More About "Subversives"

Though I've now reached the Student Rebellion chapters of "Subversives," I'm still kind of gobsmacked at the information in the previous chapters, particularly about Ronald Reagan's long and intimate relationship with the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. I can't say that I ever knew or even thought about it before.

Rosenfeld details Reagan's collaboration and cooperation with the FBI and Hoover in rooting out Communists and com-symps from Hollywood, not only in his role as President of the Screen Actors Guild, but -- apparently -- just because he was who he was and he wanted to do it. It's a tale I never really thought about before.

Of course everyone knew that he had been president of the Screen Actors Guild and had engaged in Red Baiting during that time, but what he had actually done on behalf of the FBI and Hoover's anti-Communist conspiracy/crusade, the names he had named, and the people whose careers or lives he'd destroyed had to my knowledge never been highlighted at all, certainly not to the extent that Rosenfeld does in "Subversives."

Of course, Rosenfeld has the documents, and he has interviewed many of those who were still alive during his writing of the book and were directly or indirectly involved in the conspiracy against presumed Communist infiltration of the movie industry. It is a story of gross deception and illegality on one level. On another, though -- and perhaps even worse -- it is a story of careerism and business as usual on the part of Reagan and many others who pretended one thing but who were doing something else.

I think most of us understand that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was a lawless and criminal enterprise, particularly when going after those Hoover personally deemed suspect of disloyalty, communism, and/or communist "sympathy." Of course there were many other targets of his interest and ire, but that's another issue. The issue here is the incessant, indeed obsessive, targeting of Hollywood personalities for investigation (often enough through illegal breakins of homes and offices) and denunciation as "subversives" and "communists."

Many of us knew the FBI was doing this, not simply in Hollywood, but everywhere (my 5th grade teacher was targeted, for example), and we understood there were severe consequences for many, many people who were accused, but it simply never occurred to me that there were such deep personal connections between Ronald Reagan and the FBI in this conspiracy. Finding out about it now, for the first time, demonstrates to me how carefully and successfully these things were concealed.

 It was a conspiracy.

I won't go into the details here, but I urge you to get and read the book. It's an eye-opener both about Reagan and Hoover, and about what a very small world it can be when certain well-placed individuals join forces to destroy some designated "enemy."

From the AntiFa Trenches, c. 1938 (contd)

Antifascist poster, Spanish Civil War, c. 1938. "The foreign fascist hordes are trying to invade our territory. Antifascists! Block their road, bar them forever from our soil!"

There are so many parallels and similarities between the situation we face now and the situation faced by Americans during the 1930's and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, but there are also many profound differences. Perhaps the most troubling is the absence of any political ideology to counter a revived fascism that has been taking over the world.

One can say what one will about the merits of Communism, or the lack of them, but it was a coherent ideology opposed to fascism, and at the time the example of the Soviet Union could be and was held up as a model antifascist society. It was deeply -- and ultimately fatally -- flawed, of course, but it was something.

 Now? What is there?

Occupy is self-consciously non-ideological and apolitical. It operates in a space outside the framework of routine civil society -- which is one reason why it has been significantly successful, despite repression by authorities and more than a little internal dissension.

But unless something can stand as a counter to the modern neo-fascists, the fascists win. And hands down, they are winning, spectacularly and consistently. They have been doing so for decades, to the point where their victories are taken pretty much for granted as the way things are, the baseline from which any opposition is expected to arise. In other words, the neo-fascist reality is the one we all live in now.

In 1938, fascism was the political reality through much of Europe -- we forget that most of Europe was, by 1938 or 1939, ruled by fascists and what Magil and Stevens call "semi-fascists." Fascism was the reality in much of Asia and Latin America as well. Colonial Africa could not escape the fascist march.

The United States, as Magil and Stevens amply document, was riddled with overt and covert fascist elements and organizations, found in every aspect of government and throughout what passed for civil society, especially but not exclusively in the South.

I would argue that part of the reason for the pervasiveness of fascism at the time was "fashion." Fascism was new and energized, revolutionary in much the same way that Soviet Communism was, but with the key difference that fascism was the modern mass movement, the modern revolution if you will, that provided crucial support for the very sort of hypercapitalism that had so recently been responsible for crashing economies all over the world.

Fascism is the response of late-stage capitalism to existential crisis. The World War, the Russian Revolution(s), the financial collapse of 1929, and the mortal blow to the peoples of the capitalist democracies delivered by the Great (and at the time seemingly Endless) Depression, was perceived by many, inside and outside the system, as the quintessential Crisis of Capitalism that would quite likely lead to its ultimate demise.

Fascism was demonstrated as a functional alternative to both Communism and Capitalism in Extremis. There are many reasons why it was so successful at the time, chief among them that fascists gave people a common national purpose and it put people back to work. Global Capitalism on its own, as we've seen since the Crash of 2008, cannot do that. "Nations" are simply in the way, and keeping substantial numbers of people unemployed indefinitely is a necessity to ensure profits continue to rise (unemployment works by driving down wages and benefit costs).

Fascism was highly regimented and militarized in the 1930's, aspects which we note are largely absent from the neo-fascism of today.

Imperialism is still very much apparent, but no longer are vast armies assembled to undertake the conquest of foreign lands. According to modern military doctrine, mass armies are no longer necessary for conquest of desirable foreign territory or control of resources. Bribery works very well, and what can't be bought can be rather easily seized and held by a small, mobile, technologically advanced army together with a sufficient number of mercenaries to handle extraneous matters and occasional wet work. And of course remote controlled Death From Above machines take the place of thousands of military personnel.

As targets soon discover, there is no adequate defense against modern warfare.

Civil society and civilian life are largely neglected by the neo-fascist cabal of global rulers we see today. Apart from constant surveillance and sporadic repression of nascent uprisings, the ruling class essentially ignores most of what's going on in "The Street." There is an incessant barrage of propaganda from every corporate outlet.

 Everything the common people are allowed to  have is due to the "gifts" of the elites, and everyone is supposed to be grateful for what little -- or much -- they are given. But nothing comes without a cost.

Because taxes are seen as punishment for failure, only the "lesser people," who by definition are failures, are forced to pay taxes.

 Rent seeking, extraction, gambling, plunder and pillage now constitute the elite "economy" -- if you want to call it that. For man of the rest of us, subsistence has become the New Normal.

This is about where global fascists would have been by now if the unpleasantness of World War II hadn't intervened.


And so we continue with excerpts from "The Peril of Fascism" by A.B. Magil and Henry Stevens, published in 1938 by International Publishers, the American publisher for the Communist Party of the United States.

The Bonus March of 1932 was undoubtedly one of the epoch-making mass struggles in American history. It was initiated in a very modest form by a small, militant veterans' organization, the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League (later renamed the League of American Ex-Servicemen [Note: the League disbanded in 1935, its members joining the American Legion and other veterans' organizations.] but it grew far beyond the plans of its original sponsors. Members of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans disregarded the instructions of their national officialdom and joined with the members of the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League and with unaffiliated veterans in the great trek to the nation's capitol. All told, about 20,000 of them gathered in Washington and camped for nearly two months in Anacostia Flats.

Hoover blasted the ex-soldiers out of Anacostia with the gun-fire, tear gas and bayonets of the United States Army. But he also helped blast himself out of the Presidency. Bloody Thursday, July 28 [1932], aroused the entire country. The great veterans' struggle broke through the anti-bonus policy of the Legion chiefs and won from the Portland, Oregon, convention in October, 1932, the first endorsement of immediate payment. [Note: the "bonus" was legislation passed in 1924 providing per-capita payment of $1 a day for those engaged in domestic military service during WWI and $1.25 per day for service overseas, payable in 1945. The Bonus March was organized in 1932 to demand immediate payment so as to alleviate some of the suffering caused by the Depression.]

The army of bonus marchers that staggered out of Washington in rout and apparent defeat became the nucleus of a movement which, gathering ever wider popular support, marched forward irresistibly until it culminated in 1936 in the passage by the 74th Congress of the bonus bill over President Roosevelt's veto.

The Bonus March revealed not only the strength of the veterans' movement, but also its weakness. It was only natural that among men who had little experience with rank and file organization and who only yesterday have been ardent patrioteers there should exist considerable political confusion. And there were not lacking at Anacostia Flats buzzard of reaction on the hunt for prey. We have already mentioned the Key Men of America. It was the Key Men, with the collaboration of General Pelham D. Glassford, at the time Washington police chief, that foisted on the marchers the Oregon adventurer, W. W. Waters, as commander-in-chief of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces. Waters surrounded himself with a host of shady characters, among them Harold B. Foulkrod, former manager of the Philadelphia branch of the Burns Detective Agency, who was named "legislative representative." These individuals sedulously used the  Red scare to divide the veterans. They were helped along by Father Coughlin who sent a $5,000 check to the B.E.F. "with absolute instructions that they who benefit by this donation be clear of all Communist leaders and Communist suggestions."

Out of the Bonus March emerged what was one of the country's first openly fascist terrorist organizations, the Khaki Shirts, also known later as the U. S. Fascists. It was launched by Waters, with himself as leader. The shirt idea spread rapidly, and Father J. R. Cox of Pittsburgh attempted to entice veterans into the Blue Shirts.

The passage of the Bonus resolution by the 1932 Legion convention marked the first step toward directing the organization away from the reactionary policies which it had hitherto pursued. But economic issues are inseparably bound up with questions of civil liberties, with the preservation of democracy itself. The leaders of the American Legion had early shown a decidedly pro-fascis bent and a special affection for Mussolini. In January, 1923, only two months after Il Duce has established the world's first fascist dictatorship, National Commander Alvin Owlsley, in an interview with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, expounded on the philosophy of the Legion's royal family in the following candid words:

If ever needed, the American Legion stands ready to protect our country's institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy... Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.

The history of the Legion during most of the years since its inception certainly indicates that its leaders have attempted to live up to these "ideals." They have sought to suppress meetings of labor and liberal groups through the Legion's well-financed National Americanism Commission, directed by Homer Chaillaux, have incited red-hunts in the colleges and distributed large quantities of red-baiting literature, including that richly imaginative work, Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling's The Red Network, which lists among the country's dangerous Reds Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mayor La Guardia of New York City. In 1934-35 the Legion chiefs actively cooperated in the Chamber of Commerce-Hearst crusade against democracy. At the same time these super-nationalists have not neglected their international contacts. A Paris dispatch of Hearst's Universal Service published in the New York American as of June 25, 1935, stated:

Reports that the Prince of Wales, Colonel de la Rocque, head of French war veterans, and American Legion chiefs are cooperating to unite veterans to force their respective government to present a united front against Communism impressed delegates to the International Chamber of Commerce meeting. [The Prince of Wales, (later King Edward VIII and now the Duke of Winsor) at the time was making overtures to the German fascist war veterans' organization in line with the British Tory government's policy of rapprochement with the Nazi regime.]

But the membership of the Legion were beginning to move in a different direction. Many posts were adopting resolutions condemning strike-breaking and attacks on democratic rights. In San Francisco and Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Legion posts officially participated in parades for slain strikers.The Blissville Post of Queens, Long Island, after placing Paul Crosbie, an avowed Communist, on trial, ruled that "Communist membership is not sufficient reason for expulsion." In New Jersey the state organization of the Legion in 1936 opposed compulsory saluting of the flag for school children. In the same year, the Americanism Committee of the New York County Posts of the Legion adopted and circulated a pamphlet called: "Americanism, What Is It?" which advocated an Americanism that was a far cry from the Hearstized brand that the Legion chiefs had been propounding. In June, 1936, the convention of the New York County Legion voted opposition to teachers' loyalty oaths and urged higher relief allowances.

...

Let it be remembered that ex-servicemen have played an all-important role in the development of fascism in other countries. In Germany, the National Socialist Party was organized in 1919 by army officers who won their first successes among returned soldiers. In Italy, Mussolini formed his first terrorist bands from among former soldiers. In France, the core of the fascist forces has been the veterans' organization, Croix de Feu (now the Social Party) led by Colonel de la Rocque. In the United States, as we have seen, the Legion was groomed by its founders and early leaders to play a similar role. That their dreams are farther from realization today than at any time in the Legion's history is a tribute to the strength of the democratic sentiment among the World War veterans and the American people as a whole and their growing awareness of the social and political forces that are shaping the world today. The fight against professional patriotism and fascism in the American Legion has not yet been won, but recent developments offer hope that the men who went through the blood and muck of the war may yet avoid the tragic mistakes of their comrades in Germany, Italy, and France.

 

From the AntiFa Trenches, c. 1938 (contd)

More and more, it's becoming clear that the program in operation by Our Government and its Owners and Sponsors is quite simply that of a Fascist amalgam of the State and Corporate interest against the People and the Public Interest. By exploring what was going on during the Great Depression, and the forces at work at that time to assert the dominance of Corporate interest over that of the People -- ie: fascism -- in our country then, we can better understand and ultimately fight what is going on now.

Of course, Government was much smaller then, and one of the ways Corporate interest coped with the inability of smaller government (which they claim to want once again) is by establishing private armies and private espionage activities used against workers and worker-led organizations.

The La Follette Civil Liberties Committee  held hearings in the US Senate from 1936 to 1940 and documented employer violations of the rights of workers to organize and to bargain collectively.

Of course nowadays, unions seem rather quaint, anachronisms from another era. In the 1930's they were the mainstays against the total victory of corporatist-fascist rule in the United States. Given the low estate that worker unions have fallen to, and the rampant resurgence of fascism as a consequence, it might be wise to explore the benefits of some kind of worker/citizen organization.

From "The Peril of Fascism," by A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens, published by International Publishers, 1938:

"Big Business: Fountainhead of Fascism"

The LaFollette Committee uncovered many othere instances of close co-operation beterrn public authorities and labor espionage agencies and munitions companies. These activities bear an ominous resemblance to the assistance which the Italian police and carabineers rendered to the blackshirts on the eve of Mussolini's assumption of power.

The extent of big business armament, like the size of the corporation armies, is not exactly known; but the clue to its enormous proportions is contained in the revelation that three companies -- the Lake
Erie Chemical Company, Federal Laboratories, and the Manville Manufacturing Company -- sold $606,572 of tear and nauseating gas from 1933 to 1937.* (*Among the largest purchasers were Firestone Rubber Company, Bethelhem Steel, Carnegie Steel, Jones and Laughlin Steel, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber. In addition to enormous quantities of gas, the large corporations laid in supplies of machine guns, sub-machine guns, rifles, revolvers, and other instruments of "collective bargaining.")

The munitions companies, besides arming corporations, engage, like the private detective agencies, in extensive provocation in order to drum up business. The LaFollette Committee revealed that Federal Laboratories sent out hair-raising descriptions of wholly fictitious Communist "activities" in an effort to frighten their clients into increasing their armament orders.**(**One committee witness, a motion picture cameraman, testified that during the San Francisco marine strike, an agent for Federal Laboratories, J. M. Roush, had fired a gas projectile at James Engle, a striking longshoreman, "for the benefit of the motion picture cameramen." Engle was severely wounded. In his report to B. H. Barker, vice-president of Federal Laboratories, Roush laconically reported the incident: "I might mention that during one of the riots, I shot a long range projectile into a group, a shell hitting one man and causing a fracture of the skull from which he has since died. [Roush's report was somewhat too sanguine. Actually, Engle recovered from his injuries.][Ché's note: cf. Scott Olsen and others injured in Oakland during police violence against Occupy.] As he was a Communist, I have had no feeling in the matter and I am sorry that I did not get more." Vice-President Barker, in his reply, commended Roush for his "spendid report." (From Associated Press, March 5, 1937.)

"Demagogues of Fascism"

"The German has not the slightest notion of how a people must be misled if the adherence of the masses is to be sought," wrote Hitler in Mein Kampf. (this statement has been deleted since the 12th edition published in 1932.)

The misleading of the people is part of the normal practice of capitalism. The whole bourgeois political edifice, with its formal and legal democracy concealing the economic and political domination of a small number of wealthy men, is based on a fundamental class deception. The existence of certain civil and labor rights -- most of which have been wrested from the ruling class only after determined struggle -- modifies but does not basically alter the class character of the political superstructure. So long as it rests on the economic foundation of the private ownership of the means of production by a small wealthy class, democracy, even in the freest of capitalist republics is necessarily maimed and limited, and in the present period is under constant threat of extinction. under such conditions complete democracy is never more than a promissory note which cannot be redeemed under the profit system.

With the development of monopoly capitalism the area of social deception may be said to have expanded as the area of democracy contracted. Deception and demagogy tended to function more and more as an arm of the capitalist state itself. And some of the greatest cultural contributions of capitalism -- the press, universal education, and later the cinema and radio [television was barely available, the internet not even on the horizon at the time this was written] -- have been used as vehicles of this deception.

In the United States, with the rise of the modern political parties and political bosses in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a particularly venal type of demagogy made its appearance. With the campaign of the Whigs to unseat Jackson in 1832 -- a campaign which was financed largely by the Bank of the United States against which Jackson had declared war -- the familiar chicanery and corruption of modern elections emerged for the first time. This took on a more organized form with the march of monopoly after the Civil War, when corrupt political machines in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities  made it a practice to trade on the discontent of the masses, wormed their way into labor unions, themselves took up the banner of "reform," of attack on big business, and by combining systematic deception with bribery and gangsterism, were able to win what appeared to be popular support.

Yet even this type of social demagogy was to a large extent crude and improvised. It is only in the period of extreme decay and degeneration of capitalism, when its very existence is threatened, that there emerges a more "scientific" system of mass deception -- the demagogy of fascism.

It might be said -- writes Palme Dutt -- that if Marxism represented the development of Socialism from Utopia to science, fascism represents the development of capitalist demagogy from amateurism to science. (cf: Bernays and Adam Curtis's "The Century of Self.")

The highly specialized character of fascist demagogy derives not only from the gravity and complexity of the problems facing capitalism in crisis, but also from the fact that in most countries fascism, in its effort to achieve power, is compelled to appear in the guise of opposition to the bourgeois democratic government and times even to the capitalist system itself. The necessity of creating a mass movement that seems to express the deepest needs of the people, but in reality aims to suppress those needs with inexorable brutality, requires an elaborate technique of deception which makes all past capitalist efforts in this respect seem like gospel truth by comparison.

It is important to be clear as to the meaning of the term demagogy. The reactionaries call every revolutionist, every labor leader, every progressive a demagogue. But the essence of demagogy is the deception of the masses. Those who genuinely carry on the struggle to improve the lot of the people play a diametrically opposite role. Demagogy "is the art of playing on the hopes and the fears, the emotions and the ignorance of the poor and suffering for the benefit of the rich and powerful. It is the meanest of the arts. This is the art of fascism."

Fascist demagogy requires its own specialists and virtuosi. The Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Goebbels -- these are the masters of this "meanest of the arts." They had their precursors and teachers; but when these new suns shine, the early stars grow dim. In the United States fascism is still in its swaddling clothes, but has already produced two virtuosi of demagogy: the late Huey P. Long, and Reverent Charles E. Coughlin. Both have played with considerable success on the sufferings, the needs and the prejudices of the poor in the interest of big business reaction. And both have cast their demagogy in the mold of native American traditions. They have exploited not merely the democratic traditions of 1776 and 1861, but those of agrarian radicalism associated with Jefferson and Jackson, and with the Greenback, Farmers Alliance, Populist, and Bryan movements of the seventies, eighties, and nineties (of the 19th Century.)

Though Populism died, its traditions have proved among the most persistent and fertile in American history. They have brought forth varying fruit in the trust-busting and muckraking under Theodore Roosevelt, in the Non-Partisan League during and immediately after the war, in the LaFollette campaign in 1924, in the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in the Farmer-Labor Party movement today. Essentially these are the deep-seated traditions of farmer-labor democracy, whose first great representative was Thomas Jefferson and whose roots go back to the origins of our republic. And it is these traditions which have fertilized practically every progressive movement in our history (and) that have been exploited by the two foremost demagogues of incipient American fascism, Huey Long and Father Coughlin. For them, the ideas of farmer-labor democracuy have served the same purpose as have Socialist and labor traditions for Hitler and Mussolini.

The chapter goes on to explain how these two men used their access to the public to promote fascism in America. We can easily make the comparison between them and Rush Limbaugh and the entire stable of Fox "news" personalities today. The dangers are the same; the difference is that the modern media demagogues have had many years to promote their versions of neo-fascism over the radio and television, whereas Long and Coughlin only had a relatively few years on the air. Times are different, the dangers are the same.

Still the Most Dangerous Object In Amercia

I was watching a bit of Nate's coverage of the Occupy National Gathering in Philadelphia yesterday, and sure enough, there were a series of extraordinarily ridiculous confrontations -- violent on the part of the police --over the erection of pup tents in the park being used for assembly by what looked like a couple of thousand Occupy enthusiasts and participants.

This was proof, if any was needed, that the Occupy tent remains the most dangerous object in America. You would think, after all the violent police raids on tents and tent encampments last year and into this one, all the tens of thousands of arrests, all the police violence against dissent, all the violation of basic rights, the authorities would be a little more circumspect in Philadelphia during Independence Week. But no.

Here we go again. The sight of a tent -- even if only symbolic -- enrages the authorities still, and scrums between clearly befuddled police and Occupy  National Gathering people occurred again and again, resulting in a few violent arrests (the universal tactic seems to be to throw the target to the ground, pile several officers on top of the nonresisting suspect -- who quite likely is a random member of the crowd -- wrench his or her arms, while screaming at the suspect to "stop resisting!", and truss him/her up like a roasting chicken).

This is not to say that the Occupy participants were filled with grace, or that their assembly in the park was particularly well organized or that Nate's live stream connection was adequate to the scenes before him.  It was quite a mess, really. But the point -- so far as I could tell -- was that there was no harm being done by the Occupy participants, and the tents were erected as symbols of The Resistance, perhaps provocative to be sure, but hardly threats to the Republic. Maybe threats to the nascent Empire, but that's another topic altogether.

How Authority responds to such things is an indication of how seriously the Powers That Be regard the "threat" before them. The violent response in Philadelphia, against unarmed, rather disorganized, and clearly nonviolent resistance, tents, and protest tells us pretty much all we need to know. Given that there are calls for violent insurrection by armed and demonstrably dangerous rightists (some assembling at the Independence Mall under the TeaBag banner) over the ACA (and the nigra in the White House)  which apparently the police pay no attention to, the confrontations in Philadelphia yesterday take on quite a sinister aspect.

Fascist in a word.

(And can someone teach the "Anticapitalista" chant, please? When I heard the pathetic rendering of it at the Philadelphia gathering, I was initially convinced it was the work of a provocateur. Oh wait. Maybe it was...)

In between all the other things I'm trying to get done while in New Mexico this trip, I'm reading "The Peril of Fascism," by A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens, International Publishers, 1938. It is horrifyingly evocative, regardless of the fact that it is straightforward AntiFa agitprop from the CPUSA. The insights of the authors are spot on, something the mainstream media at the time -- much of which was openly enamoured of fascism and even Nazi-ism -- simply couldn't accept. Fascism was on the march, it had nearly complete control of Europe, and it was coming to America. Truthfully, it was already here.

Occupy is not strictly speaking ideological, unlike CPUSA or the 'Baggers for that matter. But it is forthrightly and often quite eloquently anti-fascist. It is not necessarily anti-capitalist, despite the mangled chants. But it is very definitely anti-fascist. (At one of the Occupy meetings I attended in the spring, a debate arose over whether "fascists" should be allowed to participate; many, of course, said "NO!" but there was a large contingent who insisted that Occupy's open door accommodated everyone, even "fascists", and it was a simple enough thing to counter their ideas, so why not let them participate if they wanted to? Maybe they'd be convinced to change their evil ways. The matter was tabled for lack of consensus. But I thought it was interesting...)

Magil and Stevens argue that among all its other faults, fascism is forthrightly anti-democratic, and it is that aspect, perhaps most of all, that constituted the "peril" of which they spoke. Fascists act to silence the People's democratic voice. This has nothing to do with CPUSA practice and policy; it has to do with what the fascists do, and why they do it.

Silencing the democratic voice of the People -- or rather, making it irrelevant -- has been the priority of both Government and its witting and unwitting handmaidens in this country at least since the 2000 Judicial Coup. Sometimes it's done with finesse, by pretending that some obnoxious policy is the "real" voice of the People, but often it is done brutally and violently with the intention of frightening and intimidating open dissent against obnoxious policies.

Fascism, though, isn't exactly the correct description for the radical global reorganization, destruction and reconstruction that's been going on since the demise of the Soviet Union and the International Communist Conspiracy. The Neo-Liberal economics, the Neo-Conservative ideology, and the Neo-Colonial foreign policy all resemble classic fascism, especially in the union of Government and Corporate interests and the dismissal of the public interest. But it's something else, something in some ways worse, as if we could wrap our minds around something worse than fascism.

The fight is engaged. The Revolution is under way. But in fact, there are two Revolutions occurring simultaneously, and the Neo-Fascist Revolution is winning easily at this point (much as the fascists were rolling roughshod over Europe prior to WWII and initially after starting the War.)

There's no Communist counterweight this time. There is only the People themselves.

And their tents.

"First They Came For Black Bloc..."

...and I didn't say anything, but if they hadn't come, I would have called the cops myself.

When they came for the Anarchists, I didn't say anything because it was just as well, those people can never be satisfied.

When they came for the Communists, I kept my mouth shut because nobody likes them anyway.

When they came for the Marxists, it was all the same to me; there's no profit in being prematurely right, after all.

When they came for the Socialists, I didn't care, since Socialists are such namby-pambies.

When they came for the Secularists, it was nothing to me, since I'm a Believer.

When they came for the Libertarians, I said "Good Riddance."

When they came for the Zeitgeisters and all the various Alternative Energy Proponents and Self-Sustainers, I hardly noticed; I'd forgotten they were still around.

When they came for the Homeless Advocates, the NLG, and the other trouble-makers, it was too bad, but they made their beds when they tried to hijack my movement and protect those who were breaking the law. It's not about the Homeless and Criminals!

When they came to round up the Nonviolence people, I figured they were next, and at least they knew how to behave.

They didn't have to come for me because I'd turned myself in; I didn't want to be alone anymore....

"Where is everybody.....???"

What's Really Going On

Bewildering, innit?

A Congress that is utterly immune to persuasion by DFH's like us, but ever yielding to the Powers and to the Interests and to the Busheviks. A presidency that has been successfully and almost completely transformed into a Sovereign Autocracy, accountable to no one, not even to the Divine. Courts that persnicket on minutae, when they bother with anything. Or order vast upsets in procedures, orders that are then subverted or ignored. And -- of course -- appoint their favorites to office.

Worst of all, we have two candidates for the (Imperial) Presidency who seem to be vague at best when not openly hostile to the whole idea of a self-governing constitutional republic such as the one Americans used to take some pride in.

Our Constitution has become an option; a rough guide you might say. Law is for the Little People, and even then only selectively, based primarily on race and gender. Government continues consolidating its independence from The People, offering whatever blandishments are necessary during Election Season, then promptly ignoring them when push and shove meet.

So what's really going on? Why can't we get through to these people we put in office. Why do so many Dems turn into Blue Dogs once elected? Why are the Republicans able to control the Congress almost effortlessly under putative Democratic leadership? And why is a gravely unstable president given everything he wants and then some by a supposed opposition party?

What the hell is really going on?

Part of the answer may be found in a BBC series by Adam Curtis called "The Century of the Self" which ran a while back (2002). The proposition is that our Sham Democracy is actually a "managed democracy" in which mass psychology is used (and abused) by political, economic and social interests, using theories and techniques pioneered during WWI and afterwards by Sigmund Freud, his nephew Edward Bernays, and others, to create and maintain a society of consumers rather than citizens and to prevent -- so far as possible -- the outbreak of nationalist/populist risings in the English-speaking countries and the world (to the extent the "world" is recognized by English-speaking countries.)

Here's the first episode of four:



Links to further episodes:

Part II

Part III

Part IV

While I think some of it is superficial and even silly, there are some fundamental truths in Curtis's hypothesis that we overlook at our peril.

The Western Elites were horrified by the carnage of WWI and they were terrified by the overthrow of Tsarist Russia and the advent of the Soviet Union -- an advent which led to seventy years of "Communist Threat" to their pelth and status.

An "answer" to this threat was found in the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and the marketing theories of Edward Bernays. Instead of "citizens" the Western ideal would be to turn the masses into "consumers" and to direct and control their darker impulses and desires, as well as their "democracies", through marketing.

The Fascists and Nazis took this basic premise way over the edge, controlling the masses almost completely through brutality, through promises of a brighter and greater future, fulfilling demands for order, for honor (patriotism), for consumer items, and by scapegoating specific minorities for all the troubles the masses had had to endure. The Fascists and Nazis used the same ideas of the Western Elites, but used them to further populist and nationalist interests. This was a threat to English-speaking countries, and there was a second phase of the War to End All Wars as a consequence. The Fascists and Nazis were crushed or absorbed; the Communists, however, made massive headway.

As a result, the West turned to "directed democracy" and spreading consumerism throughout the world as a means to co-opt the desires of the masses for control of their own futures and a better life, which they often believed were more likely through Communism than through the agency of Capitalist Democracy.

Even though the Soviet Union has been vanquished and the "Red" Chinese have become perhaps the greatest capitalists in the world, our elites still operate on the theories of Freud and Bernays, on the principles of consumerism as opposed to citizenship, and on the premise that "directed democracy" is best.

This is a major reason why We, the People are not able to get through to our elected elites, and why, in some measure, they have withdrawn behind the Palace Gates to twitter among themselves about how our future should be managed. It's one reason why Obama has seemed to do such a turn about since securing enough Democratic delegates to be nominated. It's one reason why electing more Democrats means electing more Blue Dogs, not "progressives", whether you think you're electing Blue Dogs or not.

We can do a long dissertation on why Progressivism has been marginalized, and why Progressives are ignored (except for their financial contributions to candidates), but the key is to understand what our elected officials themselves think they are doing, and why they think it is best to do that.

This series, "The Century of the Self", helps that understanding in ways that our ruling classes may not even comprehend themselves.

Commonist! Fascist!

Obama!




The outlines of the Campaign Against Teh Negro are taking shape. The other day, one of the favorite neo-conmen propagandists, Hugh Hewitt, had Jonah Goldberg, Spawn of Lucianne, and Doughy Pantload, on his show to tout his best-selling book, "Liberal Fascism."

They discussed all the many aspects of the Liberal Fascist subversion of this country since Woodrow Wilson and Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Destruction of the Christian Nation, yadda, yadda, yadda, and they summed up their mutual stroking with consideration of Michelle Obama's speechifying, which was clearly Fascist according to them both, and then with a parallel discussion of Obamamania, which is so overtly and obviously Fascist, there is no way to beat it.

Got that? No way to beat it. Well, not no way, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more. But if things run their usual course it will be a very hard row for McCain to hoe against the Negro. Thus Barack, if he is the Democrat Nominee, is almost -- repeat, almost a shoe-in to win the election in November.

It's that Liberal Fascism, don'tcha know.

Meanwhile, over at The Corner, we learn (via "Accuracy in Media") that Negro men and white women were hooking up in the 1950's and 1960's only one way: through Communist cells operating in the land before they could be dismantled by the authorities. Ergo. The Half-Black Obama must be the product of one of these nefarious cells, because there was no other way in those days, for the Black Man to come into intimate contact with the White Woman. It just couldn't happen.

Which makes Obama himself a Communist by breeding, and lookit here: he's also an ideological Communist. Once you understand the dynamics of his upbringing and all.

So.

As a Commun-o-Fascist, the Epitome of Evul, Barack may think he's got the Presidency sewed up, but that crusty old warhorse St John McCain is the Right Man to give him a run for his money. McCain, American fighter of Commun-o-Fascists, Resister. Winner! Martin Luther King was a Communist, too. Don't you deny it! He wouldn't have stirred up all that trouble if it weren't for the Communists infiltrating the SCLC. It's a Known Fact.

Just remember, there wouldn't be a Barack without the World Wide Communist Conspiracy that McCain and Barry Goldwater and St. Ronald Reagan fought their whole lives and defeated.

Just remember that. Harrumph.

[Ed note: the level of desperation these pathetic attempts to smear Barack Obama as a Communist/Fascist represent is kind of breathtaking. It's hard to imagine anyone under the age of 50 cares. It is so 20th Century.]