if you'd read any of my posts you would realise that I am > an ultra-leftist, you know, the kind that leninists have always liked to > dispatch to Jinnah? Possibly you are an ultra-leftist, but your tendency toward hysterical denunciation and abstraction (strenuously decapitalised to avoid the suspicion of Hegelianism no doubt) is more redolent of Stalinism than anything else. > how much of leftwing communism are you familiar with? Are > you one of those who nods his head sagely when reading "an infantile > disorder" without knowing anything about the people Lenin is attacking? I suppose I should be counting down to mentions of Kronstadt and one-man management.  I see no purpose in discussing that with you, since you've made it abundantly clear that you can't even discuss topics not usually riddled with sectariana without going off into your own loops of fantasy, imputation, misrepresentation, slander and so on. <hr />Be one of the first to try <a href='http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d' target='_new'>Windows Live Mail.</a></body> </html>