More on fascism

[Terrance]

Malignd wrote:
> 
> Re the alacrity and fuzziness with which the word
> "fascism" is used:
> 
> Christopher Hitchens, in the course of reviewing, in
> the Atlantic Monthly, Sidney Blumenthal's book, The
> Clinton Wars, talks about how the Democrats and
> Republicans, two parties that, in the larger scheme of
> things, sit pretty close to one another on the
> political spectrum, attempt to exaggerate with
> rhetoric such differences as do exist, as if great,
> uncrossable gulfs separated the two.  He writes:
> 
> "If this [exaggeration] meant anything, it meant that
> the difference between a donkey and an elephant was
> the difference between democracy and fascism, or
> between pluralism and absolutism."
> 
> Not my favorite person, Hitchens, but this seems apt.

Fascism is probably just a word for most of you. But
the reality is very much present in this country. And
the fact of it dominates most of the world today. Each year there is
less and less freedom for more and more people. Put simply, fascism
is the control of the state by a single man or by an oligarchy,
supported by the military and the police. This is why I keep
emphasizing the dangers of corrupt police forces, of uncontrolled secret
police,
like the FBI and the CIA and the Bureau of Narcotics and the
Secret Service and Army counterintelligence and the Treasury men—what a
lot of sneaky types we have, spying on us all!

		--Gore Vidal

The Democrats are the bleeding-heart-fascists because they  bewail the
loss of "middle class" jobs, yet they have no way to get them back. I
guess we could call them the phony-anti-fascists too. That is, if we say
the Republicans are the real- postmodern-Amerikan-fascists. Only the
real-postmodern-Amerikan-fascists would name  fascistic legislation a
"Patriot Act" and set the world on fire with war and more war in the
name of American "family values." 


The Fascists of old, not your teacher or your mother, your f-ing mother
is a Fascist! but the real fascists like Il Duce were very good at
diverting attention away from what the working class really cared about
to phony issues so that the real issues, the exploitation of the many by
the few, will continue to go unnoticed. 


Is it OK to be a Luddite? Is it OK to be a writer? Is it OK to use a
word like fascism the way kids use the F-word? 

We have an industrial economy where people work, not individually, but
socially.
We work together in factories, offices, schools and all other
workplaces. Today, economic freedom for all people means, not private
property, which can become monopolized by a few, but social property.
The workplaces we work in and the machines we work with need to belong
to all of us, as a cooperative economic community. 
This change in ownership is the only way to acquire the full product of
our labor and ensure everyone has the opportunity to use his/her skills
and talents productively. 
This idea serves the interests of the great majority, the working-class,
but clashes with the interests of the owning class. 

To achieve the new freedom requires a political struggle. It requires
that the workers become aware of their class position in society so they
can organize to build a new society where there will be no classes. 

Until that happens, and I'm not holding my breath, I'm sending my kids
to college (the democrats phony-anti-fascist answer) and teaching them
to swing a hammer (the best answer I've found to all the questions life
lifts and drops onto my horses).