On 2010-02-07, at 9:19 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Marv writes: 'the teabaggers are an incipient fascist movement, though they hardly see or would describe themselves in those terms, casting another faint shadow of Weimar.'
>
> I would make the comparison with a more recent European political trend, the emergence of non-conventional, inchoate and fleeting political movements that have accelerated as conventional party politics has lost its grip.
>
> I wrote about this in International Politics:
>
> 'The 1990s saw millions march against child abuse in Belgium, and thousands in Portsmouth, England; tens of thousands mourned the unexpected deaths of Princess Diana, Pim Fortuyn and Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh; unofficial and alternative music festivals were popular in Britain and Germany; farmers protested in favour of fox-hunting in Britain in 2001; anti-racists rallied to the cause of immigrants sans papiers taking refuge in a Paris church in 1996; between 1999 and 2001 anti-capitalists protested in London, Cologne, Bologna, Prague and Nice. Culminating on 15 February 2003, European capitals were once again site to mass protests, this time against the war in Iraq. In 2005 a coalition of the
> revived left organisations pulled together in a successful campaign for a vote against the proposed EU constitution. ...
>
> Right-wing parties like the Front National in France, the Pim Fortuyn List in Holland, Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria, and Forza Italia have done well. So too have regional parties like the Lega Nord, the Scottish Nationalist Party and Herri Batasuna. In 1989 the Green Party won 8 per cent of European votes, and in Germany, the Green Party became part of the ruling coalition in 1998. Protest candidates of the far left also did well, like France's Arlette Laguiller, and Britain's George Galloway. In 2005 even the communists made a comeback playing key roles in a new protest party, Die Linke in Germany, and in the successful campaign for a No vote on the proposed European Constitution in France.'
> http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/ip/2009/00000046/00000006/art00004
>
> I could have added the American Tea Party and the Australian anti-green protests if my scope were beyond Europe.
>
> Most of these anti-political movements (with the exception I suppose of Forza Italia and the Green Party) were unstable, and burned up like Supernovas, after a brief and intense period of success.
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Just so. They flame out or absorbed by the system - but only insofar as the capitalists can recover on their own through their traditional governing parties. This also holds true of parties on the far left.