[lbo-talk] Snowden

[Carrol Cox]

JimCreegan:  It is also appalling that anyone on this listserve wouldfall for government talking points to the effect that the principal purpose of thismammoth data mining operation is to ensure “safety” (or even create theillusion of it), and that the main issue is some kind of “trade-off betweenprivacy and security.” One government purpose is to thwart terrorist plots. Butdoes anyone believe that the government will use its data for this purposealone, and not to promote its numerous other nefarious imperial designs andpersecute those who stand in its way? Talk about LEFTIST naivety!

 

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Indeed, something truly appalling is happening in the U.S. and we need a name for it that is useful for both agitation and theoretical analysis. It is _not_ "Fascism," but something in many ways worse. The nations of the world more or less united to crush the Axis; a _visibly_ 'totalitarian' government in the u.s. might generate more "big power" resistance to its leading role in enforcing global capitalism. The tyranny wrapped in democratic forms is more sinister because it works better. As I've argued (though I accept, more or less, Ian's criticism of my phrasing), the repressive machinery now in place began with the War on Crime/Drugs. Those 'wars' expanded the (already) great repressive powers of the bourgeois-democratic* state, but Obama has succeeded, as no Republican could in codifying the previous 50 years growth in repressive power.

Carrol