Economic Aspects of "Love"

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:47 pm

http://intheprocessofbeing.wordpress.co ... 0/11/1683/

in our quest to merge our spiritual with our political, we must let reality, as it continues to change, permeate how we see ourselves in the world. it is important to remain dialectical, to collide the past with our present in order to form the questions that will inspire creation, that will inspire us to look at what is without dogma, attachment or romanticism.



questions in preparation for the first radical poc fuckin’ sangha (meditation in community) at the makerspace-LOL:


what does individual liberation look like without collective liberation? how does privilege play into that?

what about nonviolence vs. armed resistance? what about the violence enacted on us everyday by capitalism, by colonialism?

and how about stealing? what is theft really when land, resources and community have been and are perpetually stolen from us?
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:41 pm

Image
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:42 pm

“It is common knowledge that family relations are alienated and alienating, that the “love” we have for our fathers, mothers, children and siblings has to be expressed through the work we do for them—work which produces them as commodities. All family members—even within the “love” of the family—are not protected from but remain subject to capital’s will and discipline. Children “must” go to school whether they want to or not, for example, and everyone is aware that the family is in reality the pool of labor on which capital draws. It appears as a place of “love,” but is in reality a place of alienation, of commoditization, of non-communication.”

— Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 24, 2012 2:57 pm

Image
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:43 pm

http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2012/ ... ology.html

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Golden Dawn’s fascist ideology

Continuing Three Way Fight’s series on the Greek neonazi party Golden Dawn, in this post I offer a profile of Golden Dawn’s fascist ideology, based on online writings from the party and its affiliated organizations (Women’s Front, Youth Front, and Green Wing), which I have accessed using Google’s Translate function. Although some of the auto-translation results are garbled, many passages come through clearly and major points are often repeated in different ways, so I believe the following is reasonably accurate. (For Greek language sources, I have provided URLs in the “Sources” section below, rather than hyperlinks.)

Golden Dawn’s web offerings feature a familiar set of fascist ideological themes, including aggressive and expansionist nationalism, a vision of racial purity through purging alien groups and influences, a crude anti-elitism based on scapegoating Jews, patriarchal traditionalism, homophobia, closeness to nature, rejection of both capitalism and communism, and a call for a strong state role in the economy and society.

The party glorifies a militaristic approach to politics. GD’s Youth Front blog, for example, declares “The People’s Nationalism stands [for the] neglected Values of Honor, Duty, of ethics, of Blood, discipline, power of will and self-improvement for Life and finally the heroic lifestyle.” [1] And U.S. neonazi influences are evident. The Youth Front posted a glowing tribute to Robert Mathews, leader of The Order, who died in a 1984 shootout with U.S. federal agents. [2] The Women’s Front blog main page features a version of the “Fourteen Words” slogan coined by Order co-founder David Lane: “We must ensure the existence of our race and the future of our children!” [3]

Against globalization
Historian Roger Griffin has argued that fascist ideology centers on a vision of palingenesis, or collective rebirth out of a near-fatal crisis or decline. This fits Golden Dawn well, as the party’s name suggests. “Today the country is going through a deep crisis. [A] crisis of values and ethics. [A] crisis economic, cultural and national” – a crisis brought on mainly by globalization. “We do not believe in any globalization and believe that this is the way for the subjugation of all peoples of mankind in [the] global conspiracy that exists today.” [4] GD cites damaging effects of economic globalization including “the depopulation of the countryside, methodical destruction of agriculture, closure of sugar factories, textiles and dozens of other productive sectors related to agricultural production,” as well as the closing of hundreds of factories and decline of the shipping industry. Because “multinationals operate unchecked,” Greece has become dependent on imports for 80 percent of food consumed, and cheap imports “create fictitious and false needs.” [5]

GD also argues that “the system” has brought about “commercialization of the arts and cultural alienation of our people” through imposition of “outlandish American subculture” and (presumably worse) even Turkish culture. These changes are “aimed at discrediting the Greek civilization and [causing Greeks] to forget their manners, customs and traditions of our nation.” [5]

The part of globalization that upsets Golden Dawn the most is mass immigration, which they regard as an attack on Greece’s cultural and racial purity. “Millions of immigrants have invaded and continue to invade our country unchecked… so in a few years the Greeks [will be] a minority in our land…” The “international system of globalization” is forcing Greece “to become multinational and multicultural…. Crime is now rampant. Neglected infectious diseases reappear.” The party calls for immediately arresting and deporting “all illegal immigrants” and securing the country’s borders with antipersonnel mines. [5]

Anti-elitism and antisemitism
Golden Dawn says that Greece is “under occupation” – controlled by outside forces. “The local corrupt political establishment, hooked to power, executes all the commands of dependence and subordination selling out [the] country.” [5] According to GD, real power is held by global elites, who the party refers to more or less interchangeably as “multinationals,” “capitalists,” “plutocracy,” [6] “predatory banking system,” or “international moneylenders.” [7] These terms hint at the classic fascist distinction between “productive” industrial capital and “parasitic” finance capital, but from what I have seen Golden Dawn doesn’t seem to develop this argument clearly. In any case, at the center of the conspiracy is “the one and only ruler of nations: the world Jewry.” [8]

The GD Youth Front argues that Jews use globalization “to create people incapable, [with] no future, and to eventually destroy humanity. Materialism will prevail and any value will be erased permanently from the souls of men. The consumerism will reap people and any resistance will immediately [be] suppressed.” [1] On GD’s own website we are told that Zionism (Jewish nationalism) is trying “to exterminate the ‘eternal’ enemy (the Greeks)” and that the Jewish lobby in the U.S. is behind U.S. policy in the Eastern Mediterranean region, which aims at “segmentation of the Greek State and the disappearance of the Greek Nation.” Zionism, by accelerating globalization, “put the U.S. on a slippery road [of] confrontation… with all nations of the earth.” [9])

Beyond left and right
Golden Dawn claims that “the political theories of bourgeois democracy, liberalism, Marxism and capitalism …ultimately are creations of the Jews, who incite the New World Order.” [1] Thus political left and political right are two sides of the same coin. “The right and left solutions supposedly fight each other, [but] it’s just theater[:] two partners who perpetuate the dominance of cosmopolitan internationalist and anti-national and anti-people forces.” [6] GD rejects both capitalism and communism as “instruments of the Zionist world domination attempt.” [5] “The oligarchy of money and [Bolshevik] party tyranny [are] the same. Enemies of the Nation and the People.” [6] On one side, the free market is “only the vehicle [of] internationalist capital, banks and moneylenders.” Adam Smith’s “theory of the ‘invisible hand’” (the belief that free markets channel selfish behavior into social benefits) has been disproved, because on “one finger of the hand, [is a] shining gold ring with the star of David!”

On the other side, the idea of class struggle “is opposed to our vision for unity of the people in a community of shared blood. The Bolsheviks did not believe in the reality of race.” [10] “In contrast with the sweat and blood of the worker, the leftists [have] the privileged status of rottenness and corruption.” In addition, GD claims, the left actually aids the capitalists they claim to be fighting. “While we are nationalists, [we have] argued from the outset against the invasion of foreign workplaces, [while] the unfortunate Marxists rushed to side on the side of smuggled migrants, essentially serving the interests of capitalists…. Who was actually the beneficiary of the massive invasion of foreign manpower in our country? [It] was undoubtedly the class of capitalists…” [7]

Rebirth of the nation
Golden Dawn aims to restore the unity, purity, and independence of the Greek nation. This involves not only purging foreigners, getting rid of corrupt politicians, and freeing Greece from the control of international moneylenders. The “ultimate aim” is to form “a new society and a new type of man” through “a radical renewal of the obsolete and counterfeit social values.” To GD, “nationalism is the only absolute and true revolution because it seeks [a] new birth [of] ethical, spiritual, social and mental values.” [6]

Golden Dawn’s “policy line is that the national interest stands above anything else…” [4] This means subordinating the individual to the nation. “It is important to society, the whole community of the People, not the person…. A person can only be one person who completes the socialization through capability, as [a] harmonious composition of social and individual values. This superior type of person is a new kind of person who seeks to realize nationalism.” [6]

Golden Dawn nationalism celebrates Greek culture as an outgrowth of Greeks’ racial heritage. “Tradition, the History of Law of our Nation and the Idea of Hellenism are the supreme values through which we experience the world and approach the concept of culture.” “We believe in a new Greek culture based on [the] great and eternal tradition of our race. We believe in a Greek way of life against the vile and vulgar outlandish customs.” [4] “Our way is the way of natural law: because Nature herself stated that Greek blood will be the most complete, most crystallized and perfect expression of human culture!” [10] “Nobody can refute the eternal natural law, no one can refute the Law of Blood!” [7] In this framework, “racial mixing is unacceptable, and almost always leads to disorder, mental illness, due to the destructive combination of inherited mental gifts, resulting in the destruction of human nature.” [1]

Women's duty
Golden Dawn proclaims “the importance of family and the value of motherhood.” Having babies is women's duty to the nation, in that “More children means more Greek[s], more opportunities for progression and creativity, more power to prevent any foreign conspiracy.” [8] When the party advocates services for women, such as more childcare centers or “support for single mothers to prevent abortion,” it is mainly to support their function as mothers. Similarly, the head of Golden Dawn's Women's Front, Eugenia Christou, said, "We want women to be educated because those will nurture their children, who are the hope and future of this country." [11]

At the same time, GD argues that traditional roles are a source of strength and pride for Greek women, in contrast to global culture's consumerism, sexual exploitation, and racial dangers. Declaring that women should not be treated as a "pleasure vessel or object," Christou proclaimed, “In today’s society, dominated by the standards of prostitution, where the role of the mother has become obsolete and has been replaced by superficial values, Women of the Golden Dawn, dynamic and informed about the nature of the female sex, strongly assert a healthy standard.” [11] A GD Women's Front blog post about a women's self-defense course explains, "our members were taught how with simple movements [they] can protect themselves, as attacks against women by hordes of illegal immigrants have already become a daily occurrence…. The course is for Greeks only.” [12]

Nature and tradition
Like the original Nazi party before them, Golden Dawn emphasizes closeness to nature. The party has an environmentalist affiliate organization called Green Wing, whose blog features articles about recycling, organic farming, the blight of strip mall construction, and traditional ways of harvesting olives. [13] Green Wing frames such concerns in a nationalist context. “Man is and should be in direct contact with nature and the natural environment. The rupture of this bond [through] urbanization leads to a decline in[to] a vulgar way of life, this American, cosmopolitan lifestyle away from their ancestral homes and Nature.” [14]

Taking this a step further, Green Wing has also promoted eugenics. In 2007 their blog reprinted an article by J. Bauge-Prevost on “Biopolitics and Eugenics,” which argued that “The hereditary burdened people [such] as paranoid, the mentally retarded, the schizophrenic, epileptic, carriers of mutated genes, incurable alcoholics, advanced drug addicts and others should [be] sterilized.” The same article listed “homosexuality, the degenerate marriages, racial intermarriage, [and] wild consumerism” along with “the soiling of the environment” as threats to the white race. [15]

A strong state
Golden Dawn's website refers to their ideal of the purified and unified nation as “the People’s State” or “the secular state.” “For the People nationalism is not only a numerical unity of people but a qualitative synthesis of people with the same biological and spiritual heritage, which is the source of all creation and expresses its power in the People’s State[:] the only state that can express the people as an organic whole and spiritual living.” “In [the] secular state there is no social stratification based on income-economic classes. The popular classes are collaborating organic[ally], other groups of people with special abilities and production skills each. Just like in a living body. The different systems contribute harmoniously and in full cooperation for their survival.” [6]

The People’s or secular state will be “a fair state where everybody is equal before the law and where the law is respected by all.” [4] But this formal equality will allow true, natural inequality to express itself. “The People’s State of Nationalism [that] delivers social equality of opportunity is grounded in meritocracy and [does] not ignore the law of diversity and difference in nature. Respecting the spiritual, ethnic and racial inequality of men can build egalitarian society and law.” [6] Specifically, “the Armed Forces and the people of Culture and Education” represent “a natural aristocracy.” “In our state they will be the leaders and guides of the nation and not the cunning politicians or government-nouveau riche plutocrats.” [4] (The reference to the Armed Forces as natural leaders of Greece evokes the rightist military dictatorship of 1967-1974, whose former leaders helped inspire Nikolaos Michaloliakos to found the Golden Dawn party.)

Golden Dawn advocates a strong state role in the economy. “As there can be no strong economy without private initiative, so it can not exist without public sector. The strategic sectors of the economy [should be] controlled by the national state.” [5] Further, “the state should control private property so that it is not dangerous for the survival of the People or can manipulate [the People].” [6] They want to nationalize those banks that have received bailout funds and merge them into a strong national bank, whose income will be invested in domestic production to make Greece self-sufficient. They also want debt relief for low-income people and “specialized programs to support workers, Motherhood, vulnerable groups and youth.” But at the same time, Golden Dawn also calls for a “dramatic reduction of government expenditure,” to be achieved by reducing the salaries of MPs, expenditures on parliament and the presidency, and cutting funding for political parties and NGOs. [5]

Foreign policy
Golden Dawn calls for an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. “We denounce the abandonment of Northern Epirus [part of Albania], the constant retreats in Cyprus, Macedonia, [and] Aegean Thrace...” [4] “Macedonia is our land since ancient Greek times…. Today, some parts of it remain outside the National Backbone and Greeks living there [are] methodically persecuted.” GD wants political autonomy for Northern Epirus and Greek citizenship for ethnic Greeks living there. They declare that “Cyprus is Greece” and call for the liberation of occupied Cyprus from Turkish rule. They also want to expand Greek territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, “close the Turkish consulate and [deport] agents of Ankara.” [5]

* * *

Golden Dawn’s website and blogs offer a relatively traditional form of fascist ideology, not that different from what was common in the 1920s and 1930s. Like many current-day fascists, GD has adapted old themes to fit new circumstances – thus the rejection of globalization and the scapegoating of immigrants. Golden Dawn has apparently not gone in for any of the more systematic reworkings of fascist ideology, such as Alain de Benoist’s ethno-pluralism, Julius Evola’s racial mysticism, Lyndon LaRouche’s esoteric conspiracy theories, or Troy Southgate’s national anarchism. GD is also not significantly influenced by national bolshevism, Strasserism, or any other avowedly anti-capitalist variants of fascism. Although one of their articles proclaims Golden Dawn’s “own real socialism,” all this amounts to is providing a Greek-only employment agency, emergency food distribution, and a blood bank. [7]

Golden Dawn advocates a rightist revolution against Greece’s established political and cultural order, but it bolsters capitalist economic power through its attacks on the left and large sections of the working class, and by channeling many people’s frustration and rage at the economic crisis into anti-immigrant bigotry and violence. I agree with clandestina that here “capitalism uses fascism, as it also has in the past,” but I’m skeptical of their claim that the rise of Golden Dawn (“a seemingly ‘militant’ fascist organization”) was simply part of a campaign manufactured by the ruling class. Yes, there are close ties between Golden Dawn and the police, but that doesn’t explain the genuine popular support for the party or address the question of possible divisions within the ruling class or the state.

Similarly, I agree with "9 Theses on the Golden Dawn..." that Golden Dawn stands with one foot “in increasing totalitarianism, mafia and violence” but not that its other foot is in “neoliberal rationalism.” Arguing that the free market is a tool of Jewish power and that “the state should control private property so that it is not dangerous for the survival of the People” is flatly at odds with neoliberalism. It seems more likely that Golden Dawn is aligned with sections of the Greek ruling class that are resisting neoliberal demands from the European Union and global capital.

SOURCES (titles translated from Greek):
[1] “Fighting the People’s Nationalism, fighting the natural order!” Resistance-Hellas, 5 January 2012, http://resistance-hellas.blogspot.com/2 ... st_05.html
[2] “Robert Jay Mathews,” Resistance-Hellas, 8 December 2011, http://resistance-hellas.blogspot.com/2 ... -1984.html
[3] Golden Dawn Women’s Front main page, http://www.whitewomenfront.blogspot.com/
[4] “Front Youth,” Golden Dawn, http://www.xryshaygh.com/index.php/kinima/neolaia
[5] “Our positions,” Golden Dawn, http://www.xryshaygh.com/index.php/kinima/thesis
[6] “Identity,” Golden Dawn, http://www.xryshaygh.com/index.php/kinima
[7] E. Karakostas, “Our own real socialism!,” Golden Dawn, 14 October 2012, http://www.xryshaygh.com/index.php/enim ... osialismos
[8] “Our Ideas,” Golden Dawn [former website], http://clubs.pathfinder.gr/kynaigeiros2/307050
[9] Apostle Karaiskos, “Zionism and Globalization,” Golden Dawn, 25 September 2012, http://www.xryshaygh.com/index.php/enim ... smiopoihsh
[10] “The Meaning of Struggle,” Golden Dawn, 3 October 2012, http://www.xryshaygh.com/index.php/enim ... tou-agwnos
[11] “Women meeting fronts T.O. Upper Llosa,” Women’s Front, 2 August 2012, http://www.whitewomenfront.blogspot.com ... ost_2.html
[12] “Women’s Self Defense Lessons,” Women’s Front, 9 October 2012, http://www.whitewomenfront.blogspot.com ... ost_9.html
[13] Golden Dawn Green Wing, posts dated 21 March 2012, 14 April 2011, and 18 November 2011, http://www.oikologiko.blogspot.com/
[14] “Where Nature Meets Tradition,” Green Wing, 11 November 2011, http://www.oikologiko.blogspot.com/2011 ... -post.html
[15] “H Republic condemns innocent creatures lifelong torture,” Green Wing, 14 May 2007, http://oikologiko.blogspot.gr/2007/05/h.html. A critique and translation of this text is available on the Persona ParadoXia.blog at http://parvypalmou.blogspot.com/2012/10 ... -avgi.html


Golden Dawn-affiliated websites and blogs:
Golden Dawn (http://www.xryshaygh.com)
Youth Front (http://resistance-hellas.blogspot.com/)
Women’s Front (http://www.whitewomenfront.blogspot.com/)
Green Wing (http://www.oikologiko.blogspot.com/)

Posted by Matthew N Lyons at 9:29 PM
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 25, 2012 11:09 am

http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2012/ ... -dawn.html

Monday, October 08, 2012

White nationalists praise Golden Dawn

The anti-racist website Imagine 2050 recently posted a useful article about the Greek neonazi party Golden Dawn. Author Aaron Patrick Flanigan warns that GD’s newly formed New York City chapter may try to build connections with North American white nationalist, anti-immigrant, and Islamophobic groups. I agree that this type of networking seems likely and it is one of the main reasons that Golden Dawn’s North American venture is dangerous. For much of the far right, the flip side of nationalism is an emphasis on international solidarity with like-minded groups.

Here are some examples of praise for Golden Dawn on North American white nationalist websites:

Faith and Heritage (“a webzine presenting the views of Occidental Christians who are determined to preserve both Western Civilization and Western Peoples”) recently posted a videotape of a Golden Dawn meeting with the comment, “Hopefully this is a foretaste of a greater nationalist awakening that will sweep the West in the wake of this global economic crisis.” (The Council of Conservative Citizens, probably the biggest white nationalist organization in the U.S., lists Faith and Heritage on its homepage blogroll.)

White Reference, in a September 9 post about a Golden Dawn attack on immigrant street traders, comments, “Golden Dawn shows us what can happen when suits and boots decide to work together as one. And since Golden Dawn considers it just as important to be effective than [sic] it is to be respectable, they're winning over more support with each passing day.” (White Reference is a blog that offers “reports of crime and oppression against White people worldwide, as well as accounts of White resistance.”)

Renaissance Vanguard (also known as Renaissance Party of North America) issued a September 23 press release welcoming Golden Dawn to North America, and applauding Golden Dawn’s “efforts to resist and overcome the genocidal multi-culturalist, and anti-Hellenic agenda of the New World Order.”
 “‘We welcome the presence of Golden Dawn in NAmerika to encourage and support the development of an adolescent nationalist movement here and to build bridges where bridges may be built,’ said Sebastian E. Ronin, Chairman of the RPN [Renaissance Party of North America]. ‘We look forward to a possible opening of a Golden Dawn office in Toronto which also has a large Greek population.’” (Renaissance Vanguard describes itself as “a nascent Canadian federal political party that advocates the political synergy and recognition of Peak Oil, Ethno Nationalism, and Regional Secessionism on the NAmerikan continent.”)

Jim Goad, editor of the paleoconservative Taki’s Magazine, concedes in a May 14 article that Golden Dawn “play[s] the role of fascist street goons con mucho gusto,” but defends the party’s nativism as a natural response to the “mass immigration of mostly unassimilable and often culturally hostile foreigners.” “Only a deluded leftist ideologue or a media-brainwashed useful idiot would keep scratching their head at the persistently stubborn resurgence of nationalism without pausing to ponder that perhaps tribalism is an ineradicable human instinct rather than a sinister psychological aberration.”

Goad also highlights Golden Dawn’s proclaimed hostility to globalist elites. “Although media outlets cast a harsh spotlight on Golden Dawn’s immigrant-bashing, they don’t focus nearly so much attention on their fervid criticism of ‘global loan sharks,’ ‘bailout dictators,’ and ‘international speculators’ who are ‘selling us out and looting the sweat of the Greek people.’ For some Greeks, it seems to have come down to a choice between Golden Dawn and Goldman Sachs.”

The anti-immigrant VDare.com is more guarded in its comments about Golden Dawn. Contributor Brenda Walker both minimizes and excuses Golden Dawn’s extensive violence against immigrants, claiming: “The tribal violence is regrettable, but predictable. The Greeks are acting like typical humans, hard-wired to protect their group’s interests.” Walker also highlights the August firebombing of Golden Dawn's offices in Athens, implying that the party is more victim than victimizer.

VDare founder Peter Brimelow cites Greece as a model for the United States on “how to handle illegal immigration,” citing measures such as randomly grab[bing] illegals off the street and deport[ing] them,” which the Greek government has implemented largely in response to Golden Dawn’s rise. Brimelow euphemistically refers to Golden Dawn as an “insurrectionary Right-wing party.” (Interestingly, the other model of anti-immigrant toughness that Brimelow cites is Israel, highlighting the pro-Zionism that sets VDare apart from most U.S. white nationalists.)
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:03 pm

Fascism & Anti-Fascism

by Don Hamerquist
(an excerpt from Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement)


Nature of fascist danger

It is easy for U.S. anti-fascists to be lulled into complacency because of the historic stupidities and religiosity of fascist groupings in this country. But fascists who can think are emerging, and as they do, there will be a base for their kind of thinking. The emerging fascist movement for which we must prepare, will be rooted in populist nationalist anti-capitalism and will have an intransigent hostility to various state and supra-state institutions. The essence of anti-fascist organizing must be the development of a left bloc that can successfully compete with such fascists, presenting a rev-olutionary option that confronts both fascism and capitalism in the realm of ideas and on the street. As I have said, unless the left can become such an alternative, there is a real danger that fascist movements will be the main beneficiary of capital’s developing contradictions. It would be convenient if, for lack of an alternative, large numbers of people would automatically rally behind the left’s various tattered flags wherever they got basically pissed off. However, in a crisis there will be alternatives to the left—fascist ones, and the left may very well not look like much of an alternative to capitalism. Sadly it will not only be hard to distinguish the U.S. left from various liberal capitalist factions, the lines between it and some of the fascists are also likely to be pretty indistinct.

Nevertheless, most of the U.S. left operates on the unstated assumption that in any competition with fascists for popular support we win by default. When the secondary issues underlying this assumption are eliminated, two main grounds for it remain. The first is the belief that all of the significant fascists will eventually expose themselves as pro-capitalist. The second is the belief that fascism is inevitably white supremacist. I want to deal with the elements of this assumption separately and at some length. Of course, this separation is for purposes of discussion only. In reality white supremacy and support for capitalism are normally linked. In this country, white supremacy has been a central factor in capitalist social control, and it is certain that any white fascist movement in the U.S. that was not categorically opposed to capitalism would be white supremacist.

People are not stupid and unable to see political reality. To the contrary, they are smart and see the truth more clearly than the left. This extends beyond the popular view that leftists are just another species of politician to a basic skepticism about the left’s vision of the revolutionary alternative to capitalism. Don’t forget that the left is saddled in the popular consciousness with the Soviet and Chinese models (for some a treasured burden). These models look a great deal like fascism to the average person. They look a lot like fascism to many fascists, old and new. Wasn’t it Mussolini who said that Stalinist U.S.S.R. was “fascism without a market”?

There will be no widespread popular confidence that those who identify with the currently non-existent “actually existing socialism” in any of its phases and permutations are reliable anti-fascists or that they should be entrusted with power under any circumstances. Nor should there be. The truth is that many left groups function like fascists—organizing themselves in cultist obedience to a maximum leader and proposing models of a good society that emphasize typically fascist virtues like discipline, loyalty, and sacrifice. Other left perspectives are just liberal reformism served with some nostalgic rhetoric. It’s not at all uncommon to find both features in the same left organization.

Do we think that all of this has escaped popular notice and will have no consequences? How could that possibly be the case? It would not be difficult to pre-empt the terrain of discontent from this left of ours. Certainly this is more likely to happen than that all of the fascists will decide to help us out and become pro-capitalist. Let’s look at this issue in more detail.

Fascist anti-capitalism

Following fairly logically from the position that fascism is just a capitalist policy option, the U.S. left (also the British or at least the old Searchlight people along with their many other blemishes) has tended to view the actual fascist and neo-fascist groups as more or less of a joke. Their political positions are treated as propaganda that should not to be taken seriously, as just a cover for an opportunistic mixture of thugs, nuts, and cops that is essentially in the pay of sectors of the capitalist ruling class. Accompanying this is the terminally foolish conception of fascist cadre as cowards and bullies who will run from anyone willing to fight. Such positions should have died quietly a quarter century ago with the appearance of the Turner Diaries in this country. This novel, based of Jack London’s Iron Heel, was written by William Pierce, who until his recent death was head of the fascist National Alliance and previously a major figure in George Lincoln Rockwell’s Nazi group. The Turner Diaries is not a cartoon-Klan concoction. It elaborates a radical critique of the existing capitalist social structure and goes to some lengths to differentiate revolutionary fascists from reactionary, but reformist, right-wingers. Beyond a political perspective, the Turner Diaries lays out a moral and ethical framework for U.S. fascism which, whatever else can be said about it, is not opportunistic or lumpen. The left in the U.S paid essentially no attention and, with few exceptions, drew no political conclusions. Much of it is probably still, after two decades, familiar with the Turner Diaries only through its mention in newspaper accounts as a major influence on Timothy McVeigh, the Order, the Posse Commitatus, the Phineas Priesthood, the World Church of the Creator, etc.

Although the Turner Diaries were clearly revolutionary, they make a narrow and moralistic attack on what they picture as the essential corruption of U.S. society. Pierce is not enthused about anti-capitalism. His criticisms of U.S. capitalism focus on excesses and abuses, criticizing the alleged dominance of the financial element over the productive (sic) element. William Pierce was totally aligned with the Hitler wing of the Nazi spectrum. His politics rested on a mix of anti-Semitism, white supremacy, myths of a heroic white past, and other assorted aryan garbage. His vision of an alternative society was hierarchical, authoritarian, and patriarchal. This worldview may find mass support in fundamentalist right-reactionary circles, but it has distinct limitations in popular appeal elsewhere.

Pierce’s attempt to create an American variant of classical German Nazism has resulted in new fascist formations that frontally attack him and his organization, the National Alliance, for being insufficiently anti-capitalist, insufficiently militant, and far too bureaucratic and hierarchical. A struggle is developing among fascists over whether they should try to corral and capture the generic right or, alternatively, whether they should confront and challenge right wing variants of reformism and parliamentarianism while looking elsewhere for a political base. This provides a good place to raise a question mentioned earlier. Might an essentially pro-capitalist fascist tendency heading a mass reactionary movement develop the autonomous strength to impose fascism “from below” on a corrupt and weakened capitalist ruling class? There is absolutely no doubt that this is the intended and preferred strategy of the National Alliance and a number of other fascist groups in this country and elsewhere in the world. They would like to gain hegemony over the massive amorphous right-reactionary base and build incrementally from this base towards power. (Of course, another part of their perspective involves the penetration of key institutions, the military and the police and the development of real military assets of their own.) These fascists advocate both open and covert participation in the Reform Party, in the Right to Life movement, and in various conservative political and social movements in order to implement their perspective.

This strategy has obvious parallels to approaches of the traditional Marxist-Leninist left. Whether the strategy is advanced by authoritarians on the right or on the left, it generates the same sorts of criticisms and opposition. Capitalist development creates an anti-capitalist fascism that will neither retreat nor evaporate when confronted by what it sees as pro-capitalist fascism. Long before Pierce’s strategy succeeds, it has created its own fascist challenge, a challenge that it will have great difficulty defeating or absorbing.

Which variant of fascism will prevail? Will they cancel each other out? I have my opinions but I could be wrong. What I do know is that, on this point as on all others, the most dangerous left assumption is that the easier road is the one that we will be traveling. The worst error the left could commit in this situation is to assume that Pierce’s variant of fascism will ultimately prevail because it looks most like the best recognized historical model, German National Socialism. This assumption might ultimately prove to be true, but acting on it now only means that fascism will be effectively discounted as an ideological challenge, whatever significance it is assigned in other respects. This then becomes another support for an ultimately suicidal complacency about the left’s own perspectives and visions. The only remaining question will be whether we get done in by the fascists or by the capitalists.

Some of the conflicts and contradictions in the fascist camp are apparent in the fascist music/cultural magazine, Resistance. Recently the magazine was taken over by the National Alliance, and its revitalization and reorientation admittedly took a lot of Pierce’s time. It is clearly an attempt to appeal to and organize radical white skinheads. In the first issues after the magazine came under National Alliance control some polemical articles by orthodox fascists led to an outraged and hostile response from the magazine’s audience. One article criticized “undisciplined” and “tattooed” skinheads and argued that they should join the army and learn military skills. Another attacked the conception of “leaderless resistance” as infantile and amateurish. A further argument challenged any orientation to the “working class”. The reaction to these traditional fascist positions led to the dismissal of one editor, and a formal editorial apology from his successor.

It is likely that Pierce's successors would have to modify his entire conception of white aryan culture if they want to seriously contend with more radical fascists for this base. I wouldn’t presume to predict how this situation will ultimately work out. However, I do think that while the likes of Pierce might prevail organizationally and/or through force for a period of time, it is unlikely that they can win a conclusive ideological triumph.

Third Position

However unfortunate this was for him and his organization, Pierce’s categorical critique of U.S. society in the Turner Diaries provided part of the impetus for the reemergence of the Strasser/Rohm “socialist” wing of fascism in the U.S., the so-called “third position”—a fascist variant that presents itself as “national revolutionary”, with politics that are “beyond left and right”.

(There appears to be two distinct wings to the third position. One calls itself the International Third Position, ITP, and tends to be more predictably racist, anti-feminist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. There is also a distinctly religious character to their politics. The other wing is called “National Revolutionary” or “National Bolshevik”, and is much more radical; categorically attacking “Hitlerian fascism”, and going to lengths to argue that they support all movements that are genuinely anti-capitalist. Some National Revolutionaries like the NRF in England are still overtly racist and white supremacist, despite their support for certain liberation movements; e.g., the Irish and Palestinian. Others, as indicated in some quotes I will introduce later, claim to completely reject white supremacy. Various National Revolutionary groups and ideologists also have differences about anti-Semitism that parallel their differences on racism and anti-imperialist national liberation. I would recommend that people look at the material of both groups. This can be done easily by beginning from the websites for “americanfront” and for the international third position.)

This third position variant of fascism poses a different and, I think, greater danger to the left than Pierce and the National Alliance. It makes a direct appeal to a working class audience with a warped, but militant, socialist racialist-nationalist program of decentralized direct action that has at least as much going for it as the warped reformist, nationalist, and pervasively non militant schemes of the established left. Not only does it intend to appeal to the working class and dispossessed—in distinct contrast to groups like the National Alliance; but at least some elements within it explicitly aim to recruit from the ranks of the militant left, and not from the radical right.

It is one thing to talk about abstract potentials for a militantly anti-capitalist brand of fascism. It’s another to show evidence that something like this is actually developing. I believe that there is some evidence in this country and that there is a great deal of evidence in the rest of the world. The first indicators appeared when fascist groups began to move away from their traditional base in white racist reaction and look for recruits and influence in areas which the left naively believes are part of “its movement”. I’m including a statement about the Seattle WTO demonstrations from our World Church of the Creator friend, Pontifex Maximus to illustrate this development:

“What happened in Seattle is a precursor for the future—when White people in droves protest the actions of world Jewry not by ‘writing to congressmen’, ‘voting’, or other nonsense like that, but by taking to the streets and throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the enemy’s machine. I witnessed some of what happened in Seattle firsthand, for as chance would have it, I was in Seattle from December 2 until December 5 to meet with Racial Loyalists there and speak at the yearly Whidbey Island vigil honoring Robert J. Mathews. I witnessed some of the marches, and while there was certainly a fair amount of non-white trash involved in them, the vast majority were White people of good blood, who can be mobilized in the future for something besides their economic livelihood or environment; their continued biological existence. It is from the likes of the White people who protested the WTO (and who in some cases, went to jail for illegal actions) that our World Church of the Creator must look to for our converts—not the stale ‘right wing’ which has failed miserably to put even one dent in the armor of the Jewish monster. Did the right wing hinder the WTO? No. They were too busy ‘writing their congressmen’—congressmen who were bought off a long time ago, or waiting for their ‘great white hope’ in shining armor who they can miraculously vote into office. The reality, though, is that there is invariably a kosher U or K on that armor. How many defeats must they suffer before they realize that a change in tactics is advisable? No, it was the left wing, by and large, which stymied the WTO to the point where their meeting was practically worthless, and we should concentrate on these zealots, not the ‘meet, eat, and retreat’ crowd of the right wing who are so worried about ‘offending’ the enemy that all too often, they are a nice Trojan Horse for the enemy’s designs.”

So Matt Hale believes, “It is from the likes of the White people who protested the WTO (and who in some cases, went to jail for illegal actions) that our World Church of the Creator must look to for our converts—not the stale ‘right wing’.” Is he just deluded? I don’t think so. On the one hand, Matt Hale carries some baggage that would hinder his approach to our constituency, though the baggage is to some extent disposable. Weighing against this, he can appear to be, and probably is, more militant, more “revolutionary”, and particularly in military ways, more effective, than the existing left. Hale’s position shows the will and intent to break out of organizing approaches that have entrapped fascists before. We had better plan on the emergence of fascists that are substantially better able to exploit these initiatives than a hopeful, but frustrated, aspirant to the Illinois bar.

Consider the following passage from a statement by Louis Beam, the advocate of “leaderless resistance” and former head of the Texas Klu Klux Klan, who speaks to and for a militant, but more populist than socialist, variant of the third position: “While some in the so-called right-wing sit at home and talk about waiting for the Police State to ‘come and get them,’ some other really brave people have been out confronting the Police State, instead of hoarding guns that will never be fired, these people were out bravely facing the guns of the New World Order.

“...My heart goes out to those brave souls in Seattle who turned out in the thousands from both Canada and the U.S. to go up against the thugs of Clinton and those who put him in office. I appreciate their bravery. I admire their courage. And I thank them for fighting my battle...
“Soon, however, there will be millions in this country of every political persuasion confronting the police state on streets throughout America. When you are being kicked, gassed, beaten and shot at by the police enforcers of the NWO you will not be asking, nor giving a rat’s tail, what the other freedom lovers’ politics ‘used to be’—for the new politics of America is liberty from the NWO Police State and nothing more.”
(L. Beam, Radical Okie Homepage)

The left had better begin to deal with the fact that issues that are regarded a part of our movement; “globalization”, working class economic demands, “green” questions, resistance to police repression etc. are now being organized by explicit fascists and others who might as well be. Nor do we have a patent on decentralized direct action. That is exactly what the fascist debate around “leaderless resistance” is about. Finally, the question of who and what, exactly, is anti-capitalist remains very much unsettled. Some of the fascists take positions that at least appear to be much more categorically oppositional than those of most of the left. I said earlier that many third position fascists explicitly aim to recruit from the ranks of the left. This isn’t as quixotic as it might appear. Indeed, elements of third position politics are hard to distinguish from common positions on the left, even from positions held in some of the groups that are closest to us. For example, some punks and skinheads who view themselves as working class revolutionaries, some elements of RASH, and even some participants in our own anti-fascist organizations are ambiguous on issues which should clearly differentiate right from left. These ambiguities, and actually this may be too mild a term, include romanticized views of violence, male supremacy, susceptibility to cults of omniscient leadership, and macho opposition to open debate and discussion with respect for individual and group autonomy.

There is a more serious similarity between third position ideology and the views of one important tendency in our section of the left. Various green anarchists advance a strategy of anti-capitalist de-industrialization and ruralism based on decentralized cooperatives. Various fascist national revolutionaries explicitly argue for a similar strategy. Of course, the fascists present this position in opposition to multiculturalism and, more particularly, in opposition to immigration and foreigners. No significant element of the left in this country would currently accept these positions, although this may not be so true elsewhere in the world.

Even so, many U.S. leftists do believe that large sections of the population are so deformed by their patterns of consumption and by their acquiescence in relationships of domination and subordination that they cannot be considered as potential revolutionary subjects. This is a position which can also be found, not coincidentally, in such artifacts of the dominant culture as the movie, The Matrix. When the left combines these elitist perspectives with militant, but diffuse, actions against capitalist targets, the result can take on more than a passing resemblance to the “strategy of tension” admired by many European fascists and acted on by some.

Of course a major goal of our political practice should be to increase the “ungovernability” of capitalist society. But this cannot be done without taking adequate account of the effects of our actions on the actual living conditions of masses of people. We have to recognize and criticize the elitism and arrogance in our camp that writes off large sections of people as terminally corrupted. Blood and soil fascists, who are mainly concerned with “their own kind”, can, and do, treat masses of less favored people as redundant and mere objects. We can’t.


http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/boo ... tifash.php
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Fri Oct 26, 2012 10:35 pm

The du Pont Company

By Richard Sanders, Editor, Press for Conversion!

In the 1930s, the du Pont and Morgan family empires dominated the American corporate elite and their representatives were central figures in organizing and funding the American Liberty League. The du Pont family was so complicit in this fascist organization that James Farley, FDR's postmaster general and one of his closest advisors, said the American Liberty League "ought to be called the American Cellophane League" because "first it's a Du Pont product and second, you can see right through it'" (Donald R. McCoy, Coming of Age). Gerard Colby, in his book DuPont Dynasty, outlines the family's pivotal role in creating and funding the League. The Dickstein-McCormack Committee learned that weapons and equipment for the fascist plotters’ Croix de feu-like superarmy “could be obtained from the Remington Arms Co., on credit through the Du Ponts.” Du Pont had acquired control of the arms company in 1932.

The du Pont Co., formed in 1802 by Elèuthere Irénée du Pont de Nemours, dominated U.S. gunpowder sales for more than a century. Elèuthere I. du Pont’s father, Pierre Samuel, a French economist, politician and publisher had helped negotiate the Paris Treaty to end America’s revolution. His rightwing views made French radicals very suspicious and they sentenced him to the guillotine. Somehow, he and his son, Elèuthere, were released and escaped to America, where they arrived January 1, 1800, with a vast fortune.

To challenge England’s domination of the global gunpowder trade, Napoleon helped E.I. du Pont establish an American gunpowder business in 1802. Pierre returned to France and negotiated the French sale of about a million square miles of land to America (Louisiana Purchase, 1803). Meanwhile, his son made his first gunpowder sales to a close family friend, President Thomas Jefferson.

Du Pont produced only gunpowder. They were the main supplier of this product during many wars, including:

* War of 1812 (supplying the U.S. against Britain/Canada)

* South American wars (supplying both Spain and Bolivar’s republics)

* Mexican-American War, 1846 (supplying the U.S.)

* Indian Wars, 1827-1896 (supplying Manifest Destiny’s genocidal westward expansion)

* Crimean War, 1854 (supplying both England and Russia)

* U.S. Civil waR, 1861-1865 (supplying the Northern states)

* Spanish-American War, 1898 (supplying the U.S.)

* WWI, 1914-1918 (supplied all U.S. orders; 40% of the Allies’ needs)

In 1897, when they agreed with European competitors to divide up the world, du Pont got exclusive control of gunpowder sales in the Americas. By 1905, du Pont had assets of 60 million and controlled all U.S. government orders. Du Pont bought out 100 of its American competitors and closed most of them down (1903-1907). In 1907, U.S. anti-Trust laws created two competitors for du Pont and in 1912 the government ordered du Pont to divest from some explosives production. Du Pont then diversified into newspaper publishing, chemicals, paints, varnishes, cellophane and rayon. WWI was particularly profitable. Du Pont, the world’s largest producer of dynamite and smokeless gunpowder, made unheard-of net profits of $250 million.

Between the wars, du Pont was the world’s top manufacturer of explosives, the world’s leading chemical company and the top producer of cars and synthetic rubber, another strategic war material. By the 1930s, it owned Mexican and Chilean explosive companies and a Canadian chemical company. Although still the top U.S. gunpowder supplier, this product represented only 2% of its total production.

Du Pont’s General Motors Co. funded a vigilante/terrorist organization to stop unionization in its Midwestern factories. Called the “Black Legion,” its members wore black robes decorated with a white skull and crossbones. Concealed behind their slitted hoods, this KKK-like network of white-supremacist thugs threw bombs into union halls, set fire to labor activists’ homes, tortured union organizers and killed at least 50 in Detroit alone. Many of their victims were Blacks lured North by tales of good auto-plant jobs. One of their victims, Rev. Earl Little, was murdered in 1931. His son, later called Malcolm X, was then six. An earlier memory, his first, was a night-time raid in 1929 when the Legion burnt down their house. Gerard Colby had this to say about the Black Legion in his book Dupont Dynasty (1984):

"But corporate executives did not give up the tactic of vigilante groups, and on June 1, 1936, Cowdrick wrote Harry Anderson, G.M's labor relations director, to ask his opinion of the Sentinels of the Republic. Anderson was apparently unaware of Irénée du Pont's support of this organization, but offered his own home-brew alternative. "With reference to your letter of June 1 regarding the Sentinels of the Republic," he replied a few days later, "I have never heard of the organization. Maybe you could use a little Black Legion down in your country. It might help."

The "Black Legion" Anderson referred to was indeed a great help to General Motors in its struggle to prevent auto workers from unionizing. With members wearing black robes and slitted hoods adorned with white skull and crossbones, the Black Legion was the terror of Michigan and Ohio auto flelds, riding like Klansmen through the night in car caravans, bombing union halls, burning down homes of labor militants, and flogging and murdering union organizers. The organization was divided into arson squads, bombing squads, execution squads, and anti-communist squads, and membership discipline on pain of torture or death was strictly enforced. Legion cells filled G.M. factories, terrorizing workers and recruiting Ku Klux Klansmen.

Since 1933 the Black Legion's power had permeated police departments."


The Legion, claiming 200,000 members in Michigan, was divided into distinct squads, each focused on a different aspect of their work for du Pont: arson, bombing, execution and anti-communism. The Legion’s cells within GM factories intimidated workers, targeted Jews and recruited for the KKK. They worked together to stop Reds and unions that demanded their labour rights.


Continues: http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/dupont.html
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Sat Oct 27, 2012 6:13 pm

McDonalds Workers Resistance - analysis

Image

Theoretical and analytical texts by McDonalds Workers Resistance.

One day our manager pulled us into the office and told us “you need to have a long hard think about why you’re here”. Well we did, and it wasn’t an easy question to answer.

It certainly wasn’t for fun- the work was repetitive and monotonous, robotic and likely to cause minor injury. The pay was piss and the uniforms were far from chic. It certainly wasn’t to contribute to the general well being of the world since our principal functions were cooking and serving slabs of dead cow, raised on deforested land in order to be sold to the impoverished parents of emotionally manipulated two year olds. The obvious answer, that we needed money to pay the rent, didn’t explain why we were working at McDonalds as opposed to doing something vaguely useful that might afford us a shred of dignity. In fact, the only reason we could see why we, or anyone else, worked at McDonalds, was because in doing so we made some rich guys we had never met even richer. Well, ‘bollocks to that’, we thought, ‘we’re not prostituting our lives to an idiotic pursuit of wealth on behalf of those who already have too much’.

Well people wrote to us, they said, “damn it boys, why don’t y’all stop moaning you damn commie faggots, if you don’t like it why don’t y’all quit?” Well we still needed to pay the rent and when we looked at our options, none of them seemed a great improvement; we could work for Burger King, or in a call centre, or in a branch of Wetherspoons… We started to wonder why all the jobs available to us were so piss and pointless. We listened to the capitalists, they explained about job creation and investment, and we learned that under their system jobs were created when rich people invested and rich people only invested when they thought they were going to make profit. In other words jobs are created, not because they serve any discernible function, or provide any tangible increase in human pleasure, but because they make rich guys richer. It wasn’t just McDonalds that was the problem, the whole thing was starting to seem a bit fucked.

People wrote to us, they said, “god damn it, why don’t you make something of your lives instead of moaning? There are winners and losers in this world boys, it’s your own fault y’all did so bad at school.” Well, that was true, but it didn’t change the fact that for every ‘winner’ there needs to be a hell of a lot of losers stitching clothes in their sweatshops and flipping burgers in their McDonalds. “It’s not the most noble use of one’s powers to crawl ashore deaf to the cries of drowning companions” as some geezer once said, and if the whole world was educated until they could explain the theory of relativity while deconstructing Hegel, most of us would still be stitching clothes, flipping burgers, or doing some other menial task in order to make rich guys richer.

Well we listened to the politicians- “we’re going to get tough on immigration”
“We’re going to get tougher on immigration”
“We’re the toughest anti-immigrants money can buy”
“We’re going to jail them”
“We’re going to send them home and steal their kids”
Well, they weren’t really dealing with our priorities. In fact, it seemed to us that we could vote labour to work in McDonalds for £4.20 an hour, vote Tory to work in McDonalds for £4.10 an hour, vote Scottish National Party to work in McDonalds and wear a kilt, or vote Liberal Democrat to work in McDonalds and wear a woolly jumper.

We listened to the capitalists some more (we were desperate); they said that everyone gets richer when rich guys get richer. We didn’t really follow this because McDonalds had been making billions over decades but the people who work in their toy factories were still earning a few pence an hour and after we had bought three litres of extra strong white cider, we had £2.47 to last until pay day between us. They said it was all about economic growth, if people didn’t spend their lives doing stupid things to make rich guys richer, there would be no investment, no growth, there would be unemployment, recession, plagues of locusts… Well, that seemed a fair point, but out with the self-referential terms of their theology, what was the point of all this growth? “Well, for the world to be free of poverty by the year 2050, the global economy has to quadruple”. But there is no shortage of food, nor of labour power and material to build good houses, there is more power than we could want in the sun, the wind and the waves, more creativity than we could imagine in those who flip burgers and stitch clothes, why don’t we just share our bounty of resources equally and for the benefit of humanity? They smiled at us amused by our naivety and explained with generous condescension, “well that’s a very nice idea, but we can’t just share things equally, why there would be no economic growth and for the world to be free of poverty…”

It became apparent that the world was being consumed by a circular logic that served no function other than to perpetuate exploitative class relations and ensure the continued servitude of the majority. Having surrendered humanity to the buccaneering vicissitudes of the logic of profit, we had lost all control of our lives, no matter how much technology we invented we ended up working more, until some people were stressed and overworked, while others became depressed and suicidal because they were broke and unemployed. Individuals owned personal fortunes greater than small countries’ GDPs while the majority of the world’s population lived on less than two dollars a day. It was screwed. We had to do something about it!

Well, we listened to the Socialists (we were getting really desperate); they wanted to take over the state and rule in our name- like that worked before. We figured that the last thing we needed was another set of bosses. We thought it was time for people to start to take control of their own lives, to control production and distribution from the bottom up, to produce for need and want not profit, to stop doing stupid things to make people rich, to start looking after our own interests, to find a new way of living based on co-operation not competition, to live without dead time and enjoy without restraint.

People used to write to us and say, “why don’t y’all educate yourselves instead of moaning?” That was a very good suggestion.



http://www.mwr.org.uk/analysis.htm
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:53 pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oc ... ice-claims

Golden Dawn has infiltrated Greek police, claims officer

Officer says government has turned blind eye to fascists and far right may be being used to provoke clashes with demonstrators

Aris Chatzistefanou in Athens
guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 October 2012


Video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2 ... lice-video

A senior Greek police officer has claimed that the far-right Golden Dawn party has infiltrated the police at various levels. He has laid the blame on consecutive governments and the leadership of the police force for turning a blind eye to what he describes as "pockets of fascism".

Speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, the officer said the Greek state had been fully aware of the activities of Golden Dawn for several years, with the National Intelligence Service and other security agencies monitoring it closely. The officer claimed police chiefs had had the opportunity to isolate and remove these small "pockets of fascism" in the force but decided not to. The state, he said, wanted to keep the fascist elements "in reserve" and use them for its own purposes.

The officer said he believed that Golden Dawn members could be used against the Greek left, which has led popular street protests against the government and austerity measures imposed by the EU. He expressed his belief that neo-fascist groups may already have acted as agents provocateurs during demonstrations across the country, to provoke clashes between demonstrators and the police or even between demonstrators themselves.

A spokesman for the Greek police, Christos Manouras, denied the police were using or being used by "any political formation against any other". Manouras rejected the existence of "pockets of fascism" within the force and said no unlawful behaviour would be tolerated.

He conceded that "individual cases can be found everywhere and at any workplace". But he added: "It is unfair for the Greek police force to be accused with no evidence that they tolerate or support specific actions or to be identified with certain [political] beliefs … You should note that – in accordance with the constitution and laws of the Greek republic – only illegal acts can be prosecuted and punished. The same does not apply for political positions, even if characterised as 'extreme' by the other parties and the overwhelming majority of public opinion."

Golden Dawn won 6.9% of the vote in elections in June, taking 18 seats in parliament, but a recent opinion poll conducted by research company VPRC suggested the party had doubled its support since then.

Human rights groups have accused the Greek police of being sympathetic to, or acting in collusion with, the group, and earlier this week a report of the Racist Violence Recording Network, a group consisting of 23 NGOs and the UN high commissioner for refugees, highlighted violent incidents in which police and racist violence overlapped.

"These incidents concern duty officers who resort to illegal acts and violent practices while carrying out routine checks," says the report. "There are also instances where people were brought to police stations, were detained and maltreated for a few hours, as well as cases where legal documents were destroyed during these operations."

Kostis Papaioannou, former head of the Greek national commission for human rights, said: "On some occasions there is a blurred line between Golden Dawn and the police." Allegations of collusion resurfaced after anti-fascist protesters told the Guardian they had been "tortured by police" after clashes with Golden Dawn supporters. The minister of public order, Nikos Dendias, has denied the allegations.

The officer who spoke to the Guardian accused the government of abandoning Greek police officers and thus creating the conditions for Golden Dawn to infiltrate the force. "These policemen feel unappreciated and isolated. They are badly paid, they work under the worst conditions and they look for support," he said, adding that they found it among the neo-Nazi community.

He also called on the ministry of public order to disclose reports of the internal affairs division, which he said showed cases of police brutality. "We should never accept policemen who attack journalists from behind," he said, referring to an attack on the president of the Greek photojournalists' union, who was taken to hospital with a brain injury last May.

The press officer of the Hellenic police restated the ministry's commitment to establishing a special response team to combat racist violence.

Several cases of violent attacks carried out in the presence of Golden Dawn MPs have been reported recently, including the storming of flea markets and an incident in which stones were thrown, and racist abuse hurled, at audience members during the Athens premiere of Terrence McNally's play Corpus Christi.

Earlier this year, Liana Kanelli, an outspoken Communist party MP, was assaulted during a live TV talkshow by Ilias Kasidiaris, Golden Dawn's spokesman, in an incident that made headlines around the world.

This week the Greek parliament voted in favour of lifting the immunity of three Golden Dawn MPs who could now face trial for suspected violent attacks and allegedly assisting in a robbery. Among them is Kasidiaris, who has claimed he is the victim of political persecution.

Kanelli characterised Golden Dawn as an "ideological and political pimp" serving "a mission that the system assigned to it". According to Kanelli, immigrants were just the first victims of the party, which also threatens workers and has attempted to infiltrate unions.

"If an employer wants to blackmail you, he threatens to call Golden Dawn," said Javed Aslam, a leader of the Pakistani community in Greece.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 28, 2012 4:25 pm

http://kalisherni.tumblr.com/post/21704 ... -all-those

Image

SHERNI~LIONESS
GULABI
PINK

Power to all those silenced, power to those who cannot write their own narratives when they are puppets. We must cut off our strings and speak

Gulabi gang
Power womyn, Shernis, Warriors Prints


October 2011 Lino Cut prints

☻khushsg
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:42 pm

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... halloween/

CAPITALISM, CANDY, AND HALLOWEEN
by Lisa Wade, PhD

Last Halloween my students (at a private liberal arts school) told me that it was considered embarrassing to wear the same costume to two separate parties. Many of them, then, had purchased two or more costumes for the week preceding the holiday. I remarked about how convenient that was for the economy, creating a need to spend money that helped our economic engine keep churning.

I thought of their stories when I came across this vintage ad for Halloween candy. It tells the viewer that a really cool house will offer trick-or-treaters more than one type of candy and allow them to take one of each. How excellent for the candy companies if offering only one piece of one kind of candy is considered below the bar.



Image
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:53 pm

American Dream wrote: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... halloween/

CAPITALISM, CANDY, AND HALLOWEEN


Via Vintage Ads:
When posting this, I found out something interesting, that the heiress to the Brach fortune, Helen Brach, disappeared on February 17, 1977 and was declared legally dead in May 1984. An investigation into the case uncovered serious criminal activity associated with Chicago stable owners including Silas Jayne and Richard Bailey (who Brach was romantically involved with). More than a decade later Bailey was charged with, but not convicted of, conspiring to murder Mrs. Brach, he eventually received a long sentence after being convicted of defrauding her.


Info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Brach

Helen Brach

Helen Voorhees Brach
(born November 10, 1911), was an American multi-millionairess widow whose wealth had come from marrying into the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company fortune; she endowed the Helen V. Brach Foundation to promote animal welfare in 1974.[1] Helen Brach disappeared on February 17, 1977 and was declared legally dead in May 1984. An investigation into the case uncovered serious criminal activity associated with Chicago stable owners including Silas Jayne and Richard Bailey (with whom Brach was romantically involved). More than a decade later Bailey was charged with, but not convicted of, conspiring to murder Mrs. Brach; he eventually received a long sentence after being convicted of defrauding her.

Circumstances of disappearance

After a routine medical check-up, Helen Brach left the Mayo Clinic for the return journey by air to her north suburban Chicago mansion on February 17, 1977. A gift shop assistant near the clinic insisted that Mrs. Brach had said, “I’m in a hurry, my houseman is waiting.” This is the last sighting of Brach by an independent witness.

The crew on the commercial airliner on which she was supposed to return did not report seeing her on the flight; because of her stature and carriage Brach was not easily overlooked. Her houseman/chauffer, Jack Matlick, said that he collected her at O'Hare Airport, further asserting that Mrs. Brach, known as a "telephone addict", spent four days without making a call before she was dropped off at O’Hare for a flight to Florida, three hours early and without luggage.

Matlick, an ex-con, soon came under suspicion by the authorities for a number of reasons: he later cashed checks he claimed had been written by Mrs. Brach; he had a room repainted and re-carpeted at the mansion during this four-day period; he waited two weeks before reporting his employer missing; and he failed a lie detector test. Later, Matlick relinquished a share in her estate under threat of legal action for allegedly stealing $100,000 in gold coins from the mansion.

Jack Matlick was the focus of police attention during the investigation, but lacking solid evidence of foul play police and prosecuters shied away from a case they saw as unwinnable. Matlick always claimed to be innocent and angrily denied to reporters that he knew what happened to Mrs. Brach but a former federal agent who worked on the case said that Matlick was indeed responsible.[2][3] Brach's brother was of the opinion that Matlick had been responsible for the murder of his sister without any involvement from Bailey or horse racing racketeers.[4][5][6][7] On February 14, 2011 Matlick died in a Pennsylvania nursing home at the age of 79.[8]

Richard Bailey and the horse racket connection

Helen Brach was declared dead in 1984,[9] one theory was that she was killed on the orders of a confidence trickster associated with insurance fraud conspiracy and horse murders. No person was convicted in her disappearance although Richard Bailey was sentenced to 30-years imprisonment for defrauding the candy empire heiress.[10][11]

According to a case[12] filed in the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit, Bailey, the owner of Bailey Stables and Country Club Stables targeted wealthy middle-aged or older women with little knowledge of the horse business who had recently been widowed or divorced. After meeting them at the stables or through personal advertisements, he began to romance them, escorting them to expensive Chicago restaurants and sending them flowers and gifts. If he discovered the woman was not wealthy, he declined to see her again. If she was wealthy, he proceeded to secure her affection, engaging in sexual relations and in some cases proposing marriage, despite the fact that he was already married.

Bailey had several ploys; in one, he claimed that his money was temporarily tied up, but that he had found a horse that was a wonderful investment opportunity. Using the horse as collateral to make the purchase he secured a temporary loan from the victim which he never repaid. Once he defaulted on the loan, the victim became responsible for the horse's boarding bills (allowing the conspirators additional income as well as the opportunity to take the horse back in satisfaction of unpaid bills). A second scenario saw Bailey persuading the victim to enter into an investment partnership. Bailey and his conspirator (who posed as the seller) agreed beforehand on a price for an overvalued horse. Bailey then bargained with the seller in the presence of the victim. He and the victim each wrote a check for one-half the selling price, but after the victim left he and the seller tore up his check and split the proceeds from the victim's check. A third scheme involved selling a client an overvalued horse which did not suit her needs, then persuading her to trade the horse and additional monies for more expensive horses. While executing his schemes, Bailey was not averse to taking advantage of his victims' weaknesses: he plied an alcoholic with champagne and cocktails while she and her daughter visited the stables, and he schemed to defraud gravely ill women by obtaining their powers of attorney when he visited them in the hospital. When Bailey had gained as much money as he could from the woman, he ended the relationship, though occasionally he passed the woman on for his conspirators to further defraud. His victims were often left broken-hearted and destitute.

Helen Brach met Bailey in 1973 and they entered into a relationship. In 1975, Bailey's brother, Paul, sold her three horses for $98,000; unknown to Brach, Bailey also participated in the sale, and the horses were worth less than $20,000. Brach also bought a group of expensive brood mares.

On New Year's Eve 1976, Brach and Bailey "danced the night away" at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, but their relationship soon began to deteriorate. Early in 1977, Bailey and a conspirator arranged an extensive showing for Brach, hoping to persuade her to invest $150,000 in more horses. Brach left in less than an hour. Further, an appraiser Brach hired recommended she invest nothing in training one of her original three purchases, contrary to the $50,000 estimate of the trainer recommended by Bailey. Around this time Brach also visited her breeding stock.

Subsequently, she told a close friend that she was disturbed about her purchase of horses from a younger man whom she had been seeing (Bailey), after hearing that her friend knew state prosecutors, she agreed to visit the State's Attorney's office after she returned from her upcoming visit to the Mayo Clinic. In 1989 the investigation was reopened and turned up evidence of criminal activity by associates of Richard Bailey such as Silas Jayne, Bailey was charged with conspiring with several others (named but not charged) to kill Helen Brach, however some (including her brother) questioned if Bailey had in fact been guilty of this[13] and when he was eventually convicted it was not on that charge.

Richard Bailey was not convicted of Helen Brach's murder but sentenced to life imprisonment for defrauding the candy empire heiress; the judge made it clear that the sentence reflected evidence that Bailey was involved in a conspiracy to murder her.[14] On March 21, 2005, in a tersely worded two-paragraph opinion, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Richard Bailey's request for a new sentencing hearing for the fraud charges to take into account new evidence suggesting his innocence of the murder conspiracy, saying that the "new evidence does not establish by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant is actually innocent of conspiring to murder Helen Brach and soliciting her murder."
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 29, 2012 2:31 pm

Hurricane Sandy

Louis Proyect

This is the last storm that hit the Northeast that is on the scale of the one we face now:




Even if I lived within the vulnerable Zone A that has been designated as an evacuation area by the authorities, I would still have few worries about flooding since I am on the thirteenth floor of a high-rise.

My old friend Jeffrey is not so fortunate. His house is a block from the Atlantic Ocean on the Rockaways, a peninsula that is 100 percent Zone A. CBS news reported:

Rockaway Beach was on the list for areas of New York City deemed Zone A for evacuation purposes, and by Sunday night, Hurricane Sandy had sent the floodwaters rising.

As CBS 2’s Jamie Yuccas reported, Yuccas was knee-deep in brown, foamy water as she stood on the Rockaway Beach each late Sunday night. The water was funneled through two areas where sand breakers were located and pushed its way toward 137th Street.


Jeffrey lives on 138th Street.

As I am writing this, it is 1:28 PM in NYC and the rain has a taken on a horizontal trajectory while the winds are capable of turning even the stoutest umbrella inside out. And this is a good five hours until the storm has achieved its maximum force.

Frankly my biggest concern is not about being hit by a falling tree or losing my belongings due to a flood. Rather it is loss of electricity. While this is nothing more than an inconvenience, it is a major one nonetheless since I live on the thirteenth floor. A few years ago, during a blackout, I had to walk up and down for necessities and it was not fun. People in their 70s and 80s had it worse. They were just stuck until the power came back on.

Just as was the case during Hurricane Katrina, there are those who pose the question whether this looming disaster is a function of climate change. The New Yorker Magazine offers this:

As with any particular “weather-related loss event,” it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change. Just a few weeks before the Munich Re report appeared, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the apparent increase in extreme heat waves. Extreme summertime heat, which just a few decades ago affected much less than one per cent of the earth’s surface, “now typically covers about 10% of the land area,” the paper observed. “It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies”—i.e., heat waves—“such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.” It is worth noting that one of several forces fuelling Sandy is much-higher-than-average sea-surface temperatures along the East Coast.

You will note that the New Yorker makes the customary caveat: As with any particular “weather-related loss event,” it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change.

This enables scientists on the payroll of energy corporations to cast doubt on any major storm’s tie to climate change in the same fashion as the “experts” who testified that smoking does not necessarily lead to cancer, emphysema, etc.

As a rule of thumb, the biggest environmental crises we face are subject to the same kind of plausible deniability alibi. For example, there will always be corrupt scientists eager to step forward and argue that pesticides and herbicides do not cause cancer. Since the exact biological process in which cells mutate has not been revealed, this will always provide wriggle room for those disposed to getting some payoff from a multinational corporation.

If cancer remains something of a mystery on the cellular level, there will continue to be debates about whether a particular storm was caused by climate change. While it is becoming more and more difficult to sustain the fiction that greenhouse gases do not lead to climate change, the likelihood of “proving” that a storm was caused by it will remain daunting.

It is obviously left up to socialists to create a world in which humanity strives to create an environment where either catastrophic storms or diseases are minimized. As the rather off-putting Sandra Steingraber put it to me an interview a couple of weeks ago, cancer can be linked to three different conditions: 1. Life-style, such as smoking; 2. Genetic predisposition; and 3. Man-made carcinogens that we have little or no control over, such as PCB’s, etc. While all three interact with each other, it is only the third that we need to wage a political struggle to overcome.

The same thing is true of climate change. There will obviously always be terrible storms. But we need to wage a political struggle to control the emission of greenhouse gases that are the byproduct of petroleum-based energy production, which finally can only be consummated through the creation of a worldwide socialist system.



http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/ ... ane-sandy/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Economic Aspects of "Love"

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 30, 2012 10:20 am

http://libcom.org/history/radio-alice

Radio Alice

Image

An interview with Franco Berardi on Radio Alice, a free radio station in Bologna from 1973-1977.

Radio Alice was a free radio station in Bologna from 1973-1977. Rather than attempting to objectify events in the world, they set out to create a flow of sounds, information, messages and poetry, silences and abuse. Like the manifestations of Dada, transmissions were seen as immediate cultural subversions.

Bifo, who worked on Radio Alice was interviewed by Carlos Ordonez at the recent conference on Autonomy (’After Marx, April’) in London. The interview was conducted in English.

The autonomia movement in Italy during the seventies emerged from the new proletariat of disaffected and unemployed youth, workers and intellectuals creating a radical opposition to institutional politics.

‘Autonomy has no frontiers. It is a way of eluding the imperatives of production, the verticality of institutions, the traps of political representation, the virus of power. In biology an autonomous organism is an element that functions independently of other parts. Political autonomy is the desire to allow differences to deepen at the base without trying to synthesize them from above,to stress similar attitudes without imposing a general line, to all parts to co-exist side and side in their singularity.’

Sylvere Lotringer ‘The Return of Politics’
‘Autonomia’ issue of Semiotext(e)


Q: How did Radio Alice begin, and what experiences did it attempt to address?

Radio Alice started in February 1976 with people who came from the experience of Potere Operaio, a leftist revolutionary group and people involved in the movement of Autonomia. We did not think of Radio Alice only as a political means but, first of all, as a possibility of organising the experiences of a homogenous community. We were speaking of little groups – feminists, gays, workers. I emphasize this ’little group’ character because we did not conceive of the radio as a political organisation that has to ’state decide’ who can speak or can’t speak. We considered the radio as the point of intersection of different experiences – every experience being different from the other. We did not think about attempting to homogenise these different groups and points of view.

Q: How was the radio organised?

We had a weekly assembly of the different groups who were working in the radio, and we organised a general programme for the week. Anyone who wanted to propose something for the programme could come along. Of course, the programme referred, in general, to the social and cultural areas that were somewhat homogenous. The starting point for the radio was the different social experiences of the autonomia and, on the whole, the people who listened to the radio were engaged in this social area. Another way of organising the transmission was with the use of the telephone which was connected directly to the radio station. This created a special kind of interchange of information.

Q: So you used the telephone as a means of bringing people together?

If you wanted to say something to the people listening, you could. The people working on the broadcast also transmitted their own messages. We had a political bulletin each lunch time for an hour and after that, we had direct political information coming in from callers. We also organised ’listening groups’ and this created the possibility of a continuous feedback involving a lot of these small listening groups. For instance, one listening group of students occupied a technical school and immediately called us in order to speak of the occupation. Immediately after, we received a lot of other calls from other schools asking for information and questions about the kinds of problems the group faced. This gave rise to the possibility of not only the circulation of information but also the circulation of struggle.

Q: Was there a critical examination of news as a phenomenon?

I am opposed to the idea of alternative news which attempts to expose the bourgeois news as lies. You see, I do not have truthful information opposed to the non-truthful of the bourgeois press. I have my information. That is all. And I prefer to diffuse or mix my information. I don’t know if that is the truth; I do not believe that it is the truth; I do not believe that the truth exists at all. I believe that there are a lot of possible forms of information, every information being connected with a form of life. I choose a form of life and I diffuse the kind of information connected with this form of life – that is all.

Q: Did you explore the forms involved in radio as well as the content? .

We gave special importance to the problem of form. I prefer to say to the problem of the language we chose. For instance, all the Free Radio’s in Italy generally have a framework except for the political bulletin and even that was loose. This kind of destruction of the framework gave rise to the possibility of speaking all kinds of different ’languages’. When we destroyed the framework it opened out all other possibilities, but of course, you still have to choose between the different possibilities. We rejected any kind of censorship, political or aesthetic. (The idea was that we were an artistic object).

Speaking about the forms of language we used, what I liked was information that was simulated (false information). One time, the police went to the biggest square in Bologna where young people meet, and arrested a lot of them under the pretext that they were dealing in drugs. It was a period of attack by police due to pressure from the owners of businesses in the centre of Bologna who wanted a clearing-up operation to get rid of these young people. I was at the Radio and I called the head of police – the sheriff – telling him that I was a journalist from a big newspaper in Bologna. I told him that I realised he had arrested 35 people and I wanted to know whether he would continue to go on with these politics because the town had been asking him to get rid of these dirty people from the squares for a long time. He said yes, and that he had been waiting for a long time to do it but he would be arresting more people the next day. I then asked whether the arrests would just be confined to drug dealers or to extremists as well because it was surely not enough just to arrest the drug dealers. He agreed and was so happy to speak to a big journalist. But then another section of the police who was listening in to Radio Alice, went to the office of the sheriff to tell him what was happening, so that ended the call. But that was a form of real information. We were obliging the sheriff to tell the truth by us telling a little lie.

In Bologna in 1977, there was a movement in schools, in the universities and in some of the factories and a zone of the city was occupied. The police came into the university and killed someone in the movement and for three days the town was occupied and barricaded. In the period of the riots, Radio Alice was one of the means of communication, organisation and information for the people. The way this coordination worked was that people on the barricades, for example, would go to the telephone and call the radio to say that they needed more people there as they were tired. People from another place would then come and relieve them. Radio Alice was not only the walkie-talkie of the riots; people were also ringing in to say that we were extremists or killers and that we should criticise the movement on the streets. It was 20 hours a day of free speech about what was happening on the streets. On the second day of the riots the police entered the radio station and destroyed everything. The press supported the police action by saying that Radio Alice was instigating the riots through the use of false information. All the people arrested from the radio were charged with using false information and for instigating the riots by means of false information. We had a long theoretical discussion about the conception of true and false news and said that every newspaper is giving news that is true from one point of view. The news is not the reproduction of reality but the production of events, of facts, of reactions etc. so to tell something which is explicitly or evidently false may be the means ofproducing the effects connected with a truth – our truth.

Q: To what extent do the people at Radio Alice feel that they were accountable to the movement?

The radio was open in such a way that any group disagreeing with something that had appeared on the radio, could come and put across their own point of view. One time a feminist group that did not like a transmission, came and occupied the station for half a day in order to put out their own transmission. But of course, this was an extreme example. We did not aim to be representative of the autonomia movement but we aimed to represent ourselves and I think that all the people coming to the radio had the same aim; to be representative of their own point of view.

Q: When I read the texts of Radio Alice, what I found unusual was the use of poetic language lyricism, mixed with music. They were inventive but also obscure, readings from Lautreamont, de Sade, discussions on Surrealism etc. Was that the kind of creativity going on in the movement and how did people respond to it?

First of all, there is a very particular set of problems in Bologna. There is a difference between the majority who make up the traditional workers’ movement and on the other side young people Bologna is a university city and a lot of young people come from the south to look for work. And so an opposition and separation has produced a growing distance and break from the worker movement tradition, and this opened out the possibility of a close connection between politics and artistic language, and immediate forms of speech. Secondly, there is a group experience that is the result of both the social situation of Bologna, and from 1973 onwards, a series of lectures, readings and workshops on Anti-Oedipus by Guattari and Deleuze. A concept of Mao-Dadaism emerged and an idea was that Dadaism was an attempt to break the separation between art and life. We thought that Dadaism wanted to overcome this separation, but the experience of the Dada movement meant that it was only a name without the possibility of realising and effecting this kind of overcoming; the idea of ’from the masses to the masses’ is the kind of projectory that may be made through the immediate artistic language. The aim of Dadaism becomes realistic in the condition in young proletarian forms of life. The young proletarian forms of life realise immediately the separation between art and reality.

Q: Why did the station stop transmitting?

First of all, we did not have money, but that was always a problem from the beginning which we managed to solve. The real reason was that we felt there was a growing distance between our possibilities of information and the political organisation in opposition to the repression. We faced the problem of a change in the feeling of the people. For instance, the audience of punk groups in Italy are more and more interested in drugs, images, videos and music and less and less interested in words, in politics and in the technology of spoken information. I think that radio has been a very important moment of passage, a transition from the political speech and the paper that has moved from the print into the electronic forms of communications. Now, most of the people from Radio Alice are working in music bands, or musical publications and video groups. This is our problem today. What we are doing now is a construction of a form of communication beyond words, beyond speech. We had reached the limit of what is possible just using words. Radio Alice was using more and more poetry in the transmission and less political messages. To read poetry over the radio after 1977 was crazy. You had to speak about the hundred or so arrests every day. Yet to speak about the arrests means nothing if every day you have to announce a similar message. When you have to say each day that one, two, three hundred people had been arrested yesterday, you are completely impotent and powerless. You say the same things for 10 days and nobody will listen to the radio because it is only depressing information and It is not some political indication nor is it some linguistic communication. It is only depressing information. In that moment we had the impression that the contradiction between our aims and the political needs was an impossible contradiction to overcome. In fact we stopped the radio and some of us engaged ourselves in the defense of prisoners and most of us started to work also with video and music.

Q: What kind of connection did you have with other forms of communication?

Before we started Radio Alice, a group of us were working on a publication called A Traverso which was especially concerned with problems of communication, information, relationships between forms of language. It was a paper of poetry, literature and political literature. From the magazine we went to the radio with the feeling that we were passing to a more developed form of communication. There was no contradiction in this as we continued to produce the magazine.

On a radio, you can’t do things that you can with music, video or drugs. I think that drugs are a very important area of communication. We generally use drugs like a commodity. But I think that drugs are not a commodity but a communication technology. I think we can also do a scale in the relationship between social forms of life and communication technologies. The old working class did not use music or video but used newspapers and speeches. The meeting is overcome by the existence of the telephone. When the telephone exists in most houses, the meeting becomes less and less useful. The development of new forms of communication technology renders obsolete other forms of technology. It does not mean you have to forget these obscure forms of technology because there is still a particular kind of specificity which remains.

The speed of written communication is much slower than the speed of radio-communication. But there is the problem of communication technology to produce greater and greater speed. The capitalist knows this very well. If speed is the problem then I think that radio is not fast enough. The radio needs a very rational and discursive relationship between the speaker and the listener. Also the feedback is very slow. I think that music, image and drugs make possible a form of feedback which is absolutely immediate and I think we have to work in this universe of SIMULTANEITY. Radio is the middlepoint between the very slow, distant communication of the written text and the simultaneous form of communications of music, video and drugs. Radio is by necessity, connected as a form of communication based on successive items of information like the written text. The most important thing about electronic consciousness is that you don’t have the need for this succession of items of information – the linear sequence. You are faced by a wall, by alterations of mind. From writing to image is a trajectory that goes from teaching, from the transmission of items of information, to the alteration of consciousness; the immediate transmission, not of concepts of information of distinct items but a wall that changes you in one moment, and then in the next moment, another change. TV is the evident way of this way of alteration. Really TV is a drug, not a fantasizing sense, but in a concrete sense, a kind of alteration of your perceptions. But I think you have to deal with the alteration, with the change of perception in relationship to reality and ourselves.

Q: Do you think that TV is reformable?

No. It was a problem in the radio movement in 1977 when someone proposed that we should organise a TV network. The majority of the movement said that we did not accept this proposition because of the relationship TV has with its audience. This relationship is very fixed and determined and puts the audience in the position of passivity. We cannot reform the TV and we cannot think of another form of transmission. Different forms of transmission do not create a different relationship with the object, with the gadget. So we have to think, not only of different video transmissions but also towards a different network of consumers and users of the image. What has to be changed is not only the contents, not only the transmission, but also the form of network – the relationship between the people that the transmission may produce.

An interview by Rosetta Brooks of ZgPress on 10 July, 2010.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to Data & Research Compilations

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests