Ralph :As to the use of the term fascist, without a definition grounded in material conditions rather than in symptomatic behavior, the term is
slippery and mostly devoid of propaedeutic or analytic value. After all, the term was so rapidly diluted in the 30s and 40s that Roosevelt was called a fascist, as were many others. ^^^^^ CB: I did give a definition , a wellknown one. If you mean by a definition "grounded in the material conditions" , "material conditions that fit the defintion", then I mentioned how some of the current conditions fit the Dimitrov defintion of fascism. I gave you a second definition based on the UN conventions against fascist war. I told you how current U.S. material conditions in Iraq fit the definition. So, what if use of the term was diluted by some. The use of a term can't be terminated by its dilution by anybody and everybody, otherwise , the political police could just destroy the use of a working class partisan's term by having the media agents of the bourgeoisie start overusing and misusing the term , "dilute" it in your phrase, and then the working class partisans couldn't use their own term ! Too bad if ultra-leftists and others misuse "fascist". I can still use it and do use it and will use it, based on the solid definitions I gave. ^^^^^^ Ralph: Which of the factors I have enumerated as grounding fascism in the early to mid-twentieth century exists in the present context? ^^^^^ CB: I'm not using your analysis. I am using my definitions, as I gave you in a previous post. The critical absent factor in the U.S. today is that domestically there is not quite _ open_ terrorist rule. There is terrorist rule, but it is not openly illegal. The spectacular police murders of people of color are terrorist, but they are done under "color" ,as the saying goes, of law. The courts sanctioned the cops who shot some innocent person 41 times in NYC , for example, Fascism is when they murder you, and say, "yea and it was illegal too. I you can't do anything about it. " Fascism implies a certain lawlessness by the state ! Although, I think even the Nazis put a legal fig leaf over many of their great crimes. "Open" means "in your face". That's why everytime the Bush regime and the Reaganite institutions do something "in our face", it is scary. It is soft fascism when you pass law like the anti-bankruptcy law that was just passed. It guarantees a certain number of suicides, murders, a large dose of misery for an almost mathematically estimable number of people. It guarantees a certain number of poverty induced crimes, victims of crimes, and imprisonments for crimes. It is certain that these will be somewhat excessively concentrated among Black people. It gets to be a form of "in our face". It is not yet immediate or imminent assasination of physical persons. But it does assure a somewhat longer termed assassination of physical persons. It is necessary to denounce these material conditions in "no uncertain terms ", so to speak.
