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It Can't Happen Here

  
 
grant
16:07 / 22.12.05
I found this article on "My Left Wing" called Slouching Toward Kristallnacht .

It's fairly thought-provoking, especially if you're at all critically minded and prone to cautiousness bordering on paranoia. Basically, it's a few extended quotations from Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 - 1945. Mayer is a Jewish-American journalist who interviewed ordinary folks living in Germany during the rise of the National Socialists. There are a few passages of the excerpts that have been put in boldface because they're reminiscent of contemporary America.

I have two simultaneous and contradictory reactions to this. One is, "Oh, invoking Nazis as criticism of your opponent - right. %Haven't seen that one before.%" The other is, "Damn, you know, that's kind of creepy. Is this how it starts?"

I'm not sure what to do with this reaction, or with this article. Is it valid? Is it useful? When does the line between hyperbole and genuine alarm get crossed? Can we ever use this part of history as an example? And is it happening now?
 
 
Mirror
16:47 / 22.12.05
All I know is that this strikes painfully, painfully close to home. No, not close. It hits the bullseye without error.

Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
 
 
elene
08:59 / 23.12.05
Why would you doubt it works just this way, grant? Isn't it obvious it does?

It surprises me the article ends questioning who the next scapegoat might be. Has World War Two somehow been reduced to the Holocaust alone? Is that all Germany has to be ashamed of in the eyes of Americans? Are we good people no matter what measures we might resort to, just as long as we don't murder six million Jews?

Perhaps one might have been certain the Third Reich would play out as it did. These new war lords were after all poor and had to take wealth and power from others. They were ruthless and they made it quite clear what they intended. Of course who could believe it. America's masters, on the other hand, are very rich. They don't need excuses. They don't need scapegoats. No one's surprised when they do what they say they will.

It's certainly not exactly the same. That's true.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:41 / 23.12.05
On a related note, where does the quote "fascism doesn't start with concentration camps- that's where it ends" come from? (I heard it on a Blaggers ITA album and I've always wondered, as I'm quite fond of quoting it myself in just this type of discussion).
 
 
Char Aina
13:35 / 23.12.05
are the 'islamic terror men' not a scapegoat, then? or do people have to be killed en masse in camps before it counts?
 
 
Tom Paine's Bones
19:44 / 12.01.06
where does the quote "fascism doesn't start with concentration camps- that's where it ends" come from? (I heard it on a Blaggers ITA album and I've always wondered, as I'm quite fond of quoting it myself in just this type of discussion).

I know that it's a speech that's been given by Mensi (who's the speaker on the Blaggers album) at Angelic Upstarts' gigs for quite some time. I'm not sure whether or not he's the originator of the quote though.

I'd shy away from describing the current US regime as fascist or even seriously moving towards fascism. Mostly because I do differentiate between an authoritarian regime of the traditional right, which I think the US is undoubtedly moving towards and fascism.

I'm not hard-line enough to insist that any government classified as fascist has to have a corporatist economy, but there are several important reasons I wouldn't say the US is moving towards fascism.

I simply don't think the social conditions are right. Historically fascism comes to power when you have a capitalist ruling class in crisis (despite sometimes using anti capitalist rhetoric, traditionally fascism comes to an arrangement with the ruling class when push comes to shove. The small number of exceptions to that have all been crushed, Romania's Iron Guard for example), and the US ruling class is not in that position. For them to implement fascism is simply a tactical risk I can't see them being willing to take.

Equally, I can't see the US needing to crush independent working class associations (unions etc.) in the way fascist regimes always do.

There are people on the religious right who I do think veer seriously towards a Falangist variety of fascism, but I think they're too much on the fringe to seriously have that much of an influence.

I know that this may seem at least partly a matter of semantics. The reason I'm wary about using the term "fascist" over generally, is that I think that it causes problems for the antifascist movement. It's necessary to very carefully define your enemy in order to fight it effectively. See also the importance between differentiating between "fascist" and "Nazi" groups on the far right. The current threat actually comes from the tactically clever neofascist groups. The minority of fascist groups currently seriously influenced by Nazism aren't really a political threat at the moment.
 
 
sleazenation
22:20 / 12.01.06
I'd shy away from describing the current US regime as fascist or even seriously moving towards fascism. Mostly because I do differentiate between an authoritarian regime of the traditional right, which I think the US is undoubtedly moving towards and fascism.

I think looking for an exact fascism-USA match is going is a mistake. You can be living in a situation that is not an according to Hoyle fascist regeme and still in a very nasy place...
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
00:36 / 13.01.06
Agreed, and doesn't using the term 'fascist' (or 'crypto-fascist' or 'corporate fascism') to describe America (or AmeriKKKa, as they say) just smack of campus-level political rhetoric? It makes it hard for ideological swing-voters to take your position seriously when the vocabulary used could have come from System of a Down lyrics.
Maybe a better term, which I have invented just this second, would be a 'Morally failed State', which could include everyone from Nazi Germany to the USSR, Zimbabwe, Iran, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, North Korea, Haiti, Cuba, Saudi-Arabia, and a bunch more. This term, rather than the more narrow 'Fascist', could denote a State that has entered a sustained period of behaviour that is unnaceptable to its citizens and the world at large (once all the facts are in).
 
 
alas
03:25 / 13.01.06
Equally, I can't see the US needing to crush independent working class associations (unions etc.) in the way fascist regimes always do.

But I'm pretty sure this has mostly already happened. The number of union members is shrinking very quickly, and Walmart has worked very hard to be sure that they, the biggest employer in the US, do not have to work with a unionized workforce.

They crushed it mainly through rhetoric, but crushed it they did.

(I am reading Phillip Roth's novel, The Plot Against America and it's really good on this issue.)
 
 
Tom Paine's Bones
14:05 / 13.01.06
And there is of course also the Taft-Hartley act, which is a legalistic attack on union organising.

But I think there's a big difference between weakening and restricting unions (which also happened in the UK under Thatcher) and the full scale attacks you see under regimes like Pinochet's. I think Pinochet's an interesting one to look at in comparison to the US, as the only fascist regime to also have a full capitalist economy.

Again, it's a matter of tactics for the US ruling class. There's really no need for them to implement fully repressive measures against trade unions, considering how weak the unions actually are.
 
 
grant
14:46 / 13.01.06
I'd like to point out that I (carefully, I hope) didn't use the word "fascism" in my original post -- I'm less interested in textbook fascism than I am in totalitarianism or, I'm not sure what to call it, an absolute rulership of ideological absolutes.

Although fascism is probably the first example of that pattern that comes to most people's minds, I think the USSR under Stalin and China's Cultural Revolution would both be related.
 
 
sleazenation
22:30 / 13.01.06
Yes, the first, perhaps facile, thought that pops into my head is something along the lines of 'yeah I bet the victims of Stalin's pogroms (or other repressive regeime) were just thanking there lucky stars that technically they were not the victims of a facist state'...
 
 
quixote
03:32 / 17.01.06
Waiting to recognize your situation until your government undertakes the assembly-line slaughter of millions is lethally stupid. The question is not "do we fit the definition of fascism?" The question is "where are we headed?"

Whether you call it fascism or something else, all authoritarian regimes share the idea that the authority is above the law. The clearest symptoms of that mindset are detention without trial, and torture.

You see where I'm heading with this. The US has crossed that line. At this point, the difference between us and a dictatorship is one of degree. It is no longer a difference in kind. We're not far from the line, there are lots of democratic institutions left--some of them on life support--and we could still step back across the line without too much difficulty if we come to our senses.

It's a big if.
 
  
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