Re: USA: More Dominant of Thought than N. Korea; CriticalResistance

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Join the Angela Davis critical thinking and resistance cult ! Free your mind.

>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> 04/26/00 01:38AM >>>

Hi Jacob:

>The question raised might the comparative freedom or lack of freedom in
>these societies.  Simply to raise the number of the prision population do
>not address the actual oppression in Cuba and North Korea which is
>significant and ought not to be underestimated.  Yoshie argues that
>repression in communist countries needs to be balanced by Foucault's idea
>of the panopticon or the internalization of social norms which prohibts
>certain actions or belief not through law but through the construction of
>the self through various disciplines, such as schools, hospitals etc.  I
>certainly accept this as a description of western "individualism" but this
>repression is of a different kind than the limitation of thought that
>happens to everyone in Cuba and North Korea

(((((((((((((((((((((((((

CB: Yea, the American, capitalist dictatorship, Big Brother,  abstract 
panopticon ,
television-led mind control system is of a WORSE kind, an order of magnitude 
worse,
qualitatively worse than  the form taken in the dictatorships of the 
proletariat. The
U.S. control is aggrievated by the evaporating effectiveness of Bill of Rights 
and
Liberties through crafty subversion especially of First Amendment freedoms or 
freedom
of consciousness/conscience/speech  simultaneous with a drift toward open 
terrorist
rule as in NYC and LA.

By the way, freedom , and encouragement to bullshit excessively is just one 
clever way
to get people to waste some of their freedom of speech energy and time; in other
words, sometimes the bourgeoisie use finesse , and encourage , rather than 
repress ,
speech and thought as a way to dominate and control  it. Fomenting 
proliferation of
dumb , passive thought , as with television consciousness,  is using "freedom" 
of
thought to dominate and control thought.
_________________

Comrade Furuhashi comments:
A high rate of incarceration does not simply signify the loss of
civil liberties for prisoners; it is also a loss of political
liberties, including freedom of speech.  Machiavelli writes in _The
Prince_: "One has to remark that men ought either be well treated or
crushed."  The ruling class & governing elite of the USA do not treat
the working class well (even by capitalist standards), so they must
crush them, especially the population made surplus by capital's
counter-offensive (= neoliberalism).  Christian Parenti explains the
war on crime as a two-phase political response to the crisis of
capitalism:

-clip-

The first phase is obviously repression of political freedom, in
response to militant blacks, anti-war activists, etc., and has been
recognized as such (besides it was practiced in tandem with
COINTELPRO, etc.).  The second phase, however, should be also counted
as political repression: not the repression of actual political
activists, but a kind of *preventive detention* of those who might
*potentially* become political activists.

-clip-



Capital has realized (learning the lesson of the late 60s) that it is
too late to repress people *after* they develop political
consciousness and begin to exercise their political freedoms,
including freedom of speech, in a fashion threatening to the
conditions of accumulation.  It is far better to lock up the poor
*before* they become political activists.  The war on drugs and crime
has killed political speech by locking up potential subjects of
political speech.  Needless to say, the war on drug and crime has
also limited political speech of those who remain outside prisons.
It has helped to manufacture the consent of the governed to the
dialectical twins of the police state & neoliberalism.


(((((((((((((((PRAXIS

CRITICAL RESISTANCE: ANGELA DAVIS, Icon, Idol, Personality, Great Leader of 
Freedom of
Thought

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http://www.prisonactivist.org/critical/netcast
The Prison Activist Resource Center and Deep Dish Television present Audio
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September 25-27, 1998 Listen to audio clips from conference Download Realplayer:
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