Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America

with a President that can now order the murder of a US citizen, I'd say they're well on their way..

The problem is that they appeal to a greater constituency.

The real problem for the left in this regard is the inability of the left to find traction with the real issues that give this kind of thing momentum. Many are "warning" of the impending danger, but no effective means of demobilizing this movement by offering a way through to those more sensible people on the fringes of this movement, who are merely looking for a way through in tough times.

The field of battle for the hearts and minds of the great number of Americans who are increasingly feeling the pinch in tough times seems basically to have been abandoned, while the "liberal" middle class seems to be lost issuing dire warnings and flapping its hands in a desperate search for epiphany in a national Kumbaya moment.

We need more Henry Rollins and less depressing droning out of the Amy Goodman's of the world.

I've seen a Democratic Senator/Congressman remark on Jon Stewart's show that the tea baggers are leaving Wall Street and the bankers alone in terms of who they're venting their rage against. It's the same old right wing shit. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but from what I understand the tea baggers are getting enormous coverage from gutter media such as Fox News despite the fact that they represent a tiny political percentage - the same, rich, white guys that are always "mad" in a very selective way.

Maybe they could build on the work of the Vermont Progressive Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Progressive_Party

The Tea baggers really are fascists. In the US the tea baggers' message promotes "anti-tax", "property-owning democracy", and even "free enterprise." Remember how well that worked for Thatcher the snatcher and Raygun. Except that they don't say anything about corporate wealth and corporate property, which far exceeds that of most Americans. And rightwingers like Glen Beck are saying that redistribution of wealth is socialism, and even confusing Nazism with Soviet communism to scare Americans. Scaring hell out of Americans has been the way since the 1950's. And there are lots of Americans living in fear today.

Here in Canada we are experiencing fallout from the same neoliberal ideological meltdown. One side says HST is good, and that they need it to fund our social programs. Theyve even gone so far as to suggest that new social programs are in the skunkworks, if only Canadians would accept a tax hike on everything and anything. And they accuse the NDP of being hypocrites for questioning HST and their suggested intentions to spend it on public good. We're up to our necks in Ontario now as it is with Orwellian tax terms like "public benefit" charges on "green" electricity. There is an issue though with who is actually benefiting. Dont believe the HST good doobies. Their way is falling apart, and they just want to look better on paper by next election. There will be no Nordic style social democracy in Canada with levying of HST.

Quote:

And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.

So are both bipartisan war parties linked to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex and big pharma, big sugar, big agribusiness, big prison-industrial complex, big time CIA drug dealing, and big time CIA-NATO covert gladio operations. Noam and Canada's Peter Dale Scott are divided on the issue of whether to pursue 9/11 truth, as are the political and ruling class in America. But the truth is that both the two old line parties in America are bought and paid-for by a billionaire oligarchy. There never was much in the way of true democracy.

Americans were easily sand-bagged by the right when it came to communist health care reforms in America. The vast majority of them won't be convinced that socialism for bankers is pro-American. Obama will have no choice but to continue allowing Wall Street parasites to drain the taxpayers of their life's blood for generations. And Obamacrats will have to continue allowing Republicans to be perceived as the ones who will clean up the financial mess - the same ideologically induced financial disaster for which both parties are responsible for making happen. The country is run by warmongering plutocrats and a few fat-cat bankers on Wall Street. I think Hong Kong under British rule with an appointed white governor and a few bankers running things out of the Hong Kong jockey club may have been as democratic as what America has become.

I think Chomsky is being furtive with his comments for a reason. He knows what's happening.

I think Chomsky's exaggerating the threat of fascism but anyone who thinks they're going to be able to convince Americans that "socialism (by any name) is a good idea" have another think coming. The revolution will be elsewhere.

(I found the "Amens" from Rev Wright's congregation rather cheering, though!) 

it would be more useful, in any case, for those who believe in an imminent threat of fascism to be uttering calls for unity in common cause against specific, concrete threats, rather than crying "wolf". See The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

On a practical level, I have a hard time seeing an explicitly fascist government forming in the US.  Part of the reason for my skepticism is that the US military doesn't have much of a history as a political actor in the US.  Also, the tea party movement is skewed significantly towards white people.  I don't know how hispanics, blacks and other minorities would not go along with a white-oriented dictatorship - especially with many minorities in the armed forces.

That said, things could still get worse.  My own prediction would be for even more power invested in the executive to the point where there is an elected dictatorship, which is pretty much in line with what some of the original founders wanted anyways.  A country governed by executive orders.

Fascism is not a possibility in America? Try looking at the new law in Arizona and tell me it is not a fascist, racist policy.  If the Governor signs this law that was passed in the state legislature, the term, "show us your papers", will become common place. I love the part that it is up to the police to determine whether by looking at someone they think they might be american or an illegal immigrant. At least there are some hispanic voices speaking out against this totalitarian measure. Cuba is looking more democratic all the time, in comparison to some of its neighbours.

Quote:

One Arizona congressman called for businesses to boycott his own state, and a Catholic cardinal said the state may be encouraging "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques" as pushback against Arizona's proposed crackdown on illegal immigrants went into high gear Tuesday.

The bill, which would make being an illegal immigrant a state offense and would make it illegal to knowingly transport or hide an illegal immigrant, has become the latest hot-button litmus test in the immigration issue, dividing members of Congress already sparring over whether to pass a bill legalizing illegal immigrants.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has not said whether she will sign the state measure into law, but U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., said businesses should be prepared to retaliate with a boycott if she does.

"Do not do business with the state," Mr. Grijalva said at a news conference on the Capitol grounds in Washington, adding that a boycott would "give economic consequence to a very bad decision."

Mr. Grijalva said that, if Arizona is able to enact the law without facing consequences, other states will follow suit.

But his call for a boycott shocked Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

"That's very helpful. An Arizona congressman calling for folks to boycott his home state?" Mr. Kyl said. "That'll really help job creation. End of comment."

Mr. Kyl on Monday joined with seatmate Sen. John McCain, also an Arizona Republican, to call for Mr. Obama to post 3,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, and both men also said they understand why legislators acted. They pointed to the killing of an Arizona rancher last month and to reports from sheriffs of escalating violence as evidence the border is not secure.

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Arizonan-Boycott-Immigration-Bill/201...

Louis Proyect has an interesting commentary on this [url=http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/weimar-germany-and-contempo....

Unlike Weimar, America is actually a democracy experiencing a bit of financial difficulty right now? Come on! Yes inflation was far worse in Weimar due to the fact that western powers were occupying the industrial heartland of the Rhine, and they couldn't manufacture or export anything to pay the bills.

The closest thing I can think of paralleling that in America is that capitalists have offshored so many manufacturing and jobs and sabotaged the productive labour economy in the US that today, and just like Weimar Republic, the US can't pay it's bills! The time for bubble capitalism driven by asset price inflation is coming to an end. Now comes debt deflation. The same people who helped Russian oligarchs pauperize tens of millions of Russians in the 1990s are about to do the same to America over the next decade. And they might even invade a few more countries along the way. A mild case of fascism? Hell no. It's actually far worse. It's hyper-imperialism!

Fascism is a response to the crisis of capitalism. The tea party movement and agents like Glenn Beck are preemptively trying to steer the US population away from real antidotes to capitalism by effectively labeling the Wall Street heist and its enablers in the Obama Administration as Socialists. Beck was even on the air making the case that America is afflicted with a cancer called "progressivism". When such views are been expoused by the mouthpiece of the corporate media, you know they are serious about their propaganda effort. 

So obviously the US won't look like Nazi Germany or even Fascist Italy as the forms of popular organization are entirely different, but the same strains are there. To discount this is to miss some ominous warning signs.

Some may say that but the German economy did not really become a fully mobilized centrally planned capitalist economy until 1943. Prior to that, even in the midst of the war, it seems to have been a point of pride for Adolph Hitler that the German domestic economy would not be affected by the ongoing war, and it was only after things began to sour in the Soviet Union that they pulled out the stops. Many people, Albert Speer among them, hypothesize that had the German military economy been fully "Keynesianized" earlier, their fortunes would have been better -- Speer claims that if the reforms he implimented in 1942/43 started earlier, they could have gone into the attack on the Soviet Union with twice the amount of armoured vehicles as they did historically.

Even in 1941, there was only a 20% reduction of domestic consumer goods production from peace time norms, and in late 1941, Hitler actually ordered that planned expansion of the war economy should be reduced, probably based on the assumption that the campaign in the Soviet Union was all but concluded as another victory.

This link shows how German tank production in 1943 exceeds the entire number of tanks produced between 1939 and the end of 1942.

In other words its hightly debatable that Germany invented "Keynesian-militarism". Really that title probably belongs to the Soviet Union, and then second the United States.

Cueball wrote:

In other words its hightly debatable that Germany invented "Keynesian-militarism". Really that title probably belongs to the Soviet Union, and then second the United States.

Wikipedia mentions only two countries wrt Keynesian-militarism, Hitler's Germany and the United States.

Tony Cliff did describe the former USSR as a state-capitalist economy. But that's highly debatable. The profit motive was largely absent from Soviet economy between the 1920's and perestroika. Contrary to Tony Cliff's description of state-capitalism in the former USSR,  the Soviet economy did not operate on the state-capitalist basis of supply and demand. Therefore, Keynesian-militarism was not possible in the Soviet Union. Profit margins of anywhere from 300% to 1000% that exist among warfiteering industries here in the western world today were not possible in the FSU. Profiteering was considered illegal in the FSU.

Keynes was a critic of laissez-faire capitalism and is credited with saving capitalism from itself using some Marxian principles. But profiteering in Hitler's Germany existed and especially so in US warfiteering industries today where Keynesian-militarism thrives at the expense of social democracy within a state-capitalist economy.

Here's a good one on Keynesian-militarism: [url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/51/pauwels.html]Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler[/url] The Bush family of warfiteers began with Samuel P. Bush and the US war industry board. The US economy is largely based on war, and with profit margins of anywhere from 300%-1000%, those jackals in the military-industrial complex will continue dreaming of liquid war and state-sponsored terrorism.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAV87X5keQ0]14 signs of fascism[/url]

Aristotleded24 wrote:

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAV87X5keQ0]14 signs of fascism[/url]

Apparently we are falling into a common trap of people caught in early stage fascist regimes.  We are the good people and we have to adopt these measures to fight evil. Ergo even though it looks and walks like a duck it is actually a democracy of the people and for the people.  If we don't protect our way of live then the evil ones will win.

[url=http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18830]An Act Of War: The US Congress is Actively Pushing for War on Iran[/url]

I think Lawrence Britt should add to number four on the list of defining characteristics  of fascism:

 #4.2  Threatening sovereign countries with and carrying through on threats for medieval siege and naked military aggression.

Note: The likelihood for fascism becomes noticeably higher after the air force bombs 26 countries or so inside of 50 years.

and #4.3  Candidate nation  is suspected of orchestrating false flag terrorism at least twice and used to justify military aggression both times.

Further to that ...

William Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the US wrote:

The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy.

When their own (former) officials make such statements, only the most sycophantic US regime bootlickers can fail to treat such remarks with the seriousness that they deserve.

Yea, OK, I wasn't making the claim that the current (or all post WW2) US regime is fascist. I was just re-inforcing Fidel's claim in the previous post.

What the very fascist America has done since WW II is to make bombing and invasion of countries nearly obsolete by way of globalization of marauding capital. And when this country or that refuses to be controlled by a western banking elite, the very obsolete NATO siege machine is unleashed and fascist bombing begins, but not before a thorough attempt at Balkanizing the targeted country is made in creating generally chaotic economic and social conditions first and foremost.

I think that if democracy was to advance to a point where it should be, the UN would be democratized, and various countries including Canada would not be supporting countries like the USA with no-strings attached trade and mostly benefiting corporations and the rich. No country would act unilaterally to impose sanctions on any other country and interfering politically without democratic consensus. Iow's, stoogeocracies like the ones we've had in Ottawa long time would be made obsolete.