On 1/2/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 1/2/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The authoritarianism we've seen in recent years -- especially right
> after 911 -- was forcible only toward an unpopular minority and was
> generally accepted by the majority in the US. In many ways, it was
> akin to Cointelpro back during the 1970s, which also applied to
> unpopular minorities (e.g., the Black Panther Party). The fascism in
> the Mussolini or Franco sense of the word was aimed at very popular
> movements tending toward becoming the majority. The authoritarianism
> of recent years in the US isn't that kind of fascism as much as it's
> American as apple pie.
In the past, though, the targets of repression as American as apple
pie were more clearly defined: racially, as in the cases of American
Indians, Blacks, Japanese, and so on, when racial exclusion was
perfectly legal, which is not the case today; or politically, as in
the case of Communist Party members, Black Panther Party members,
etc., though liberal sympathizers could become collateral damages.
Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and repressed a very
unclearly-defined minority, i.e., southerners who might be sympathetic
with the CSA.
He went way beyond Bush, by the way. Was Lincoln a fascist?
--
Jim Devine / "Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the
world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it
is the farthest thing from it, because cynics don't learn anything.
Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world
because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us." -- Stephen
Colbert.
