On 2011-08-05, at 4:16 PM, John Glastonbury wrote: > Now, we can quibble over whether or not > totalitarianism/authoritarianism/fascism are the right terms to use, but, in > my short life as a politically conscious being, I've never seen 'democracy' > in America do anything remotely progressive, beneficial for me, or my age > cohort. I've also met many right wing people who, frankly, scare me with > their anger and vitriol and endless rage against liberals and blacks and > 'faggots' and pacifists. I cannot express my real political beliefs in almost > any public place or forum. Reactionary sentiment is deepening, broadening, > and becoming the de-facto consensus in many places in America.
I'm in the camp of those who think the danger of fascism is over-rated at present. But I do share yours and others concern about the growth of an anxious, agitated, mostly white, incipiently fascist base within the conservative parties in the US and Europe which could form the core of organized fascist movements outside of these parties if the current economic crisis and social polarization were to deepen in the advanced capitalist countries. I don't know if it's a quibble or not, but the distinguishing characteristics of fascism, which may have been already pointed out on this thread, a) are the organization of right-wing paramilitary detachments based mainly on small propertyholders, military veterans, and unemployed workers designed to terrorize national minorities, trade unions, left-wing groups, and other popular organizations, and b) the suppression on gaining power of parliamentary institutions, opposing political parties, and the basic democratic rights of organization, assembly and free speech. The dividing line is blurry, but authoritarian leaders outside in the colonial and semi-colonial world have often shied away from mobilizing a mass right-wing base, preferring instead to rely on the military high command and wealthy elites, while sometimes leaving intact the shell of representative institutions as a sop to the bourgeois democratic states on which they are dependent. Some on the left have preferred to more precisely describe them as "strong states" rather than fascist ones, although I can see where the distinction could be lost on those victimized by either regime. It's tempting to dismiss the value of democratic institutions and democratic rights, as you do above, because these are skewed to the interests of the wealthy and powerful in a capitalist system and the public, as you note, is conditioned to reject anticapitalist opinion. But if online forums like this one were shut down, if we weren't allowed to organize or attend rallies and demonstrations, if the right to form unions and other independent organizations was outlawed, if we could be arbitrarily imprisoned without any legal avenues of defence, the absence of these democratic forms would very quickly become apparent, and we would no longer be experiencing our current confusion about how to distinguish between bourgeois democracies and authoritarian capitalist states, of which fascism is the most extreme variant. If and until it comes to that, it also shouldn't be forgotten that these rights were not handed down from above but grudgingly conceded after often violent struggles by workers and small propertyholders, national minorities, and other oppressed groups, who rightly saw, and still see, them as indispensible to the betterment of their social conditions. There's a material basis to the stubborn attachment of the masses to bourgeois democratic institutions and values; it's not, as is often supposed on the left, mainly a matter of false consciousness, an inability to behind the veil of electoral politics. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
