[lbo-talk] Allen, racism, fascism and beyond

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu Jan 3 12:47:03 PST 2008



>Don't forget WW I, when Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in jail


>(he served more than two before Harding commuted his sentence),
>thousands were rounded up and deported, and The Nation was banned
>from the mails.

I was going to mention this. It's actually the best example. Think of the scariest aspects of late 2001 and 2002 and then multiply by 1,000.

People were getting thrown in jail for making mildly critical comments

about the war in casual conversation. We had freedom fries, and they had liberty cabbage, but the hysteria was so intense in that moment that you could get beaten up by a mob of respectable citizens just for using the

word sauerkraut. A few years later everything was back to normal. Left-wing labor unions even organized a mildly successful third-party presidential bid by LaFollette in 1924.

Seth

^^^^^ CB: And at the same time, the KKK was lynching and burning, and parading down Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. Racist police brutality was rife. T'was US fascism for colored folks and radicals.



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