10 Steps To Fascism

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12) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v4y3tzQty8

― M.V., Thursday, 26 April 2007 02:16 (seventeen years ago) link

so that Scahill book on Blackwater seems interesting

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=domestic+operations+blackwater&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/21/1340210

JEREMY SCAHILL: Blackwater has an aviation division, and they have at least twenty aircraft. And one of the things that I did in the book was to look at the commonalities between the extraordinary rendition flights, the patterns of the aircraft that are engaged in extraordinary renditions, and Blackwater’s aircraft. And several of Blackwater’s aircraft, as I document in the book, fit the pattern, the flight patterns, of these flights that were engaged in extraordinary rendition.

Now, I have to say, I’ve tried to get all of Blackwater’s contracts. Some of them are classified. In fact, Blackwater’s president, Gary Jackson, has said that some of their contracts are so secret that Blackwater can’t tell one federal government entity what it’s doing for the other.

― Milton Parker, Friday, 27 April 2007 20:10 (seventeen years ago) link

bush's shadow army

In just a decade Prince has expanded the Moyock headquarters to 7,000 acres, making it the world's largest private military base. Blackwater currently has 2,300 personnel deployed in nine countries, with 20,000 other contractors at the ready. It has a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships and a private intelligence division, and it is manufacturing surveillance blimps and target systems.

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina its forces deployed in New Orleans, where it billed the federal government $950 per man, per day--at one point raking in more than $240,000 a day. At its peak the company had about 600 contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi. Since Katrina, it has aggressively pursued domestic contracting, opening a new domestic operations division.

― Milton Parker, Friday, 27 April 2007 20:11 (seventeen years ago) link

I wondering, what is the measure of when things get a bit too fascist for comfort: when radical powers are granted to the authorities, or when the authorities decide to use them?

If an internment camp is built next door, but they call it something else, like a happy camp or emergency center, is there no problem until one actually finds oneself being bussed thru the gate?

And do things have to get as bad as the worst case in recorded history in order to categorized similarly?

― kingfish, Friday, 27 April 2007 20:38 (seventeen years ago) link

we already had internment camps once, remember?

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:02 (seventeen years ago) link

And we got them again, but before, we didn't have them at the same time as all the other shit that's going on. There wasn't a move to destroy an independent judiciary or the concept of judicial review, for example.

― kingfish, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:05 (seventeen years ago) link

And more to the point, such camps are pointedly unAmerican and undemocratic things.

― kingfish, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:06 (seventeen years ago) link

well circumventing judicial review isn't necessary when the Supreme Court is authorizing the detentions like they did in '44. kinda like they are now with Guantanamo.

UnAmerican shit is totally American, sorry to say.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:08 (seventeen years ago) link

(I mean why would FDR need to "destroy an independent judiciary" when he'd already packed the courts with sycophants eager to follow his lead? Just like Dubya...)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:09 (seventeen years ago) link

His attempt at packing the courts was partially blocked, wasn't it?

― kingfish, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:12 (seventeen years ago) link

this country vacillates between its best and worst tendencies - it always has and it always will. Right from the beginning we were for great things like freedom and equality and oh yeah slavery.

I am loathe to subscribe to any notion that the country is moving irreversibly towards some end-goal - whether its fascism or a utopian democracy. It just is what it is (i.e., a mess of contradictions)

x-post

partially blocked in the sense that he was not allowed to expand the number of judges on the court. but he still "packed" it with politically motivated appointees.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:14 (seventeen years ago) link

I think I'm just irritated by attempts to separate the term "fascism" from its historical context. No one goes around calling anyone a "whig" or an "anarchosyndicalist" anymore, because those terms belong to specific historical and political situations that are no longer extant. But the term "fascist" has maintained some kind of currency because its a term that still resonates as both an insult to paint your opponents with, and a bogeyman to scare people into agreeing with you. But its usually used in a manner that is totally devoid of any actual understanding of fascism as a political movement, and a distinctly European one at that, which was rarely exported to other countries (Peron and a handful of other "populist strongman"-type examples).

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:21 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean there's nothing inherently fascistic about rounding up and expelling/imprisoning/executing a minority group. Every political system in the history of mankind has done that at one point or another.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm an engineer by training, so I think in terms of systems. The thing about our history of oscillating between a high point and a nadir is that there's is a point in any system here you can drive it past a certain threshold and the system breaks down; there's no vascillating back because the feedback control mechanism has been broken.

The feedback control mechanisms that have corrected previous authoritarian grabs for power have been deliberately and systematically disabled: a broken media, fucked voting, a justice system filled with cultist apparatchiks at all levels, an education system designed to kill off any school not run by a church or a company.

Not all of them have gone, of course, but plenty of quite powerful, quite determined, and quite well funded people are continuing to work away at it.

It is only these feedback control mechanisms that return the system/nation to a state of stability, but it's entirely possible to break these mechanisms down.

― kingfish, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:32 (seventeen years ago) link

*toke toke*

― JW, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:47 (seventeen years ago) link

that's very true, and the system analogy is a good one - historians are fond of trying to pinpoint when the Roman Republic reached the point of no return as well. But determining where that point is with any accuracy is nigh impossible - particularly when you have no perspective and are in the middle of it (as we are now). Take the examples you list:

- "a broken media". When was the media NOT broken in US history? The media isn't under any serious government censorship at the moment, certainly not any worse than it's ever been under (its arguably FREER than ever thanks to the relatively unregulated internet). You can complain about Fox, but how is their particular brand of "yellow journalism" worse or more detrimental to the country than, say, William Hearst's?
- "fucked voting". Women couldn't vote AT ALL until the beginning of the previous century. Black people were basically entirely disenfranchised in large swathes of the country up until the 60s. Presidents have "bought" the office before (JFK springs to mind), and we've had political dynasties before (the Adams'). There is a long, long LONG history of voter manipulation, fraud, dead people voting, "ward heels", ad infinitum.
- "a justice system filled with cultist apparatchiks at all levels." This is kinda too complex to get into but the struggle for civil rights is illuminating in this regard and basically involved the removal of an entire generation of the judiciary.
- "an education system designed to kill off any school not run by a church or a company." The public school system is a relatively recent phenomenon. I applaud it and believe its the best way to run it, but we shouldn't pretend like it was ever the norm in this country. It had a hot run in the middle of the 20th century, but it began to break down on a lot of levels (primarily because most people in this country don't agree on the GOAL of education - is it to churn out automatons that can parrot answers to specific test questions? or is it to "enlighten the mind" in a more general sense? or is it to train people to be diligent workers?). Even so, I'm not sure how the privatization of education = fascism. The fascists didn't care who did the educating as long as everyone swore fealty to the state.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:48 (seventeen years ago) link

*toke toke*

my rants are fueled by caffiene, and little else

(okay, boredom, too)

― kingfish, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah dude I am disappointingly sober

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 27 April 2007 22:52 (seventeen years ago) link

[url=[Removed Illegal Link], boiling water, slow steady heat etc[/url

― The Boyler, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:24 (seventeen years ago) link

bah

frogs, boiling water, slow steady heat etc

― The Boyler, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:24 (seventeen years ago) link

given that its the LAPD its more surprising that they didn't just shoot a bunch of people (another time-honored American tradition that is not specifically fascist in any way)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:31 (seventeen years ago) link

capn save-a-blackshirt

― and what, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:50 (seventeen years ago) link

I prefer cap'n-read-a-history-book

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago) link

WHAT

jesus

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago) link

i prefer cap'n crunch. sweeter, less conflict.

― latebloomer, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:02 (seventeen years ago) link

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/31M3X3T5EBL._SS500_.jpg

― and what, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:03 (seventeen years ago) link

haha, that's the one that's yet to be published, right? the one he's been putting off for 3 years?

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:05 (seventeen years ago) link

he's waiting to see if he has to change it from Hillary to Obama

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:13 (seventeen years ago) link

http://i20.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/8f/92/9645_2.JPG

― and what, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:14 (seventeen years ago) link

At what point does:

- Excessive militarisation of civilian life
- Extremely large military
- Incredible traction of flag-waving patriotism as argument winner
- Extremely closed political class, in terms of recruitment and access
- Media in hands of small coterie of corporate interests
- Media very antipathetic to anything looking left of centre
- Very handy pariahs within state and without with added value of actually having had pariahs having done something with USA (as opposed to being people who might do something)
- general decline of political language and general acceptability of some awful things
- general decline of ability to stop gross violations of human rights by the state

stop being things you can identify as common strands of US political life and start to be worrying?

It seems to me like saying something isn't a bolognese, because although it contains meat, tomatoes, wine, basil, garlic, onion etc, all those things have been seen before in meatloaf, wine bottles, chilli etc, which whilst true, doesn't get around the fact that right now, they've all come together and made, er, bolognese.

PS - this is not a thread for discussing bolognese recipes. There's another thread for that.

― The Boyler, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:38 (seventeen years ago) link

since almost all of your qualifiers for fascism are dependent on modifiers ("extreme", "very", "excessive", "incredible", etc.) seems to me some definite goalposts need to be set by which those measurements can be made. American history provides those goalposts. Compare the past to today.

Its just tiresome to see "fascism" flung around carelessly because people are distressed about the current political situation, without any in-depth understanding of what constituted the political movements that delineated and defined fascism.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Don't forget a burgeoning "cult of masculinity", where all those uptight white guys going on about how "Jesus wasn't a pussy"

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:50 (seventeen years ago) link

most of your qualifiers are so vague I don't even know what they mean. and you leave out several of the key aspects of fascism - its basic ethnic/racial/nationalist character, its populism and appeal to the "lower classes", etc.

and btw fascism was definitely not constituted by a "closed political class, in terms of recruitment and access" - Hitler was a failed painter, Mussolini an journalist, etc.) Nor does the size of the military have anything to do with fascism (America has long had the biggest military in the world - are you implying its been fascist since, oh, WWII?)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Shakey I kind of agree with you insofar as the second the word comes up, the conversation becomes way too heated and it becomes impossible to focus. Let's just agree that whatever America ends up doing is going to require a whole new word and stay alert to the developments.

And I actually think that Wolf article wasn't that bad at tracking those developments -- its concluding point wasn't that we are now actively fascist, but simply that laws and workflows have been implemented and and actively put into practice, and that given a precipitating event (like another moderately successful attack), whatever the government decides to move forward with will _already_ be perfectly legal and it'll be too late to dismantle the machine. Steps need to be taken now.

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:56 (seventeen years ago) link

- Very handy pariahs within state and without with added value of actually having had pariahs having done something with USA (as opposed to being people who might do something)

I don't know what you're saying here.

- general decline of political language and general acceptability of some awful things

A decline from what? The lofty political language of the "Know Nothing" party at the turn of the century? This is so vague, and predicated on their being some mythic point in the past when our political language was more high-minded and eloquent. This past does not exist.

general decline of ability to stop gross violations of human rights by the state

This is also super-vague. Decline of whose ability? The "people's"? Reigning in human rights abuses by the state requires the participation of people WITHIN the framework of the state, to reshape it so those things don't happen. Problem is, in the current political climate of the US, the majority of the people are actually A-okay with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and torturing people in the name of stopping terrorism. No excessive legal obstacles have been placed in their way - these laws are open to being challenged by the courts (and they ARE being challenged in the courts), the problem is that the majority of the country DOES NOT CARE.

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:58 (seventeen years ago) link

laws and workflows have been implemented and and actively put into practice, and that given a precipitating event (like another moderately successful attack), whatever the government decides to move forward with will _already_ be perfectly legal and it'll be too late to dismantle the machine. Steps need to be taken now.

I totally agree with this assessment. I just don't find the deliberate misuse of terminology helpful. Its actually detrimental - cuz it makes the speaker sound like a shrill alarmist (and thus more easily dismissable).

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:00 (seventeen years ago) link

another key thing about fascism is its inherent reliance on the cult of personality - the veneration of the leader as the embodiment of the country's ideals. Unless presidential term limits are repealed, its kind of impossible for this to happen in America. Our love affair with Dubya barely lasted 6 years (obviously 6 years WAY TOO LONG but still - its not comparable to the idolization of Hitler, Peron, Mussolini etc.)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:03 (seventeen years ago) link

well that's always been Wolf's problem before, but goin' all LOL at her article seems an overreaction as well. I see your point though, discussing these things in a thread with _that word_ in the title helps things gets lost, I should probably move that domestic-operations-of-military-contractors stuff to a Blackwater thread

x-post

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Blackwater is just the best name ever for that kind of company - so evocative (the River Styx ie the passageway to hell, oil, etc.)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Also, it can be true that the current bunch of chuckleheads have been busily putting things into to place that perhaps things aren't a fascist state now, but are certainly setting things up for the next time round. As guys like Chris Hedges write, religious totalitarian types need a moment of crisis to come to power. These guy have just been stacking the deck: attacking the notion of an independent judiciary, discrediting science, journalism, and narrowing everything down to an authoritarian set-up. They've been remarkably competent at this; actual governing, no, but setting up this shit, which was their actual goal since they don't believe in public services or representative government, hell yeah.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:09 (seventeen years ago) link

well they're obviously obsessed with consolidating power in the hands of the executive, which is certainly a move towards fascism. combine that with the handy repeal of a couple of amendments and voila Uberfuhrer Schwarzenegger. You know we're in agreement on the current admin's penchant for totalitarian fantasies.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link

By pariahs, I'm referring to the Islamic other; US politics, like most countries, have a long history of using some vague ill-defined and overblown threat to justify a more repressive set of policies. Unlike previously, these people have more traction with US voters because they've done something in the US. Instead of being a phantom, they're more 'real' and so more durable and more amenable to being a justification for some bad shit.

By failure to stop human rights abuses, I'm saying that regardless of who has failed - the media/supreme court/congress/people, it doesn't really matter. They've happened and continue to happen, indicating a failure of really quite important counterbalances to actually do anything at all about a quite dreadful state of affairs.

As for language, I wasn't positing a golden age back in the day, merely saying that from where we are know, you notice an astonishing vacuity and vapidity of US political discourse. Fights seem to take place over the most inconsequential points of linguistic definition whilst the bigger picture never gets a look in. The normalisation of this weird hybrid of martial language and management textbook shite looks pretty entrenched with no-one seemingly able to challenge this and find a new way of talking about things.

― The Boyler, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 20:33 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.mises.org/TRTS/18.jpg

― braveclub, Thursday, 3 May 2007 15:40 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/3/102322/7962

― M.V., Thursday, 3 May 2007 17:28 (seventeen years ago) link

eight years pass...

Has anti-fascism lost its urgency in the eight years since this was published? I grew up with World War II veterans for relatives. My own father was a WWII buff. "Don't be a fascist" was a big thing in my family. Might seem quaint to a younger generation? My own mother was a big proponent of "never forget". Yet on the Internet, I encounter many people -especially younger people - for whom it is more like "never even considered it". Even with a black man in the White House, I think it's important to "never forget".

― Fake Sam's Club Membership (I M Losted), Tuesday, 7 July 2015 16:54 (eight years ago) link

thread title sounds like the evil self-help shadow of

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419KZWFeBcL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:02 (eight years ago) link

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Fascist

― jmm, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:03 (eight years ago) link

thread title sounds like the evil self-help shadow of

Seven Steps to Heaven

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:05 (eight years ago) link

modern states' complete fealty to global capitalism makes fascism look p quaint and outdated

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 7 July 2015 18:06 (eight years ago) link

eight years pass...

Our mission statement is the same as it is on the podcast: that people should be able to understand complex ideas and have fun at the same time. All the knowledge. None of the pain.
— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) May 22, 2024

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2024 08:57 (one week ago) link

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