American Fascism ?

[Charles Brown <BrownBingb@xxxxxxx>]

From: "Tom O'Lincoln

Charles, some responses:

>>An important part of fascism's essential features is aggressive,
conquering
warmaking. The U.S. today fully qualifies in this regard as fascist.<<

Tom: Wouldn't this apply equally to the British empire and to Napoleon? How
about Bismarck. All fascist? The term loses most of its meaning if we're
not careful.

^^^^^
CB:  Well afterall, the Roman Republic had the symbol of the fasces, from
which the term came.  And weren't the 20th Century fascists first termed
Bonapartists ? What is your point here on "saving" the meaning of the term ? 
What are
you saving the term "fascist" for in practical-critical activity ?  Seems to
me that, if we could have, we would have wanted to warn against the rise of the
British Empire, Napoleon and Bismarck in those eras.  As to retrospective
application of the term or not, that is a very academic discussion, not a
practical one.

If you want a "scientific", academic differentiating characteristic from
Napoleon and the British Empire,  the U.S. and fascist Italy and Germany are and
were in the imperialist stage of capitalism for one thing. The ruling classes
were not finance capital back then.  Aggressive warmaking is one of the
scientific characteristics of technical fascism, no ? Or what is your 
definition of
fascism ?

>>the Patriot Act I , and rumored Act II, state legislators in one state
discussing treating anti-war protests as
punishable by life in prison<<

Tom: This is very serious, but is it really that different to what has
happened
at a number of other points in American history? I'm thinking of the Palmer
raids and McCarthyism. All fascist?

CB: They certainly could have become fullblown fascism if people had not
termed them as fascistic and fought against them based on that. Of course,
"fascist" would not have had the significance it does now during the Palmer 
raids, so
the term would not have been that useful. McCarthyism was termed "fascist",
and it probably helped stop it.



CB:>>I would add that white supremacist institutions are not exactly in
contradiction to some USAmerican form of fascism... White supremacy has
served bourgeois hegemony well until now, but things change.<<

Tom: So true. White supremacy is compatible with various forms of capitalist
rule, including liberal democracy. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, after
all.

CB: Again , what is your point here ? Establishing a rigorous academic
typology of socio-economic-politico forms ?  Shouldn't we be trying to stop 
some new
form of open terrorist dictatorship before it gets started, even if it is not
technically identical to historical fascism ? And isn't it really ok to use
the term "fascism" or even "Nazism" to anticipate that barbarism, because there
is the largest historical memory today of those forms of dictatorship, as
compared with other historical tyrannies ? I mean we have to use words when we
talk to people.

 Slavery was worse than fascism, so how does that cut in this discussion ? It
means that the existence of a long term institution of white supremacy in the
U.S. is in no way whatsoever an obstacle or counterindicator of a trend
toward fascism in the U.S., right ? On the contrary, it would make the U.S. 
fertile
ground for fascism. It means that saying, "oh, we probably don't have to
worry about fascism in the U.S. because we have white supremacy" doesn't really
make much sense. It seems sort of strange to have to explain this, i.e. the lack
of incompatibility between fascism and white supremacy.


>>There is no premature anti-fascism.

Tom: I think there is, and I'll give you an example.

In 1993 our local Nazis announced they would march through Brunswick, an
ethnically diverse part of Melbourne. It also happens to be the main left
ghetto -- so it's a bit like the Mission District in San Francisco. Perhaps
the Nazis hadn't realised it was a left stronghold.

We mobilised maybe 800 people, mostly local residents, to chase them out of
the area. It was terrific.

But our left group had got a bit obsessed with anti-fascist campaigning. A
year or two later, when a couple of Nazis set up shop in a house in another
area, there was a campaign against them. It involved one modestly
successfull demo. So far so good.

But after that the campaign languished. We didn't have a support base among
the local citizens, and the Nazis were not doing anything over that
provided a basis for mobilising. They just lived there and issued a crank
leaflet once in a blue moon.

Meanwhile something else was happening. A racist named Pauline Hanson was
elected to parliament. Not a Nazi, but a racist populist. There were major
left campaigns against her which were excellent. Our group should have
thrown all its anti-racist energies into these campaigns: a) because they
were a big thing, and b) because it was within the Hanson movement that
more serious fascist elements could potentially have arisen. (The smarter
Nazis understood this and got involved).

Instead we divided our energies between the two issues, and put some of our
people through a demoralising and pointless campaign against a couple of
oddballs living in a house somewhere. Suggestions that we scrap it were met
with moralistic arguments.

Our anti-racism was timely. Specifically anti-fascist campaigning was
premature. That's why it's good that we debate what seem to be fine points
about what is fascism, because it helps us orient strategically.

^^^^^^^^^^

CB: The Bush regime is not just living here and issuing  crank
leaflets once in a blue moon.

Anyway, "there is no premature anti-fascism" is not a scientific axiom, just
a rhetorical flourish harking back to the bad ole days when we Reds slew the
real dragon.


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