Just A Reminder: The Fascists Won

[Students and a sign at the Occupy Rally at UC Davis, 11.21.11. The sign says: "You can blind our eyes but you can never blind our minds."]

Over at dKos, Meteor Blades has been assembling Occupy Poster Art -- along with other art from various revolutions and rebellions of the past (not, interestingly, including much from his own/my own era of rebellion) -- and finding it good.

It is; it's wonderful. I've been really impressed with many of the graphic images associated with the Occupy Movement. When I was at Davis yesterday, there were any number of large scale, freshly silk screened, and very dramatic posters being passed out by various groups to their members. They mostly dealt with Katehi's blunders, the police overreaction, and the increases in tuition and fees. But what struck me was their graphic power -- a few simple words, in stark black and red or black and yellow, on large sheets, some of them still wet. They show up in some of the pictures I took yesterday, but I wasn't really concentrating my camera on them. Maybe I should have!

The video below (that I scarfed from the comments on the second of MB's poster threads) shows some of the startling graphics of the Spanish Civil War.



I would remind the gentle reader that the Fascist/Falangists won that little contretemps, and it would be decades before the Spanish People were able to liberate themselves.

And now it looks like the Fascists have made stunning a comeback thanks to the inability of the Socialists who have been in power to address, let alone meet, the needs of the Spanish People -- rather than endlessly service the demands of their banker-owners.

Oh, of course, the "center right" PPP, "People's Party," isn't exactly Fascist, but it's close enough for modern day conditions. And this is the problem throughout Europe. The Socialist and Social Democratic parties have failed the People just as surely as the Democrats have in this country. They have no credibility with the People any more, so they are falling in election after election, generally to whatever the Rightist opposition is. It's not because the People have any greater faith in the Rightists. Not by a long shot. It is because the Left in Europe, such as it is, has sold the People out to the Banksters, everywhere.

The horrible irony electorates face is that the rightist parties -- while apparently as beholden to the Banksters as the Socialists are -- seem to have a little more flexibility in dealing with the increasingly strident demands of the People. Strangely -- and not yet compellingly -- they may be able to address them more appropriately than the Socialists could.

On the other hand, the Indignado Movement throughout Spain is reinvigorated. The tension between the Government and the People will only increase.

Meanwhile, the graphic and literary images coming out of the Occupy Movement both here and abroad continue to raise consciousness, the brutality of suppression continues to prick the conscience, and the Revolution continues its evolution.

It's not the same now as it was yesterday, and it won't be the same tomorrow as it is today.

More than one person has pointed out to me that the way the Center of (Revolutionary) Energy keeps shifting is remarkable -- and appropriate. "You can't keep it in one place," someone said to me. "It will get stale and old and the authorities and the people will become accustomed to it. For a Revolution to succeed, the Center must keep moving."

And so it is. Yesterday, the Center was Davis, a little University town in California's Central Valley. Where it will be today, I don't yet know. Where it will be tomorrow, no one knows.

The Incident at UC Davis has had a profound effect on the course of events; perhaps it represents a turning point. But so many events have represented turning points in the organic development of this Movement. Just the week before, it was the Incident at UC Berkeley. And before that it was the Incident in Oakland. Before that, it was Denver, and before that, it was Chicago. Remember Boston? And of course, there will always be New York.

But then, New York came from somewhere, didn't it? It wasn't directly from Spain, it was from Canada, specifically Vancouver.

Round and round and in and out, weaving a Global Revolution that can't be stopped. At least no one who has an interest in doing so has figured out how to do it yet.

More and more people don't want it stopped.

Don't let the Fascists win this time.

Creativity and movement are the keys. I saw an image yesterday when I was watching Tim Pool's wrap up of the events in New York; he was outside the occupied New School building, on Fifth Avenue near Union Square. The building was "liberated" last Thursday and has been held without much official interference ever since. (They say it is because the New School's board is in favor of Occupy Wall Street, but who knows?) Tim was walking around the building describing the banners and posters hung in the windows and on the walls, and then he came to something that was such a startling vision: there high up on one of the pilasters of the building was a bright yellow tent.

The image below is far from perfect -- it's a still from the video stream -- but the message on the tent says:

"You cannot evict an idea whose time has come."

There you have it. The most dangerous object in the world (a tent) carrying the most dangerous message.