Drawing Lines Against Racism and Fascism

[MacCruiskeen]

Didn't intend to de-lurk today, btw. I just have an extreme aversion to that shameless thoughtstopper "classism" -- the use of which appears to be on the rise recently, and not for no reason. (Cui bono, indeed.)

[Wombaticus Rex]

1.)

No; I really see the dynamic as the same.

Consider that any anti-Semite would insist their case is based on a dispassionate reading of the facts, too. Indeed, they're talking about the same mechanisms of power & control, they only diverge by insisting the levers are being managed by a specific religious group. Make it Jesuits, make it NATO, make it the Pilgrims, make it the US Chamber of Commerce. Still grossly inadequate as an actual explanation for How Things Are.

While my arrogance is spanned in parsecs, I'm still not sufficiently far gone to tell you what you really believe and chide you for lying to me about it; enjoy the view out there.

2.)

I'm saying causality is more complex than "rich people are responsible for bad things," not that causality does not exist. I have fallen down a lot of stairs in my life. I was hoping to imply that attributing causality to The Other is, inherently, denying our own complicity.

It is a mistake because it ends critical thought prior to yielding any useful insights.

I'm also saying the Left should be a lot more concerned over what they're actually going to do with the power they've attained in the past 50 years than policing the reading habits of their membership, but that's helpful advice I should probably keep to myself.

3.)

Your claim that Classism is a unicorn wrapped in colorless green ideas, I don't even know how to parse. What was the Russian Revolution? What was the Great Leap Forward? What was the goal of the Khmer Rouge?


4.)

Obviously, all of my work here is on behalf of the people who pay me to monitor this community and steer you away from certain sensitive topics -- but everyone knows that, so I wonder why you posed the question at all?

(And words are pretty worthless, yeah -- this could be related to why no manifesto has yet been able to save the human race.)

[MacCruiskeen]

Look, WR, I don't know why you're acting so hard-done-by. It was, after all, you who introduced (and bolded) the newly-fashionable cant term "classism" and asserted -- with great confidence and with an air of weary worldly-wisdom -- that it was a real thing and every bit as bad as racism or sexism. Now, that is a position, clearly-enough stated. And I say -- in response -- that it is a merely a transparently manipulative way of obfuscating exploitation, by suggesting to the exploited that they are wrong for noticing their exploitation, wrong for noticing who's exploiting them, wrong for objecting to it and to them, and wrong for believing that things (social relations) need not necessarily be the way they are (i.e. exploitative) and for aspiring to change them.

Losers! Classists! Resentful! How dare they? Claiming that capitalists exploit them? Why, it's just like beating women or lynching black men!

No. It isn't. It's nothing like it at all.

You tell me that anti-Semites and wife-beaters think they're right too. So what? This is cheap relativism. No doubt child-molesters, serial killers and slum landlords have their reasons too. All that proves is that some conflicts of interest are inevitable, especially in a set of social* relations as catastrophically fucked-up as the present one.

*And ecological. I wonder how close to the actual end of all life on earth we will have to get before the denizens of the Currently Privileged Zone will admit that change is not merely advisable and not merely right, but inevitable.

[MacCruiskeen]

I mean, really, all this "oh that socialism nonsense has been tried SO MANY TIMES and never worked!!" - it does get increasingly hard to listen to while the sainted status quo of globalised capitalism sends the entire planet straight down the shitter (women and children first, especially the brown ones).

[Wombaticus Rex]

Didn't intend to de-lurk today, btw. I just have an extreme aversion to that shameless thoughtstopper "classism" -- the use of which appears to be on the rise recently, and not for no reason. (Cui bono, indeed.)

Certainly true. Perhaps there might be a bit of difference between hedge fund owners penning opinion columns about how unsafe they feel and me, pointing out that rallying the masses around "Rich People Are The Problem" is short-term effective and long-term dumb, but that's probably just something I want to believe. (As long as we're on the subject: who benefits from endless in-fighting, re-theorizing, witch-hunting and self-examination on the radical Left? It's not the radical Left....)

It is unfortunate that any critique of socialism and its failures benefits capitalism (and its failures) but that's not sufficient grounds for me to stop stating what I see when I see it. It sucks that false accusations of sexual assault happen, too, but they happen, and that doesn't mean it's a conspiracy or a some kind of sponsored message from The Patriarchy.

If you're confused about the only detail in our exchange that actually bothers me, it was this part:

While my arrogance is spanned in parsecs, I'm still not sufficiently far gone to tell you what you really believe and chide you for lying to me about it; enjoy the view out there.

...and what does it matter? That's your rhetorical style, mine bothers you, too, and we're still having an interesting conversation on a thorny topic. I agree with you that exploitation is the core of this, and my contention is that Socialism is exploitation by socialists. AD saying that Trotskyites would spend their ten billion on getting their comrades elected to office is particularly poignant in this regard; I can't imagine a more implicit admission of defeat.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Capitalism/Socialism. A pox on both their houses. Neither changes the way money works. As we approach the first anniversary of Mike Ruppert's suicide, maybe we should try getting out of the binary trap and explore something that HASN'T been tried?

[seemslikeadream]

old worn out words .........new words... new ideas...new creations

We Need to Grow Our Souls-Building Next American Revolution

"We need to grow our souls. We need to find that balance of life that respects each other, that thinks that the most important thing at this time on the clock of the world is not our accumulation of things, is not economic growth which threatens and imperils all life on this planet including ourselves, that the time has come to grow our souls, to grow our relationships with one another, to create families that are loving and communities that are loving, to bring the neighbor back into the hood... There are so many ways in which we can grow our souls and the souls of those around us."

[American Dream]

I agree with you that exploitation is the core of this, and my contention is that Socialism is exploitation by socialists.

There's a very important kernel of truth there about certain forms of "Socialism". What's missing is the fact that not all socialists believe in the top-down model, one party rule, or a vanguard led by intellectual/expert types whose decisions and opinions can not be questioned after a certain point. There are many other types of socialists with many other ideas.

[MacCruiskeen]

How about a programme along these lines?

Nationalisation of all major industries and utilities, including water, gas, oil, coal, iron, steel, telecommunications, railways and airlines;

Free education for all (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic), up to and including university level:

Free healthcare (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic) for all;

A living pension for all from the age of 65;

Tens of millions of spacious, well-equipped, centrally-heated homes, with rents so low that they are easily payable by a factory worker with a spouse and five children;

Etc.

What do you think? Completely unrealisable, a laughable pipe-dream? Or perhaps it sounds to you like a nightmare of oppression, a horrible dystopia?

Don't hesitate to speak your minds. I'm really interested to hear what Americans especially think (and feel) about this.

[Pele'sDaughter]

I'm all for it. To me, this is the way things should be and we'd have a lot less social problems. I don't resent paying for "welfare" now, but do resent that our govt is only willing to apply this "bandaid" instead of actually resolving issues like unemployment and affordable child care. I do believe our entire western society needs to change in so many ways that maybe it is impossible. Certainly those in positions to do it are too greedy to want to do so. At this point I'm favoring a bottom up approach with broad decentralization. Once we get rid of some of the unwieldy aspects of the Federal govt, it should become much less complicated to deal with issues going forward. Maybe I want it crowd-sourced even, because we certainly need more and more diverse input for making these decisions which affect so many. Clearly, Congress is completely out of touch and absolutely ignorant in some cases. Everyone really should get to have a part in governing, and there must be a way to get us all involved.

[American Dream]

The author of the OP has more, on the responses to their article:

THE CONTINUING APPEAL OF RACISM AND FASCISM

By Spencer Sunshine, on April 6, 2015

My recent PRA article “Drawing Lines Against Racism and Fascism” documented how cryptofascists and pro-White separatists are attempting to make inroads into progressive political and counter-cultural circles. It was based on a number of recent incidents where conflicts had arisen between antifascists and these untraditional Far Right activists. However, the dynamic I wrote about is so common that soon after the article was published, new events were reported in the media, and readers—who were previously unknown to me—shared their stories of similar encounters.

Some of these incidents came to light as comments on Walter Reeves’s Daily Kos post, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing; Racism, Anti-Semitism and Fascism: Infiltrating the Left,” which was based on “Drawing Lines.” In the lively discussion thread that followed, one commenter talked about encountering anti-Federal Reserve conspiracy theories (laced with anti-Semitism) at Occupy Wall Street, while a second had run into fascists in discussion circles about “ancient history and religion.”

The comments also revealed a more serious situation, involving a neo-Nazi man who regularly attends an atheist group’s meetings. One commenter wrote (in their own Daily Kos blog) that: “He seems to have a single focus: to bring up one of his many offensive topics (wildly racist ideology, holocaust denial, women should not be allowed to vote, gay bashing, praising Hitler…).” The blogger said the neo-Nazi continuously offended existing members with his comments and scared off new ones. His past forcible incarceration in a state mental health facility, along with his claims of gun ownership, intimidated the organizers enough that they were unable to stop his repeated disruption of the group.

Situations like the one involving this atheist group are complicated to deal with. But they underscore why progressive groups should both be prepared for such encounters, and have a plan ready to deal with them—comparable to having an evacuation route set and go bag ready for emergencies: you will probably never need it, but if you do, you’ll be glad it’s there.

Continues at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2015/0 ... d-fascism/

[Wombaticus Rex]

Nationalisation of all major industries and utilities, including water, gas, oil, coal, iron, steel, telecommunications, railways and airlines;

Free education for all (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic), up to and including university level:

Free healthcare (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic) for all;

A living pension for all from the age of 65;

Tens of millions of spacious, well-equipped, centrally-heated homes, with rents so low that they are easily payable by a factory worker with a spouse and five children;

Etc.

As a modest utopia, I'm all for it. We could perhaps be there now, had things only gone differently in the 1930s. (Or the 1800s? So many inflection points!)

While utopia implies non-existence, I wouldn't call it a laughable pipe dream...but it does lack certain operational details, yeah? I think humanity has really intractable problems with agency and accountability, and instituting a new political system won't change that because the problems are the humans, not the system.

How do we reach that land of plenty? Mao was right: you get there by stomping on the face of anyone who tries to stop you. The problem with that approach is, you have to get everything right to make those sacrifices mean anything.

Humans don't do very well with that, either.

More inclusive alternatives pose logistical problems, not to mention the complications bad actors impose. Still, all I'm saying is that we haven't really nailed down many workable formulas for self-governance -- I'm not saying we can't/won't. Humans are dope.

[Searcher08]

Spencer Sunshine is the guy who wrote that execrable piece about how "Occupy was infiltrated by Conspiracy Theorists". It was really low quality, deeply tarded, conflationary and confused... back in that awful "How to Overthrow the Illuminati" thread. He is as marvellous a writer as Tony Greenstein ie associational and pretty logic-free.

The author of the OP has more, on the responses to their article:

THE CONTINUING APPEAL OF RACISM AND FASCISM

By Spencer Sunshine, on April 6, 2015

My recent PRA article “Drawing Lines Against Racism and Fascism” documented how cryptofascists and pro-White separatists are attempting to make inroads into progressive political and counter-cultural circles. It was based on a number of recent incidents where conflicts had arisen between antifascists and these untraditional Far Right activists. However, the dynamic I wrote about is so common that soon after the article was published, new events were reported in the media, and readers—who were previously unknown to me—shared their stories of similar encounters.

Some of these incidents came to light as comments on Walter Reeves’s Daily Kos post, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing; Racism, Anti-Semitism and Fascism: Infiltrating the Left,” which was based on “Drawing Lines.” In the lively discussion thread that followed, one commenter talked about encountering anti-Federal Reserve conspiracy theories (laced with anti-Semitism) at Occupy Wall Street, while a second had run into fascists in discussion circles about “ancient history and religion.”

The comments also revealed a more serious situation, involving a neo-Nazi man who regularly attends an atheist group’s meetings. One commenter wrote (in their own Daily Kos blog) that: “He seems to have a single focus: to bring up one of his many offensive topics (wildly racist ideology, holocaust denial, women should not be allowed to vote, gay bashing, praising Hitler…).” The blogger said the neo-Nazi continuously offended existing members with his comments and scared off new ones. His past forcible incarceration in a state mental health facility, along with his claims of gun ownership, intimidated the organizers enough that they were unable to stop his repeated disruption of the group.

Situations like the one involving this atheist group are complicated to deal with. But they underscore why progressive groups should both be prepared for such encounters, and have a plan ready to deal with them—comparable to having an evacuation route set and go bag ready for emergencies: you will probably never need it, but if you do, you’ll be glad it’s there.

Continues at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2015/0 ... d-fascism/

[stillrobertpaulsen]

How about a programme along these lines?

Nationalisation of all major industries and utilities, including water, gas, oil, coal, iron, steel, telecommunications, railways and airlines;

Free education for all (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic), up to and including university level:

Free healthcare (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic) for all;

A living pension for all from the age of 65;

Tens of millions of spacious, well-equipped, centrally-heated homes, with rents so low that they are easily payable by a factory worker with a spouse and five children;

Etc.

What do you think? Completely unrealisable, a laughable pipe-dream? Or perhaps it sounds to you like a nightmare of oppression, a horrible dystopia?

Don't hesitate to speak your minds. I'm really interested to hear what Americans especially think (and feel) about this.

Great food for thought, MacCruiskeen. Many points on your list are possible realizable, some points have the potential for oppression, but hardly enough to qualify as dystopia. In America, I see things becoming progressively more dystopic politically as the ramifications of the Carbon Crisis (Peak Oil/Global Warming) become more pronounced - we've already seen that to some degree since the 70s: Nixon, bad enough to be forced to resign begat Reagan, whose Iran/contra was even worse, who begat George W. So your bullet points seem almost utopian by contrast.

Addressing them one at a time:

"Nationalisation of all major industries and utilities..."

Certainly realizable. Also carries the potential, especially in our Patriot Act-driven NSA Surveillance State, of fascist oppression.

"Free education for all..."

Certainly realizable. I don't see any potential for dystopian oppression.

"Free healthcare..."

After Obamacare, hell yeah!

"A living pension for all from the age of 65"

Sounds like a pipe-dream, but a good one. Anyone who calls this dystopia is just a fucking grinch. Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians are corporate-owned grinches.

"Tens of millions of spacious, well-equipped, centrally-heated homes, with rents so low..."

By itself, this point is conceivable. But it isn't about one point, right? This is a program. So if we take everything in its totality, then we have to face the reality that you're asking for the impossible. To accomplish this in its entirety, it cannot happen under the current political and economic paradigm. It can only occur with the right kind of revolution

Which brings me back to Ruppert. This is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote last year memorializing what I felt was worth commemorating about him: his message.

Michael C. Ruppert had a message that was ambitious to the point of being almost all-encompassing within the circle of life; extending into spheres political, economical, environmental and even spiritual. As I perceive that message, it boils down to two basic points:

1. Unless you change the way money works, you change nothing.

I've heard him say this phrase in one form or another for years, the first time I read it was 10 years ago in Crossing the Rubicon on page 593: "If you decide that you want to change things, I am telling you right now that you will change nothing until you change the way money works." I've read many others say the same, but it was through Mike that I gained a thorough understanding of what that means. It does not mean changing from capitalism to socialism, or vice versa. We're not talking about changing the way money is distributed as much as we are talking about changing money itself. What is money? Mike broke it down easy enough for a child to get.

A. Fiat currency - Someone at the Federal Reserve clicks a key on their computer and money is created.
B. Fractional reserve banking - Someone at a bank loans money into existence.
C. Compound interest - Banks + credit companies set interest rates of accrual. What many religions call usury.

Those three factors combine to form a system Mike called out by its real name: pyramid scheme! He also spelled out what money, under this current paradigm, actually represents: debt! That's why any movement to balance the budget under the current paradigm is an exercise in futility. You can wipe the slate clean with Universal Debt Forgiveness (a great start!) but if you don't change money itself so that it has intrinsic value, you'll be right back where you started in no time at all because money will still represent debt.

What intrinsic value should money represent? Mike made that extremely clear: energy! Money should represent both the human energy that we produce through our labor and the planet's energy that we utilize. He was a huge proponent of re-localization, that would mean local currencies reflecting the output of that particular region. Bottom line, the economy would be rooted in sustainability as opposed to growth. This ties into the other basic point of Mike's main message as I perceive it:

2. You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.

This point reflects the more comprehensive problem humanity faces. This problem, which Mike labeled the Infinite Growth Paradigm, encompasses the totality of civilization's current unsustainability. Since our monetary system is a pyramid scheme, it requires infinite growth. That means not only infinite growth of the consumer base, which has resulted in the unprecedented population explosion at 7 billion and growing, but to meet that demand, infinite growth of the physical resources that fuel this economic infrastructure. All within this little blue-green sphere that, prior to the last two centuries, never had more than one billion people residing within its confines.

The constraints of reality upon this living arrangement are too vast for any one person to quantify, but Michael Ruppert did more than most to map out the ramifications. That this living arrangement is unsustainable because our resource base for the fuels that grow our food and operate our transportation system (oil, coal, gas) is non-renewable is obvious. But for a scalable alternative in which our civilization runs on a resource base where our transportation system runs on renewable energy and our food supply is grown through organic permaculture, there are certain factors currently present that prevent us from achieving that. Factors that keep us out of balance. Balance is something Mike seemed to value to an immense degree. Here are a few unbalancing factors Mike pointed out over the years.

A. Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROEI) - Any "alternative" to our already out-of-alignment paradigm must pass this test: does the amount of money it takes to turn something into fuel exceed the amount you get in return? If the answer is no, as Mike exposed in regard to ethanol, "clean" coal and many other snake oil propositions, then it has no future in our society unless you change the way money works. If you do, Mike pointed out which alternatives had a chance; wind and solar. That's for transportation, for food supply Mike loved permaculture. But there is another unbalancing factor that might destroy this option...

B. Greenhouse Gasses - We're still burning one billion barrels of oil every 11 1/2 days, Mike frequently pointed out. That's just one source for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that human civilization has been polluting our atmosphere with since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Along with coal, we have been taking our environment into an extremity we may not survive. Mike alluded to this in Collapse but spelled it out very clearly in Apocalypse, Man: we are destroying our food supply and face a more immediate threat through radiation poisoning. What global warming doesn't kill, the collapse of civilization and 447 nuclear power plants will.

C. Population Overshoot - If we don't find a way to voluntarily reduce the population beyond our carrying capacity, then it will be done involuntarily. Mike pointed out a couple ways he foresaw it being done involuntarily: either through a fascist police state (once I heard Mike do a spot-on impersonation of Henry Kissinger saying 'The problem is not that there is too little oil. The problem is just that there are too many people.') or nature would do the job for us, as detailed above in section B.



Is it too late? Is it possible that we are too far out of balance, that we're collectively too blind to awaken our consciousness and stop the madness of Infinite Growth? Can we change the way money works so that our economy is truly sustainable and stripped of the motive for greed?

If we want to honor the memory of Michael C. Ruppert, we owe it to our Mother to make his vision our reality, or die trying.

[Joao]

Marxian Class Analysis Theory and Practice Online Course
There are two basic purposes of this intensive class taught by Professor Wolff at the Brecht Forum in New York city in the Spring of 2010. The first is to teach the specifics of Marxian class analysis (its history, different interpretations, and basic structure). The second is to show in detail how to apply Marxian class analysis and what unique insights it achieves both in terms of understanding society and strategizing for social change.

• Class 1: The basic concept of class; history of class analysis; differences (inside and outside Marxism) over how to define “class”; specifics of Marxian class analysis; different results from using Marxian class analysis versus using other analytical frameworks.
• Class 2: Analyzing the current US capitalist crisis in class terms and proposing class-based solutions for the crisis.
• Class 3: A class analysis of the rise and fall of the USSR (with applications as well to China, etc.)
• Class 4: A class analysis of the current crisis of households, families, and intimate life in the US
• Class 5: A class-based strategy for US labor and left today based on class analysis of their current situation