The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sat Mar 05, 2016 9:06 pm

tapitsbo » 06 Mar 2016 04:38 wrote:

Interesting, so a process where one group of europeans was assimilated by another. This doesn't disqualify groups elsewhere in the fact. What people are indigenous to North Africa or Central Asia? You're about to tell them they have "no connection to place"? I doubt they'd feel a need to explain their connection to place should they be occupied by e.g. a hostile international force, certainly one like IS and perhaps one like the USA, too.


Indigenous people occupy a particular political niche in the modern world. trying to expand that place to include Europeans generically undermines that and is kind of insulting given that so many have suffered under European colonisation. Its a bit like "they've stolen so much of ours already, now they want to steal our attempts at a political identity too."

The idea of europe doesn't come from extremely ancient people but instead comes from the relatively more recent empires of antiquity. If you're saying the Roman Empire left a legacy of disconnection from place, that may have been true at the time or even left a lasting influence. But are we going to say the Aztec Empire destroyed any connection to place?


Europe has been dominated by a series of empires since the Romans. These empires have destroyed indigenous systems of land management and legal recourse.

Are we going to divide Indians in India into those who belong there and those who don't? The population of India didn't have a lot of trouble figuring out who their colonizers were.


i think the mess in sri lanka would show how fruitless that'll be. None the less people in India are colonised by Indian governments. the Indian government has already done that. The "marxist" rebels in Andhra Pradesh then Chhattisgarh are the only recourse tribal Indians who are having their homes and sacred lands destroyed and as of yet have had no benefit from india's modernisation. i think if you ask them which Indians have any business in "their" homelands the answer would be clear.

what does common law have to do with this subject? ;)


Common law is often cited as a british indigenous legal system. Thats why I mentioned it. I know people from the East End of London who claim to have oral family histories that stretch back before 1066. They reckon their inner city suburb was once a village. They also have a lot more sympathy for modern migrants than the City yuppies or modern day Ukip types. I dunno what to make of the fact they have all left London and live in the paradise that is northern NSW.

Indigenous people who are relying on it in some way to assert themselves could most definitely do better somewhere down the line, don't you think?


It worked alright for them with the Mabo decision in Australia. But the state response - the Native Title Act 1994 certainly began to undermine the rights originally recognised by the Common Law/High Court. I have other indigenous friends (Higanon from Mindanao) who specifically have the UN to thank for the limited autonomy they have in their home country. I think indigenous people basically use whatever legal instruments are available to get whatever benefits they can in their circumstances. In the hope of gaining some ground and eventually, well yeah, doing better somewhere down the line.

Thank you for the interesting points you've raised.


Cheers.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby tapitsbo » Sat Mar 05, 2016 9:28 pm

Of course it's insulting, you don't appear sympathetic to the groups whose existence is being denied though, which is also insulting. When these groups get political representation back they certainly won't be inclined to lavish recognition on parties that denied it to them. And round we go in circles all the way to semantic games of the nature of those played about Israel and Palestine. Certainly for a country to recognize a new population under the name of a previous one that is not any longer recognized as existing at all is a form of linguistic appropriation, as you feel is an issue with term under discussion here.

The use of the term "indigenous" in the context of europe would seem to have a growing, not declining currency, for better or for worse. It's not really something that's that important to me, but understanding your argument seems important. I don't think the points you've raised are insignificant, but the context I've referred to is also relevant if I am to understand the model you're using here. And I'm having a hard time seeing what your concern is other denying political representation to "white" people which, as a meta-goal, is having decreasing, not increasing success at the present.

Of course if you're just going to keep going back to your definition to ignore the context I have provided it's hard to see where how we're going to find any common ground here. I'm not asking you to change your definition of course but the context seems to interest you greatly.

You've brought up connection to place and you've brought up indigeneity, a more complex definition which may or may not apply as you says it does. You've also brought up the category of "tribal" peoples. Clearly people around the world have a connection to place which transcends simple boundaries or ideas about the "nation".

Of course to me the wars and economic displacement in MENA bring to mind forced migration under the USSR, which also denied the existence or representation of certain ethnic groups at different times, in different measures. Do you feel the displaced peoples in this case had no "connection to place" even if they weren't indigenous or tribal? In any case they seem to have won back a level of representation that was missing, something I wouldn't rule out happening elsewhere in the west or in the Middle East.

The empires of Europe are defunct. The indigenous groups you mention have certainly been ruled by empires. I do understand your points about India but my point was rather that India had no trouble figuring out who the European colonizers were, in other cases this question has obviously been much more fraught with difficulty for them. I really don't understand what you mean about the history of empires in the history of Europe, would you really attach this significance to empires in the history of other parts of the world? Regardless of whether you do or do not personally, others may see something different.

To me common law as indigenous is neither here nor there. Certainly the sense in which it is called indigenous is very different from the definition you are using here.

UKIP is quite irrelevant to the issues that brought us here as the UK is a much more ambiguous situation than certain other countries who are quite clearly subjugated by outside powers, and I certainly have no sympathy to UKIP the party.

I don't blame indigenous Australians for appealing to common law or the UN and wish them the best. I will make the assumption that these legal systems aren't the be all or end all, for them, though.
Last edited by tapitsbo on Sat Mar 05, 2016 10:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sat Mar 05, 2016 10:01 pm

tapitsbo wrote:Of course it's insulting, you don't appear sympathetic to the groups whose existence is being denied though, which is also insulting. When these groups get political representation back they certainly won't be inclined to lavish recognition on parties that denied it to them. And round we go in circles. Certainly for a country to recognize a new population under the name of a previous one that is not recognized as existing at all is a form of linguistic appropriation, as you feel is an issue with term under discussion here.

The use of the term "indigenous" in the context of europe would appear to have a growing, not declining currency, for better or for worse. It's not really something that's that important to me, but understand your argument seems important. I don't think the points you've raised are insignificant, but the context I've referred to is also relevant if I am to understand the model you're using here. And I'm having a hard time seeing what your concern is other denying political representation to "white" people which, as a meta-goal, is having decreasing, not increasing success at the present.


What "groups whose existence is being denied" are you referring to? Where are white people being denied political representation?

Of course if you're just going to keep going back to your definition to ignore the context I have provided it's hard to see where how we're going to find any common ground here. I'm not asking you to change your definition of course.

You've brought up connection to place and you've brought up indigeneity, a more complex definition which may or may not apply as you says it does. You've also brought up the category of "tribal" peoples. Clearly people around the world have a connection to place which transcends simple boundaries or ideas about the "nation".


What context? You'll have to spell it out cos I've completely missed what you are talking about.

We all have various connections to place. Indigenous communities have connection to place and associated legal, land tenure and cultural systems that have been violently displaced with little or no compensation. That hasn't happened to "white people in Europe". It may happen to them but not without an immense upheaval beyond anything implied by the current refugee crisis.

Of course to me the wars and economic displacement in MENA bring to mind forced migration under the USSR, which also denied representation to certain ethnic groups at different times, in different measures. Do you feel the displaced peoples in this case had no "connection to place" even if they weren't indigenous or tribal? In any case they seem to have won back a level of representation that was missing, something I wouldn't rule out happening elsewhere in the west or in the Middle East.


Of course they did. But if they have won back some level of representation or power over their lives and are happy with that its their choice. Many haven't. Palestinians for example.

The empires of Europe are defunct. The indigenous groups you mention have certainly been ruled by empires. I do understand your points about India but my point was rather that India had no trouble figuring out who the European colonizers were, in other cases this question has obviously been much more fraught with difficulty for them.


No they aren't. The empire in Europe is reasonably continuous just had its technological progress cycle back and forth over millennia and the ethnicity or nationality of the people who wielded its power changed a bit. Ceasar, Kaisar and Tsar are all essentially the same word.

To me common law as indigenous is neither here nor there. Certainly the sense in which it is called indigenous is very different from the definition you are using here.


Yes that was my point.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby tapitsbo » Sat Mar 05, 2016 10:09 pm

We got here from talking about EU countries that don't recognize the existence of the ethnic group they are named after or that is named after them at the same time as they give group ethnic rights to immigrant groups who are simultaneously said to be part of a broader civic nationality, this is well documented elsewhere. Of course this is not an issue in many parts of the world where migrants are unfortunately shot on sight, yet the same criticisms are never targeted at these countries. By representation I am obviously referring to the group representation that is afforded to some and not to others in many configurations throughout the world and sometimes is referred to as a "political right".

Violent displacement with little or no compensation is exactly what's happening to people in the Middle East, often by one arm (if you're uncomfortable with jihadi groups let's say the literal US military) of the same imperial power that is responsible for the lack of recognition many ethnic groups have in Europe, for example, where groups that have recently immigrated will be recognized based on ancestry but the native population is not.

Likewise I have had someone break out in tears at the thought that the Quebecois, who I do not belong to, might at times illicitly define themselves based on ancestry (officially they are defined by language and possibly "culture" though this doesn't really mean anything.) Meanwhile she had no problem identifying with a group that is based on ancestry and in fact rather more privileged. The standard was assumed to be "racist" for one group and constitutive for another. Of course it is conversations like these which brought these issues to my attention for the first time.

Of course you may feel the West is all part of an eternal European imperialism (why the need for military occupation then?) but then we could trace this back to Sumer and earlier (we wouldn't find uninterrupted continuity however).

You're reading a lot into what I've said that I didn't necessarily imply, what I am talking about here goes far beyond the so-called refugee crisis.

I'm still interested in the term "tribal" that you used, to me it is obvious that the term indigenous has a much broader application than so-called tribal peoples regardless of whether you agree with it being used by Europeans who do trace their descent from tribal groups at times.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 26, 2016 2:26 pm

http://monthlyreview.org/2016/09/01/in-the-boredroom/

In the boredroom

by Marge Piercy

Do they yawn, these masters
of our fate and wallets
as they cast their weighted
dice together, as they weigh
our lives and find them
negligible as we do when
we swat a fly?

Do they still find it
exciting as they plan
a war or an election,
a tax break or a politician
bought for less or more
than they judged him
worth? Is it still fun?

Is it just routine now—
a famine in Bangladesh
a strike crushed in West
Virginia mines, a plague
ignored in the Congo,
a carcinogenic drug
widely advertised.

The draperies are drawn.
We have no spies
in those high places.
Our phone calls recorded,
our IDs stowed in files
but they remain almost
invisible to us.


Marge Piercy is the author of nineteen books of poetry, most recently Made in Detroit(Knopf, 2015). Her first short story collection, The Cost of Lunch, Etc., was published in 2014 by PM Press.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 04, 2016 11:38 am

Some of these people might like to be at the head of the line for a driverless automobile that goes "neither left nor right"...


Adbusted

Behind the bizarre ideology that fuels Adbusters.

by Ramon Glazov

Image

The easy narrative about Adbusters, accepted by its friends and enemies alike, is that it’s at heart an anarchist project. To those wishing it well, the magazine is one of the cornerstones of the Left, a wellspring of anti-authoritarian tools meant to revive progressive activism and shake things up for the greater good. For curmudgeonly detractors, “culture jamming” is little more than a powerless rehash of old Yippie protest tactics. Yet anarchism, nearly everyone assumes, is either the best or the worst part of Adbusters.

But those explanations miss a much weirder side of the magazine’s underlying politics.

This March, Adbusters jumped into what ought to seem like a marriage made in hell. It ran a glowing article on Beppe Grillo — Italy’s scruffier answer to America’s Truther champion Alex Jones — calling him “nuanced, fresh, bold, and committed as a politician,” with “a performance artist edge” and “anti-austerity ideas . . . [C]ountries around the world, from Greece to the US, can look to [him] for inspiration.” Grillo, the piece gushed, was “planting the seed of a renewed — accountable, fresh, rational, responsible, energized — left, that we can hope germinates worldwide.”

Completely unmentioned was the real reason Grillo is so controversial in Italy: his blog is full of anti-vaccination and 9/11 conspiracy claims, pseudo-scientific cancer cures and chemtrail-like theories about Italian incinerator smoke. And, as Giovanni Tiso noted in July, Grillo’s “Five Star Movement” also has an incredibly creepy backer: Gianroberto Casaleggio, “an online marketing expert whose only known past political sympathies lay with the right-wing separatist Northern League.” Casaleggio has also written kooky manifestos about reorganizing society through virtual reality technology, with mandatory Internet citizenship and an online world government.

Adbusters could have stopped flirting with Grillo at that point, but it didn’t. Another Grillo puff piece appeared in its May/June issue. Then the magazine’s outgoing editor-in-chief, Micah White (acknowledged by the Nation as “the creator of the #occupywallstreet meme”) recently went solo to form his own “boutique activism consultancy,” promising clients a “discrete service” in “Social Movement Creation.” Two weeks ago, in a YouTube video, White proposed that the next step “after the defeat of Occupy” should be to import Grillo’s Five Star Movement to the US in time for the 2014 midterm elections:

After the defeat of Occupy, I don’t believe that there is any choice other than trying to grab power by means of an election victory. . . This is how I see the future: we could bring the Five Star Movement to America and have the Five Star Movement winning elections in Italy and in America, thereby forming an international party, not only with the Five Star Movement, but with other parties as well.

The day after Adbusters ran its first pro-Grillo article, Der Spiegel compared Grillo’s tone — and sweeping plans to restructure Italy’s parliamentary system — to Mussolini’s rhetoric. Ten days before that, a Five Star Movement MP, Roberta Lombardi, faced a media scandal after writing a blog post praising early fascism for its “very high regard for the state and protection of the family.”

Most progressives might reconsider their glowing assessment of a party as “the seed for a renewed left” when its leaders peddle absurd conspiracy theories and praise fascists. No such signs from Adbusters or White.


More at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/10/adbusted/





American Dream » Sat Apr 16, 2016 9:33 pm wrote:“The Undying Appeal of White Nationalism”

Left-Right Collusion and The Technocratic Future

Bizarre fascisms are starting to appear everywhere. Two of the three members of the board of directors of the Occupy Solidarity Network (Occupy Wall Street’s nonprofit wing) have at times publicly expressed vaguely fascist sentiments. Micah White, former Adbusters editor and cofounder of Occupy Wall Street, has traveled across the country promoting a populist left-right alliance, recently going so far as to advocate working alongside the violent Greek neo-nazi party Golden Dawn.

While it would be comforting to attribute this prospective collusion to naivete, it is clear that White is by no means unfamiliar with the dynamic nature of fascism. He has studied political movements for years and even authored an article exposing Pentti Linkola and other fascist influences in the ecological movements in 2010.

On August 12, 2011, a month before the start of Occupy Wall Street, White was interviewed by Nathan Schneider, author of “Thank You, Anarchy”:

The worst outcome would be to get there and they just fumble it by doing this whole lefty game we always play, which is self-defeatist. We go there, make some unreasonable demand, like, we want to abolish capitalism and we won’t leave until we do. And well, that’s like the war on terrorism; that’s an impossible dream. Or they just squander it by being some hipster, anarchist insurrection like, we’re gonna smash some stores and make a spectacle. And everyone’s like, ‘Why?’

Because we have something beautiful going here. So we’re trying to rise above the sectarian clashings of whether or not US Day of Rage is tweeting too much or whether or not the libertarians are – you know? And reach out to the Tea Party too. This is a moment for all of America.

I don’t see why this has to be a lefty moment or a righty moment, because this is a moment for us to reinvent democracy in America, because it’s getting to be too late. If we don’t do it now, we are reaching the end
[24].


While the far right Tea Party is not technically a fascist formation, White’s proposed nationalist left-right collusion is cause for concern, especially in the light of his statements about Golden Dawn. A proposed collaboration with the Tea Party is ridiculous, yet it must be mentioned that, in real terms, the Tea Party was the initial popular response to the economic crisis of 2008. This street-level conservatism spanned the nation with demonstrations against the bailout of Wall Street nearly three years before the left decided to occupy it.

While White’s dream of left-right collusion is disconcerting, it is important to note that he is not alone. Justine Tunney, creator of occupywallst.org and the Occupy Wall Street twitter account is also a member of the Occupy Solidarity Network board of directors. She currently works as a software engineer for Google. Recently, she used the official Occupy Wall Street twitter account to publicly advocate a corporatist political agenda:

Ending poverty isn’t a political problem- it’s an engineering problem [25]

I want to make clear that this is not an anti-corporate movement. This is an anti-wall street movement. [26]

In an interview with Business Insider about her role in Occupy Wall Street, she stated that “democracy never works [27]”. From her personal twitter account she attempted to bolster her image of Google as a revolutionary force by insisting that “Silicon Valley is firmly post-capitalist” because tech companies like Google “expropriate ad money from capitalists to build a superintelligence & don’t pay dividends” to “entitled shareholders”. In March, she posted a petition to the White House website demanding the termination of all 4.3 million government employees, the resignation of Barack Obama, and the appointing of Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt as CEO of America [28].

Google, the largest collector of private personal information the world has ever known, acts as a giant data mine for advertisers and the state. The mere suggestion of granting the giant surveillance apparatus even deeper governing power is troubling.

Google’s rigid hierarchical structure has been (positively) likened to a monarchy by some reactionaries. Shareholders have virtually no voting power in the company as the company’s two founders control the vast majority of votes through the organization of shares. The workforce is organized into veritable castes delineated by colored badges. Most employees enjoy high pay (median salary $125,000), free gourmet meals, and a relaxed work environment. Lower-paid yellow-badge workers are confined to a separate building and excluded from the free food, limousine shuttles, or usage of company bikes. Their jobs consist entirely of tedious data-entry. These workers are not permitted to speak with the rest of the workforce. Filmmaker and former Google employee Andrew Norman Wilson stated that the yellow badge workers were mostly people of color [29].

According to its own numbers, Google’s overwhelmingly male American “tech” workforce is a mere one percent black and two percent latino [30].

Both Tunney and White have advocated raising funds to sustain a mercenary “non-violent militia” to take to the streets. Recently, Tunney suggested that her twitter followers “read Mencius Moldbug” referring to the pseudonym of computer programmer and aspiring writer Curtis Guy Yarvin. Yarvin, along with English philosopher Nick Land, is among the best known names in the “Dark Enlightenment” movement. This tendency, also referred to as the neoreactionary movement, promotes a pseudo-scientific notion of the racial superiority of whites under the guise of “human biodiversity”, opposes egalitarianism and democracy, and supports autocratic governance [31].

Human biodiversity [HBD] is the rejection of the ‘blank state’ of human nature. Creepily obsessed with statistics that demonstrate IQ differences between the races, the darkly enlightened see social hierarchies as determined not by culture or opportunity but by the cold, hard destiny embedded in DNA…

Cue the adherents of The Bell Curve, eugenics enthusiasts, believers in white supremacy and sympathizers of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. In the Dark Enlightenment, we seem to have stumbled across a place where pseudo-intellectually grounded racism is flourishing in a way it hasn’t since before World War II.

In our discussion, [Nick] Land was explicit in his view on this: ‘HBD, broadly conceived, is simply a fact. It is roughly as questionable, on intellectual grounds, as biological evolution or the heliocentric model of the solar system. No one who takes the trouble to educate themselves on the subject with even a minimum of intellectual integrity can doubt that’…

Is this fascism? Desire for genetically determined ruling classes, distrust of popular democratic reform, distaste for the aesthetic standards of mass culture, and nausea over the political correctness of modern life—the Dark Enlightenment does have all the markings of a true neo-fascist movement. It’s here that the dangers of the Dark Enlightenment are hard to dismiss
[32].


They advocate a return to feudal city-states as a counter to democratic governance while maintaining an almost religious reverence for technology.

Yarvin advocates a form of total corporate domination of society he calls “neocameralism”:

To a neocameralist, a state is a business which owns a country. A state should be managed, like any other large business, by dividing logical ownership into negotiable shares, each of which yields a precise fraction of the state’s profit. (A well-run state is very profitable.) Each share has one vote, and the shareholders elect a board, which hires and fires managers [33].


While ridiculous, the ideas of the neoreactionary tendency have attained some degree of support in the world of Silicon Valley tech workers.

Balaji Srinivasan, Computer Science lecturer at Stanford University and current partner in Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm Andreesen Horowitz, promoted “dark enlightenment” inspired ideas during a speech to a crowd of tech entrepreneurs last fall. He encouraged the dawning of a Silicon Valley secessionist movement that would break away from the United States and establish authoritarian city-states run by technology firms:

We want to show what a society run by Silicon Valley would look like. That’s where ‘exit’ comes in .. . It basically means: build an opt-in society, ultimately outside the US, run by technology. And this is actually where the [Silicon] Valley is going. This is where we’re going over the next ten years …[Google co-founder] Larry Page, for example, wants to set aside a part of the world for unregulated experimentation [34].”


The contrast between this hyper-technological conservatism and the right-wing traditionalist ecological movements highlights the pluralistic essence of fascism. Throughout history fascism has been a movement that is at once rational and anti-rational, secular and spiritual, traditional and futuristic, capitalist and socialist, authoritarian and anti-statist, social and individualistic, luddite and technological, nationalistic and international. Fascism is a rigid paradox that does not fall in the face of contradiction. The Third Reich was at once the mystical and environmental perspective of Hess, Himmler, Rosenberg, and Darre and the hyper-rationalist and industrialist reality that flattened much of Europe. Mussolini was as influenced by Julius Evola’s esoteric traditionalism as by Filippo Marinetti’s rejection of of the past and advocation of a technological and artistic “futurism”.

The commonalities shared by these ideologically diverse reactionary movements are concerning: the belief in racial, ethnic, or cultural superiority, the revival of The Nation, the concept of a superhuman ubermensch at the individual or the racial level, fearsome disdain for groups considered “inferior”, an aversion to collective desire, and a reverence for force and brutality.


More at: https://nycantifa.wordpress.com/2015/01 ... tionalism/
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:32 pm

How Sweet It Isn’t: “What’s Left?”
November 2017, MRR #414

Image

It’s called “sweetening.”

It’s a certain type of background music and ambient sound for films and TV shows meant to enhance mood and emotion. It’s also called juicing, but it’s intended to be subtle, behind the scenes, muted. Sweetening is not supposed to be too obvious. For instance, when a live audience is recorded anywhere, a laugh track/canned heat track is frequently blended into the live audience track to amplify its effect, whether of laughter, clapping, booing, whatever.

The term has its origin in old-time radio, when sound effects like horses galloping, doors opening and closing, characters walking, gunshots, etc. were used to paint visual detail in a non-visual medium. Again, it’s not all dramatic sound effects. In films and TV shows, it’s not the sound of violent explosions or roaring monsters. The sweetening is in the sense of foreboding portended in the background music, or in the subsonic infrasound used to generate apprehension in the audience prior to some climactic scene. So while “sweetening” comes off good and positive, it might as well be called “shadowing” or “darkening,” depending on what effect the sound is intended to enhance.

As for political sweetening, two recent examples come to mind. The Tea Party ended up sweetening the Republican Party from the right, as did Bernie Sander’s “political revolution” the Democratic Party from the left. Both movements started as popular revolts against their respective party establishments and their mainstream politics, both helped rewrite their respective party platforms, and both moved the politics of those parties respectively to the right and left. Both threatened to break away to form independent third party efforts, both were blamed for the potential demise of their respective political parties, but both ultimately succumbed to political opportunism, cooptation, and marginalization. Or at least the Tea Party succumbed and wound up faking a hard-times protest movement, spawning affiliated get-rich-quick cottage industries, and successfully rebranding the GOP. Bernie’s “political revolution” has blended nicely into the much broader anti-Trump protest movement, so it remains vibrant and very much in the streets. Ideally, this popular resistance needs to avoid opportunism, cooptation, and marginalization, but that’s very difficult to do if the Tea Party is any indication.

What doesn’t count as political sweetening was Occupy Wall Street. OWS doesn’t count for much at all now, despite initially being praised by authors, artists, celebrities, politicians, and pundits as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’ve never hidden my disdain for OWS. It may have personally changed lives like the bad brown acid circulating at a mediocre rock concert, but it was just a flash in the pan that changed little politically. So unless the inane consensus hand signals and annoying human microphone are included, no innovation of any consequence arose from OWS. That also covers the communizing “occupy everything, demand nothing” campus activism that emerged among protesting California students in 2011.

OWS ran with the franchise activism common nowadays, where an indistinct idea was widely disseminated and then taken up by local activists who made it their own through locally flavored community actions. The movement’s core idea, embodied in its name, was so nebulous in fact that it produced both the anarcho/ultraleft, black bloc, streetfighting Occupy Oakland, California, and the virulently antisemitic, conspiracy-theorist, ultraright Occupy Tallinn, Estonia, with every political combination in between. So while the majority of OWS-affiliated actions tended leftwing, liberal, and even anarchist, there was considerable involvement by rightwing, conservative, and even fascist elements. In this way, OWS displayed troubling Left/Right crossover politics similar to the anti-globalization movement which preceded it. This was not by chance but by design, given the decentralized, all-are-welcome nature of the movement’s organizing message. This was complemented by the ambiguous categories employed by OWS, most prominent being “the 99%” versus “the 1%.” This promoted an uncritical populism that studiously avoided any class-based analysis, but it denied any identity-based analysis as well, instead encouraging an amorphous, dumbed-down, Hardt/Negri-style notion of “the multitude.”

When finance capital comes to the fore, capitalism itself is in decline. Capitalism has abandoned industrial production for financial circulation, meaning that its profit-making comes not from surplus value transformed into capital but from mere exchange. For OWS then to focus its vague critique of capitalism on Wall Street and finance capital was to target a decaying economic system as if it were still robust, misinterpreting capitalism’s retreat as a faux advance. To see the enemy as attacking rather than as withdrawing was a delusion that badly skewed the tactics and strategy required to take on and defeat that enemy. If nothing else, this falsely portrayed finance capital as stronger and more powerful than it actually is, reinforcing the rightwing trope that “international bankers” rule the world. Excuse me, “banksters.” From this, it’s a half-step to the “international Jewish conspiracy for world domination” that is the ultra-right’s favorite meme.

Spencer Sunshine has written a detailed survey called “20 On The Right In Occupy” through the Political Research Associates think tank which provides thumbnail summaries of anti-Federal Reserve, antisemitic, white nationalist, fascist, and neo-Nazi individuals and groups involved in OWS. These strange right and left bedfellows in OWS are not so odd once we realize that antisemitism is also on the rise on the Left. Case in point, the post-Situ Adbusters Magazine from which the original OWS call came. From Kalle Lasn’s Adbuster article discussing fifty influential neoconservatives under the title “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” to Adbuster tweets that took up the alt.right’s outing of twitter users as Jewish by surrounding their names with parentheses, Left/Right crossover politics abound. Not that Adbuster’s leftist politics aren’t sketchy in so many other ways, what with their support of Israeli antisemite Gilad Atzmon and Italian conspiracy theorist Beppe Grillo. They do act as a political transition to the hard Left’s anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist ideologies, which too easily and too often become outright Left antisemitism.



Continues at: https://leftyhooligan.wordpress.com/201 ... 7-mrr-414/
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:01 pm

Is David Icke Britain’s Leading Antisemite?

Image
Antisemitic Nazi cartoon from 1930’s depicting the ‘string pulling’ Jew
in control of assorted dignitaries


https://marlonsolomon.wordpress.com/201 ... ntisemite/
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby liminalOyster » Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:16 pm

Funny- I thought the best criticism of Icke called out his dangerous propensity for an elemental distillation of human affairs down to a primitive eschatological battle between good and evil:

What will you will find is the full battery of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Zionist, anti-semitic, anti-capitalist, anti-modernity, anti-EU, anti-Nato, pro-Assad, pro-Iran and pro-Putin propaganda: all seductive ideologies in many parts of the left – a part which has grown significantly in the last two years as Corbynism has brought radical, fringe leftists into the mainstream.


If that critique is now passe, I'm going to fall back on - seems to have watched the TV miniseries V during a bad acid trip in 1983, possibly exacerbated by proximity to a ley line and/or on the event of the summer solstice.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:36 pm

I've been thinking of the endless TV Series Amerika lately, due to the Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS") thread.

I can't stop thinking about the drugged out nights at the clubs where it is revealed that the "rebellious" kids who are happily tripping out are actually pawns in a bigger game, as it is revealed that the evil occupying commie gubbermint is actually providing all the drugs, in order to manipulate the kids.

See, I can't stop thinking of TIDS and my nagging suspicion that the State let all that acid flood out in the 60's in order to spin the worldwide rebellion towards self-absorption and ineffective activity generally. Then I suspect that acid house and MDMA were let loose on the brink of the falling of the Wall so that everyone would stop hating people from the other side and instead, have a great big party....




https://youtu.be/K-fjT7QBpQ8


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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:23 pm

Forget The Lizards: David Icke Is Dangerous And We Should Take Him Seriously

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This doesn’t just concern Jews. This concerns feminists, ethnic minorities of all persuasions, anti-fascists, anti-racists, Syrians, people who don’t want the memory of Jo Cox sullied and her husband abused, environmentalists, in short: anyone who wants to be a member of the Anti-Stupid Party.


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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Fri Dec 22, 2017 8:02 am

JULY 28, 2017

Enough Nonsense! The Left Does Not Collaborate with Fascists

by ERIC DRAITSER

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In early October of 2011, I found myself in the midst of what seemed the greatest political upsurge in decades: Occupy Wall Street. I sat in Zucotti Park in the General Assemblies and the various working groups around the corner at the public atrium on Wall Street. I watched as anarchists and communists, progressive Greens and disillusioned Democrats, gathered together to show their hatred for finance capital, for the banks and hedge funds parasitically siphoning off our collective wealth with the intent of leaving working people nothing but their eyes to cry with. I felt the energy of those days running up and down my spine, the good kind of shivers you get when something exciting but daunting presents itself before you.

And I thought to myself: “This is the moment that we need to build our alliances deeper with the libertarian, anarcho-capitalist types who attack the Fed and oppose wars!” Sound familiar Caity?

I organized multiple teach-in events nearby on topics such as “The Origins of Wall Street and Modern Finance Capital” and “How Wall Street and Foundations Conspire to Oppress the People” and “The Bipartisan Imperial Consensus for War and Exploitation.”

I engaged with a number of young right wingers who worshiped Ron Paul (at the time a presidential candidate in the Obama-Romney 2012 circus), and whose political analysis came from festering political carbuncles like Alex Jones and David Icke. They were not goose-stepping Nazis longing for a pat on the head from Uncle Adolph, but neither were they serious political activists. They were Youtube kids with a fetish for Rothschilds-run-the-world style fascist propaganda. They had no interest in building resilient communities or exploring new ways of political organizing. They were not at all convinced that capitalism was a problem, much less THE problem. They did not accept the concept of imperialism as interrelated with capitalism, which they saw as the best form of socio-economic organization. There was literally nothing with which to really work except for maybe smoking some pot together.

Remember, this was at the height of the War on Libya, Gaddafi was assassinated a few days after my last teach-in. This was in the midst of a tremendous anti-capitalist political upsurge. And still, the deafening roar of crickets and tumbleweeds. And this has proven to be true time and time and time again in myriad social settings. The far right is not at all interested in the core ideas that make the Left.

You know who is interested in the core ideas that make the Left? At least 100 million apolitical, demoralized working people who don’t have time for politics as they struggle to ensure their families’ survival.

There is your fertile organizing ground! Not the white supremacist purveyors of rape culture such as Mike Cernovich, who Johnstone apparently feels is some sort of right wing John Brown, ready to lay kindling for the white man’s revolution. Apparently, Johnstone has acknowledged that she is a rape survivor – I commend her for stating it openly, without shame – which somehow seems to excuse her promotion of a misogynist, fascist provocateur. You know, like how it’s totally cool and not racist for black men to openly say they don’t like dark-skinned black women.

It seems that Johnstone’s lack of understanding about political realities has led her to become a dupe of the right wing while allegedly steadfastly clinging to her left wing ideals. She seems to believe that appealing to a vocal and visible, but still small, far right is more important and more effective than genuine organizing in oppressed and marginalized communities where the bulk of real activist work is done.

While Johnstone shakes her flashy pom-poms for the likes of the Proud Boys and 4chan circle-jerkers in Pepe the Frog furries, there is real work to be done.

The Ideological Framework of the Johnstonian Tripe

Aside from the absurdity of the red-brown alliance strategy, there is an even larger, and perhaps more troubling, question to ask: Is Johnstone directly promoting a fascist agenda while operating under left cover? Is she a useful idiot of forces she either doesn’t understand or doesn’t know exist?

To answer this question, let us turn to the very nature of historical fascism.

The German Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch famously wrote:

By feeding upon the failures and omissions of the so-called ‘system politicians,’ [fascism] enrolled in the long run the support of the nation and in both the economic and political fields solved a number of concrete problems that had been neglected or frustrated by the unsocialist attitudes of the socialists and undemocratic behavior of the democrats.


Indeed, it is in the very nature of fascism to present itself as a viable option when the “system politicians” have lost credibility and legitimacy. That’s precisely how it went down in Germany, and Italy and Spain, with each having its own unique trajectory due to specific conditions in each country.

Fascists always rush in to occupy the political space vacated by failed liberalism. And, for that reason, fascist antipathy is always most pronounced when it comes to communists, anarchists, and other leftists who seek to do the same.

And, today, it’s self-evident that we have a failed liberalism (neoliberalism) wherein the system politicians have lost legitimacy and are increasingly hated. Even Johnstone, not exactly a political theoretician of tremendous capacity, understands this point. And it is precisely at such a moment, when the liberal and conservative bourgeois order is increasingly unstable and untenable, that fascism becomes a clear and present danger.

And what’s Johnstone’s prescription? COLLABORATE WITH THEM! She even laments that leftists aren’t willing to collaborate enough with the fascists. Oh, yeeeah…sorry about that Caity. I’d be happy to share with you some wonderful materials on the proud history of anti-fascist organizing on the Left. It might be useful for you.

But today, we also have a new variant of fascism that has emerged, one that goes well beyond the typical corporate-imperialist consensus of the Empire.

Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian fascist political operator-cum-philosopher, has emerged as an influential figure for both the alt-right and, embarrassingly, some on the Left, though they’ll never admit it, even to themselves. Dugin is widely regarded as very influential in Russian policy circles – his Foundations of Geopolitics remains a required text for Russian military officers – despite attempts by some in Russian media circles to downplay his influence and present him as a marginal figure.

One of Dugin’s most important works is The Fourth Political Theory (4PT), a pseudo-intellectual manifesto of fascist politics that eschews 20th Century political labels in favor of a “new synthesis” for a new century. Consider it the fascist remix tape where Dugin just recycles the same tropes of every fascist movement while dressing them up in convoluted jargon and esoterica.

The essence of 4PT is just a repackaged variant of third positionism from an openly fascist perspective. It calls for direct alignment and alliance of forces on the far left and far right to attack the center. Even the homepage for the book states “Beyond left and right but against the center.” Sound familiar?

Dugin writes:

If the third political theory [fascism] criticised capitalism from the Right, and the second [communism] from the Left, then the new stage no longer features this political topography: it is impossible to determine where the Right and the Left are located in relation to postliberalism. There are only two positions: compliance (the centre) and dissent (the periphery). Both positions are global. The Fourth Political Theory is the amalgamation of a common project and arises from a common impulse to everything that was discarded, toppled, and humiliated during the course of constructing ‘the society of the spectacle’ (constructing postmodernity).


It is rather explicit what Dugin is arguing: his 21st Century 4PT politics is rooted in the idea of a necessary collaboration between a bygone left (communists, socialists, etc.) and a bygone right (fascists). Put another way, Dugin here is rebranding fascism as something distinctly new, separated from the tarnished historical legacy of Nazism and Italian fascism, something most necessary in our “post-modern” world. Of course, it should be noted that when Dugin says “post-modern” he means multiculturalism, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and generally everything that has become fundamental to the Left over the last 50 years.

Dugin’s brand of fascist politics is peddled globally under the heading of “Eurasianism” and is propagated by a wide array of Russian media outlets and fascist online platforms (i.e. Katehon, Fort Russ, New Resistance, Arktos, etc.). And it’s in the world of social media and the blogosphere where these LittleEichman.coms really make their mark, penetrating left discourse in the cyber realm in the way that fascist entryists penetrated left political organizations.

Indeed, this is precisely the Duginist strategy, to penetrate the left via anti-imperialism and marry it to the far right, with the two united in a common pro-Russian outlook. That’s Dugin’s agenda, and people like Johnstone become very useful to that end. Just looking at the number of alleged progressives who rightly reject US corporate media narratives unless they’re backed by hard evidence, while at the same time believing reports from Russian media and Kremlin press releases as holy writ tells me that that strategy is somewhat effective.

The danger in even bringing up these facts is that one has to be careful not to fall into the trap of buttressing or legitimizing the Democratic Party liberal talking points about Russia and Putin. How does one remain honest about the impact of these far right trends while also remaining entirely opposed to the fomenting of conflict with Russia? Not so easy.

[cue the “Russophobia” accusations from said nitwits]

But of course, for Johnstone no Democratic Party conspiracy theory is beneath her (Pizzagate, Seth Rich, etc.) while any anti-Russia conspiracy theories are to be dismissed out of hand. It’s almost as if she a priori chooses which conspiracies to peddle and which to dismiss. It’s almost as if she clings to conspiracies that have zero evidence like Pizzagate while ignoring the Russia-Trump story which, despite attempts by Democratic Party noodleheads to paint it as the greatest controversy since Caligula fellated his horse, is still worthy of examination as damaging facts have emerged about those ties.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Johnstone was just parroting talking points from others in a bid to build her popularity by sticking closely to one side’s talking points. Jesus Christ, I hope that’s all it is.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/28 ... -fascists/
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:10 pm

https://leftyhooligan.wordpress.com/cat ... for-fools/

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Anarchism for Fools: “What’s Left?” April 2014, MRR #371

Part Three: Anarchism of-by-for Fools

What has to be stressed here, regardless of the philosophical foundations of Anarchism, is that National-Anarchism is Anarchism sui generis. An Anarchism of its own kind. We are not answerable to or responsible for the actions of those who also happen to call themselves ‘Anarchists,’ be they contemporary or in the past.
Troy Southgate


When I hear the term sui generis, I reach for my gun. Also, the term “beyond left and right.” Both are attempts to provide a patina of philosophical respectability to the idiocy that is National Anarchism (NA), an oxymoron if there ever was one.

Two columns ago, I discussed the relationship of capitalist libertarianism to historical libertarianism, that is, to old school anarchism. I didn’t require more than a sentence to position anarchism, which referred to itself as social anarchism, within the context of socialism or the Left as a whole. Individualist anarchism, up to and including its current capitalist iteration, is categorical in identifying the various schools of social anarchism as leftist. And that tiny yet shrill tendency calling itself post-left anarchism, first promulgated by Anarchy, A Journal of Desire Armed, acknowledges the leftism of much previous anarchism by defining itself as “post.” That NA describes itself as a unique “category in itself” suits most anarchists just fine, as they would be happy to be completely rid of these poseurs. NA is far from Fascism sui generis, however. In point of fact, NA is Fascism, simple and unadorned and quite generic.

Which brings up the tricky task of defining Fascism proper. The thumbnail description associated with Fascism is that it’s an “anti-liberal, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist revolutionary ultra-nationalist ideology, social movement and regime.” This tweet-length one-liner is woefully insufficient for most academics interested in researching the nature of Fascism and coming up with a paradigmatic “Fascist Minimum” that can encompass as many types of ultra-right ideological/social phenomenon as possible. But for those on the ultra-right, the above sound bite of a description is too definitive because it tries to nail down what seeks to remain intentionally vague, flexible, and sui generis.

I noted the explosion of political ideas, associations and actions, left and right, that occurred from the fin de siècle to the beginning of the second World War. With respect to the European ultra-right in the decades inclusive of and following La Belle Époque, and aside from Mussolini’s Fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism, there was political futurism, Traditionalism (Evola), völkisch nationalism (Dickel), Novecentismo (Bontempelli), Maurras’s Action Française, young conservatism (Jung), conservative revolutionism (van den Bruck), Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal, national revolutionism (Jünger), the German Freikorps, the Croatian Ustasha, National Bolshevism (Niekisch), leftist “universal fascism” (Strasser), Codreanu’s Iron Guard, Perón’s Justicialismo, ad nauseum. This is by no means an exhaustive list of fascist, quasi-fascist, para-fascist, and crypto-fascist tendencies, movements and regimes in this era, and in a European context.

Despite the short-lived attempt to found a Fascist International Congress at Montreux, Switzerland in 1934-35, the relationships between these highly fractious tendencies, movements and regimes were often less than cordial, and sometimes quite brittle. To briefly illustrate: when National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy formed their Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936 it became clear that Mussolini’s Italy was to play “second fiddle” to Hitler’s Germany in military expansion, empire building, and war against the allies. The Allied invasion of Italy led to German intervention and invasion to shore up Mussolini’s Fascist regime, resulting in the consolidation of the rump Italian Social Republic in northern Italy in 1943. The pseudo-leftist Salo Republic proved a “shrinking puppet-state of the Nazis in economic and agricultural production, in foreign affairs, and in the military campaign against the Allies.” (Roger Griffin) Both Germany and Italy came to the aid of Franco’s Nationalist rebels in Spain with military and financial assistance between 1936 and 1939. After Nationalist victory, Franco joined with Mussolini and Hitler to clamp down on liberal, democratic, secular social elements generally, and specifically to smash the international socialist working class, from anarchist to Bolshevik. But, given that Francoismo was above all traditionalist in orientation, Franco also dissolved the overtly fascist Falange as a party, declared Spanish neutrality, refused to enter the war as an ally of Germany, nixed a plan to seize Gibraltar and close the Mediterranean to the British fleet, and even allowed Jewish refugees escaping the Nazi Final Solution to transit Spanish territory. Italian Fascism made easy accord with the monarchy and the Vatican. Rightwing Italian critics of Mussolini and his Fascist regime were rarely imprisoned, but were occasionally placed under house arrest. Julius Evola was kept at arms length, never embraced but never renounced. Hitler’s National Socialist Germany was far more brutal in dealing with right wing critics and competitors. During the Night of the Long Knives (Operation Hummingbird) in 1934, Hitler ordered the murder of aristocratic and Catholic conservative opposition figures (von Bose, von Schleicher, von Kahr, Klausener, and Edgar Jung), as well as the purge of National Socialism’s left wing. Ernst Röhm, leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), was first imprisoned and then killed, while Nazi leader Gregor Strasser was assassinated. His brother, Otto Strasser, was driven into exile. The literary figure, war veteran and national revolutionary Ernst Jünger was kept under constant surveillance by the regime.

(Röhm and the Strasser brothers considered themselves “second revolutionaries.” Yet it would be a “historical mondegreen,” referencing Death in June, to believe that the actual history of the Third Reich would have been much different had either of these three been führer instead of Hitler.)

Fascism guilefully thinks of itself as sui generis, beyond left and right. The various groupings within and surrounding Fascism, as well as its National Socialist “blood brother,” each insist on their status as sui generis. In attempting to synthesize a violent opposition to Enlightenment liberalism, Marxism, and capitalism with an embrace of populism, revolutionism, and ultra-nationalism, these ultra-right ideologies, movements and regimes exemplify not fusion and unification but splitting and division. Their sense of distinctiveness and uniqueness might be laid at the feet of Nietzsche and his philosophy of aristocratic individualism, what Jünger called the sovereign individualism of the Anarch. Yet more fundamental socio-political causes must be cited. Unlike Marxism’s highly programmatic politics, the Fascist ultra-right was decidedly less programmatic, and what platforms it did generate were intensely idiosyncratic. Leninism posited a scientific, universalist, international socialism that, when corrupted by nationalism, devolved into particular socialist types, say, a socialism with Chinese or Vietnamese or Cuban characteristics. By contrast, the particular cultural, social and national characteristics of the countries out of which Fascism arose, combined with Fascism’s innate syncretic tendencies, has produced a plethora of Fascist types. Consider the problem of nationalism. In opposition to the secular nationalism born of the Enlightenment, there is Evola’s Traditionalist pan-European Imperium on the one hand and on the other hand de Benoist’s Europe of a thousand flags comprised of separate tribal ethnies. Way stations along this spectrum are völkisch pan-Germanic Aryanism and the Romantic organic nationalism that was a fusion of local ethnic groups within a given nation-state. Then there is the issue of racism. National Socialism’s biological racism and virulent anti-Semitism stands in stark contrast to Italian Fascism which was relatively free of anti-Semitic and eugenic strains until influenced and then subsumed by Nazi Germany.

Academics and intellectuals, whose job it is to formulate unifying theories and overarching explanations of phenomenon, have been stymied by the variegated nature of Fascism. Attempts to define a “Fascist Minimum” have been as diverse as Fascism itself. Marxist approaches have predominated, and at times have been augmented by post-Marxist modernization, structural and psycho-historical theories. Liberal reactions to Fascism have remained thoroughly splintered, ranging from Nolte’s theme of resisting modernization to Payne’s understanding of a new kind of nationalist authoritarian state. A related conceptual constellation offered by Mosse’s “third way,” Sternhell’s “new civilization” and Eatwell’s “new synthesis” hints at a way forward. Personally, I find Roger Griffin’s summation that “Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism” the most convincing.*

Which brings us back to National Anarchism. Troy Southgate has been engaged in “serial Fascism” based on a “palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism” for most of his political career, pursuing the next big Fascist thing from the National Front, through the International Third Position, the English Nationalist Movement, the National Revolutionary Faction, Synthesis and the journal Alternative Green, to his current New Right and National Anarchist affiliation. “As a prelude to an anticipated racial civil war and a collapse of the capitalist system,” NA seeks to “[E]stablish autonomous villages for völkisch communities, which have seceded from the state’s economy and are no-go areas for unwelcomed ethnic groups and state authorities.” Setting aside the ersatz weekend hipster tribalism of your typical Burning Man participant as an outright insult to aboriginal realities, NA’s anti-statist ethnic tribalism is, in actuality, well within the range of Fascist nationalism demarcated by Evola and de Benoist. NA’s racism falls within the spectrum defined by German Nazism and Italian Fascism as well. (“My race is my nation,” or so goes the White Nationalist slogan.) Whether NA prefers mutualism or autarky to national socialism or corporatism for its so-called anti-capitalist economics is also not unusual. Presenting itself as a resynthesis of “classic fascism, Third Positionism, neo-anarchism and new types of anti-systemic politics born of the anti-globalization movement” simply reveals the syncretic character inherent in Fascism as a phenomenon. That this segment of the “groupuscular right” champions a “a stateless palingenetic ultranationalism” amounts to subtle nuance, not radical difference. Nothing distinguishes NA from Fascism proper. Nothing sui generis here. Absolutely nothing.

So, let’s forego all the academic abstractions and get down to brass tacks. Individuals who claim NA talk to, hang out with, organize among, and act alongside fellow ultra-right Fascists. They claim to “go beyond left and right,” but they fully identify themselves as New Right. If NAs rear their ugly pinheads on internet forums like anarchist LibCom or leftist RevLeft, they are immediately identified, isolated, and purged. And if they openly show their faces at explicitly anarchist and leftist events, they risk a serious beat down. In contrast, NAs can and do freely join, discuss, argue and debate on white nationalist/white supremacist forums like Stormfront. They’re also welcome on disgruntled anarcho-individualist and self-styled pan-secessionist Keith Preston’s greatly attenuated Attack The System forum. His American Revolutionary Vanguard argues that “the mainstream of the anarchist movement has become unduly focused on left-wing cultural politics, countercultural lifestyle matters, and liberal pet causes.” His stated goal is to go beyond the Left/Right political spectrum to: “work towards a synthesis of the currently scattered anarchist tendencies. These include anarcho-collectivism, syndicalism, mutualism, post-structuralism, Green anarchism, primitivism and neo-tribalism from the Left, and anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-monarchism, anarcho-feudalism, national-anarchism, tribal-anarchism, paleo-anarchism and Christian anarchism from the Right.”

Fuck this fascist noise!




*[F]ascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence.
Roger Griffin, Nature of Fascism

[Fascism is] a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti conservative nationalism. As such it is an ideology deeply bound up with modernization and modernity, one which has assumed a considerable variety of external forms to adapt itself to the particular historical and national context in which it appears, and has drawn a wide range of cultural and intellectual currents, both left and right, anti-modern and pro-modern, to articulate itself as a body of ideas, slogans, and doctrine. In the inter-war period it manifested itself primarily in the form of an elite-led “armed party” which attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to generate a populist mass movement through a liturgical style of politics and a programme of radical policies which promised to overcome a threat posed by international socialism, to end the degeneration affecting the nation under liberalism, and to bring about a radical renewal of its social, political and cultural life as part of what was widely imagined to be the new era being inaugurated in Western civilization. The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation’s imminent rebirth from decadence.
Roger Griffin, The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology



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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sat Jan 06, 2018 9:28 am

Gaddafi's Harem: No rapist abused women like the late Libyan leader

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Silvio Berlusconi and Muammar Gaddafi in Italy 2010


http://claysbeach.blogspot.co.uk/2018/0 ... women.html







American Dream » Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:02 am wrote:
JULY 28, 2017

Enough Nonsense! The Left Does Not Collaborate with Fascists

by ERIC DRAITSER

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In early October of 2011, I found myself in the midst of what seemed the greatest political upsurge in decades: Occupy Wall Street. I sat in Zucotti Park in the General Assemblies and the various working groups around the corner at the public atrium on Wall Street. I watched as anarchists and communists, progressive Greens and disillusioned Democrats, gathered together to show their hatred for finance capital, for the banks and hedge funds parasitically siphoning off our collective wealth with the intent of leaving working people nothing but their eyes to cry with. I felt the energy of those days running up and down my spine, the good kind of shivers you get when something exciting but daunting presents itself before you.

And I thought to myself: “This is the moment that we need to build our alliances deeper with the libertarian, anarcho-capitalist types who attack the Fed and oppose wars!” Sound familiar Caity?

I organized multiple teach-in events nearby on topics such as “The Origins of Wall Street and Modern Finance Capital” and “How Wall Street and Foundations Conspire to Oppress the People” and “The Bipartisan Imperial Consensus for War and Exploitation.”

I engaged with a number of young right wingers who worshiped Ron Paul (at the time a presidential candidate in the Obama-Romney 2012 circus), and whose political analysis came from festering political carbuncles like Alex Jones and David Icke. They were not goose-stepping Nazis longing for a pat on the head from Uncle Adolph, but neither were they serious political activists. They were Youtube kids with a fetish for Rothschilds-run-the-world style fascist propaganda. They had no interest in building resilient communities or exploring new ways of political organizing. They were not at all convinced that capitalism was a problem, much less THE problem. They did not accept the concept of imperialism as interrelated with capitalism, which they saw as the best form of socio-economic organization. There was literally nothing with which to really work except for maybe smoking some pot together.

Remember, this was at the height of the War on Libya, Gaddafi was assassinated a few days after my last teach-in. This was in the midst of a tremendous anti-capitalist political upsurge. And still, the deafening roar of crickets and tumbleweeds. And this has proven to be true time and time and time again in myriad social settings. The far right is not at all interested in the core ideas that make the Left.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sun Jan 21, 2018 9:03 am

Michel Collon, Conspiracies, Political Confusionism and…… Steve Hedley (RMT).

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Michel Collon, Conspiracy Theorist and Confusionist.

Michel Collon is a member of the Parti du travail de Belgique PTB (English here) and sits on its central committee. This party, which counts around 10,000 members, has 47 local councillors and 2 MPs in the Federal Parliament and a number of other representatives, and at present is said, according to opinion polls to be the second largest political force in Wallonie. It is of a ‘Marxist-Leninist” origin, that is pro-Chinese ‘Maoism’, publishing in 1994 a book in support of Stalin, Un autre regard sur Staline (éditions EPO) and supported Kim Il Sung. Since 2008 it claims to have become an “open” party, turned towards electoral campaigning as a party of the working class, with references to other European lefts from different traditions, including the Portuguese Communist Party (Parti du travail de Belgique : du maoïsme au parlementarisme ?). It’s success in the last year owes a lot to the massive corruption scandals affecting the Belgium Parti socialiste and the PTB’s ability to carry out grass-roots campaigns on immediate issues such as public services.

Collon has his own past which includes, “Il a participé à la conférence “anti-impérialiste” Axis for Peace, organisée en 2005 par Thierry Meyssan du Réseau Voltaire“. That is he took part in a conference held by the far-right, conspiracy (9/11 Truthers) Meyssan and the Réseau Voltaire which has been accused of anti-Semitism. It is at present, pro-Assad in Syria. In 2015 Collon claimed that the murderers of the Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper-Cacher were armed, trained and indoctrinated by French Socialist Minister Laurent Fabius as part of the war in Syria and Libya, “en réalité, ils ont été armés, formés militairement, endoctrinés par Monsieur Fabius et ses amis ; qui ont envoyé pendant trois ans des milliers, des dizaines de milliers de frères Kouachi, faire encore pire qu’à Charlie, en Syrie et en Libye. ” (Michel Collon sur les attentats de Charlie Hebdo : « les frères Kouachi ont été armés par Fabius »).

In his most recent book Collon has nevertheless attacked the conspiracy theories Alain Soral, on the grounds that Soral does not understand the mechanisms of capitalism behind these affairs. (Pourquoi Soral séduit 2017). It goes almost without saying that he is a writer for RT (Russia Today) defending Putin’s regime against US plots to demonise the state.


More at: https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2 ... edley-rmt/
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