Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby Canadian_watcher » Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:02 pm

http://www.youareanacceptablelevelofthreat.com/

and if you were not you'd know about it.

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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby Elvis » Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:43 pm

brekin wrote:This guy has culled some great definitions:
http://www.anesi.com/Fascism-TheUltimateDefinition.htm

Handy chart.
Image


Love the chart. We're fucked.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby Luther Blissett » Mon Aug 27, 2012 11:32 pm

barracuda wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:No shit. Hair-splitting pedantry. Desire to attack rather than have dialogue. Evasion.


You're not addressing my question: how does modernity figure as a requirement of fascism? What makes fascism different from similar types of oppression which occurred before the modern era? My opinion is that the answer has to do, again, with aesthetics, specifically modern aesthetics, for example, see: Marinetti.


I think that the original quote might have had to do with "modernism" as opposed to "the modern world" or "the modern era" though of course I'm not sure. Modernism, as the rejection of all traditions, has been wrestling with, in opposition to, and competing with fascism since its conception around the late 19th Century, and vice versa. The early 20th Century's version of fascism was made possible partially through its response to modernism (which also had its own built-in aesthetics [though, as a modernist, I would argue that the timeless aesthetic, a pursuit of self-improvement, Utopianism, and democracy, was derived strictly from form and immaculately inspired by the philosophy]). We could have a similar discussion about defining modernism and socialism - two innately twinned concepts outside of the realm of politics and art.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby barracuda » Mon Aug 27, 2012 11:52 pm

Elvis, I'd say that although yes, we are in a state of verifiable fuckitude, that chart demonstrates a few crucial reasons to think we might not be a bunch of fascisti in American at least. For example:

    - Leftist refusal to compromise: Ha! That's all they really do here!

    - Strikes, disorder, crime: When was the last time we had a decent strike that meant something?

    - Military/police refusal to defend government: Apparently THAT ain't gonna happen.

    - Desire for transcendant "new path": Here, we have a sustained ideological desire for new judges on "American Idol".

So perhaps we're not exactly fucked but certainly "fuckistic". And that's the good news, har.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby barracuda » Mon Aug 27, 2012 11:52 pm

Luther, here's the original quote I was responding to:

Among other things, fascism is a kind of political reaction and degeneration that visits modern and modernizing societies when they enter severe economic crisis.


...which sounded to me as if he was referencing "the modern era". My gambit here was partly to see if I could introduce the necessity of the fascist aesthetic via the Futurists due to it's historical insistence on the glorification and beauty of violence and submission to "higher" social forces, which I think is a fairly integral characteristic of fascism, and has a special relationship to the modernist advancements in relationship to the technological innovations of the modern era, specifically innovations of war.

But I'm interested in what you mean here, the bolded part:

Luther Blissett wrote:The early 20th Century's version of fascism was made possible partially through its response to modernism (which also had its own built-in aesthetics [though, as a modernist, I would argue that the timeless aesthetic, a pursuit of self-improvement, Utopianism, and democracy, was derived strictly from form and immaculately inspired by the philosophy]).


The "timeless aesthetic"?

Also:

We could have a similar discussion about defining modernism and socialism


Yes, and communism too.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Aug 28, 2012 12:07 am

Luther Blissett wrote:I think that the original quote might have had to do with "modernism" as opposed to "the modern world" or "the modern era" though of course I'm not sure. Modernism, as the rejection of all traditions, has been wrestling with, in opposition to, and competing with fascism since its conception around the late 19th Century, and vice versa. The early 20th Century's version of fascism was made possible partially through its response to modernism (which also had its own built-in aesthetics [though, as a modernist, I would argue that the timeless aesthetic, a pursuit of self-improvement, Utopianism, and democracy, was derived strictly from form and immaculately inspired by the philosophy]). We could have a similar discussion about defining modernism and socialism - two innately twinned concepts outside of the realm of politics and art.


Yes, I think classical fascism was very much a modern reaction to modernism - meaning, the worldview prevalent in the West by the late 19th and early 20th century; not just the art movement. That's not all I think about it, but it's a good excuse to add an interesting text to this thread.

Sandro Bocola (author of the seminal but under-selling "The Art of Modernism") influenced my thinking on this, partly because he's right, and partly because when you translate several hundred pages of an author you actually like, it makes for the deepest possible reading. It becomes very hard not to be influenced. Among art critics, Bocola (I hope he still lives) is commendable for writing a textbook on the subject that interspersed sections of straight history between chapters on particular artists and movements. It makes for great reading, although these are still short-form for the subjects he tackles (relativity theory and psychoanalysis summed up in 12 pages) and so at times he telescopes and exaggerates. As an art critic, he couldn't help but give a highly personalized version of the NS history. He sees Hitler as a failed artist who turns to politics as his new medium. (There's no doubt Hitler understood himself as a performer and took pains to refine and rehearse everything about his image and impact on crowds.) Of course the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition plays a major role in Bocola's telling of the story, at least in the longer form. And Hitler becomes the force that ends up driving the locus of modernist art from Europe to the United States, where many refugee European artists keep tight company with each other and hold court for the many up and coming Americans who would succeed them at the top of the art world.

I must still have the chapter on National Socialism from the full version of his book in file form, but I can't find it. I later translated a highly abridged, illustrated timeline version of "Modernism," which I have found. It's incredible the optimistic historical spirit of the time that (some) people who grew up postwar could still evoke, even as late as 1998.

The relevant passage:


1945-1980. Triumph and Consummation

Before we can follow the subsequent development of Modernism, we must turn to one of the darkest chapters of European history: the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler, the terror of National Socialism, and the Second World War.33

The worldview and self-concept of the modernist era, which had already found its artistic, scientific, political and social form and expression before the First World War, began during the interwar period (documented on pages 62 to 83) to spread throughout the Western world. The social and political models of the modernist idea — democracy, political equality of the sexes, separation of church and state, the right to education and information, and the protection of the private sphere — came hand-in-hand with hitherto unheard of claims to self-determination. The fulfillment of these claims, however, was perceived among broad strata of society not only as an enrichment but as a threat. The intellectual attitude of Modernism had not simply reduced dependence and social repression and helped raise the standard of living; it also destroyed the worldview and mental structures that until then provided protection and stability. The prevailing mood of the new era was marked by a general sense of insecurity.

This insecurity could be tolerated without objection only for as long as it shined in an optimistic light, i.e. for as long as the promises of the newly gained rights and freedoms could push the associated fears into the background. With the outbreak and mounting intensity of the material and spiritual crises of the postwar period, that was no longer the case. The ambiguity of the modernist era — the ineradicable link between freedom and insecurity — was increasingly perceived as intolerable. In nearly all European countries, radical nationalist and anti-democratic movements rose up with new offers of absolute certainties and promises that the life of each person and of the nation could be put back on solid spiritual and economic foundations. The declared goal of these movements, which we nowadays describe as fascist, was the creation of a totalitarian state. The most extreme and fateful manifestation of this attitude of mind (as a political revolt against the modernist idea) was found in German National Socialism.

The core of National Socialist ideology lay in Hitler’s Social Darwinist racial doctrine. According to that, humanity consists of superior and inferior races; the superior have the right to subjugate the inferior and use them in the service of their own goals and purposes. In this scheme the best and most valuable race is that of the German peoples, the "Aryan" race. The idealization of the Aryan went hand-in-hand with a fanatic anti-Semitism that in the end led to a systematic extermination of the European Jews.

The Jew functioned as a stand-in for all people, forces or institutions that directly or indirectly questioned Hitler's inflated self-image and claims to power. To Hitler, democracy and the League of Nations, pacifism, Marxism and modernist art were all Jewish inventions; the Soviet Union, "international finance capital," the German Revolution of 1918, the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles were all works of "international Judaism." It is pointless to refute these nonsensical claims. The common denominator that connects all of these manifestations branded as ”Jewish” is the mental attitude or worldview of which they were an expression. Hitler's image of the enemy — "international Judaism" — has a paradigmatic significance. It stood for the spirit of Modernism.

With Hitler's seizure of power in Germany in January 1933 came the legal disenfranchisement and the material persecution of the Jews. At the same time, cultural life was to be "freed of all Jewish influence" (literally: "dejudaized"), protected from the subversive influence of "international" thinking, and regained as a province of "Aryan genius." Accordingly the Bauhaus was shut down on April 11th, 1933, followed by the infamous book burnings on May 10th and, finally, the "purging" of the museums and galleries.34

Hitler's foreign policy was marked by the same ruthless determination that he had displayed in the pursuit of his domestic goals. After the annexation of Austria, the bloodless occupation of the Sudetenland and subsequent absorption of the rest of Czechoslovakia, German armed forces overran the Polish borders on September 1st, 1939, setting off the most destructive war in history, which ended after five and one-half years with the utter defeat of the Axis powers.

The repercussions of the Second World War on cultural history were comparable to those of the French Revolution, this time affecting not just Europe but the whole world. Henceforth the world was split into two blocs divided by a boundary running right through the middle of a devastated Europe that had ceded its political, economic and intellectual hegemony to the new world powers — to the United States and the Soviet Union. The sense of self that had once sustained the Old World lay buried beneath the rubble.

The extent of the destruction and horror unleashed upon the world by a country as cultured as Germany — with its history of great thinkers, poets and musicians — the discovery of the concentration camps and the accounts of the systematic murder of six million Jews, the photographs of prisoners, the mass graves, the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka united the civilized world in its abhorrence of Nazi terror and shattered any remaining illusions about the intellectual and moral supremacy of Western civilization.

All progressive, liberal and anti-bourgeois tendencies, in spite of the often unbridgeable gulfs among them, were thus cast in a new light and gained newfound respectability and vindication. With his failed attempts at restoration, with his insane extreme of political absolutism, Hitler ultimately helped to bring about the triumph of precisely those ideas and principles that he had so bitterly opposed. Internationalism, social pluralism, democracy and communism became the dominant factors in the politics of the postwar world. To secure world peace and advance international cooperation, 52 governments convened on October 24, 1945 to adopt the charter of the United Nations, which among other goals purposed the protection of human rights and basic freedoms.

This reappraisal redefined the intellectual life of Western democracies, in particular influencing their artistic consciousness. Much of the old cultural context came to be equated with a Europe of power-hungry nation states, and with traditions and values that were held responsible for the catastrophe just endured. Modernist art was not tarred with the same brush; it represented one of the few achievements of Western culture that could still be idealized. Its condemnation by the Nazis and their persecution of its exponents made it into a symbol of intellectual resistance, of the integrity and continuity of a liberal European consciousness. In the United States and the countries of western Europe, the great masters of Modernism were now presented to a broader public in individual and major group exhibitions. The outsiders and the revolutionaries of the pre-war era became established figures.

Even as they celebrated their belated triumph, even as some of them — Matisse and Giacometti spring to mind — actually created their most important works, the artists of a war-scarred Europe lacked the will and strength to build on previous artistic developments in a creative and innovative way. That fell instead to the relatively unsullied and unburdened American artists, who had recently discovered modernist art for themselves, and who sought to create their own, truly American works that would rank alongside those of their much admired predecessors.

[...]



PS - When the CIA soon after decided to do undercover PR work for the Abstract Expressionists, I would say this was an example of them (for a change) not being fascists.

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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby compared2what? » Tue Aug 28, 2012 1:33 am

JackRiddler wrote:
compared2what? wrote:I don't know why you're arguing in favor of putting it less well.


I don't, but it's complicated and my description touches upon many US contexts in which the f-word is appropriate. Given this country's preeminence as a modern-day producer of fascism internationally for profit, geostrategy and ideological solidarity, I don't react well to stuff like, "it's not fascist because _____ is not present or Country XYZ is worse." Especially given how often Country XYZ has been a US client state.

But we've come close to exhausting this aspect of the subject, haven't we?

.


If we have and you still think that what I'm saying is that another country is "worse," that's a shame. But since I guess we have.....Well. What I'm saying is that each evil country is evil in its own way. And the reason I'm saying it is that nobody benefits from the redefinition of fascism as much as fascists do, which is, imo, how and why it will succeed here, when and if it comes to America as an official ideology/system of governance. Fascism is typically extremely popular at the outset and for some time afterwards. That's not for no reason. It makes most people living in uncertain times and places feel really good about themselves. Most people are quite naturally disinclined to think of the things that make them feel good as the worst of the worst. And most Americans are both naturally inclined and culturally conditioned to think of themselves as incapable of opting for fascism. So when the only meaning you assign to the word "fascism" is "the worst of the worst" you lose your best defense against it.

I mean, Ron Paul's picture could appear in the dictionary next to the definition of "neo-fascist." And how does he deflect criticism along those lines?

Ron Paul: U.S. ‘Slipping Into a Fascist System’


Etc. (Also, LINK.)

People hate the word a lot more than they hate the thing it describes. Henry Wallace (and others) knew it and capitalized on it for political gain in 1944. Ron Paul (and others) know it and capitalize on it today. That's not a pretty truth. But it's still the truth. So I'd rather deal with it before it deals with not just me but countless others.

That's what I'm saying.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby Elvis » Tue Aug 28, 2012 1:50 am

barracuda wrote:Elvis, I'd say that although yes, we are in a state of verifiable fuckitude, that chart demonstrates a few crucial reasons to think we might not be a bunch of fascisti in American at least. For example:

    - Leftist refusal to compromise: Ha! That's all they really do here!

    - Strikes, disorder, crime: When was the last time we had a decent strike that meant something?

    - Military/police refusal to defend government: Apparently THAT ain't gonna happen.

    - Desire for transcendant "new path": Here, we have a sustained ideological desire for new judges on "American Idol".

So perhaps we're not exactly fucked but certainly "fuckistic". And that's the good news, har.


I agree that the US is not fascist, yet, in and readily concede your first two bullet points. Leftist intransigence seems like a minor factor in the US, since the Left is a minor factor so I doubt it makes much difference. Unless you include labor unions (which is reasonable); 'Murkins would never elect a Marxist president, but I like to think big strikes are still possible.

Third bullet, military/police refusal, seems minutely possible with this president; I get the impression a lot of military types hold Obama in mighty high disdain. If they DID refuse executive orders, it'd most likely be for the wrong reasons.

Creeping fuckism is what could really veer us onto number four, the transcendent new path blazed by "strong leader" or merciless bureaucracy, leading straight to a genuine fascism, homestyle.

Probably most Americans, now either squabbling over Obomba/Rmoney or scratching their heads over the whole spectacle, would, under the right circumstances, succumb to "fuck it" mode and go along with a Big Fix of some kind involving "broad powers" on all fronts.



I think the US is fascist in this sense: "They" (an melange of entrenched interests with a spectrum of motives) can do whatever they want, and frequently do it. "And it's all legal!" Ultimately under government license of one sort or another, they can know what you're doing at any time, they can get at your hard drive, they can get at your toothpaste, they can know how much you gave the cab driver, they can stop you from going on TV and no one would ever know, they can kidnap you, they can experiment on you, they can kill you. But I think they only do this when they really feel the need.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Aug 28, 2012 2:56 am

A neo-confederate (like Paul) is certainly on friendly terms with neo-fascists, if we should even make a distinction between them; and yet at the same time Ron Paul also stands in formal opposition to the growth within the official institutions of what I've been terming post-fascism, which is an equal if not far greater concern. (No defender of Paul, yet I find it hard to see how the present-day Republican leadership differs from him in any substantive way, except for their fanatically enthusiastic support of imperialism, new foreign wars and the drug war with its attendant mass imprisonment.)

We talk as though the US is separable from its global empire, when even the domestic police forces now operate around the globe, and thousands of fusion centers and joint task forces have been created in a push to integrate the military and imperial agencies with federal, local and state police forces, private security contractors and the rest of the big corporations within a single "security" framework. You all know the ideal. Whether it ever works perfectly or not, they want one web of finely-tuned surveillance, pre-crime detection and enforcement, global and domestic, legal and extralegal, overt and covert, online and on the street.

The NYPD, for example, just announced the opening of a Microsoft-designed joint surveillance center to receive and make sense of the video feeds from thousands of cameras downtown, as well as countless other data feeds. Actually this had already been running for months and now it's growing. Representatives from the Wall Street banks, Pfizer and the Federal Reserve have desks within the same large, open office that you have to think includes or at least has hotlines to OEM, FEMA, the various DOJ agencies, FBI, Homeland-ICE and, surely, people from CIA, the military branches and national guard. The model is for sale to other cities, at a profit for New York - good news everyone, city revenues! That's how this innovation is being marketed by the mayor. (We can only hope this mechanized version of the biblical Beast runs on Windows - ha ha, let's have a bitter laugh.) The cutting edge technocratically has been developed within the government, driven by programs like the drug war, the crackdown on immigration (we've seen record-setting detention and deportation levels in the last couple of years) and the "war on terror," which we've seen is a war on anything that might be designated as such, at the discretion of the sovereign and his agents. If the president now admits to having a kill list, sooner or later that's going to turn into a phone book.

Capitalism and the national security cult have accomplished this, without need of neo-fascist ideology (though there's plenty that rhymes with it in the Great American discourse). If the feared ideological right-wing extremists who are supposed to be the Only Acknowledgeable Fascists take the government over, they'll have at their disposal a bigger, more rationalized and better-oiled machinery of repression than ever, honed through decades of development and plenty of practice within enclaves as varied as Baghdad, South Central, and New Zealand (where the FBI had free rein to arrest Kim Dotcom), and seething with resentment at freeloaders and America haters. The incoming "squadristi" are likely to encounter plenty of friends and fellow travelers on the inside! Fascism germinates within the state and military long before the declared fascists take command of it - as was the case in late Weimar Germany, which I mentioned above.

You know what? We're not "there" yet - that's why it so important to avoid denial about where we're heading, get the word out, and prepare for mass protest on a general strike level - not just to grow rutabagas on the balcony, essential as that will also prove.

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http://www.fastcompany.com/3000272/nypd ... ate-monito

Image

NYPD, Microsoft Launch All-Seeing "Domain Awareness System" With Real-Time CCTV, License Plate Monitoring [Updated]

By Neal Ungerleider

August 8, 2012


The New York Police Department has a new terrorism detection system that will also generate profit for the city.

The New York Police Department is embracing online surveillance in a wide-eyed way. Representatives from Microsoft and the NYPD announced the launch of their new Domain Awareness System (DAS) at a Lower Manhattan press conference today. Using DAS, police are able to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras around the five boroughs, scan license plates, find out the kind of radiation cars are emitting, and extrapolate info on criminal and terrorism suspects from dozens of criminal databases ... all in near-real time.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly first announced that Microsoft had the NYPD's Domain Awareness System under development at the Aspen Security Forum in July. Microsoft has quietly become one of the world's largest providers of integrated intelligence solutions for police departments and security agencies. Although DAS is officially being touted as an anti-terrorism solution, it will also give the NYPD access to technologies that—depending on the individual's perspectives—veer on science fiction or Big Brother to combat street crime. The City of New York and Microsoft will be licensing DAS out to other cities; according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City's government will take a 30% cut of any profits. "Citizens do not like higher taxes, so we will (find other revenue outlets)," said Bloomberg. Bloomberg continued that "I hope Microsoft sells a lot of copies of this system, because 30% of the profits will go to us."

According to publicly available documents, the system will collect and archive data from thousands of NYPD- and private-operated CCTV cameras in New York City, integrate license plate readers, and instantly compare data from multiple non-NYPD intelligence databases. Facial recognition technology is not utilized and only public areas will be monitored, officials say. Monitoring will take place 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a specialized location in Lower Manhattan. Video will be held for 30 days and then deleted unless the NYPD chooses to archive it. Metadata and license plate info collected by DAS will be retained for five years, and unspecified “environmental data” will be stored indefinitely.

Cameras are primarily deployed in the Financial District, Midtown Manhattan, and at strategic transportation points like bridges and tunnels. In addition, radiation detectors capable of identifying radiation contamination from chemotherapy, x-rays, medication, industrial uses, and terrorism will also be deployed.

Although NYPD documents indicate that the system is specifically designed for anti-terrorism operations, any incidental data it collects “for a legitimate law enforcement or public safety purpose” by DAS can be utilized by the police department. The NYPD will also share data and video with third parties not limited to law enforcement if either a subpoena or memorandum of understanding exists. The DAS system is headquartered in a lower Manhattan office tower in a command-and-control center staffed around the clock by both New York police and "private stakeholders." When this reporter visited, seats were clearly designated with signs for organizations such as the Federal Reserve, the Bank of New York, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and CitiGroup.

The system also allows deep, granular analysis of crime patterns in real time. Information about suspects can also be quickly called up. At a press conference, Microsoft's Jennifer Tisch showed how integrated geographic information systems could display layers of real-time crime analysis for both misdemeanors and felonies. In addition, real-time access to multiple databases belonging to the NYC and other organizations can bring up a massive personal history--including both criminal and public domain information--from any suspect in a matter of seconds. [Please Note: "Suspect" meaning - anyone. - NL]

At the Aspen Conference, Kelly praised DAS as a next-generation law enforcement tool. Civil libertarians, however, are concerned. The NYPD has been at the center of recent controversies involving civil rights and surveillance; in July, a 911 call revealing an NYPD anti-terrorism safe house in New Jersey was released. The safe house in the college town of New Brunswick was monitoring Muslim-American college students; the safe house/apartment's landlord feared the NYPD apartment might have been harboring terrorists.

In response to a question about civil liberties at the press conference, Bloomberg and Kelly noted that similar systems have been used in the private sector for years--and that mobile phone companies track the intimate, granular details of users' locations. [Note: Well there you go! Done. Justified! - NL]

Similar systems have already been deployed in Baltimore and the United Kingdom. However, the NYPD DAS system is one of the largest in scale that has been publicly announced.


For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Find Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, on Twitter and Google+.

[Image: JordiDelgado via Shutterstock]



The nearest analogue to this prior to 9/11, presumably far more primitive, was probably at WTC 7, which was home to OEM, CIA, DoD, IRS and SEC, as well as some big banks (Standard Chartered and Salomon Brothers and I've wondered if the biggest CIA station in the US outside Washington, according to NYT, was in floors that officially belonged to either of them. I also wonder if that's where this thing is now?)
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby brainpanhandler » Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:30 am

JackRiddler wrote:The incoming "squadristi" are likely to encounter plenty of friends and fellow travelers on the inside! Fascism germinates within the state and military long before the declared fascists take command of it - as was the case in late Weimar Germany, which I mentioned above.


Barracuda wrote:- Military/police refusal to defend government: Apparently THAT ain't gonna happen.


I don't know. I mean it's not like they're defending the bill of rights or anything. I guess it depends on how you define "government".

We have tens of thousands of broken people coming home and they are being largely left to fend for themselves. The VA is a disaster. The economy is a disaster. There's no GI bill. There's no jobs. A certain portion of veterans were fascist leaning psychopths before they went in. What are they when they come home? Just as the only real difference between a cult and church is numbers, so too getting a critical mass of defectors ready to plot the overthrow of the government distinguishes a lone, crazy plot with a couple of kooks from a full on, coordinated movement with serious and credible intentions.

I posted this in the "right-wing terror plots" thread, although I'm not really certain it belongs there.

Prosecutors: Ga. murder case revealed terror plot by US soldiers operating militia inside Army
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, August 27

LUDOWICI, Ga. — Prosecutors say a murder case against four soldiers in Georgia has revealed they formed an anarchist militia within the U.S. military with plans to overthrow the federal government.

...

Prosecutor Isabel Pauley says the group bought $87,000 worth of guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in nearby Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html


viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33982&start=60



I almost started a thread titled, Anarchism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?, and then thought better of it.

I'm not sure what to think of these Forever Enduring Always Ready people. Anarchists? Of course the government just calls them domestic terrorists. Were they for real? Were they encouraged? Do they serve a propaganda purpose?

As I understand it they were active duty.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby barracuda » Tue Aug 28, 2012 12:37 pm

brainpanhandler wrote:I don't know. I mean it's not like they're defending the bill of rights or anything. I guess it depends on how you define "government".


I'm tempted to define our government at this stage of the game as the mechanism by which private property and big business is sanctified and protected. The impetus for my remark above had to do largely with the actions of the police during the Occupy protests, when it seemed their motivations were well revealed.

We have tens of thousands of broken people coming home and they are being largely left to fend for themselves. The VA is a disaster. The economy is a disaster. There's no GI bill. There's no jobs. A certain portion of veterans were fascist leaning psychopths before they went in. What are they when they come home? Just as the only real difference between a cult and church is numbers, so too getting a critical mass of defectors ready to plot the overthrow of the government distinguishes a lone, crazy plot with a couple of kooks from a full on, coordinated movement with serious and credible intentions.


I wouldn't seriously consider a bunch of mutilated and PTSD'ed ex-cannon fodder as a threat to overthrow the government. Veterans aren't charged with "protecting the government" anyway, so it's not like they have agency to abandon that function and allow it to fall.

Generally speaking I view veterans as among the most extremely disenfranchised individuals in society.

Mussolini essentially came to power by mustering a private army estimated at about 200,000 and marching on Rome, where he was met with acquiescence by the military and granted the reins of government.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby brainpanhandler » Tue Aug 28, 2012 1:06 pm

barracuda wrote:
brainpanhandler wrote:I don't know. I mean it's not like they're defending the bill of rights or anything. I guess it depends on how you define "government".


I'm tempted to define our government at this stage of the game as the mechanism by which private property and big business is sanctified and protected.


I guess I wouldn't disagree. Although you can see how an idealist might think otherwise. Not that that's me.

Big business in this country anymore is directly or indirectly tied to the mil/industrial complex or the wall street/banksters.


The impetus for my remark above had to do largely with the actions of the police during the Occupy protests, when it seemed their motivations were well revealed.


Clearly domestic police/intelligence has acted as a private army/security force for the mil/industrial complex/wall street/banksters wrt ows. And I don't expect any defections there in the near term or in fact ever.

barracuda wrote:
brainpanhandler wrote:We have tens of thousands of broken people coming home and they are being largely left to fend for themselves. The VA is a disaster. The economy is a disaster. There's no GI bill. There's no jobs. A certain portion of veterans were fascist leaning psychopths before they went in. What are they when they come home? Just as the only real difference between a cult and church is numbers, so too getting a critical mass of defectors ready to plot the overthrow of the government distinguishes a lone, crazy plot with a couple of kooks from a full on, coordinated movement with serious and credible intentions.


I wouldn't seriously consider a bunch of mutilated and PTSD'ed ex-cannon fodder as a threat to overthrow the government. Veterans aren't charged with "protecting the government" anyway, so it's not like they have agency to abandon that function and allow it to fall.

Generally speaking I view veterans as among the most extremely disenfranchised individuals in society.

Mussolini essentially came to power by mustering a private army estimated at about 200,000 and marching on Rome, where he was met with acquiescence by the military and granted the reins of government.


Except that I think that private army was substantially composed of pissed off veterans of world war I. No? If you're going to recruit an army that's a great place to start. Aguigui, the leader of F.e.a.r., was recruiting at Ft. Stewart and was apparently targeting disturbed individuals with greivances against the government.

I guess I don't find a
Seven Days in May scenario very hard to imagine happening. Or something worse:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby compared2what? » Tue Aug 28, 2012 3:03 pm

JackRiddler wrote:A neo-confederate is certainly on friendly terms with neo-fascists, if we should even make a distinction between them; and yet at the same time Ron Paul also stands in formal opposition to the growth within the official institutions of what I've been terming post-fascism, which is an equal if not far greater concern.


The key phrase there is "within official institutions." Because, sad to say, he does not stand in non-formal (aka "real") opposition to any of the post-fascist actions launched from those precincts. He doesn't have any problems with those, per se. He just doesn't think they should be paid for, organized, and staffed by the federal government.

^^That's what "libertarian" doublespeak is all about. Almost the whole point of it, really. Apart from the regular old doublespeak purpose of hornswoggling listeners.

Anyway. He's not opposed to those things. He just wants to privatize them so that the rich can make more money and pay lower taxes and, presumably, live on the hallowed private-property grounds of their vast fiefdoms. Probably surrounded by all-white serfs from the former other classes.

That last part is a flight of fancy. Maybe. But if you read him closely, the rest of it is clearly really his agenda. He talks around it most of the time. But not all the time.



(No defender of Paul, yet I find it hard to see how the present-day Republican leadership differs from him in any substantive way, except for their fanatically enthusiastic support of imperialism, new foreign wars and the drug war with its attendant mass imprisonment.)


They're not much different. And certainly not enough to be more tolerable. So I agree. Neither is the Democratic leadership, when left to its own devices. And possibly with a few other qualifications, I guess. I'm just highlighting the "when left to its own devices" because that's the distinction with the most obvious potential to make them different from a populist perspective, ie -- if they had a more participatory, progressive constituency, they'd probably straighten out somewhat though not enough. However, at least you'd be standing on higher ground when time came to push them off a cliff. And such things being inherently incremental, that's not an insignificant advantage, over the long haul.

That aside, though, they're not much different either.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Aug 28, 2012 4:32 pm

We don't disagree, c2w?, but I feel like you're underplaying the significance of certain points of mine about the current evolution of the "post-fascist" state, compared to that of the current "neo-fascist" movement (and many of the people who are suckered into supporting Paul of course are not in the least fascist, just patsies for the only elected politician at that level who nominally supports an end to imperialism and the drug war).

me repeating wrote:
[...]

We talk as though the US is separable from its global empire, when even the domestic police forces now operate around the globe, and thousands of fusion centers and joint task forces have been created in a push to integrate the military and imperial agencies with federal, local and state police forces, private security contractors and the rest of the big corporations within a single "security" framework. You all know the ideal. Whether it ever works perfectly or not, they want one web of finely-tuned surveillance, pre-crime detection and enforcement, global and domestic, legal and extralegal, overt and covert, online and on the street.

[...]

Capitalism and the national security cult have accomplished this, without need of neo-fascist ideology (though there's plenty that rhymes with it in the Great American discourse). If the feared ideological right-wing extremists who are supposed to be the Only Acknowledgeable Fascists take the government over, they'll have at their disposal a bigger, more rationalized and better-oiled machinery of repression than ever, honed through decades of development and plenty of practice within enclaves as varied as Baghdad, South Central, and New Zealand (where the FBI had free rein to arrest Kim Dotcom), and seething with resentment at freeloaders and America haters. The incoming "squadristi" are likely to encounter plenty of friends and fellow travelers on the inside! Fascism germinates within the state and military long before the declared fascists take command of it - as was the case in late Weimar Germany, which I mentioned above.

You know what? We're not "there" yet - that's why it so important to avoid denial about where we're heading, get the word out, and prepare for mass protest on a general strike level - not just to grow rutabagas on the balcony, essential as that will also prove.
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Re: Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

Postby BOOGIE66 » Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:11 pm

brainpanhandler wrote:
Alchemy wrote:That is good to know then, I have read that quote attributed to him in countless text books and on the net. Goes to show you cant trust much of what you read anymore. But the quote is pretty accurate in any case.


Another famous (and accurate) quote with questionable origins:

"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." - ?

http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/03 ... g-a-cross/





I'm pretty sure that's Sinclair Lewis in It Can't Happen Here (which is a must read imo)

Sorry for repeating info if someone has already posted this
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