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> For all the legislation and absurd statements by the Bush
White House, it
has shied away from testing most of this by doing something and getting it before the courts. In the end, I don't see it as much different than the laws they had on the books during the Cold War, authorizing extraordinary executive privilege, etc. Generally, the repression has thus far been very selectively focused on Muslims and people with Middle Eastern associations, recalling the ethnic focus of the Red Scares in the 1920s. All of this speaks to political realities that transcend what legislation or its authors and advocates might say. In short, this is mostly neither unprecedented nor actually threatening any imminent transformation of the country's civic culture (such as it is) in any substantive ways. ML. < Seems to me the operative word is "imminent transformation."
In addition, the meaning and ones understanding of "the country's civic culture"
and whether or not this "civic culture" requires some mysterious "catalytic
convertor" to become fascistic is an issue.
Earlier, it was written by another contributor:
>As somebody who has been outspokenly critical of the idea
that fascism is
an imminent threat in the US, I had been meaning to respond to Stan Goff's article "Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America" that appeared at truthdig.com. LP < Again we are confronted with the word "imminent" and "imminent
threat" as the focal point of critique. I have read Mr. Goff's article in
question and the title, as stated by the above critique is "Sowing the Seeds of
Fascism in America."
To "Sow" or rather, the conceptual logic implied in the
meaning of "Sow," in contradistinction to that, which is "imminent" . . .
is the question. To sow the seeds of fascism (a terroristic political
doctrine and method of class rule) versus the "imminent transformation," of the
existing civic culture, seems to me the issue involved in the above
response to Mr. Goff's article.
The existing civic culture is of course not the issue because
such a creature has to be narrowed and defined critically. The existing military
culture based and rooted in and riveted to the system of military bases
throughout primarily the Southern United States, is and always have been a
noticeable aspect of the civic culture of the country.
In a few words this existing military culture, that is an
aspect of the civic culture "of the country," has in our 200 years history,
always been under the political and ideological domination of the Southern wing
of our ruling class. To understand this military culture critically, would
require one to examine the history and legacy of the Southern wing of the ruling
class, which has always been more capitalist than classically bourgeois, in the
meaning of the burger.
In other words one is challenged to examine what is called
Southern culture or at least acknowledge that such a creature exists.
George W. Bush, does of course represent the historical
striving of a distinct sector of the historic Southern ruling class.
George W. expresses as his individuality a civic
culture that is more Southern than Texan. I once again suggest for
inspection, a breath taking accounting of George W. Bush life politics and
actions, by an indigenous member of the Southern Wing of the ruling class,
rooted in the peculiarity of Texas history: Michael Lind.
Mr. Lind's "Made In Texas: George W. Bush And the Southern
Takeover of American Politics," - A New American Book, 2003, devoted generous
space to the particulars of the military aspects of Southern civic culture,
which is inherently fascistic, rather than racist, or rather fascistic with a
racial ideology. This line of thinking is echoed in Mr. Goff's critique, which
is from a lens that is generally accepted as a general Marxist viewpoint.
Mr. Goff's writings, as a former solider, including "Sowing
the Seeds of Fascism in America," generally proceed from a Southern perspective
(!!!) of the military aspects of Southern civic culture, rather than a
mysterious "civic culture of the country." Then Mr. Goff speaks of
historical process logic - sowing, and the blossoming out of the soil of
Southern history, rather than a concept of "imminent" and this difference is
apparently not understood or misunderstood by a casual critique of his article.
Goff is of course a Sout/nor (Southerner).
The imminent insurrection (ascension) to power of fascism in
America, was not my understanding as the purpose of the article "Sowing the
Seeds of Fascism in America." Read what Mr. Goff writes for yourself:
"In American society right now, with the immigration hysteria
fueled by faux populists like CNN’s execrable Lou Dobbs, there is a growing wave of xenophobia that has begun to legitimate
vigilantism, like that of the Arizona
Minutemen (supported even by the governor of
California); and vigilantism is always a feature of fascism in periods before it
decisively achieves state power. The lines between the comic-opera
militias parked along the Arizona border, the “libertarian” militias in the
Midwest and the Aryan militias in the Idaho foothills are not terribly
clear. Timothy McVeigh could have easily related to all of them.
The social currents of racial/cultural supremacy are there. The vigilantism is forming. So two aspects of fascism are already falling into place. Another aspect, and one that was formative of Timothy McVeigh, is economic destabilization." (end) In our history, the ascension to power of fascists, in the former slave holding states of the historic black belt, came to power on the basis of extralegal organizations formed from the shattered remnants of the Southern army, having taken a horrific defeat in the Civil War. The political context was the alliance between Wall Street financial-industrial capital and the remnants of the old Southern slave oligarchy and this alliance brought the period of Reconstruction to an end. I cannot but agree that the seeds of vigilantism, (extralegal organizations of terror) were sowed years ago and deserves our attention in making an estimate of the increased militarization of American society. Militarization + the military aspects of Southern civic culture + its historic racial ideological form and _expression_ is by default and the logic of American history, the recipe for political fascism in America. Racial ideology continues to confuse reality. Even under conditions of affirmative action and the end of legal segregation, all the data not only suggest but empirically reveals that the African American people, as a people, remain in a second class citizenship status to whites in "civic culture." Even when individual blacks are more often than not, able to acquire wealth and privilege; even when the overt racial superiority ideology is legally outlawed, as in the armed forces and everywhere else in "civic society," inequality remains as a very material structural relation. At its best, equality in the armed forces means more often than not, blacks adopting the master race ideology. It is not uncommon to hear blacks speaking of "Arabs" as "sandni**ers" or "the new ni**ers" - especailly in the armed forces. Nor is it uncommon to run into women who view women as weak and inferior - "for biological reasons," under conditions where sex discrimination is legally outlawed. The ascension of fascism to power or more accurately the conditions under which a fascist grouping within the ruling class carries out a successful insurrection is another slightly different issue and brings us to the question of imminent. At any rate, Mr. Goff does in fact speak to the question of "imminent" by way of European history. "In each of the European cases, the trigger bringing fascist demagogues to power was a profound economic crisis. This is a tendency buried within an ever-expanding regime of capital accumulation, because the “logic of capital” inevitably comes into conflict with the “territorial logic of power” (David Harvey, “The New Imperialism,” Oxford Press, 2003). The mobility of capital eventually liquidates or abandons all spaces, including living space, and this throws middle classes into both economic and psychological disorder. They can break both ways: embracing a progressive path of “going through to the other side” of the crisis by creating new social models, or embracing the (often idealized and mythical) past." (end) Goff seems to speak of a "trigger" for that which has already been sowed or a catalyst. Although my critique of Mr. Goff's approach, would reveal not so much my understanding of his logic, but that of my own: an approach to political fascism in world history must begin with a critical unraveling of American history and the birth of the world's first fascist movement here in the good ole US of A. Here in America is the prototype for the European fascist movements, especially the stated ideology of Adolph Hitler's Nazis movement. There was one critical economic difference. In America, fascism arose and came to power in the former slave holding states, through an alliance with Wall Street financial imperialism and the need to convert the plantation South into an economic appendage of Northern financial (and to a lesser degree, financial-industrial) demands. Up until the long series of events culminating in the Civil War the North had been an economic appendage to the Slave Holding South. Here is what the Civil War was fought in the first and last instance. To determine which brutal wing of our ruling class would chart the destiny of the American State. In Europe fascism arose as an instrument of primarily industrial demands demanding reconstitution of the closed colonial system as a basis of expansion of different states. Thus, there remains the tendency to wed the fascism movement with corporatism, when this specific logic does not define the American experience. Iim not of the country boyz, but it seems to me that "Sowing" is a very different approach that should not be confused with "imminent." Imminent is standing in front of the assembly line where engine building takes place in 13 second increments of time. The arrival of the next engine is imminent. Converting Mr. Goff's article from "Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America" into the intellectual construct that can be called "The Imminent Fascist Insurrection in America" and then suggesting that this is perhaps why Mr. Goff speaks of supporting Democrats misses all his critical unraveling of the military aspects of the civic culture, especially in its Southern dimensions. But, then again, a critique generally reveals more about the critiquer than that which is being critiqued. Melvin P.
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