Last exit fascism

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 1 Aug 2000 KXX4493553 at aol.com wrote:

> Once upon a time there was a writer named Bertolt Brecht who said: "In 
> special times it's a crime to speak about trees." At that time there wasn't 
> an ecologist movement, we would say it not in other words, but the message is 
> clear: in special times you are forced to speak about things that have 
> priority. It may sound pathetic, but language is the only weapon we have.
> 
> Sorry, dear lit-crits, but now I'm talking about other things.

True, language seems to be all we've got. However, the prevailing thought
in the land is that language is not much of a weapon with which to change
society. Language has these built in  hierarchical binary oppositions
we all know so well. Truth be told, therefore, language isn't even
adequate to demonstrate the proposition that society can or should be 
changed. True, language allows us to express things we don't like
about the status quo. Language allows us to construct a Them who
are the oppressors and an Us who are the oppressees. But don't let
any deconstructionists (deconstructors) into the building. Deconstructors
are hopeless reactionaries I know but they have made a rather important
point, a point many of us felt long before there was a Derrida on the
scene. All this being said, when language is percieved to be the ONLY
weapon, even though an inadequate one, we can be forgiven for continuing
to try to employ it in the service of some vaguely hoped-for justice. I
sympathize with kwp for doing so notwithstanding the fact that I also feel
totally frustrated in yet another restatement. (I'm not objecting just
feeling frustrated)  

Is language all we've got. Lenin believed in guns. However he also once
said something to the effect of what he might be able to accomplish if he
only had a dozen Francis of Assisis on his staff. I know the age of Saints
and belief in a higher order is long past.

				P.


 The situation 
> in Germany, Austria and other countries forces me to do so. The news I heard 
> from the party convention of the Republican party point at the same 
> direction. Two decades of social-darwinist and neoliberal propaganda led us 
> in a situation where now new forms of fascim have appeared. It began with the 
> Pinochet-Friedman-connection in the midst of the seventies and the end of the 
> keynesian era. So the new form of fascism is a "market fascism". The Nazi 
> fascism (and Mussolini and Franco and...) was a kind of "right-wing 
> keynesianism" but nowadays we have a complete different situation. The public 
> sphere is getting smaller and smaller, everything is more and more 
> commercialized, and if the development is going on you'll have to pay for 
> breathing one day... and you cannot emigrate anywhere. There are no longer 
> "islands of peace and innocence" - if that had ever existed. The new market 
> fascim is a worldwide phenomenon, and it's everywhere the same - it doesn't 
> matter any longer if you go to Nea Zealand, Argentina or South Africa. In the 
> "centres of paralysis" (James Joyce) the "democratic" propaganda in the media 
> remembers me sometimes at the real socialist propaganda - rising gross income 
> product, a booming economy, everyone can get rich if he/she really wants - at 
> the same time rising poverty, rising debts, and a public infrastructure that 
> is getting worse and worse - the Potemkin villages of the real existing 
> capitalism. It doesn't matter any longer if you have any political 
> "legitimation" for your crimes. The runners amok and the young Nazis are 
> symptoms for the same "social disease" and psycho-pathology. And a society 
> who begins to make war against its own youth shows only that it has no 
> future. They need no SS-uniforms or a new "Fuehrer". There may be a lot of 
> local leaders or local terror activists, but the mob is only the "executive" 
> part of a decadent society which is full of indifference, ego-maniacs and 
> money-obsessed. 
> Again: this may be sound "pathetic" but when I'm looking at trees in the same 
> moment I must think at "The rise and fall of Mahagonny"...
> And isn't Vineland exactly about this subject? 1984, eh? What's about 2004???
> 
> kwp
> "Who speaks about fascism cannot be silent about capitalism." (Max Horkheimer)
>