In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Charles Brown
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this war. The
>U.S. neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist governments that are
>fully fascist because of their connection to the reactionary sector or military
>industrial complex of transnational finance capital.
The spirit of Charles' post is certainly an improvement on Chris's. But
the problem with bandying around words like 'fascist', to indicate 'I
disapprove of this' is not just one that applies to calling Milosevic a
fascist.
Nato is not fascist. It is imperialist. The United States is not a
fascist dictatorship. Its foreign policy is repressive, as is much of
its domestic policy.
But you really trivialise the experience of fascism, of the
organisational liquidation of the working class organisations and the
mobilisation of a MASS petit-bourgeois reaction, when you toss the word
around like it was an epithet.
There are not extermination camps operating in the US (any more than
there are in Yugoslavia). The working class is not forbidden from
organising. Are you really saying that the Clinton administration's
support for positive discrimination is 'fascistic'? US military policy
is vicious and hostile to the independence of small nations. But the US
is not at war with other imperialist powers, though that was the outcome
of Germany's renewed imperialism under the Hitler regime.
Of course you can use the word poetically and figuratively if you want
to. But then it doesn't have much more meaning that the teenager who
calls his parents 'fascists' because they want him to clean up his room.
You can seize hold of merely superficial similarities, like a penchant
for wearing uniforms, or moustaches, and then, hey presto Saddam
Hussein's a fascist. But that is just a false analogy.
Fascism was a specific experience, which, however barbaric the current
events, overshadows all of these in the extent of its reaction. It is
not pedantry to insist on the proper use of terminology, when these
terms are the categories of real historical experiences.
One of the great tragedies on the left (one that Burford is repeating)
was the way that the Communist International denounced its enemies ON
THE LEFT as 'social fascists'. On top of that they slurred over and
minimised the distinction between bourgeois democracy and fascism, to
the point that they were indifferent to the seizure of power by the
Nazis - even though they were its first victims. Slack thinking leads to
bad judgements. Bombastic phrases just evacuate the real force of your
arguments.
Nothing personal, Charles. I like what you have to say about the War.
But words matter, and it is important to get the argument right.
--
Jim heartfield
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