A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:36 am

jakell » Tue Feb 04, 2014 7:23 am wrote:AD, what did you make of my suggestion that 'non-fascist' is a more useful term than 'anti-fascist' in the board's present form?


I think it's more useful to the Third Positionist Nazi type propaganda, which you seem to want to promote here, albeit very carefully, so far...
Last edited by American Dream on Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby Sounder » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:36 am

In that, questionable individuals such as jakell have helped very much to clarify these themes, even though I highly doubt it was their intention.


Hey, ya know what AD; Fuck you, we are all questionable individuals.

jakell has brought more substance to this place in two weeks than you have brought in seven years.

You are a master evader AD.

Your (father figure) pronouncements on jackell's character do nothing but give him more credibility.

Maybe you guys are a covert tag team for promoting fascism. (joke)
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
Sounder
 
Posts: 4054
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:42 am

Sounder » Tue Feb 04, 2014 12:36 pm wrote:
In that, questionable individuals such as jakell have helped very much to clarify these themes, even though I highly doubt it was their intention.


Hey, ya know what AD; Fuck you, we are all questionable individuals.

jakell has brought more substance to this place in two weeks than you have brought in seven years.

You are a master evader AD.

Your (father figure) pronouncements on jackell's character do nothing but give him more credibility.

Maybe you guys are a covert tag team for promoting fascism. (joke)


Thanks for that Sounder, positive regard is always nice to hear.. I think my best, but possibly least visible achievement, has been in not getting squashed (or carried away) on AD's binary** superhighway.
You might be right about me and AD being on the same team though, as I alluded to here:

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=37657&start=180#p533128

**binary thinking that is.
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
User avatar
jakell
 
Posts: 1821
Joined: Wed May 06, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: North England
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:48 am

No- thank you jakell, for coming here to promote crypto-racist, crypto-fascist causes. I don't think it's your intent but it's been very helpful in separating the wheat from the chaff and clarifying anti-racist, anti-fascist issues which do matter a great deal.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:01 am

Because this stuff is crucial, to the whole world:


http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=35536

antifa notes (february 4, 2014)
Posted on February 4, 2014 by @ndy

Image


A few notes.

First, I published an article in New Matilda last week about the Australian Defence League.

Secondly, one the groupuscules I referred to in the article, the Party for Freedom, was to have held a public meeting at Redfern Town Hall on Thursday, February 6, to discuss how awful Africans are. The Party has now transferred the venue to Humanist House in Chippendale.

Or maybe not.

According to Party Chairman Nicholas Hunter-Folkes — the man who believes Third World peoples, including Africans, ought to be sterilised so as to keep them from reproducing — leftists have forced management at the House to cancel the meeting. In addition, the Party’s website was allegedly subject to a DDOS attack on the weekend.

Further details of the non-meeting may be obtained from either Nick on 0417-679 972 or nick.folkes@partyforfreedom.com.au and/or Andy on 0434-559485 or andy.shine@partyforfreedom.com.au.

(Note that Humanist House was the subject of an unsuccessful coup attempt by neo-Nazis in 2010.)

Image

Finally, four men were found guilty last week in a Perth court for distributing racist stickers promoting Combat 18 — stickers also being distributed by boneheads in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. One of the men convicted, Jacob Marshall Hort, was previously responsible for administering a Combat 18 website (terrormachine.net) and played in the band ‘Indigenous Hate’. In July 2010, Hort was convicted of criminal damage and discharging a firearm stemming from an incident in which several shots were fired at the Queens Park Suleymaniye Mosque, causing $15,000 damage.

Note that Hort & Co have been denounced by ‘Blood & Honour Australia’ (that faction aligned with the Hammerskins) as liars and traitors; his (former?) C18 comrade, Bradley Trappitt, has since been welcomed into the New Right/’national anarchist’ camp by its leader Welf Herfurth. What this means for relations between B&H/C18, B&H/SCHS, the New Right and Volksfront is unclear at this stage.

Four men fined over racial hate stickers
Kalamunda Reporter
January 28, 2014

A HIGH Wycombe man was among four men fined a total of $8200 in Armadale Magistrates Court for placing racially motivated stickers across a number of Perth suburbs, including Midland and Glen Forrest.

Jacob Marshall Hort (27) and three other men, aged in their 20s and 30s, faced a total of 28 charges of criminal damage for posting the stickers on property, including shopping centres, rubbish bins, an ATM and car parking signs.

The WA police State security investigation group began an investigation into the group after a front-page report published in the Hills Gazette’s sister paper Midland-Kalamunda Reporter in February of last year.

The report detailed the stickers, which showed a swastika and a man clad in a balaclava with his arm in a nazi salute, together with website details, an email address and contact mobile phone number, had been placed on a City of Swan carpark sign, on The Avenue, asking residents to “support your local skinheads”.

The group was charged in August and September after an extensive police investigation.

The court heard five men had placed stickers in Cannington, Maddington, Gosnells, Thornlie and Seville Grove.

Desmond Liddington (29), of Busselton, Jordan Richard Dyer (29), of Bunbury, and Toby Adam Middlecoat (39), of Carlisle, were also convicted, along with Hort.

A Westminster man (36) failed to appear in court and an arrest warrant has been issued.


PS. Oh yeah. A handful of members of the Australia First Party attempted to disrupt a march on Invasion Day in Brisbane.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:31 am

American Dream wrote:I've had at least some knowledge of/contact with antifa type people over many years but it's never really been my thing. I was ambivalent towards making this a big focus, for the kinds of reasons that you mention- that it might distract away from other struggles, especially the efforts to change the System in a more positive direction.

However, upon further reflection, I think that's somewhat of a false dichotomy. I think the anti-fascist struggle can be part of a positive synergy including all the struggles that matter.

In that, questionable individuals such as jakell have helped very much to clarify these themes, even though I highly doubt it was their intention.

I'm still really glad that this is an anti-fascist board and that advocating here for racist/fascist causes is not acceptable here.

'
Can I just state, once more so it's absolutely clear, that I believe the 'fall-back position' for any State or Society in crisis, is one form of Fascism or another (either 'pure' Fascism like Mussolini or as a defense mechanism for self-protection - and many stages in between.)

AD, part of the problem (for me) with anti-fascist literature (and thinking) is the combatative nature of its content - it can lower itself in tone to that of fascist incitement mentality iteself. I don't read all the articles you link to, but in those which I have, many have an underlying tone of palpable intolerance of fellow human beings that happen to have warped views on the world. There was one recently in which the word 'scumbag' was used repeatedly to describe an anti-semite. The vitriol displayed in these articles is not a glowing reference for real change - it makes me suspect that if anti-fascists had their way, all the fascists would be swinging from the same lampposts reserved for themselves - should Fascists take power.
This is a paradigm that needs scrutiny if there is to be meaningful, sweeping change.

Where are the new ' isms '? Our 'isms' are old and stale. The ones we cling to were theorized, described and labelled, relatively, in ancient times. Our world is moving exponentially faster and faster, yet no new ideas (or 'isms' or ideologies) are being created.

Odd.

We now have the tool (the internet) to exchange positive ideas with one another in a currently unfettered, free environment, although this may not last. To form our own new ideas of a better paradigm. To create new ' isms ' (if isms are your thang, they ain't mine) and ideologies. And yet here we are, at what I consider to be one of the most free-thinking, exciting forums on the 'net, filled with a diversity of wonderous open-minded souls, that is constantly bogged down with what has gone before and how to combat it returning. Could it be that we are so busy preserving the 'old ways of thinking' through outdated ideologies, trying to devine the future through mistakes of the past, thinking in old paradigms and the potential horrors they represent, that we are stymied in the pursuit of a new way of conceptualizing and transmitting to others a new way of thinking?

One last thing -

Is it better to spend our days thinking of ways to combat ideological or racist enemies through character assasinations, mocking or name-calling, using the narrative of a system that we know favours certain individuals over others or;

is it better to spend our days thinking, creating and discussing new paradigms that wash away the need to even address the above?
User avatar
coffin_dodger
 
Posts: 2216
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:05 am
Location: UK
Blog: View Blog (14)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:54 am

coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:31 am wrote:
American Dream wrote:I've had at least some knowledge of/contact with antifa type people over many years but it's never really been my thing. I was ambivalent towards making this a big focus, for the kinds of reasons that you mention- that it might distract away from other struggles, especially the efforts to change the System in a more positive direction.

However, upon further reflection, I think that's somewhat of a false dichotomy. I think the anti-fascist struggle can be part of a positive synergy including all the struggles that matter.

In that, questionable individuals such as jakell have helped very much to clarify these themes, even though I highly doubt it was their intention.

I'm still really glad that this is an anti-fascist board and that advocating here for racist/fascist causes is not acceptable here.

'
Can I just state, once more so it's absolutely clear, that I believe the 'fall-back position' for any State or Society in crisis, is one form of Fascism or another (either 'pure' Fascism like Mussolini or as a defense mechanism for self-protection - and many stages in between.)

AD, part of the problem (for me) with anti-fascist literature (and thinking) is the combatative nature of its content - it can lower itself in tone to that of fascist incitement mentality iteself. I don't read all the articles you link to, but in those which I have, many have an underlying tone of palpable intolerance of fellow human beings that happen to have warped views on the world. There was one recently in which the word 'scumbag' was used repeatedly to describe an anti-semite. The vitriol displayed in these articles is not a glowing reference for real change - it makes me suspect that if anti-fascists had their way, all the fascists would be swinging from the same lampposts reserved for themselves - should Fascists take power.
This is a paradigm that needs scrutiny if there is to be meaningful, sweeping change.

Where are the new ' isms '? Our 'isms' are old and stale. The ones we cling to were theorized, described and labelled, relatively, in ancient times. Our world is moving exponentially faster and faster, yet no new ideas (or 'isms' or ideologies) are being created.

Odd.

We now have the tool (the internet) to exchange positive ideas with one another in a currently unfettered, free environment, although this may not last. To form our own new ideas of a better paradigm. To create new ' isms ' (if isms are your thang, they ain't mine) and ideologies. And yet here we are, at what I consider to be one of the most free-thinking, exciting forums on the 'net, filled with a diversity of wonderous open-minded souls, that is constantly bogged down with what has gone before and how to combat it returning. Could it be that we are so busy preserving the 'old ways of thinking' through outdated ideologies, trying to devine the future through mistakes of the past, thinking in old paradigms and the potential horrors they represent, that we are stymied in the pursuit of a new way of conceptualizing and transmitting to others a new way of thinking?

One last thing -

Is it better to spend our days thinking of ways to combat ideological or racist enemies through character assasinations, mocking or name-calling, using the narrative of a system that we know favours certain individuals over others or;

is it better to spend our days thinking, creating and discussing new paradigms that wash away the need to even address the above?


You're very good at (false) dichotomies, coffin_dodger, but ultimately they are misleading.

You paint with such broad brush strokes, it's as if you want to totally erase people like these:



What do we mean by "fascism"?

"Fascism" means different things to different people. To help explain how we use the term, here is a set of quotes from Three Way Fight contributors and people who have influenced us. The quotes don't all agree with each other, and none of them should be considered an "official" position. Rather, they are intended to sketch out a general perspective and set of issues we consider important.


Definitions

Fascism is a revolutionary movement of the right against both the bourgeoisie and the left, of middle class and declassed men, that arises in zones of protracted crisis. (J. Sakai, "The Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Fascism is a revolutionary form of right-wing populism, inspired by a totalitarian vision of collective rebirth, that challenges capitalist political and cultural power while promoting economic and social hierarchy. (Matthew Lyons, "Two Ways of Looking at Fascism")


Competing with the Left

Fascism is not a danger because it is ruling class policy or is about to be adopted as policy. Not even because it could have major influences on this policy. Nor is it a danger because of the "rahowa," racial holy war, that is advocated by some fascist factions. The policies of official capitalism carried out through the schools and the criminal justice and welfare systems are both a far greater and a more immediate threat to the health and welfare of people of color than fascist instigated racial attacks and their promotion of racialist genocide. The real danger presented by the emerging fascist movements and organizations is that they might gain a mass following among potentially insurgent workers and declassed strata through an historic default of the left. This default is more than a possibility, it is a probability, and if it happens it will cause massive damage to the potential for a liberatory anti-capitalist insurgency. (Don Hamerquist, "Fascism & Anti-Fascism")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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. (Hamerquist, "Fascism & Anti-Fascism")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The assumption that in fighting fascism we would automatically enjoy majority support has crashed -- just look at India or Austria right now. As has the delusion that fascism built its movements solely on bigotry and violence. Even the Nazi movement not only strongly manipulated themes of social justice and restoring civic order, but built its mass base by a grassroots network of fighting squads, self-help groups and social services. What fascists did crudely in 1930 is being done in a much more sophisticated way today -- as we can see in the Muslim world. In place after place, the far right is drawing on the energy of "anti-colonialism" and anti-Western imperialism. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

We forget that fascism has always been mainly a movement of the young. That many youth in 1930s Germany viewed the Nazis as liberatory. As opposed to the German social-democrats, for example, who preached the dutiful authority of parents over children, the Hitler Youth gave rebellious children the power to keep their own hours, have an active sex and political life, smoke, drink and have groups of their own. Wilhelm Reich pointed out long ago that fascism in practice exposed every hypocrisy and internal cultural repression of the old left. (Sakai, "The Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

While it intensifies oppression and murderously attacks the left, fascism also appropriates leftist anti-elitism in distorted form. In place of a structural analysis that focuses on dismantling systems of power, fascists portray evil elites as an insidious cultural or racial threat to be purged. For example, fascism attacks bourgeois values and "parasitic" business elements (sometimes, but not always, defined as Jewish) while defending the underlying institutions of private property and class exploitation. Historically, this approach has enabled fascism to tap into real social grievances, such as those of some middle-class groups who resent the power of big business but also have a stake in class privilege and feel threatened by working-class movements or oppressed communities below. (Lyons, "Is the Bush Administration Fascist?")


Totalitarian mass politics

Fascism doesn't just terrorize and repress. It also inspires and mobilizes large masses of people around a vision of collective rebirth in a time of crisis. Building a mass movement outside traditional channels is central to fascism's bid to win state power. As a regime, fascism uses mass organizations and rituals to create a sense of participation and direct identification with the state. Fascism celebrates the nation, race, or cultural group as an organic community to which all other loyalties must be subordinated. In place of individual liberties or social justice, fascism offers its followers a culture of action, virility, heroic sacrifice, cathartic public spectacle, and being part of a vast social organism. (Lyons, "Is the Bush Administration Fascist?")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

I think many people look at fascism and say, "What a load of crap. How could anyone really believe that stuff?" Even many antifascists look at the fascist movement as a joke, violent, but a joke. No doubt the fascist movements have their share of the knuckle-draggers, idiots, and the politically inept, but don’t all movements have these types? I would actually say that in a real fascist movement, the more inept and foolish would be eliminated from the ranks. Fascism prides itself on ability, commitment, and sacrifice.


Fascist movements of the past were popular because they offered a total ideology with accompanying programs for action. Millions embraced fascism not because these people were stupid but because fascism provided a vision for social transformation amidst a time of international crisis. Fascism was able to mobilize masses of people.


I think this is important. The perspective I hold essentially sees fascism as a real movement of ideas that can draw people in and motivate them. It is an ideology and world view we are gonna have to compete with on more than a physical or military level. (Interview from Beating Fascism: Anarchist anti-fascism in theory and practice)


Revolution

By "revolutionary" the left has always meant overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist or communal or anarchist society. Fascism is not revolutionary in that sense, although it may use those words. Fascism is revolutionary in a simpler use of the word. It intends to seize State power for itself. Not simply to sit atop the old pile, but in order to violently reorder society in a new class rule. One cannot read "The Turner Diaries" seriously or understand Timothy McVeigh's politics (he was slaughtering the federal government not the Black Radical Caucus) without facing this. The old left propaganda that fascism is "a tool of the ruling class" is today just a quaint idea. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Fascism overthrows old political elites and sweeps away established forms of political rule. It posits society as an organic hierarchy and rejects the Enlightenment principles of pluralism, equality, and individual rights. In the name of a fascist cultural revolution, it tries to reshape all institutions to embody a unified ideology imposed from above. Some kinds of fascism go further and revolutionize the socioeconomic order, too, as when German Nazism restructured the industrial heart of Europe with a system of exploitation based largely on plunder, slave labor, and genocidally working people to death. (Lyons, "Is the Bush Administration Fascist?")


People of color and the global south

Two points: First, there is a real potential for working relationships and alliances between white fascist movements and various nationalist and religious tendencies among oppressed peoples. In no way does this potential involve the denial of the reality of white supremacy and racial and national oppression. It only means that the left cannot count on the responses to this pattern of oppression, privilege and domination fitting into its neat and comfortable categories.

Second, there is no reason to view fascism as necessarily white just because there are white supremacist fascists. To the contrary there is every reason to believe that fascist potentials exist throughout the global capitalist system. African, Asian, and Latin American fascist organizations can develop that are independent of, and to some extent competitive with Euro-American "white" fascism. (Hamerquist, "Fascism & Anti-Fascism")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

[T]he critical turning point now for fascism is not just in Europe. With the failure of State socialism and national liberation parties in the capitalist periphery, in the Third World, the far right including fascism is grasping at the leadership of mass anti-colonialism. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Mass movements based in religious fundamentalism and various types of warlordism exist everywhere in the third world. They often have anti-capitalist features and frequently these have a quasi-fascist aspect. This should not be surprising. The crumbling structures of the national liberation states and the fragmented and demoralized elements of the communist movements in these areas are more likely to be fertile grounds for fascist development rather than a force against it. The foreign control of capital, labor, and commodity markets distorts the development of parliamentary and trade union traditions. The form of global capitalism that dominates in the periphery of the world capitalist system is not healthy terrain for the reformist leftism that predominates in capital’s historic center. (Hamerquist "Fascism & Anti-Fascism")


Men and women

[Fascism] exults in the violent military experience that is said to be "natural" for men, while scorning the soft cowardly life of the bourgeois businessmen and intellectuals and politicians….

It was early 18th century euro-capitalism itself that first redefined women not as free citizens and "not as patriarchal property of individual men, but as a natural resource of the nation-State". Fascism exalts this, and makes of women a semi-slave resource of the State restricted to the margins of an essentially male society.

One part of this discussion is whether political movements or social phenomenon can be said to have gender. Yes, fascism appeals to women as well as men. Yes, Nazism owed much to German women, no matter how unwilling feminists now are to admit that. But we have said "men" so often when discussing fascism because we are being literal. It is a male movement, both in its composition and most importantly in its inner worldview. This is beyond discrimination or sexism, really. Fascism is nakedly a world of men. This is one of the sources of its cultural appeal. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

In an emerging fascist culture, the traditional forms of oppressing women become exaggerated beyond the point of recognition. The patriarchal nature of fascism places women in a particular class, or sub-class. Women become mere property, dominated and exploited by a male authority.

But herein lies the contradiction…. A fascist movement will draw its strength from both men and women. Hitler's rise to power wasn’t merely the work of stormtroopers in the streets, it was made possible by the mass support of women. Hitler promised the creation of a cultural value system in which the contributions of "Aryan" women to the fascist German society would simply be child rearing and care of the home and hearth. A new proletarian slave class of gypsies, Jews and North Africans -- made up of men, women and children -- would handle the work previously done by "Aryan" women. All sexual elements outside of conceiving for the master race would be handled by state-promoted brothels. (Xtn, "Introduction" to Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement)

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

While all far-right movements are male supremacist, they embody a range of doctrines and policies on women and gender issues -- including some drawn from the left and even feminism. (Lyons, "Notes on Women and Right-Wing Movements")


Capitalism

Fascism grows out of the masses of men from classes that are abandoned on the sidelines of history. By transforming men from these classes and criminal elements into a distorted type of radical force, fascism changes the balance of power. It intervenes to try and seize capitalist State power -- not to save the old bourgeois order or even the generals, but to gut and violently reorganize society for itself as new parasitic State classes. Capitalism is restabilized but the bourgeoisie pays the price of temporarily no longer ruling the capitalist State. That is, there is a capitalist state but bourgeois rule is interrupted. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The new fascism is, in effect, "anti-imperialist" right now. It is opposed to the big imperialist bourgeoisie (unlike Mussolini and Hitler earlier, who wanted even stronger, bigger Western imperialism), to the transnational corporations and banks, and their world-spanning "multicultural" bourgeois culture. Fascism really wants to bring down the World Bank, WTO and NATO, and even America the Superpower. As in destroy. That is, it is anti-bourgeois but not anti-capitalist. Because it is based on fundamentally pro-capitalist classes.

Fascism, in this slowly accelerating global crisis of transformation, believes in what we might call basic capitalism, o.g. capitalism. It is the would-be champion of local male classes vs. the new transnational classes. Enemy of emigrant Third World labor and the modern supra-imperialist State alike, fascism draws on the old weakening national classes of the lower-middle strata, local capitalists and the layers of declassed men. To the increasing mass of rootless men fallen or ripped out of productive classes -- whether it be the peasantry or the salariat -- it offers not mere working class jobs but the vision of payback. Of a land for real men, where they and not the bourgeois will be the one's giving orders at gunpoint and living off of others. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

In or out of power, fascism is not a capitalist puppet but an autonomous force, whose agenda sometimes clashes with capitalist interests in important ways. Business support was crucial to both Italian and German fascists in their drives for power, and they in turn aided big business by smashing the labor movement, imposing top-down stability, and promoting centralization of capital. But as these fascist regimes consolidated themselves, big business increasingly lost political control: it lost the power to determine the main direction of state policy. In Germany, the Nazi program of conquest and genocide simply overrode capitalist priorities -- such as exploiting scarce skilled workers instead of slaughtering them -- even if big industrialists made millions along the way. (Lyons, "Is the Bush Administration Fascist?")


Transforming class society

While usual classes are engaged in economic production and distribution, fascism to support its heightened parasitism is driven to develop a lumpen-capitalist economy more focused on criminality, war, looting and enslavement. In its highest development, as in Nazi Germany, fascism eliminates the dangerous class contradiction of the old working class by socially dispersing & wiping it out as a class, replacing its labor with a new unfree proletariat of women, colonial prisoners and slaves. The "extraordinary" culture of the developed fascist State is like a nightmare vision of extreme capitalism, but the big bourgeoisie themselves do not have it under control. That is its unique characteristic. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Fascism de-proletarianized Aryan society. Or to put it more precisely: it created an Aryan society that had never existed before by de-proletarianizing and genociding the former German society. The Nazis pursued Adolf Hitler's evolving strategy, which was to simultaneously promote both techno-industrial development and the Aryan re-organization of classes. If it is the superior race man's destiny to be both a fierce soldier and ruler over others -- as the Nazis held in a core belief -- then how can this superior race man at the same time be packing groceries for housewives at the supermarket or bucking production on the assembly line?…. By the millions, newly Aryanized men were shifted into military & police service and into being supervisors, office workers, foremen, straw bosses and minor bureaucrats of every sort. The new proletariat that started emerging was heavily made up of involuntary foreign & slave laborers, retirees, and -- despite Nazi ideology about women's "natural" place in the kitchen and nursery -- women. (Sakai, "Shock of Recognition")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The German left communist, Alfred Sohn-Rethel… thought that the German fascist state and society were developing features that foreshadowed a new "transcapitalist" exploitative social order. The most important of these features was fascist labor policy where, in significant areas of the economy the distinctively capitalist difference between labor and other factors of production was obliterated. Labor, not just labor power, was consumed in the process of production just like raw materials and fixed capital. The implications are barbaric and genocidal and genocide was what occurred. But this was not the genocidal aspect of continuing primitive accumulation that is a part of "normal" capitalist development. That type of genocide is directed mainly against pre-capitalist populations and against the social formations that obstruct the creation of a modern working class and the development of a reservoir of surplus labor. The German policy was the genocidal obliteration of already developed sections of the European working classes and the deliberate disruption of the social reproduction of labor in those sectors -- all in the interests of a racialist demand for "living space." (Hamerquist, "Fascism & Anti-Fascism")


Classical versus neo-fascism

Classical fascism took shape in an era of European industrialization and nation-building, competing colonial empires, and an international Communist movement inspired by the recent Bolshevik Revolution. Now both old-style colonialism and state socialism have almost vanished, while corporate globalization is shifting industries across the world and reshaping nation-states. Far-right movements are responding to these changes in various ways. They promote nostalgia for old empires but also right-wing anti-imperialism, old-style nationalisms but also internationalist and decentralized versions of authoritarian politics. They tap into a backlash against the left but also grow where the left’s weakness has opened space for other kinds of insurgent movements. And they promote different versions of anti-elitism, often targeting U.S. or multinational capital but sometimes focusing more on local elites. (Lyons, "Two Ways of Looking at Fascism")


http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2013/ ... scism.html
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:13 am

Ok AD, I concede I'm incapable of expressing myself adequetely to convince you that I'm not here to spread or excuse fascist ideas and propoganda, but to ask questions about where it's all going wrong.

AD said:
You paint with such broad brush strokes, it's as if you want to totally erase people like these:


I'm sorry to mock you AD, but isn't that the whole fucking idea behind everything you (and this board) stands for?
User avatar
coffin_dodger
 
Posts: 2216
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:05 am
Location: UK
Blog: View Blog (14)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:23 am

coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:13 am wrote:Ok AD, I concede I'm incapable of expressing myself adequetely to convince you that I'm not here to spread or excuse fascist ideas and propoganda, but to ask questions about where it's all going wrong.

AD said:
You paint with such broad brush strokes, it's as if you want to totally erase people like these:


I'm sorry to mock you AD, but isn't that the whole fucking idea behind everything you (and this board) stands for?


It sounded like you were suggesting this isn't so important:

This is an anti-fascist board. Propagation of fascist, neo-Nazi and "white pride" causes, including sympathetically linking to sites which advocate such, will not be permitted. This includes revisionist histories of the Holocaust.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:28 am

I give up AD, you won.

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach..."
User avatar
coffin_dodger
 
Posts: 2216
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:05 am
Location: UK
Blog: View Blog (14)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby semper occultus » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:43 am

coffin_dodger » 04 Feb 2014 13:31 wrote:AD, part of the problem (for me) with anti-fascist literature (and thinking) is the combatative nature of its content - it can lower itself in tone to that of fascist incitement mentality iteself. I don't read all the articles you link to, but in those which I have, many have an underlying tone of palpable intolerance of fellow human beings that happen to have warped views on the world. There was one recently in which the word 'scumbag' was used repeatedly to describe an anti-semite. The vitriol displayed in these articles is not a glowing reference for real change - it makes me suspect that if anti-fascists had their way, all the fascists would be swinging from the same lampposts reserved for themselves - should Fascists take power.


......you'll find that when "anti-fascist" is just code for Socialist Workers Party or any other similar fringe groupuscules who hang around the high street shops selling newspapers in their authentic "proletarian worker" donkey-jackets, bearing in mind this guise is about the only way they get anyone to take any notice of them.....quite understandable really ....eliminating the competition & channelling all that bitterness of rejection into a useful motivational energy-source.....
User avatar
semper occultus
 
Posts: 2974
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:01 pm
Location: London,England
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:59 am

semper occultus » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:43 am wrote:
coffin_dodger » 04 Feb 2014 13:31 wrote:AD, part of the problem (for me) with anti-fascist literature (and thinking) is the combatative nature of its content - it can lower itself in tone to that of fascist incitement mentality iteself. I don't read all the articles you link to, but in those which I have, many have an underlying tone of palpable intolerance of fellow human beings that happen to have warped views on the world. There was one recently in which the word 'scumbag' was used repeatedly to describe an anti-semite. The vitriol displayed in these articles is not a glowing reference for real change - it makes me suspect that if anti-fascists had their way, all the fascists would be swinging from the same lampposts reserved for themselves - should Fascists take power.


......you'll find that when "anti-fascist" is just code for Socialist Workers Party or any other similar fringe groupuscules who hang around the high street shops selling newspapers in their authentic "proletarian worker" donkey-jackets, bearing in mind this guise is about the only way they get anyone to take any notice of them.....quite understandable really ....eliminating the competition & channelling all that bitterness of rejection into a useful motivational energy-source.....


There surely are members of cultish Marxist-Leninist parties involved in anti-fascist causes (as well as folks who don't believe in any sort of "Zombie Marxism" whatsoever). In the States there are lots and lots of anarchists- which is great for jakell because jakell is an "anarchist".

I'm sure the anarchists would love to pal around with him...
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby Searcher08 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:05 am

American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 12:04 am wrote:
Searcher08 » Mon Feb 03, 2014 6:50 pm wrote:
coffin_dodger » Mon Feb 03, 2014 11:21 pm wrote:I'm starting to think we've missed the boat. It worries me that generally, we seem to spend a lot of time and effort pointing out and debating what's no good, what's crap and what's scary for people like us (i.e. Fascism), but less time and little effort in promoting better alternatives/something different.

We've been hanging on to a tentative order of sorts since 2007/8 and nothing *that* convincing as an alternative has been forthcoming that has captured the popular imagination. Fascism strikes me as a 'fall-back position' for frightened, confused people and thankfully we're not there yet.
But it only takes one country to start 'tooling up', for it's equally frightened neighbours to think hard about their own security - and the type of government they want if it's going to come to a fight. And those Fascists do like to fight.


I wholeheartedly agree. The reasons for this are quite deep. I think that the main thing is that focusing on past oriented, analysis based "critiques" comes from within a mental set that is fundamentally the wrong one. People act based on their world-view and perceptions and these are changed by different perceptions, not argumentation, which is based in a clash of ideas mode where ideas battle to the death on a territory called 'being right' and an underlying demand that there is a single objective 'truth' which can be carved out by getting rid of 'wrong' or more accurately what are deemed as 'heretical' thoughts.

This type of thinking does not reflect how the brain works as a perception and pattern-making system and is a hangover from medieval church argument approaches. People change through setting up new perceptions and that requires a totally different type of thinking than analysis - it required creativity and lateral thinking, not 'I am right, You are Wrong' binary logic.

The unfortunate thing is that the "critique" crowd consider their system of logic as the only one
possible and become extremely uncomfortable about exploring this way of thinking.
Ananlysis is only ONE mode of thinking and useless at designing a way forward. THAT requires pattern-breaking, provocation and holistic thinking - anathema to reductionism.


I think that it's mostly a minority of the foot soldiers of historical Nazism, contemporary Skinheadism etc.- i.e. the most naive dupes- who seem likely at all to go through a conversion experience and leave that hateful world behind.

While I do think we should maintain compassion for all- and also fight in the realm of ideas- it is mostly the "swing vote" sector I see as strategically important, that is people who feel/know that something is wrong and are looking for explanations and solutions but are not ideologically committed racist/fascist types.

Redemption is a beautiful thing- and I'm always open to it- but I think we have to be realistic about where we are most likely to have success in organizing for positive change...


ADI
Agreement, Disagreement, Irrelevance

Agreement
I agree about redemption - I wish there was much more space created for it and that it featured more. Redemption and the whole area of NVC are closely linked. NVC is the only 'technology' or 'approach' that I have come across that seems to have worked effectively at helping apparently diametrically opposed people come together.
I also agree that there is an important conversation about
where to direction one's resources of time and energy and attention.

Disagree
I disagree on the distinction between footsoldiers and leaders. My counter-example is that 1918's gassed footsoldier = 1933's fascist tyrant.

Irrelevant
You leave unaddressed my key points:

1 Analysis / critique does not deliver on changing perception
2 Creative and lateral thinking and new approaches does not come from past facing critique / analysis
3 Opportunities should be taken to explore frameworks outside of the existing framework of polemic and diatribe flinging - for example Open Space Technology and other non-standard meeting formats.
4 I cant think of a single critique I have read that has shown an iota of forward-facing design, creative and lateral thinking.
User avatar
Searcher08
 
Posts: 5887
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:21 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:21 am

AD I asked you earlier what you thought of my suggestion that RI could be more accurately described as a non-fascist board rather than 'anti-fascist', any chance of an answer?

The reason for this (again) is that I regard anti-fascism as an activity and not just an attitude, and at board level it seems like you are the only one who pushes this issue.
I think there are important reasons for this though. and this is that I think that you personally have made it a polarised, unpleasant and unpopular subject, therefore 'anti-fascism' on here is not really being attended to. this is described in the first of the points I made where I think you have been going wrong here:

1) seeming unable to sustain an atmosphere where these these issues can be discussed rationally.

2) Having a poor method of discovery by failing to ask relevant questions, not processing and retaining information, and not producing evidence to back up accusations when challenged

3) After making accusations, simply fading away, or treading water instead of proceeding towards a resolution


http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=37657&start=345#p533543 (closed thread, so cannot linked to internally)

I think this could be made into general approaches to the subject, and I'm going to have a go at that eventually.

(seem to be a lot of Brits on this thread, I don't know how relevent that is, but it pleases me as this is where most of my familiarity with the far right lies)
Last edited by jakell on Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:26 am, edited 3 times in total.
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
User avatar
jakell
 
Posts: 1821
Joined: Wed May 06, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: North England
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:22 am

Searcher08 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:05 am wrote:Agreement
I agree about redemption - I wish there was much more space created for it and that it featured more. Redemption and the whole area of NVC are closely linked. NVC is the only 'technology' or 'approach' that I have come across that seems to have worked effectively at helping apparently diametrically opposed people come together.
I also agree that there is an important conversation about
where to direction one's resources of time and energy and attention.

I knew a beautiful hippie lovechild once who caused a hitman to doubt his mission- for a seccond- but he went on to do his job anyway.

Occasionally such a thing may happen but if you're meeting such a "man on a mission", it's best to have a really good strategy for dealing with them that doesn't involve changing their heart.

Disagree
I disagree on the distinction between footsoldiers and leaders. My counter-example is that 1918's gassed footsoldier = 1933's fascist tyrant
.
By that point the person would be committed cadre. Same as a white kid who faced violence in high school and then spent twenty years with a drug dealing Aryan gang in prison. It is possible they could become a good leftist, in my view, but not so likely...

1 Analysis / critique does not deliver on changing perception

Sometimes yes, sometimes no...

2 Creative and lateral thinking and new approaches does not come from past facing critique / analysis

Sometimes yes, sometimes no...

3 Opportunities should be taken to explore frameworks outside of the existing framework of polemic and diatribe flinging - for example Open Space Technology and other non-standard meeting formats.

I agree with this but most of all for a "swing vote sector"- say a community where people need more good jobs than they can find and some folks come around who want to tell them the real problem is a jewish plot to privilege immigrants and "mud people"...

4 I cant think of a single critique I have read that has shown an iota of forward-facing design, creative and lateral thinking.

What would yours look like?
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 1 guest