Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/14/143798/chamber-privacy-invasions/Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that top lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce solicited private security contractors to investigate the Chamber’s political opponents. The law firm, Hunton & Williams LLP, represents the Chamber against campaigns by unions and political activists. In 2009, the Chamber paid Hunton & Williams $1,147,644 for its services. The law firm has represented subprime mortgagers, global warming polluters, and tobacco giant Phillip Morris.
Three Hunton & Williams partners engaged the services of Palantir, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal to perform the invasions of privacy the Chamber itself now describes as “abhorrent“:
– Richard L. Wyatt Jr., co-head of the firm’s Litigation Group, who is suing the Yes Men on behalf of the Chamber. Wyatt negotiated with the spy firms on pricing and told them he would sell the project to the Chamber.
– Robert T. Quackenboss, a lawyer who handles “the tactical and public communications response to union-coordinated attack campaigns.” In this effort, Quackenboss was the “key client contact operationally” with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
– John W. Woods, an expert on “electronic surveillance” and “corporate crimes.” Woods was the “primary point of contact” with the corporate spy contractors.
A key service that attracted the Chamber’s lawyers to the corporate spies was the ability of HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr to use computer programs and false “personas” to “scrape” personal information from the websites of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Such acts are in explicit contravention of the legal terms of service of Facebook and LinkedIn.
Emails leaked from HBGary’s servers describe how Hunton & Williams solicited Berico, Palantir, and HBGary — who named their collaboration “Themis,” after the Roman goddess of law and order — to use social media scrapers developed by HBGary to investigate political opponents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Although Hunton & Williams avoided paying for the months of work, their officials solicited the proposal; repeatedly met with all participants; were fully aware that HBGary was scraping sensitive personal information about political adversaries of the Chamber; and praised the results of joint presentations by Berico, Palantir, and HBGary showing off the scrapers.
In January of this year, H&W sent by courier a CD with target data to the contractors. H&W also solicited the Themis team to produce a presentation on WikiLeaks for Bank of America that promoted their Facebook scraper.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8354I received confirmation that I, personally, along with members of my family, had been highlighted in Themis’ proposed hit job, as ThinkProgress followed up with a second story, based on several other emails from HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr. The email focused on me included names, personal information, home addresses, etc. of myself, family members and a number of other members of VR.
...Part of the plan included highlighting me as a “Tier 1″ player in a sophisticated disinformation/discrediting scheme that relied on high-tech tools developed for the U.S. Government’s “War on Terror”.
Team Themis’ U.S. Chamber of Commerce plan was to deploy the very same techniques and technology used to track terrorists, terror organizations, and nations such as Iran, against private non-profit political advocates and citizens in the U.S.
As disturbing (and there is a lot that every American citizen and every member of the American media ought to be very disturbed by in this story) Hunton & Williams (H&W), the law firm working on behalf of the U.S. Chamber and the Bank of America, had been recommended to BofA, the nation’s largest bank, for the parallel hit scheme to target and discredit WikiLeaks, by our own U.S. Department of Justice.
In addition to Barr’s email offering personal information on me and my family, the H&W scheme by Team Themis, created for the U.S. Chamber, also included a Power Point presentation in which I am personally highlighted, with photograph, along with my wife “Martha” and “2 boys, James and John Friedman” at our “home at 1055 Raywood Ln, Silver Springs, MD”.
Of course, I’m not married and have no children and don’t live in MD, but these are the huge private firms receiving millions, if not billions, in U.S. tax-payer dollars to target terrorists, after all, so why let such details like accuracy, or targeting innocent people, or citizens and journalists exercising their right to free speech get in the way of a potential $2 million dollar per month contract from the U.S. Chamber get in the way? The Chamber, of course, is also funded by the world’s largest corporations who receive billions in tax-payer bailout dollars and subsidies from the U.S. Government. Can you feel the synergy? Team Themis certainly did…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/14/energy-firms-activists-intelligence-gatheringThree large energy companies have been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists, the Guardian can reveal.
The energy giant E.ON, Britain’s second-biggest coal producer Scottish Resources Group and Scottish Power, one of the UK’s largest electricity-generators, have been paying for the services of a private security firm that has been secretly monitoring activists.
Leaked documents show how the security firm’s owner, Rebecca Todd, tipped off company executives about environmentalists’ plans after snooping on their emails. She is also shown instructing an agent to attend campaign meetings and coaching him on how to ingratiate himself with activists. The disclosures come as police chiefs, on the defensive over damaging revelations of undercover police officers in the protest movement, privately claim that there are more corporate spies in protest groups than undercover police officers.
Senior police officers complain that spies hired by commercial firms are – unlike their own agents – barely regulated.
Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which until recently ran the secretive national unit of undercover police officers deployed in protest groups, said in a speech last week that “the deployment by completely uncontrolled and unrestrained players in the private sector” constituted a “massive area of concern”.
Continues at: http://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/wat ... es-profitsWater—On Women’s Burdens, Humans’ Rights, and Companies’ Profits
Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz
Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz is associate professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Baskent University (Ankara/Turkey).
“We used to say that water was sacred, but now you have to be rich to use it….I feel stupid for paying for drinking water.”
—Sevgi Demir, Housewife in Istanbul/Turkey1
How is it possible that a person living in a water-rich region uses more water by flushing the toilet than a person in a water-scarce region has available for drinking, food-preparation, hygiene, and cleaning—for a whole day?
How is it possible that a woman living in a water-rich region only needs to open the tap to get enough water for herself and her family, while a woman in a water-scarce region has to…walk for miles and miles to get far less water of much worse quality?
Why is that so? Is it bad fortune? Unfair? Destiny? Undeserved? Is it unjust? It is all these, but also much more. Water is the essence of life. It is the precondition of life. Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote an homage about water, calling it “indescribable….We do not just need you to live: you are life itself! You are the Earth’s most precious possession.…You are a delicate divinity.” Just like the air we breathe, we need water to survive. Clean water, for sure: unsafe, unclean water kills.
This article has two parts. The first deals with dominant positions concerning water: the neoliberal agenda, consequences of water privatization, and the UN stance. The second part looks at what is missing in this picture and ignored by the dominant perspectives—namely, global inequalities and gender discrimination.
Water—Dominant Perspectives
In today’s globalized world, nothing is safe from being commercially exploited by global capital—not even resources that are vital for the survival of humanity, as well as sustaining life and the ecosystem. The world’s fresh water supply is a mere 2.5 percent of the earth’s total water volume. These finite fresh water resources are today being polluted, diverted, and depleted at accelerating rates, creating a growing number of water-stressed regions. Under neoliberal circumstances, where the economy controls and rules over the ecology, some corporate owners gain giant profits, whereas everybody else endures difficulties—life-threatening difficulties, that is.
In this situation of mounting demands, water loses all its figurative and sacred meanings and is converted into a commodity, a product, a good. Neoliberalism turns nature from common resource to profit-gaining commodity. In this perspective, nature is perceived as external to humans and full of usable material goods for consumption and gain.2 Certainly, there is a link between environmental degradation and social injustice: how people treat nature and how they treat each other is inseparably connected (ecofeminism).
Globalization’s panacea is privatization. This cure-all of (nearly) all global problems is vehemently prescribed by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the European Union. The World Bank drives the opening of trade in water rights by pressurizing countries to privatize and relocate rights for water sources to giant corporations. It is crucial to remember that the word “privatization” comes from the Latin word “privare,” which means “to deprive”!3
Two examples of the now common commercial advertisements of this deprivation may suffice. German Commerzbank dubs water “the oil of the twenty-first century.” It points to the fact that 90 percent of the world’s water supplies is in public hands as the main obstacle in the provision of water services. Commerzbank applauds that more and more towns and cities privatize their water supply and distribution systems, and estimates the awaited profits at a sky-scraping €300 billion, saying: “Water is a market with potential for future expansion. A wide range of companies will profit from the foreseeable boom in the water sector.”
The Deutsche Bank, too, greedily promotes this “megatrend”: “Water, the blue gold, is becoming scarce. Even today, water is a rare commodity and, in view of the population growth in developing and transitional countries, the situation looks geared to become even more critical. A short supply of a commodity is per se the prerequisite for excellent returns.”4
To celebrate water scarcity, especially in combination with population growth, is macabre, to say the least.
Global concentration among private water suppliers is enormous, generating concentrated profits. The French companies Suez and Veolia (formerly Vivendi) “until very recently, controlled two-thirds of the global private water services sector.” Suez has 160,000 employees worldwide, 72,000 in its water division, while Veolia has 272,000 employees, 70,000 in its water division. In third place is the British company Thames Water (created when Margaret Thatcher privatized UK water services) with 12,000 employees. The total revenue of Suez in 2007 (including all of its divisions) was over $130 billion, dwarfing the GDPs of many of the countries in which it operates.5
Consequences of Water Privatization
Privatization and deregulation of water are prescribed by international organizations as a solution to all problems concerning water: water scarcity, water waste, over-consumption, and pollution will end, and the developing infrastructure will make water accessible to all.
However, the reality looks different. The consequences of water privatization are devastating: water cannot be replenished according to “demand and supply.” Studies reveal that privatization neither increases access to clean water for poor people nor leads to better quality and lower prices for water. On the contrary, the commercialization of water resources has resulted in sobering problems.
After a bottled water company opened a plant in Java/Indonesia in 2002, it consumed such a high amount of spring water, only twenty meters away from the region’s main water source, that farmers had less and less irrigation water, and their wells started to run dry. Several farmers lost their livelihood and had to stop farming.6 Coca-Cola, after exploiting the groundwater reserves, turned parts of Kerala/India into a desert. Entire rivers have been sold in India.
General trends concerning privatization and deregulation of water reveal that water is being offered mostly to those who can afford to pay. Water’s preferred use in a privatized market system is for income-generating activities: already 70 percent of water is used for agriculture; around 20 percent for industry, and 10 percent goes to household use. In decision making, women’s voices are not listened to, increasing their vulnerability.
Whereas public water suppliers are not driven by the search for profits or even full returns of provision costs and are more likely to see water as a necessary public service, private companies must regain their costs of provision and maximize their profits to stay alive within harsh competition. For people, water is a public need that needs to be guaranteed, whereas for private retailers, it is a commodity like any other.
Public water suppliers commonly seek to protect those who cannot afford water with price reductions, subsidies, or provisions of free water, whereas commercial sellers do not share such responsibility or commitment toward those in need. Public water providers are in a position to keep water prices stable for years and years, whereas private venders will easily and quickly increase prices, to make sure their profit margins widen.
Public water suppliers promote water conservation and less consumption, whereas commercial companies are keen on more overconsumption by those who can afford to pay, since this generates further scarcities and enhances their growth and profits. However, the overconsumption of water brings a quick depletion of water tables and environmental non-sustainability. Public providers supply water while taking into consideration quality, environmental protection, reliable supply, best standards, and public welfare interests, whereas private companies are interested—by their very nature—in a single feature: the maximization of profit and gain—the sooner the better, the more the better.
After privatization, customers all over the world face price increases between 15 and 50 percent. As water is indispensable, they are forced to accept these raises. Consider, for example, the privatization by EnBW of water in Stuttgart, Germany. Although water prices had remained stable for years, the first thing EnBW did as the new “owner” of water, was to increase prices, first by over 6 percent, then a further 7.5 percent. EnBW achieved record results for that financial year—a gain of 42 percent.7
A lucrative byproduct of water privatization is the ever-increasing sale of bottled water. Although this commodity is not much different than processed tap water, more and more people—in fear of their and their families’ (especially children’s) health, and as a result of successful advertisement campaigns—purchase bottled water for disproportionately high prices. There are even suspicions that main infrastructural networks might be allowed to deteriorate, even disintegrate, making tap water undrinkable and boosting corporations’ profits. Bottled water is available in varying amounts, but always in plastic. Millions and millions of plastic bottles result in thousands of tons of waste, triggering an extreme kind of environmental pollution. Taking into account the transportation of bottled water, sometimes from quite far-away places, it is possible to say that bottled water causes an immense amount of environmental degradation. Another problem is the fact that water companies are eager to deplete a water source up to the last drop, without contemplating the environment, the fresh water regeneration phase, consequences for the resident population, or the desertification of entire regions.
Combining Two Approaches
In their analyses of fascism, Griffin and the independent Marxists I discussed above share several important points. In broad terms, both regard fascism as an autonomous political force, a distinct form of right-wing politics that opposes the left but also challenges the established order, including conventional capitalist politics and culture. Two of the Marxists (Hamerquist and Sakai) join with Griffin in labeling fascism as revolutionary. Within both approaches there is also a recognition that fascism is not a static entity, but one that evolves to address new historical conditions and opportunities. Along with these points of commonality, each side also brings something to the table that the other lacks. Griffin brings an incisive and detailed portrait of fascist ideology, while the Marxists bring a careful assessment of fascism's contradictory relationship with capitalism.
All of this offers a lot of room for useful interchange, but little work has been done in this area. Griffin himself often treats Marxist discussions of fascism as an intellectual dead end, trapped by a supposed dismissal of fascism's revolutionary claims and "the axiomatic assumption that fascism is primarily to be understood in relation to the crisis of the capitalist state."[57] However, Griffin does recognize significant variation among Marxist analyses and in one 2001 essay hails "the prospects for synergy between Marxist and liberal" approaches to fascist aesthetics.[58]
On the other side, few Marxists have even addressed Griffin's work. Trotskyist Dave Renton offers a mean-spirited polemic that falsifies many of Griffin's views. Renton claims, for example, that Griffin wants to "rescue fascist Italy from stigma" and that he believes "fascism cannot be blamed for the Holocaust." In contrast, Mark Neocleous makes a serious effort to synthesize class analysis with an exploration of fascist ideology that is partly influenced by Griffin. But Neocleous underplays fascism's insurgent dimension -- precisely the area that should be central to such an interchange -- and instead portrays fascism one-sidedly as "a counter-revolutionary phenomenon in defense of capitalism"[59]
As a step toward bringing the two approaches together, I offer the following draft definition: "Fascism is a revolutionary form of right-wing populism, inspired by a totalitarian vision of collective rebirth, that challenges capitalist control of the state while defending class exploitation.*
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*[Note: In the published version of this essay, I offer a revised definition with a different final clause, stating that fascism "challenges capitalist political and cultural power while promoting economic and social hierarchy." Thanks to Don Hamerquist for pointing out that the original version violated methodological empathy, since many neo-fascists either ignore or disavow class exploitation, although they glorify hierarchy, authority, and discipline.]
- - - - - - - - - -
In this definition, revolutionary means an effort to bring about a fundamental, structural transformation of the political, cultural, economic, or social order. Fascism seeks, first of all, to overthrow established political elites and abolish established forms of political rule, whether liberal-pluralist or authoritarian. Second, fascists also attack "bourgeois" cultural patterns such as individualism and consumerism and aim to systematically reshape all cultural spheres -- encompassing education, family life, religion, the media, arts, sports and leisure, as well as the culture of business and the workplace -- to reflect one unified ideology. Third, some (not all) forms of fascism promote a socioeconomic revolution that transforms but does not abolish class society -- as when German Nazism restructured the industrial heart of Europe with a system of exploitation based largely on plunder, slave labor, and genocidally working people to death.
By right-wing I mean a political orientation that reinforces or intensifies social oppression as part of a backlash against movements for greater equality, freedom, or inclusiveness. Populism means a form of politics that uses mass mobilization to rally "the people" around some form of anti-elitism. (This definition, borrowed from Margaret Canovan, differs slightly from Griffin's use of the term populism.) Combining these two concepts, right-wing populism mobilizes a mass movement around a twisted anti-elitism (often based on conspiracy theories) at the same time that it intensifies oppression. In place of leftist conceptions of class struggle, fascists often draw a phony distinction between "producers" (including "productive" capitalists, workers, and middle classes) and "parasites" (defined variously as financiers, bureaucrats, foreign corporations, Jews, immigrants, welfare mothers, etc.) Right-wing populism appeals largely to middle groups in the social hierarchy, who have historically formed an important part of fascism's mass base.[60]
The phrase totalitarian vision of collective rebirth draws on Griffin's work but broadens his category of ultra-nationalism to encompass certain religious-based and other non-nationalist movements. The fascist vision is totalitarian in that it (a) celebrates one group -- national, ethnic, religious, or racial -- as an organic community to which all other loyalties must be subordinated, (b) uses mass organizations and rituals to create a sense of participation and direct identification with that community, (c) advocates coordinated top-down control over all institutions, and (d) rejects in principle the concepts of individual rights, pluralism, equality, and democratic decision-making. The collective rebirth aspect of the vision declares that the community must be rescued from a profound inner crisis, largely by purging "alien" ideologies and groups of people that are considered threats to the community's unity and vitality. This vision often draws on romanticized images of the past but points toward a radically new cultural and political order.
Fascist regimes challenge capitalist control of the state by taking political dominance away from the representatives of big business and subordinating capitalist interests to their own ideological agenda. But as a force that is committed to social hierarchy and rejects working-class socialism, fascism defends class exploitation. Historically, fascists have colluded with capitalists and bolstered the economic power of big business. Although fascists have often targeted specific capitalist features and even specific sectors of the business class, no fascist movement has substantively attacked capitalism's underlying structures, such as private property and the market economy. At most, a fascist revolution might radically reshape economic exploitation but would not abolish it.
By combining insights from the two approaches I have explored, the proposed definition -- with its twin focus on ideology and class rule -- offers a fuller, more rounded model of fascism. In the process, it gives us a more powerful tool to map divisions, relationships, and changes in right-wing politics, and to understand how these dynamics relate to changes in capitalism.
The past thirty years have seen an upsurge of right-wing movements in many parts of the world. Many of these movements promote some form of authoritarian populism, either nationalist or religious in focus, that incorporates themes of anti-elitism and collective regeneration out of crisis. In this context, some commentators treat explicit racism or antisemitism as the decisive markers of fascism, but racism and antisemitism can be found among non-fascists as well, and not all fascists today fit the classic profile for ethnic bigotry. A more critical dividing line is between "reformists" who are content to work within existing channels and "revolutionaries" (including but not limited to fascists) who advocate a radical break with the established order. This division often cuts across movements rather than between them. The United States has seen two major examples of this in recent years: the Patriot movement and the Christian right.[61]
The Patriot movement, which included armed "citizens militias" and peaked in the mid/late 1990s, represented the United States' first large-scale coalition of committed nazis and non-fascist activists since World War II. The Patriot movement promoted the apocalyptic specter of an elite conspiracy to destroy U.S. sovereignty and impose a tyrannical collectivist system run by the United Nations. The movement's program centered on forming armed "militias" to defend against the expected crackdown, but more extreme proposals circulated widely, such as bogus "constitutional" theories that would relegalize slavery, abolish women's right to vote, and give people of color an inferior citizenship status. A loose-knit and unstable network mainly based among rural, working-class whites, the Patriot movement attracted millions of supporters at its height. It fed not only on fears of government repression but also reactions to economic hardship connected with globalization (such as the farm crisis of the 1980s), the erosion of traditional white male privilege, the decline of U.S. global dominance, and disillusionment with mainstream political options. (Many of the same impulses fueled grassroots support for Pat Buchanan's 1992 and 1996 Republican presidential campaigns. Buchanan blended attacks on immigrants, homosexuals, and feminists with a critique of corporate globalization and an anti-interventionist foreign policy, but did not challenge the established political framework.)
The Christian right has promoted a program of cultural traditionalism in response to perceived social breakdown and a supposed elite secular humanist conspiracy to destroy American freedom. The movement's agenda centers on reasserting traditional gender roles and heterosexual male dominance, but also includes strong subthemes of cultural racism. The Christian right is based mainly among middle-class Sunbelt suburbanites and has fostered a dense network of local, regional, and national organizations that actively engage millions of people. The movement includes a small fascist wing, spearheaded by advocates of Christian Reconstructionism. Reconstructionists, who have played a key role in the most terroristic branch of the anti-abortion rights movement, reject pluralist institutions in favor of a full-scale theocracy based on their interpretation of biblical law. However, the bulk of the Christian right has (so far) advocated more limited forms of Christian control and has worked to gain power within the existing political system, not overthrow it.
In many other parts of the world, too, fascism operates as a tendency or a distinct faction within a larger movement. In western and central Europe, many right-wing nationalist movements encompass small hardcore neofascist groups alongside mass parties such as the National Front (France), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), and the National Alliance (Italy).[62] All three of these parties were built largely by (ex?)fascists and promote political themes (especially anti-immigrant racism) that are widely identified as the opening wedge for a fascist agenda. Note that both the FPO and the National Alliance have participated in coalition governments at the national level. This may be part of a longterm strategy to "fascisticize" the political climate and institutions from within, but it also suggests the possibility that fascists -- like socialists -- can be coopted into a liberal capitalist political system.
The Islamic right encompasses a great diversity of organizations, political philosophies, strategies, and constituencies across the Muslim world.[63] Although some branches (notably Saudi Arabia's religious power structure) are conservative or reactionary, others represent a kind of right-wing populism that aims not to reject modernity but reshape it. These branches use modern forms of political mobilization to rally Muslims against western imperialism, Zionism, global capitalist culture, and/or local elites. They envision a collective religious and national (or international) rebirth through re-Islamizing society or throwing off foreign domination.
Within this framework, Afghanistan's Taliban and Lebanon's Hezbollah represent opposite poles. The Taliban have promoted a totalitarian form of Islamic rule that combines virulent misogyny, Pashtun ethnic chauvinism, and warlord capitalism -- politics that fully deserve the fascist label. Hezbollah, in contrast, offsets its call for a theocracy modeled on Iran with an everyday practice that respects religious, ethnic, and political diversity, does not impose special strictures on women, and focuses its populist critique mainly on the realities of Israeli aggression and the hardships faced by Lebanon's Shi'i majority.[64] (Iran's Islamic Republic falls somewhere between these two poles. Although authoritarian, it preserves too much openness and pluralism to be labeled fascist, which highlights the fact that right-wing revolutionary anti-imperialism does not necessarily equal fascism.)
India's massive Hindu nationalist movement advocates Hindu unity and supremacy as the key to revitalizing India as a nation. The movement promotes hatred of -- and mass violence against -- Muslims and claims that India's political leaders have long pursued anti-Hindu policies and favoritism toward Muslims and other minorities. Hindu nationalism, or "Hindutva," has disproportionately appealed to upper-caste, middle-class Hindus from northern and west-central India. The movement centers on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (Association of National Volunteers, or RSS), an all-male cadre organization that promotes a paramilitary ethos and a radical vision to reshape Indian culture along authoritarian corporatist lines. The RSS's political spinoff, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party, or BJP), has often favored a more pragmatic electoral strategy that blends a toned-down version of Hindu chauvinism with populist economic appeals. (The BJP headed India's coalition government from 1998 to 2004 and now leads the parliamentary opposition.) There are also tensions within the movement between advocates of free trade and economic nationalists who warn of the dangers posed by foreign investment. In contrast to many fascists and other right-wing nationalists, Hindutva forces have sought close strategic ties with both the United States and Israel, especially since George W. Bush proclaimed the War on Terror.[65]
This array of movements looks different from classical fascism, in large part, because the capitalist world has changed. Classical fascism took shape in an era of European industrialization and nation-building, competing colonial empires, and an international Communist movement inspired by the recent Bolshevik Revolution. Now both old-style colonialism and state socialism have almost vanished, while corporate globalization is shifting industries across the world and reshaping nation-states. Far-right movements are responding to these changes in various ways. They promote nostalgia for old empires but also right-wing anti-imperialism, old-style nationalisms but also internationalist and decentralized versions of authoritarian politics. They feed off of a backlash against the left but also grow where the left's weakness has opened space for other kinds of insurgent movements. And they promote different versions of anti-elitism, often targeting U.S. or multinational capital but sometimes focusing more on local elites.
Many commentators have argued that fascist movements today represent a right-wing backlash against capitalist globalization. Martin A. Lee argues, for example, that in Europe "the waning power of the nation-state has triggered a harsh ultranationalist reaction." Here far rightists have exploited a range of popular issues associated with international economic restructuring -- not only scapegoating immigrants but also criticising the European Union, the introduction of a single European curency, and the rise of a globalized culture. "Global commerce acts as the great homogenizer, blurring indigenous differences and smothering contrasting ethnic traits. Consequently, many Europeans are fearful of losing not only their jobs, but their cultural and national identities."[66]
In Europe and elsewhere, far-right politics is indeed largely a response to capitalist globalization, but this response is more complex than a simple backlash. For example, the Patriot/militia movement in the United States denounced "global elites," the "new world order," the United Nations, international bankers, etc. But their attack on government regulation, as People Against Racist Terror has pointed out, dovetailed with "the actual globalist strategy of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to end all environmental and labor codes that restrict untrammeled exploitation."[67] In India, Hindu nationalists have denounced multinational capital and globalized culture, but the movement's dominant approach has been to seek a stronger role for India within the context of global capitalism. The BJP-led coalition government of 1998-2004 promoted privatization, deregulation, foreign investment, consumer credit growth, and expansion of the information technology sector. These policies are tailored to India's rising upper and middle classes, eager to participate more effectively in the global economy -- not historical "losers" trying to gain back their old status by attacking the forces of change.[68]
The gender politics of the Christian and Islamic right, too, are sometimes seen as a reaction against capitalist globalization -- a drive to force women out of the wage labor force and back into full domestic submission, depriving multinational capital of a crucial source of labor. There is truth to this, but here again the dynamic is more complex than a simple backlash. To begin with, many Christian rightists and Islamic rightists consider it acceptable for women to work outside the home, as long as they do it in a way that is "modest" and doesn't challenge male authority. And even the religious traditionalist claim that women's place is in the home can make it easier for employers to exploit women economically. As Maria Mies argues in Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, defing homemaking as women's natural, proper role trivializes women's paid work as a source of "supplementary" income (which justifies paying women much less than men) and isolates women workers from each other and from male workers (which hinders collective labor activism).[69] This means that there is potential for both conflict and accommodation on gender politics between religious rightists and global (or local) capital.
* * *
This essay is intended to challenge the conventional leftist view that fascism equals a tool of capitalist repression -- because that view not only distorts history but also hides major political threats in today's world. Fascism is better understood as an autonomous right-wing force that has a contradictory relationship with capital and that draws mass support largely by advocating a revolution against established values and institutions. Several Marxists have helped to develop this counter-model of fascism, but their work is limited by an unsystematic analysis of fascist ideology. Roger Griffin's ideology-centered analysis of fascism helps fill the gap. Combining the two approaches gives us a stronger model of fascism than either approach can offer on its own.
This essay does not offer a comprehensive theory of fascism. Many important aspects of fascism merit a fuller treatment than I have been able to give them here, and the writers I have discussed are only a sampling of those who have written insightfully about fascism. I hope that this discussion will encourage further efforts at synthesis.
The concept of fascism as a right-wing revolutionary force has spawned the idea that we are facing a "three-way fight" between fascism, conventional global capitalism, and (at least potentially) leftist revolution. This approach is a great improvement over widespread dualistic models that try to divide all political players between the "forces of oppression" and the "forces of liberation." As some radical anti-fascists have pointed out for years, "my enemy's enemy" is not necessarily my friend. At the same time, like any theoretical model, the three-way fight itself only approximates reality. There are more than three sides in the struggle, and to understand the different forces and their interrelationships, we have a lot of work to do.
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