America's Neo-Fascism
I had an epiphany this afternoon. I was watching Chris Matthews and this spokesperson for the Gun Owners of America was on. He defended all the people bringing Semi Automatic rifles to Obama events. So Matthews asked him, "Do you think people should be able to bring a loaded gun and sit in the first row of a President Obama event. And the gun owners flack says --"Yes."
My epiphany was :"Wow! There is a real American Neo-Fascist Movement abroad."
My disbelief came on top of the epiphany about the woman yesterday who was comparing Obama to Hitler. She has not a semester of history in her brain. That's why Barney said she was like arguing with a coffee table. Thats what I feel sometimes about some of our correspondents. Here's some real history, by the twentieth century's last great living historian Eric Hobsbwam.
"Fascism was triumphantly anti-liberal. It also provided the proof that man can, without difficulty, combine crack-brained beliefs about the world with a confident mastery of contemporary high technology.... Nevertheless, the combination of conservative values, the techniques of mass democracy, and an innovative ideology of irrationalist savagery, essentially centered in nationalism, must be explained.... The strong commitment of the Left, from the liberal onwards, to anti-war movements, the huge popular revulsion against the mass killings of the First World War, led many to underestimate the emergence of a relatively small, but absolutely numerous, minority for whom uniform and discipline, sacrifice-of self and others- and blood arms and power were what made masculine life worth living. These Rambos of their time were natural recruits for the Radical Right."
The rise of Hitler was on the back of a lot of alienated lower middle class thugs, known as the Brownshirts. In 1930 Germany they made up maybe 12% of the population. These guys strutting around Obama events with Semi Automatics are America's Brownshirts. They need to be opposed right now. In Germany the "good people" didn't oppose the brownshirts in 1930 when they were a real minority. There are a lot of scared American out there--they've lost their 401 K Plans and they don't know who to blame. They've been told by Limbaugh since the days of Ronald Reagan that "the government was the problem". Now they are freaked out. They're in the Interregnum--"The old is dying and the new cannot be born"--and Fascist solutions (throw all the immigrants out and build up the military to Kick Iran's butt) may be appealing. So that is exactly the Propaganda War that is transpiring right now.
However, My guess is that David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel have as good a polling operation as anyone in the country and they know that the independents don't want to be identified with the birthers or the Lyndon LaRouche "Obama as Hitler" crowd. These guys totting guns are a fringe element and the sooner we realize that elections have consequences, that the majority rules and the birthers and fascists can "love it or leave it" (as the 60's statement went), the better for everyone.
"they know that the independents don't want to be identified with the birthers or the Lyndon LaRouche "Obama as Hitler" crowd"
- And that's the real purpose of Marshall's and Taplin's obsession with Hitlerizing the townhall protesters: WH sent word that this might help sway the independents.
You guys are getting desperate and it's starting to show.
August 19, 2009 10:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lalo
I can assure you of this much: Health care is NOT about finding a way to prevent the Universe from pulling the plug on Grandma. As you learn in logic 101
1) All Men (and women) are Mortal
2) Socrates was a man
___________________________________
Socrates was Mortal
August 19, 2009 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ahh HAH!
Lalo35adm, after exposing the Black man he heard about on Fox News who was alleged to be posting on Facebook impersonating an 'Obama hating white supremacist', Lalo has diagnosed the real motives and obsessions of Josh and Taplin!!
Eureka TPM'ers!!
Yet, is it possible, no one with a brain, conscience or a faint grasp of the history of the 20th century would want to be identified with the nuts at the town-halls armed with guns, the stupid Nazi signs or the regurgitated crap they spew that they heard on Beck or Limbaugh?
et tu Lalo?
August 19, 2009 10:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Black Cat in the Hat?
I have a feeling that the deep history that the Cat has been reading is something along the lines of...
Just a wild guess . . .
~OGD~
August 19, 2009 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for saying this so I don't have to. I would, but I don't have to.
August 20, 2009 7:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
What does Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Dick Cheney, Sean Hannity, Tom DeLay, Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint, Newt Gingrich, C Street, Ted Haggard, Ralph Reed, and Anne Coulter, to name a few, have in common?
They're all Lalo's compatriots.
August 20, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you read anything about the Nazi's, especially "Inside the Third Reich", you'll see that the rethugs with all their scary talk about Health Care Reform is taken right out of Goebbels' propaganda playbook. Word for word. It's scary. The rethugs are doing exactly everything to get these Militias up and running. If it worked for Hitler..........
But why doesn't the Secret Service do anything about these people who are armed and dangerous? I remember Bush coming to town and you couldn't even stand on the same street that his motorcade drove through. And that was only people holding signs peacefully.
August 21, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Didn't the woman who brought the picture of Obama with the Hitler moustache do a little bit of "Hitlerizing"?
August 20, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm talking about the Barney Frank meeting.
August 20, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
She was a far left wingnut of course.
August 22, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anb Lalo is off his meds again.
C
August 19, 2009 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
At least you're never off your KoolAid, so it's all good.
August 19, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those who tell the truth are desperate, those who bring guns to public meetings and Hitler pictures are not desperate, the logic of a dittohead Lalo.
August 19, 2009 10:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come on now . . .
Every table needs a chair ... or two.
~OGD~
August 19, 2009 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Guffaw
August 20, 2009 7:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yessssssssssssssssss!
August 21, 2009 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know Jonathan -- I totally agree that these people parading guns around the president are extremists and whackos. I also agree, of course, that comparing Democrats to Nazis is out of line and ridiculous and I'm very proud of Barney Frank.
But come on, there's no brown shirt movement afoot here. Lets not give too much power to the freaks, okay?
August 19, 2009 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lately when I read one your comments, I have the thought that you should change your user name to "destor the common sense liberal." :-)
August 20, 2009 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not the freaks, destor, it's the people behind the freaks and the people pushing their buttons. The union of military and corporate power allied with intimidation and violence is fascism.
If some nutcase shoots somebody as a result of this, they are but the bullet from the gun. It's the people loading the gun who are the fascists and they are dangerous. They know what they are doing. They know they are loading the gun.
August 20, 2009 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enough with the Nazi comparativism! Just as Obama trying to provide health care is not remotely Hitlerian, crazy rightwing nutjobs at rallies are not brownshirts. We need a yearlong, or eternity long, ban on comparing any political act or politician with the Nazis.
It is a) historically inaccurate, b) disrespectful to the 6 million true victims of Nazism, c) histrionic, d) unoriginal, and e) threatens to deprive the word Nazism or fascism of any meaning.
Who's with me?
August 20, 2009 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you. I frankly think that we're well past Nazis at this point in our civilization. Yes, there are some, but they have no influence. And, I find I can debate with most people I meet, even those who carry guns.
We should remind everyone that, most of our gun laws are state by state. It's okay, in many states, to own, carry and wear a fire arm.
Yes, they are "making a statement" but they're doing so by participating in a legal activity. It makes me uneasy but... you know... being uneasy with other people's behavior is party of living in a free society. I don't want to single out the gun carriers any more than I want to randomly eavesdrop on domestic conversations on the suspicion that they might pertain to terrorism.
We do not have to call out enemies Nazis. I wish they wouldn't call us that either. But two wrongs... right?
August 20, 2009 2:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
The right has consistently used the following strategy: Accuse the other side of the thing you are doing, in order to "immunize" yourself from being accused.
Another example is voter fraud. The right constantly talks about voter fraud on the left. There's really nothing to their accusations (Mickey Mouse being registered in Nevada). But it immunizes them from any accusations from the other side (even when valid -- voter roll purges of African American sounding names in Florida or Ohio).
They attempt to make the two sides equivalent, and to foster the attitudes expressed by RosaLux above -- "I don't want to hear another thing about this issue". They do this by pitching the argument at the level of the Jerry Springer Show.
So they can get away with anything, as long as they first accuse the left of doing it, and argue about it the way a 10-year-old would.
I'm not buying it. I think it's perfectly apt to call what the right is doing fascism, because that's is what it is.
I would agree that we should not use the word Nazi, or the name Hitler. Those were specific fascists of another time and place, and it only muddies the waters to invoke them.
But "fascist" is right on the mark, when describing the current tactics of the neo-con right in our country, and I don't think we should let the neo-cons themselves dictate what language is out of bounds for us.
-- ARG
August 20, 2009 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said, the neo-cons are evolving into neo-fascists. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck....
August 21, 2009 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
destor;
I myself don't call people Brownshirts yet, but the tactics are there.
I think a case can be made by others that when people act like brownshirts they should be called brownshirts. All that's missing, as of now, is the violence.
One of the Brownshirt's leaders, Hans Klintzsch was a member of the notorious Organisation Consul, which was basically a right-wing hit squad.
I see certain similarities in an excerpt from their mission statement.
"Spiritual Aims:
The cultivation and dissemination of nationalist thinking; warfare against all anti-nationalists and internationalists; warfare against Jewry, Social Democracy and Leftist-radicalism; fomentation of internal unrest in order to attain the overthrow of the anti-nationalist Weimar constitution . . .
Material aims:
The organization of determined, nationalist-minded men . . . local shock troops for breaking up meetings of an anti-nationalist nature; maintenance of arms and the preservation of military ability; the education of youth in the use of arms.
Notice:
Only those men who have determination, who obey unconditionally and who are without scruples . . . will be accepted. . . . The organization is a secret organization. "
August 20, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
The argument over whether to call the right-wing anti-liberal armed thugs "Brownshirts" is quite misguided. It attempts to focus the current American political problem on a label that is popularly recognized as being a symptom of a sick German society going through massive social and economic change. Yet the "Brownshirts" were just one gang of political thugs at a time when WW I veterans were joining into Freikorps and Socialist paramilitary organizations in reaction to a despised liberal democratic government that replaced the earlier strong militaristic German Kaiser.
The problem in America today is a failure of the government to effectively reign in the right-wing economic elites who have effectively raped the American economy since the 60's and before. America has spent its last half century building a massive war machine and creating an over-class millionaires instead of providing for the health and education of its working population.
Sure we have armed thugs attempting to conduct intimidation of the political process. But we also have fundamentalist anti-modernist preachers who essentially want to turn America into a theocracy that would be run politically much as Iran is. We also have an American population and culture attempting to apply frontier cultural values to a massively urbanized technological civilization (this was a problem the Germans had in the late 19th century as they converted from an agricultural society into a technological one.)
The attempt to focus on a few armed thugs and decide whether or not to call them "Brownshirts" as though that is the problem is simply a failure to understand what the real problems in America today really are.
August 23, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Yes, they are "making a statement" but they're doing so by participating in a legal activity. It makes me uneasy but... you know... being uneasy with other people's behavior is party of living in a free society."
Usually, other people's behavior doesn't involve them waving the means to kill you right under your nose and daring you to do something about it.
I can't believe you're defending this behavior. It's an attempt to intimidate, pure and simple. The fact that our society is stupid enough to permit this shows how far gone we are. Blood will run in the streets if the availability of guns isn't curtailed, and these insane open carry/conceal and carry laws aren't repealed.
August 21, 2009 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
It took, depending on how you count, 12-20 years of nazis before the holocaust took place and, as many have pointed out, the parallels are to the earliest years. Something to keep in mind, even if the rhetoric is alarmistic.
But I am not sure what this "neo-fascism" is.
August 20, 2009 4:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Enough with the Nazi comparativism!
What are you, the speech Nazi? No soup for you!
Just kidding, of course :)
August 21, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
not I.
I think it is TOTALLY our obligation to call these people what they are.
Right wing fanatics and they ARE dangerous, especially when frothing at the mouth.
I would also like to remind RosaLux that there were many more than SIX million victims of the Nazis. Why do we so often only memorialize the JEWISH victims of that era's right wing nut jobs?
Nazi's didn't develop out of a vacuum as the poster rightfully points out. They developed out of a culture of fear and ESPECIALLY in the wake of WWI - and extraordinarily high levels of social and economic displacement.
As a the daughter of a Holocaust Survivor(with a capital H and a capital S which means my father was jewish) I consider it my DUTY to call out early signs of fascism.
Facile comparisons of Obama to Hitler are not the order of the day - but reasoned arguments that point out the dangers and falsehoods spouted by heavily armed "patriots" (assault rifles!) who show up at heated and sometimes violent protests, as well as the drooling propaganda-filled broadcasts we see by the likes of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are most certainly appropriate.
August 21, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
These very vocal bullies, are the mentally deficient whom swallow whole the GOP propaganda they are fed, of course. (I have seen them blogging only today, that Valerie Plame was a "desk jockey" and health care's main problem is "tort reform". Coffee table, indeed... ;^)
I regard the wingnut media as principals of a neo-facist movement, since they cheerled and underwrote all of the Bush Regime abuses of power. To wit;
1) Five GOP appointees on Supreme Court interfere with Florida's right to conduct it's recount, and install Bush Jr, whom lost the 2000 popular vote.
2) Downing Street Memos indicate Bush admin meetings & plans to collude with the Blair UK government mere weeks after 9/11/01, in creating justifications for attacking Iraq.
3) CIA intel is "stovepiped" and cherry-picked to justify false claim of imminent WMD threat from Iraq. Bush sends U.S. military into battle on authorizations obtained with smoke and mirrors, thousands of American soldiers are killed, tens of thousands maimed in urban-warfare quagmire.
4) Longtime U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson publishes article in June 2003 refuting Bush "Yellowcake from Africa" claim put forth in his 2003 SOU address. His wife, 20-year covert service agent Valerie Plame is then exposed as a CIA agent by GOP mouthpieces such as Robert Novak, on plan cooked up by Cheney's office to intimidate any dissenters to Iraq invasion. Plame's distinguished career is wrecked, her life possibly put in danger by the outing.
5) Scooter Libby is convicted for obstruction of justice in the Plame abuse-of-power scandal, Bush commutes his jail sentence.
6) Shortly after 9/11, Bush admin begins mass surveillance of emails and phone calls of Americans, in violation of the 1978 FISA law and the 4th Amendment. Bush lies to reporter in 2004 campaign, that any surveillance conducted is within the law and the Constitution.
7) Bush administration engages in systematic "enhanced interrogation" and rendition program at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo and secret CIA detention facilities, in violation of Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.
8) 8 U.S. Attorneys are fired by Gonzales for not pursuing hand-picked investigations and prosecutions against Democrats.
These are each deeply documented at this point, reported on, & verifiable by Google search. They're indeed serious inroads IMO, to a police state.
Given how delusional, angry, and unwilling to accept electoral defeat the FoxNews crowd is, I am increasingly of the belief that the only solution is amicable divorce. We have nothing now that resembles a "United" States. It's time we split into red and blue, autonomous republics. We can do it by Constitutional Convention and state-by-state referendums if I remember my Poli/Sci correctly.
Imagine a nation without the GOP obstructing all progress... ;^)
-
August 20, 2009 2:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you're advocating secession, it sounds like you're much more radical than they are, doesn't it?
August 20, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Per your definition perhaps. To me it's a pragmatic solution. Red/Blue dissolution by states vote and Convention, as opposed to one side seceding. If Texas, South Carolina or Utah wishes to opt out, or into a Red Republic, that's better IMO than rising anger driven by sheer ignorance, that we have now.
We've just witnessed within the last 18 months, an abject failure of Trickle-Down/Deregulation which has been GOP gospel since 1981. Yet their propaganda is unchanged, they acknowledge no failure and actually expect those policies to continue under Obama. The 20-25% of Americans duped by them, goes out and pickets against any re-taxation, and against a health insurance program they will themselves need, when 3 decades of Reaganomics ends their job as it has millions of others.
If that segment cannot comprehend reality after the crash of 2008, it's very hard to imagine they ever will. Instead of giving a new approach a chance, they've resorted to screaming disruption of rational discussion, and gun-toting.
And some believe the anger is a seedling of a future armed revolt from the far right. If that were to continue building, I'd prefer to head it off with a National Divorce.
August 20, 2009 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
The psychological disorders and imbecility that are a central underpinning of the gun nut movement should be dealt as the problems that they are, not by cowardly coddling, and not by fear-mongering with far-fetched analogies to Hitler and the Nazis. Yes, of course, it "could happen here" but if it ever does it will look radically different. History is not a Youtube video that replays itself nor is it a computer file that is transferred and downloaded from one very different century and continent to another. Democrats in Congress need to cut the crap, find their long-lost backbones, use their majority for something other than pitiful PC whining, and pass the kind of common sense gun control laws that practically every other democratic-civil-liberties-and-human-rights-adhering country in the civilized world has had in place for decades.
August 20, 2009 4:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -- Attributed to Mark Twain
Here Taplin points out the ways in which our current times rhyme with the historical record. The comparisons are valid, and the caution against "repeating" history in this case should be taken very seriously, in my opinion.
-- ARG
August 20, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Calling someone or some group "fascist" is one of the oldest, least original, and laziest cop-outs a third-rate journalist can resort to, even if (as in this case) there is a non-negligible modicum of validity to the accusation.
America today is in almost a different universe from 1930s Germany. Within the recent past of the brownshirts in 1930, their country had lost a World War fought for no reason anyone has ever been able to begin to justify and which wrecked their economy and killed millions of their young men, was massively punished for it afterwards even though many other countries were also guilty of having helped it happen, had had their currency completely wiped out, and this was a country that had never ever been a democracy under rule of law. For all its many problems the USA has never been anything like THAT.
One morsel of validity in comparing today's gun-nuts to Nazi storm troopers is that they lived in a land that shrugged off too many common sense duties of a civilized society. The brownshirts brutalized and beat people up, and those with the authority to speak out or do something looked the other way or indulged in escapism. Here we also have a form of escapism, and in that sense the lamest and least original historical comparison in the book does apply to a degree. Instead of proposing concrete action to deal with the fundamental problem -i.e. that Nobody, least of such NRA kooks, has any good reason for owning military style weapons- Taplin wastes time with facile name-calling that will have absolutely no practical impact.
August 20, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
They aren't Nazis but there are fascists out there. Dick Cheney is one of them. You really don't yet get what they were trying to do to executive power? You think the Patriot Act and FISA have all benign anti-terror purposes? You think that the intimidation tactics they've used against unions aren't orchestrated?
I'm not saying they're Hitler. I'm not saying they're building gas chambers. But they are intent on far right control, massive power vested in the executive alone, and a country controlled by a corporate oligarchy.
I'm not saying this includes all Republicans. But it includes some of them. It includes the Blackwater types.
It can't happen here? It could happen here. We're becoming Russia. We're becoming China. Capitalism doesn't require democracy.
August 20, 2009 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did you read what I wrote? I didn't say "it" couldn't happen here. I said Taplin's lazy fearmongering won't do squat to stop it. Let the fascists (if you too are too lazy to come up with a more accurate description) deal in BS. Anti-fascists should stick to the facts. The facts point clearly to the conclusion that we should send the NRA nuts back to juvenile hall or grade school or to mental health care clinics and take away their deadly military toys as most other democratic countries would have done years ago (I am talking about real 21st century democracies, NOT Russia or China or Nazi Germany, Ancient Babylon or the Easter Island Culture) and stop whining like babies while eternally DOING NOTHING!
August 21, 2009 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The obsession with the brownshirts is serving Obama well. It makes him look good as his administration is abandoning all its commitments one by one.
I have no simpathy for "neo fascists", but I resent even more the transparent defense of Obama that invites me to focus on the nutty instead of the crooks who use and enable them.
The thugs are the breeding ground for fascism. But a fascist turn doesn't depend on them. In themselves, they are a pathetic bunch. To become a force, they need a) corporate power deciding that they need them, b) mainstream liberals acquiescing because subservience to corporate power saves them from their base, which they fear.
August 20, 2009 6:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
As usually happens around here we fixate on a tree and the forest sits out there, unexamined, and one of the usual suspects (yes, Lalo this time) starts the diversion and with dutiful Pavlovian reactions we follow him away from what this essay was trying to tell us.
I don't think the essay is particularly well written, but there are fruitful things in it for discussion anyhow. Notice, for example how the quote from Eric Hobsbawm--doesn't anyone proofread stuff any more? Look toward the middle of the quote to this:
The emphasis is mine.So who is ultimately responsible for the rise of fascism? The liberals.
This is not all Hobsbawm has to offer, but as he ages he moves more into the "a pox on both your houses" school of thought, which is a danger for all of us. Here's a recent bit of Professor H.
Let me be quick to say I think he's right here, and right throughout the essay. But then I'm at the age when poxing both houses becomes natural for me. The from which I dragged the opening paragraph is very good, I think...wisdom of the ages and all that. Read it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives
And let me finish with a quote from the same essay which will probable drive our agent provocateur nuts.
August 20, 2009 7:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
"and with dutiful Pavlovian reactions we follow him away"
- you're giving me credit I do not deserve.
The fact that you're trying to see a forest behind the trees is admirable, but I wish you would try a little harder.
"Fascism at townhalls" is a simple meme that was created by Democrats to continue demonizing the townhall protests, since they seem to have the upper hand at the moment.
It's just an escalation of the prior unsuccessful attempts to brand them "racists, thugs, mobs" in order to win the PR war over the health care reform.
That tactic backfired and peeled off the independents' support of Obama's policies even further. Josh Marshall cited polls to that effect. So Taplin is correct when he points out the Axelrod/Emmanuel bet that the independents can be brought back if the townhalls are suddenly seen as increasingly extremist and completely illegitimate.
That's also perfectly in line with the WH strategy of first making deals with pharma and insurance industry, then turning around and accusing them of being immoral when support for reform began to dissipiate.
The forest behind the trees is that both sides resort to "they're fascists" rhetoric when they're unable to convince the public on the merits of their reform proposals.
We saw the left doing precisely the same thing during Bush years and see the right doing it now.
The forest behind the trees is that these things happen when the reform, be it Social Security or health care, is driving off into a ditch.
August 20, 2009 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Forest from the trees, chicken before the egg. Is it going off in the ditch and this causes the discord, or is the nature of the discord in part responsible for it going towards the ditch. Could it be that our problems with health care reform is a result of a large segment of the poplulation inability to discuss a complex issue like health care with any amount of depth and sophistication.
You're correct when you say that those on all sides use the word "fascist" as term to downgrade those they oppose. The word has lost all its original meaning, and now just means "they suck." Most couldn't tell you the original definition (but such is the evolution of the English language, for better and for worse.)
What does seem somewhat unique in this round is emergence of calling the Obama and the WH as "Nazis." Of course, there was always the sign or two at the protest rally against the war, or just against Bush and company, that implied an equation of Bush with Hitler. But, just my impression, these people today actually believe it, that Obama is, or potentially is, the next leader of a mass killing off, this time old people rather than jews.
August 20, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
And maybe our problems stems in part because we always try to divide everything into two houses. There are no countries out there operating in a pure capitalistic system, etc. There are benefits from a free market economy we want to retain and at times the wealth generated from it enable progressive policies in the public sphere, at the same time socialistic/ progressive/ collective approaches also have outcomes that benefit the free market economy, and so on and so on.
The question here seems to be how do evolve our political systems and cultures so that they become more sophisticated, more mature. Because what this means is that populace, the citizens themselves become more politically sophisticated and mature. We can't just tell the "brownshirts" to love or leave it. We can't turn ourselves into them and use power to get to peace.
It is not easy, so we do find ourselves easily falling into the "pox on both houses."
August 20, 2009 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
your time spent on this comment appreciated by me, professor, though I am sure you suspect it is mostly crying in the wind (as I do.)
August 20, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Artappraiser...I did. But The Hobsbawm article look up was fun for me anyhow, I hope some people enjoyed reading it. If not, I did.
August 20, 2009 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The crowds of disinformed authoritarians are not your enemy. The corporate media who manipulate and promote them are your enemy.
Just discovered American "neo-fascism", Mr. Taplin? What is a rabble of gun-owners next to the Project for a New American Century, whose blueprint became US foreign and "national security" policy in 2001?
And what was their Reichstag Fire?
http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/make-it-happen-on-purpose/
August 20, 2009 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. The driver is the bald-faced liar on the electronic soap box. And on that trolly, the Bush Regime brought us an alarming part of the way past our fail-safes, towards police state.
But we push back now on the WWW, and may over time be able to defeat the propaganda menace of Media Inc. I believe the Progressive blogosphere has begun to do so. There's indeed no new story here re fascism, only the new (2009) question of whether we act in official capacities against those abuses of power, or sweep under the rug from which they one day crawl out again.
August 20, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's Hobsbawm's point in the essay I linked. The logical error is called the False Dilemma / Bifurcation Fallacy http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/false-dilemma/
I had a professor years ago who blamed this logic trap on evoluton. Isn't everything evolution's fault? Suppose that rather than intelligence evolving in a bilaterally symmetrical species it had evolved in starfish. Out goes "on the one hand, on the other hand" thinking. We're probably lucky we're not centipedes--we'd never get all the options investigated.
August 20, 2009 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Logical fallacies abound in human thinking, since most of the time we aren't so much thinking as having to choose whether or not to act, or which kind of action. We apply rules of thumb since Nature does not require exhaustive analysis for success, only getting it right often enough for our progeny to multiply. Even centipedes need to limit their choices to an easy eeny-meeny-miny-mo.
August 20, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting how many of our devices relate to body parts...we can't get away from our physicality no matter how hard we try. The "rule of thumb" is a case in point. It is usually attributed to colonial law, where the distinction between chastisement and battery was determined by that rule. Masters (and husbands) were propery chastising their slaves/wives/children as long as the switch was smaller in diameter than their thumb. Above? Battery. I used to wonder if this provided natural selection for males with small thumbs.
I wonder how many words rhymes with eeny I'll have to research centipede digitization. If they don't have four fingers and a thumb to be mo the're going to be in deep do do. Of course, if they do the counting rhyme they could either come up with enough to rhyming words to cover 100, in which case they'd only have to remember whether to start left or start right, or perhaps they could use number of limbs per body segment to be their marker. Either way they'd have to catch something else by the toe, as their sensibilities must be more advanced than ours are.
August 20, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since we are who we are because of evolution, in the end all things can be blamed on evolution. All the glory and all the blame. Just like quarterbacks.
Evolution does not impact all things, and definitely not immediately, but occuring over generations. If an attribute is neutral to survial, then evolutionary forces will not impact that attribute, or only to the extent that this neutral attribute is tied to another attribute that is tied to survival and reproduction.
Our problem is that language has emerged only recently, and one's ability to be sophicated in thought has no bearing on our population's ability to reproduce. So we are stuck with this tool Language given to us by evolution, but still don't know how to use it properly.
August 20, 2009 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is being shown now on the national scene is indicative of what has been going on for years in small rural towns - at least the one where I live. I know a number of Vietnam Vets who are opposed to socialism but who nevertheless have lived their entire post Vietnam war lives supported by the government. They will defend us from "socialism" with their many weapons. I have thought for years that it is only a matter of time before these folks go national... But ask them to define socialism and they are incoherent. Sooz
August 20, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pretty damned clear. These people are not carrying guns to meetings to assert their second amendment rights. They are brandishing the weapons to intimidate and disrupt. Real democratic, eh?
It is 100% accurate to call these "Brown Shirt" tactics. (But, I guess that's nothing to worry about because they are not literally Brown Shirts. Right?)
August 20, 2009 2:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oddly enough, shirt colour may not be completely trivial.
Mr. Taplin obviously doesn't know enough about authentic (sc., Old Euro) fascism to be dangerous. Probably he's just throwing the verbal grenade back at Neocomrade Señorito J. de Goldberg of Wingnut City and the militant extremist GOP.
I wrote it all up to suit myself yesterday. The bit about gunsel couture went like this:
Happy days.
August 21, 2009 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pretty damned clear. These people are not carrying guns to meetings to assert their second amendment rights. They are brandishing the weapons to intimidate and disrupt. Real democratic, eh?
It is 100% accurate to call these "Brown Shirt" tactics. (But, I guess that's nothing to worry about because they are not literally Brown Shirts. Right?)
August 20, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fascism and Nazism have been overused as a means of character assassination, particularly by conservatives, to the point that the words have lost their meaning. There is the femi-Nazi, abortion Nazi, antiwar protester Nazi, etc.
However, fascism is a real political phenomenon and identifying a political movement as fascist is not hyperbole or Goodwin’s law when it is true.
August 20, 2009 10:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fow what it is worth, I am a "gun nut" and I am a lifetime member of Gun Owners of America, but I still think that bringing guns to a meeting with the deliberate intention to provoke is a stupid thing to do.
August 20, 2009 10:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glaiver,
well, you think that way because you're mentally stable.
August 21, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
j
August 21, 2009 3:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
The black humour in this thread, to someone on the other side of the pond, is seemingly misplaced. We have our problems, of course, on this side but the increasingly violent rhetoric in the US against a democratically elected president is extremely disturbing.
It goes without saying that US gun law is completely inexplicable to a European. To quote the Bill of Rights or whatever that allows every citizen to carry a gun is about a hundred years out of date. In the 21st century it is somewhat ridiculous for grown men to swagger about with a 45 under their belt to buy a fried chicken!
It is, of course, anything but a joke. The current upsurge in overt threats of violence is deeply worrying.
August 21, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow the only neo-fascism I have nightmares about is the fascist in the WH.
These men don't upset me in the least.
They haven't done anything wrong. Look to your administration for those who are the communo or neo if you will, FASCISTS!
August 22, 2009 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
OH and by the way, there were NO threats of violence you foolish kool-aid drinking pansies!
On the other hand, the first guy in NH was attacked and assaulted by two Obamathugs, and he didn't even reach for that gun he had.
So who's promoting violence here? I would say it's Obama's army.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUxjahek0f8
August 22, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fascism is one of the broad traditions in American Politics. If nothing else, America's vast eugenics movement of the thirties and forties, and the continuous appeal in of the Father Coughlin/Bill O'Reilly's to the American psyche underlines this.
Fascism is the most successful adaptation of power to mass, media-driven society, and in 2009, it's hardly news that fascism is a.) a much broader historical movement than a bunch of brown- and black-shirted lunatics in Germany and Italy, and b.) actively supported in America by the same power elites that have supported it everywhere.
The reality is that America has handed power to fascists repeatedly, and each time been convinced to accept less of their democracy back. Each time, a war has been the pretext. Those who support the basic premises of corporatism – essentially the Republican Party, and Southern Dems – plus most other Dems – have learned that a state of continuous war, or preparation for war is the ideal way to promote and strengthen fascist ideology.
The gun nuts aren't part of this in any important way, because they don't actually play a role in this subversion of American Democracy. Shooting a President every now and again is perfectly normal, and far predates fascism. That's why they're a joke, of course: they're America's Maginot Line, expecting the enemy to come from one direction, the direction they came from last time – if they'd come last time.
Sadly, the most recent militarist foray, in 2001, was a coup, with a stolen election and a government one-mindedly seeking a pretext for war marks. Debates like this post are simply evidence of the failure of confidence in American political life: if Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow ever declares a coup has happened, you might start talking about it, but the evidence in front of you won't: Habeas Corpus is effectively suspended when and if the government requires it: half your military force in your latest war is private mercenaries uncontrollable by Congress; monitoring of citizen's private communication is normal; ownership of the means of election by corporate interests is complete; and Americans consider their core cultural life to be one of diversion, inanity, avoidance of serious debate and the elimination of inquiry.
The party was beautiful, but now is the hangover. Americans themselves agreed to the wars and empire, and gave away the greatest government the world had yet seen. Like the election of Hitler in 33, the permission of a public without the confidence to trust the evidence before them, drugged by self-delusion and happy talk is a prerequisite for disaster.
August 23, 2009 12:52 AM | Reply | Permalink