Bulletin
N° 786
The Serpent’s Egg
(1977)
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+serpant%27s+egg+putlocker+film&&view=detail&mid=2D7A43F2AD912D758E0C2D7A43F2AD912D758E0C&&FORM=VRDGAR
Subject
: PREDATORY CAPITALIM REPRODUCING PREDATORY RELATIONSHIPS THROUGHOUT SOCIETY,
AT EVERY LEVEL . . . .
16
February 2018
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The
predatory violence in society of recent years speaks to the decline of imperial
power we are now witnessing. The debacle of liberal ‘law-and-order’ does not
mean the spontaneous generation of socialist ‘harmony’. On the contrary, the
brutalizing effect of the neo-liberal ideology of ‘possessive individualism’
seems to be ushering in a new phase of the most blatant violence that
capitalism can produce. The sadistic episodes of military and police violence
are, of course, only the signal of a paradigm shift that will affect all of
society, from Gargantuan financial/banking interests and giant pharmaceutical companies to the
unorganized working poor and the homeless, not to mention Third World victims who, also, are suffering the onslaught of capitalist-owned state agencies.
According
to historian Fritz Stern, this pattern was detectable in the pre-Nazi era of
German history, during the Imperial reign of Kaiser Wilhelm and during the rise
of the Third Reich.
By
the late nineteenth century, Germany had developed an academic-industrial and,
later, military complex that was supported and sustained by its authoritarian
state, whose leaders combined class-induced political myopia with a confident
grasp of the immense utility of science.
.
. .
Put
too simply Germany’s elites - most especially the materially declining old
agrarian–feudal class, many of the rising captains of industry and banking,
and the professoriate - saw themselves as guardians of the nation’s special
character; they thought or imagined that Germany was beset by a ring of
external enemies, and most importantly by internal enemies. The mounting tide
of Social Democracy seemed to them to
threaten their values, their privilege, their property. . . . Only a nation so internally divided
could have welcomed the outbreak of war in 1914 with the extravagant hope that
war would unify its people through sacrifice. Instead, the long war – conducted
on the German side under ever more radical leadership – bred an atmosphere of
suspicion and distrust that, upon Germany’s defeat, erupted into both actual
and latent civil war. [Walther] Rathenau’s life and his assassination in 1922
exemplified the travails of the postwar Weimar Republic, the impressive efforts
made to salvage German promise that finally the horror of National Socialism
totally perverted.
Einstein’s
German world was one in which Christians and Jews (or individuals of Jewish
descent) lived and worked together; in the relatively protected realm of
science, prejudice against Jews gradually yielded to a recognition of talent
and of shared values. (In the Protestant states of Germany, Catholics probably
fared worse than Jews - and the conflict
between the two Christian religions ran very deep.) German society as a whole
was rife with every kind of prejudice – anti-Semitism came in the most diverse
guises – from irritation at Jewish success to paranoid fear and fury at the
thought of Jewish power threatening German life and virtue. So while German
Jews before 1914 prospered in spite of and sometimes even because of these
rampant prejudices, they did so at great psychic cost, as the lives of Haber
and Rathenau make clear. In no other country were Jews met with so peculiar a
mixture of hospitality and hostility, while being so attracted to a country
that in many ways treated them . . . as second-class citizens. Chaim Weizmann
had contempt for what he regarded as ignoble servility and wanted to deliver
Jews form it. The full range of Jewish responses to German life before Hitler
emerges in these various lives, as does the still terrifying failure of the
German elites to resist Hitler’s march to total power. That failure was the
precondition of Nazi success.(from the
Introduction to Einstein’s German World, pp.5-7)
In
the lengthy Chapter 3 of this book, Stern discusses the life of Fritz Haber (1868-1934), “the inventor of
poison gas warfare” as a "paradigm" of “the physical destruction that was to
mark the life of German Jews.”(p.156) In a footnote, he elaborates on the
dilemma in Haber’s post-First-World-War life.
In
the spring of 1933, fearful of what might happen to him and his children, Haber
turned to his former collaborator in the army, Herman Geyer, who in the
meantime had advanced to being a major-general. In a handwritten, cordial
letter Geyer testified that Haber had not only been a “frontline fighter of
merit” but also : ‘In the months before the first great gas attack (April 15)
you lived for weeks or months at the front and sat not only with the high
staffs but with full commitment of your person. You also were in the furthest
frontline in order to help and learn and to study the conditions for using the
gas process [Gasverfahren] of every kind.’ Geyer mentioned ‘a
particularly impressive occasion’ when both men stood in the ‘furthest front
line’ on March 21, 1918, at the moment of the ‘great attack in the west’ under
heavy fire. In his reply, only partially preserved, Haber thanked Geyer for his
note, which he would use to enable his children ‘to remain in their school’ –
if that should become necessary. At the same time he mentioned: ‘I received
directly and indirectly the army suggestion that I should again put my
Institute in the serviced of gas warfare and gas protection, as had happened
during the war, and I evaded the suggestion.’(p.156-157)
A
few months later, on October 8, 1933, Haber wrote a letter in English to the
Paris representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, from which the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute, when under his direction, had received financial support. He warned his American colleague that,
a
new Nazi-appointed director of the Institute was likely ‘to study chemical
warfare with the Institute . . . . You will remember that in war time I have
been the leader of the |sic] chemical warfare in Germany and that I have been
proud to work for the military authorities with the institute as [sic] experimental
basis. But after the Armistice, I have cancelled every [sic] such work and
fully decline to renew it in whatever form.’(p.135)
Stern
went on to note that Haber “worried about Weimar’s future in the shadow of
Versailles. In the early years he renewed his ties to the army and may have
been involved in the super-secret deliberations about the use of poison gas in
the future war. . . . Likewise Haber and
his institute experimented with pesticides and developed a deadly substance
that came to be known as Zyklon B. The horror of Haber’s involvement with the
gas that later murdered millions, including friends and distant relatives,
beggars description.”(p.135)
Haber
who converted early in his career from Judaism to Lutheranism, at the age of 24, found himself in a
precarious situation at the start of the Third Reich. He had been a military
officer in the imperial war and had made a contribution to German warfare, but
when he refused to dismiss Jewish scientists under his direction at the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute, the die was cast. His privileged elite status would no longer serve
to protect him. On August 7, 1933, he wrote Albert Einstein (1879-1955) who had
just delivered his final speech in Europe, at London's Royal Albert Hall a
few days earlier, on October 3, 1933. Haber asked him to tone down his
criticisms of Zionist violence against Palestinians in his communications with
University of Manchester Chemist and ardent Zionist, Chaim Weizmann
(1874-1952). He wrote, “I have the impression that the public quarrel between
you and Weizmann renews the misfortune that the internal conflicts in Jerusalem
signified in the days when Titus and his legions besieged Jerusalem.” He begged
for reconciliation and concluded by confessing, “In my whole life I have never
felt so Jewish as now!”(p.159)
Einstein
responded almost immediately to his old friend from the days in Berlin in
characteristic fashion, on August 10, 1933. He attacked Weizmann and warned
Haber, who had now converted to Zionism, not to work at the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem*;
then went on to write:
[I’m]
pleased that . . . your former love for the blond beast has cooled off a bit.
Who would have thought that my dear Haber would appear before me as defender of
the Jewish, yes even the Palestinian cause . . . . I hope you won’t return to Germany.
It’s no bargain to work for an intellectual group that consists of men who lie
on their bellies in front of common criminals and even sympathize to a degree
with these criminals. They could not disappoint me, for I never had any respect
or sympathy for them – aside from a few personalities . . . . (p.159)
Earlier
that same year, Einstein had written to Harber, on May 19th :
I
can conceive of your inner conflicts. It is somewhat like having to give up a
theory on which one has worked one’s whole life.
It
is not the same for me because I never believed in it in the least.(p.159).
Einstein
expressed repeatedly his contempt for servile German obedience to Nazi rule,
and later called Germany, “a country of mass murderers.”(fnt. on p.163)
_______
*Note:
Einstein eventually softened his criticisms of Israel and three years before
his death in 1955, he was offered the presidency of the new Jewish state. He
declined the offer for reasons of advanced age, poor health, and his lack of
political experience. After his death and in fulfillment of his will which was written
in 1950, his archives were moved from Princeton University to Hebrew University
in Jerusalem.
The
28 items below represent the “new normal” in US political culture, as
the paradigm shifts into a remarkable surge of highly visible,
capitalist-orchestrated state violence against classes of dominated people living
in North America and beyond. The challenge remains to successfully conceal this
violence from the general public in order to curb widespread resistance and proactive organizing
against it . . . . The caveat in the 28th item below, sent to us by Alan Haber, questions
whether it is productive to call the Trump Administration "Fascist" or to
recognize important differences, in order to seek strategic advantage.
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
emeritus of American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
|
|
===========
c.
The
Fed's Impossible Choice,
In
Three Charts
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-11/feds-impossible-choice-three-charts
by Tylor Durden
Critics of “New Age” monetary policy have been
predicting that central banks would eventually run out of ways to trick people
into borrowing money.
===========
d.
Plunge In
Interbank Lending:
The Straw That
Broke The Fed's Back
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-13/plunge-interbank-lending-straw-broke-feds-back
===========
e.
One
Belt, One Road Map
https://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/2015/11/03/obor.png
===========
f.
Global Warming Map Shows What Happens
When the Earth Gets 4 Degrees Warmer
https://mymodernmet.com/parag-khanna-global-warming-map/
by
Jessica Stewart
===========
g.
Russia
In the Crosshairs
https://southfront.org/paul-craig-roberts-russia-in-the-crosshairs/
by Paul Craig
Robers
===========
h.
Dutch FM resigns after admitting lie
about meeting Putin
https://www.rt.com/news/418689-dutch-quits-putin-lie/
===========
Syria - Is War With Israel Imminent
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48778.htm
by Moon Of
Alabama
On February 11,
2018, around 6 am GMT the Syrian air defense shot downed an Israeli fighter
jet that was attacking the country. There is now the chance that a larger war
will ensue. (The whole story behind this will surely be covered in Elijah Magnier's upcoming book on Hizbullah.)
[This is a
developing story that will be updated below as new information comes in. - The
latest update (below) is a video interview with Elijah Magnier on the
implications of today's developments.]
===========
j.
“It’s Hard to
Believe, But Syria’s War Is Getting Worse”:
World Powers
Clash as Civilian Deaths Soar
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/2/13/its_hard_to_believe_but_syrias
===========
k.
WHITE HELMETS: James Corbett
– An Open Letter
to Olivia Solon of The
Guardian
http://21stcenturywire.com/2018/02/12/white-helmets-james-corbett-open-letter-olivia-solon-guardian/
from the Corbett
Report
As attentive Corbett Report viewers will already
know, The Guardian was the recipient of the
highest dishonor of the year this year: The award for “Fakest Fake News Story
of the Year 2017” at my First Annual REAL Fake News
Awards ( aka “the Dinos”). Specifically, the dishonor was
bestowed on The Guardian’s San Francisco-based
technology reporter, Olivia Solon, for her breathtaking contribution to the annals
of establishment fake news hackery, “How Syria’s White Helmets
became victims of an online propaganda machine.”
===========
l.
Tip-off received on Al-Nusra, White Helmets plotting
chemical weapons provocation in Syria – Moscow
https://www.rt.com/news/418649-alnusra-white-helmets-chemical-provocation/
===========
m.
Erdogan threatens
US with 'Ottoman slap,'
says all NATO
countries created equal
https://www.rt.com/news/418712-ottoman-slap-erdogan-us-nato/
===========
n.
The
Selective Empathy of #MeToo Backlash
by Megan Garber
That was
President Trump, on Saturday, ostensibly reacting to the fact that, this week,
allegations of domestic abuse led to the resignations of two high-level staffers at
the White House. He was also, obliquely, weighing in on #MeToo. The
president’s 48-word assessment of the reckoning so many Americans are painfully
but productively engaged in made for rich (but thoroughly unsurprising) irony:
Trump, of course, has been accused of sexual impropriety by 19 women—and
has also been caught on tape bragging about sexual
assault, and has also boasted, on national television, about advising
friends to “be rougher” toward their wives, and has
also been elected president of the United States. His tweet is revealing both in
spite and because of those facts: “Peoples[sic],”
in the plural; allegation, in
the singular. The peoples meaning
the “men’s”; the allegation—though in its context, the diminishing adjective is
redundant—being a “mere” one.
===========
o.
Meet the Sacklers: the family feuding over blame for the opioid
crisis
by
Joanna Walters
Philanthropic
heirs to OxyContin fortune have a ‘moral duty to help make this right’ says the
widow of one of Purdue Pharma’s founders
The
Sackler Drug Rehab Facility, unlike the prestigious Sackler art galleries of New York and London does not exist. Yet. If
lawyers have their way, however, or public opinion pricks a few consciences, it
may soon. US drug companies accused of being 'cheerleaders' for opioids. The
Sackler family, a sprawling and now feuding transatlantic dynasty, is famous in
cultural and academic circles for decades of generous philanthropy towards some
of the world’s leading institutions, from Yale University to the Guggenheim
Museum in the US and the Serpentine Gallery to the Royal Academy in Britain.
But what’s less well known, though increasingly being exposed, is that much of
their wealth comes from one product – OxyContin, the blockbuster prescription
painkiller first launched in 1996.
===========
p.
The
FBI and the President – Mutual Manipulation
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48787.htm
By James Petras
Few government
organizations have been engaged in violation of the US citizens’ constitutional
rights for as long a time and against as many individuals as the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI). Seldom has there been greater collusion in the
perpetration of crimes against civil liberties, electoral freedom and free and
lawful expression as what has taken place between the FBI and the US Justice
Department. In the past, the FBI and
Justice Department secured the enthusiastic support and public acclaim from the
conservative members of the US Congress, members of the judiciary at all levels
and the mass media. The leading liberal voices, public figures,
educators, intellectuals and progressive dissenters opposing the FBI and their
witch-hunting tactics were all from the left. Today, the right and the
left have changed places: The most powerful voices endorsing the FBI and
the Justice Department’s fabrications, and abuse of constitutional rights are
on the left, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and famous liberal media
corporations and public opinion makers.
===========
q.
How Establishment Propaganda Gaslights Us
Into Submission
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48788.htm
by Caitlin
Johnstone
The dynamics of
the establishment Syria narrative are hilarious if you take a step back and
think about them. I mean, the western empire is now openly admitting to having funded actual, literal terrorist
groups in that country, and yet they're still cranking out propaganda pieces about what
is happening there and sincerely expecting us to believe them. It's adorable,
really; like a little kid covered in chocolate telling his mom he doesn't know
what happened to all the cake frosting. Or least it would be adorable if it
weren't directly facilitating the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people.
I recently had a
pleasant and professional exchange with the
Atlantic Council's neoconservative propagandist Eliot Higgins,
in which he referred to independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley as
"bonkers" and myself as "crazy", and I called him a
despicable bloodsucking ghoul. I am not especially fond of Mr. Higgins. You see
this theme repeated again and again and again in Higgins' work; the
US-centralized power establishment which facilitated terrorist factions in
Syria is the infallible heroic Good Guy on the scene, and anyone who doesn't
agree is a mentally deranged lunatic.
===========
r.
Ramo Reminded South Koreans of the
Brutality of Imperial Japan
by
Joseph
Essertier
It
is sad that even now, at this hopeful juncture in the history of Korea, when
the end of the Korean War could be just around the corner, that we are
confronted with the false claim that South Koreans cannot take pride in the
democratic and modern country they have built. A country that is now generously
hosting the Olympic games. A country whose president, Moon Jae-in, is bringing
hope to millions in East Asia and the world. A hope that is being kept alive by
his spirit of independence, his message to not only South Koreans but to the
whole world, that a peaceful solution to the US-North Korea crisis can be found
as long as the baying hounds of war in Washington can be kept at bay.
===========
s.
The Deadly Rule
of the Oligarchs
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48789.htm
by Chris Hedges
Oligarchic rule,
as Aristotle pointed out, is a deviant form of
government. Oligarchs care nothing for competency, intelligence, honesty,
rationality, self-sacrifice or the common good. They pervert, deform and
dismantle systems of power to serve their immediate interests, squandering the
future for short-term personal gain. “The true forms of government, therefore,
are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the
common interest; but governments that rule with a view to the private interest,
whether of the one, of the few or of the many, are perversions,” Aristotle
wrote. The classicist Peter L.P. Simpson calls these perversions the “sophistry
of oligarchs,” meaning that once oligarchs take power, rational, prudent and
thoughtful responses to social, economic and political problems are ignored to
feed insatiable greed. The late stage of every civilization is characterized by
the sophistry of oligarchs, who ravage the decaying carcass of the state.
These deviant
forms of government are defined by common characteristics, most of which
Aristotle understood. Oligarchs use power and ruling structures solely for
personal advancement.
===========
t.
Do Financial Markets Still Exist?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48795.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts,
Dave Kranzler, Michael Hudson
For
many decades the Federal Reserve has rigged the bond market by its purchases.
And for about a century, central banks have set interest rates (mainly to
stabilize their currency’s exchange rate) with collateral effects on securities
prices. It appears that in May 2010, August 2015, January/February 2016, and
currently in February 2018 the Fed is rigging the stock market by purchasing
S&P equity index futures in order to arrest stock market declines driven by
fundamentals, and to push prices back up in keeping with a decade of money
creation. No
one should find this a surprising suggestion. The Bank of Japan has a
long tradition of propping up the Japanese equity market with large purchases
of equities. The European Central Bank purchases corporate as well as
government bonds. In 1989 Fed governor Robert Heller said that as the Fed already rigs
the bond market with purchases, the Fed can also rig the stock market to stop
price declines. That is the reason the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) was created
in 1987.
===========
u.
Trump Privatizes America
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21121:Trump-Privatizes-America
Trump's infrastructure
privatization plan is a hat trick that optimistically turns $200 billion into
$1.5 trillion, is designed to eliminate the public sector and to bankrupt
cities and states, says economist Michael Hudson.
===========
v.
Rationalizing
the “Irrational”
A
Pentagon Budget Like None Before: $700 billion
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48785.htm
by ROBERT BURNS and RICHARD LARDNER
It’s the biggest budget the Pentagon has ever seen: $700
billion. That’s far more in defense spending than America’s two nearest
competitors, China and Russia, and will mean the military can foot the bill for
thousands more troops, more training, more ships and a lot else.
And next year it would rise to $716 billion. Together, the
two-year deal provides what Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says is needed to pull
the military out of a slump in combat readiness at a time of renewed focus on
the stalemated conflict in Afghanistan and the threat of war on the Korean
peninsula.
The budget bill that President Donald Trump signed Friday
includes huge spending increases for the military: The Pentagon will get $94
billion more this budget year than last — a 15.5 percent jump. It’s the biggest
year-over-year windfall since the budget soared by 26.6 percent, from $345
billion in 2002 to $437 billion the year after, when the nation was fighting in
Afghanistan, invading Iraq and expanding national defense after the 9/11
attacks.
===========
w.
Medicare
Recipients Will Pay For Border Wall?
Trump Proposes to Cut Medicare and Spend Big on Wall,
Defense
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48786.htm
by Justin Sink
President Donald Trump
will propose cutting entitlement programs by $1.7 trillion, including Medicare,
in a fiscal 2019 budget that seeks billions of dollars to build a border wall,
improve veterans’ health care and combat opioid abuse and that is likely to be
all but ignored by Congress.
The entitlement
cuts over a decade are included in a White House summary of the budget obtained
by Bloomberg News. The document says that the budget will propose cutting
spending on Medicare, the health program for the elderly and disabled, by $237
billion but doesn’t specify other mandatory programs that would face
reductions, a category that also includes Social Security, Medicaid, food
stamps, welfare and agricultural subsidies.
The Medicare cut
wouldn’t affect the program’s coverage or benefits, according to the document.
The budget will also call for annual 2 percent cuts to non-defense domestic
spending beginning “after 2019.’
===========
x.
Noam Chomsky
Explains What’s Wrong with Postmodern Philosophy & French Intellectuals,
and How They End Up Supporting Oppressive Power Structures
===========
y.
John Pilger: How the People of South
Africa Were Misled and Can Rise Again
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48792.htm
by
Eric Ortiz
===========
z.
Scientists Know How
You’ll Respond
to Nuclear War—and
They Have a Plan
https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-know-how-youll-respond-to-nuclear-warand-they-have-a-plan/
by
Megan Molteni
===========
zz.
A
Dangerous Turn in U.S. Foreign Policy
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/14/a-dangerous-turn-in-u-s-foreign-policy/
by
Conn
Hallinan
The
Trump administration’s new National Defense Strategy is being touted as a sea
change in U.S. foreign policy, a shift from the “war on terrorism” to “great
power competition,” a line that would not be out of place in the years leading
up to World War I. But is the shift really a major course change, or a
re-statement of policies followed by the last four administrations? The U.S.
has never taken its eyes off its big competitors. It was President Bill Clinton
who moved NATO eastwards, abrogating a 1991 agreement with the Russians not to
recruit former members of the Warsaw Pact that is at the root of current
tensions with Moscow. And, while the U.S. and NATO point to Russia’s annexation
of the Crimea as a sign of a “revanchist” Moscow, it was NATO that set the
precedent of altering borders when it dismembered Serbia to create Kosovo after
the 1999 Yugoslav war.
===========
zzz.
From: "Alan Haber" <megiddo@umich.edu>
To: "FRANCIS FEELEY" <francis.feeley@u-grenoble3.fr>
Sent: Thursday, 15 February, 2018 10:15:13 PM
Subject: Fwd: Global Peace -- February 15 -- Fascism in the Age of Trump
francis
for your interest
alan
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Mayer <thomas.mayer.boulder@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 4:09 PM
Subject: Global Peace -- February 15 -- Fascism in the Age of Trump
Hello peace and justice
activists:
My dear friend Tom Clark
forwarded me this article by the distinguished cultural analyst Henry
Giroux. The article explores the relationship between the presidency of
Donald Trump and emergence of a distinctive American variety of fascism.
Giroux has many fascinating insights regarding United States political
cultural. He chastises liberal Americans for passivity in the face of
growing authoritarianism.
"Instead
of refusing to cooperate with evil, Americans increasingly find themselves in a
society in which those in commanding positions of power and influence exhibit a
tacit approval of the emerging authoritarian strains and acute social problems
undermining democratic institutions and rules of law. As such, they remain
silent and therefore, complicit in the face of such assaults on American
democracy. Ideological extremism and a stark indifference to the lies and
ruthless polices of the Trump administration have turned the Republican Party
into a party of collaborators, not unlike the Vichy government that
collaborated with the Nazis in the 1940s. Both groups bought into the script of
ultra-nationalism, encouraged anti-Semitic mobs, embraced a militant
masculinity, demonized racial and ethnic others, supported an unchecked militarism
and fantasies of empire, and sanctioned state violence at home and
abroad."
Giroux appears to be agnostic about
whether the Trump regime is actually converging towards fascism. I regard
Trump as a serious threat to democracy, planetary environment, world peace,
immigrants, people of color, and many other things. However, I do not
think political realism or conceptual clarity are served by labeling Trump as a
quasi-fascist. Fascism is by no means the only grave threat to democracy,
the environment, and world peace.
The United States political system
can be described as an electoral plutocracy. It is electoral in
form, but plutocratic in content. All policies truly threatening to our
capitalist plutocracy are suppressed or rapidly disqualified. As long as
capitalists institutions remain secure, genuine civil liberties (e.g. freedom
of speech and association) are tolerated. But, as the McCarthyist episode
of the last century indicates, this toleration is by no means absolute.
The Trump presidency and its Republican Party collaborators push the U.S.
political system towards a modified version of electoral plutocracy, which I
would characterize as racist electoral plutocracy.
Of course racism is no stranger to
the United States political system. For most of its history our political
system has been thorough imbued with racism. This history is what gives
the Trump modifications so much political purchase. But also bear in mind
the ambivalent relationship between the capitalist class and fascism. The
capitalist class will usually embrace fascism as a desperate defense against
burgeoning working class power, but fascism is rarely the preferred political
system of the capitalist class. Fascism makes the state too powerful and
also limits the control which capitalist elites have over state policy.
Electoral plutocracy tends to be the desired political system of the capitalist
class: electoral to gain legitimacy with the subaltern masses; plutocracy to
insure obedience to capitalist interests.
On behalf of the Global Peace Collective,
Tom Mayer
Henry A.
Giroux | The Ghost of Fascism in the Age of Trump
By Henry A.
Giroux
http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/44709
In the age of Trump, history neither
informs the present nor haunts it with repressed memories of the past. It
simply disappears. Memory has been hijacked. This is especially troubling when
the "mobilizing passions" of a fascist past now emerge in the unceasing
stream of hate, bigotry, lies and militarism that are endlessly circulated and
reproduced at the highest levels of government and in powerful conservative
media, such as Fox News, Breitbart News, conservative talk radio stations and
alt-right social media. Power, culture, politics, finance and everyday life now
merge in ways that are unprecedented and pose a threat to democracies all over
the world. This mix of old media and new digitally driven systems of production
and consumption are not merely systems, but ecologies that produce, shape and
sustain ideas, desires and modes of agency with unprecedented power and
influence. Informal educational apparatuses, particularly the
corporate-controlled media, appear increasingly to be on the side of tyranny. In
fact, it would be difficult to overly stress the growing pedagogical importance
of the old and new media and the power they now have on the political
imaginations of countless Americans.
This is particularly true of
right-wing media empires, such as those owned by Rupert Murdoch, as well as
powerful corporate entities such as Clearwater, which dominates the radio
airwaves with its ownership of over 1,250 stations. In the sphere of television
ownership and control, powerful corporate entities have emerged, such as
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns the largest number of TV stations in the
United States. In addition, right-wing hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean
Hannity have an audience in the millions. Right-wing educational apparatuses
shape much of what Americans watch and listen to, and appear to influence all
of what Trump watches and hears. The impact of conservative media has had a
dangerous effect on American culture and politics, and has played the most
prominent role in channeling populist anger and electing Trump to the
presidency. We are now witnessing the effects of this media machine. The first
casualty of the Trump era is truth, the second is moral responsibility, the
third is any vestige of justice, and the fourth is a massive increase in human
misery and suffering for millions.
Instead of refusing to cooperate with evil, Americans increasingly find
themselves in a society in which those in commanding positions of power and
influence exhibit a tacit approval of the emerging authoritarian strains and
acute social problems undermining democratic institutions and rules of law. As
such, they remain silent and therefore, complicit in the face of such assaults
on American democracy. Ideological extremism and a stark indifference to the
lies and ruthless polices of the Trump administration have turned the
Republican Party into a party of collaborators, not unlike the Vichy government
that collaborated with the Nazis in the 1940s. Both groups bought into the
script of ultra-nationalism, encouraged anti-Semitic mobs, embraced a militant
masculinity, demonized racial and ethnic others, supported an unchecked
militarism and fantasies of empire, and sanctioned state violence at home and
abroad.
Words carry power and enable certain actions; they also establish the grounds
for legitimating repressive policies and practices.
This is not to propose that those who support Trump are all Nazis in suits. On
the contrary, it is meant to suggest a more updated danger in which people with
power have turned their backs on the cautionary histories of the fascist and
Nazi regimes, and in doing so, have willingly embraced authoritarian messages
and tropes. Rather than Nazis in suits, we have a growing culture of social and
historical amnesia that enables those who are responsible for the misery, anger
and pain that has accompanied the long reign of casino capitalism to remain
silent for their role and complicity in the comeback of fascism in the United
States. This normalization of fascism can be seen in the way in which language
that was once an object of critique in liberal democracies loses its negative
connotation and becomes the opposite in the Trump administration. Politics,
power and human suffering are now framed outside of the realm of historical
memory. What is forgotten is that history teaches us something about the
transformation and mobilization of language into an instrument of war and
violence. As Richard J. Evans observes in his The Third Reich in Power:
Words that in a normal, civilized society had a negative connotation acquired
the opposite sense under Nazism ... so that 'fanatical', 'brutal', 'ruthless',
'uncompromising', 'hard' all became words of praise instead of disapproval...
In the hands of the Nazi propaganda apparatus, the German language became
strident, aggressive and militaristic. Commonplace matters were described in
terms more suited to the battlefield. The language itself began to be mobilized
for war.
Fantasies of absolute control, racial cleansing, unchecked militarism and class
warfare are at the heart of much of the American imagination. This is a
dystopian imagination marked by hollow words, an imagination pillaged of any
substantive meaning, cleansed of compassion and used to legitimate the notion
that alternative worlds are impossible to entertain. There is more at work here
than shrinking political horizons. What we are witnessing is a closing of the
political and a full-scale attack on moral outrage, thoughtful reasoning,
collective resistance and radical imagination. Trump has normalized the
unthinkable, legitimated the inexcusable and defended the indefensible.
Of course, Trump is only a symptom of the economic, political and ideological
rot at the heart of casino capitalism, with its growing authoritarianism and
social and political injustices that have been festering in the United States
with great intensity since the late 1970s. It was at that point in US history
when both political parties decided that matters of community, the public good,
the general welfare and democracy itself were a threat to the fundamental
beliefs of the financial elite and the institutions driving casino capitalism.
As Ronald Reagan made clear, government was the problem. Consequently, it was
framed as the enemy of freedom and purged for assuming any responsibility for a
range of basic social needs. Individual responsibility took the place of the
welfare state, compassion gave way to self-interest, manufacturing was replaced
by the toxic power of financialization, and a rampaging inequality left the bottom
half of the US population without jobs, a future of meaningful work or a life
of dignity.
The call for political unity transforms quickly into the use of force and
exclusionary violence to impose the authority of a tyrannical regime.
Trump has added a new swagger and unapologetic posture to this concoction of
massive inequality, systemic racism, American exceptionalism and
ultra-nationalism. He embodies a form of populist authoritarianism that not
only rejects an egalitarian notion of citizenship, but embraces a nativism and
fear of democracy that is at the heart of any fascist regime.
How else to explain a sitting president announcing to a crowd that Democratic
Party congressional members who refused to clap for parts of his State of the
Union address were "un-American" and "treasonous"? This
charge is made all the more disturbing given that the White House promoted this
speech as one that would emphasize "bipartisanship and national
unity." Words carry power and enable certain actions; they also establish
the grounds for legitimating repressive policies and practices. Such threats
are not a joking matter and cannot be dismissed as merely a slip of the tongue.
When the president states publicly that his political opponents have committed
a treasonous act -- one that is punishable by death -- because they refused to
offer up sycophantic praise, the plague of fascism is not far away. His call
for unity takes a dark turn under such circumstances and emulates a fascist
past in which the call for political unity transforms quickly into the use of
force and exclusionary violence to impose the authority of a tyrannical regime.
In Trump's world, the authoritarian mindset has been resurrected, bent on
exhibiting a contempt for the truth, ethics and alleged human weakness. For
Trump, success amounts to acting with impunity, using government power to sell
or to license his brand, hawking the allure of power and wealth, and finding
pleasure in producing a culture of impunity, selfishness and state-sanctioned
violence. Trump is a master of performance as a form of mass entertainment.
This approach to politics echoes the merging of the spectacle with an ethical
abandonment reminiscent of past fascist regimes. As Naomi Klein rightly argues
in No Is Not Enough, Trump "approaches everything as a spectacle" and
edits "reality to fit his narrative."
As the bully-in-chief, he militarizes speech while producing a culture meant to
embrace his brand of authoritarianism. This project is most evident in his
speeches and policies, which pit white working- and middle-class males against
people of color, men against women, and white nationalists against various
ethnic, immigrant and religious groups. Trump is a master of theater and
diversion, and the mainstream press furthers this attack on critical exchange
by glossing over his massive assault on the planet and enactment of policies,
such as the GOP tax cuts, which are willfully designed to redistribute wealth
upward to his fellow super-rich billionaires. Trump's alleged affair with adult
film star Stormy Daniels garners far more headlines than his deregulation of
oil and gas industries and his dismantling of environment protections.
Economic pillage has reached new and extreme levels and is now accompanied by a
ravaging culture of viciousness and massive levels of exploitation and human
suffering. Trump has turned language into a weapon with his endless lies and
support for white nationalism, nativism, racism and state violence. This is a
language that legitimates ignorance while producing an active silence and
complicity in the face of an emerging corporate fascist state.
Like most authoritarians, Trump demands loyalty and team membership from all
those under his power, and he hates those elements of a democracy -- such as
the courts and the critical media -- that dare to challenge him. Echoes of the
past come to life in his call for giant military parades, enabling White House
press secretary Sarah Sanders to call people who disagree with his policies
"un-American," and sanctioning his Department of Justice to issue a
"chilling warning," threatening to arrest and charge mayors with a
federal crime who do not implement his anti-immigration policies and racist
assaults on immigrants. What can be learned from past periods of tyranny is
that the embrace of lawlessness is often followed by a climate of terror and
repression that is the essence of fascism.
Whether Trump is a direct replica of the Nazi regime has little relevance
compared to the serious challenges he poses.
In Trump's world view, the call for limitless loyalty reflects more than an
insufferable act of vanity and insecurity; it is a weaponized threat to those
who dare to challenge Trump's assumption that he is above the law and can have
his way on matters of corruption, collusion and a possible obstruction of
justice. Trump is an ominous threat to democracy and lives, as Masha Gessen
observes, "surrounded by enemies, shadowed by danger, forever perched on
the precipice." Moreover, he has enormous support from his Vichy-like
minions in Congress, among the ultra-rich bankers and hedge fund managers, and
the corporate elite. His trillion-dollar tax cut has convinced corporate
America he is their best ally. He has, in not too subtle ways, also convinced a
wide range of far-right extremists extending from the Ku Klux Klan and
neo-Nazis to the deeply racist and fascist "alt-right" movement, that
he shares their hatred of people of color, immigrants and Jews. Imaginary
horrors inhabit this new corporate dystopian world and frighteningly resemble
shades of a terrifying past that once led to unimaginable acts of genocide,
concentration camps and a devastating world war. Nowhere is this vision more
succinctly contained than in Trump's first State of the Union Address and the
response it garnered.
State of Disunion
An act of doublespeak preceded Donald Trump's first State of the Union Address.
Billed by the White House as a speech that would be "unifying" and
marked by a tone of "bipartisanship," the speech was actually steeped
in divisiveness, fear, racism, warmongering, nativism and immigrant bashing. It
once again displayed Trump's contempt for democracy.
Claiming "all Americans deserve accountability and respect," Trump
nevertheless spent ample time in his speech equating undocumented immigrants
with the criminal gang MS-13, regardless of the fact that undocumented
immigrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens. (As Juan Cole points out,
"Americans murdered 17,250 other Americans in 2016. Almost none of the
perpetrators was an undocumented worker, contrary to the impression Trump
gave.")
For Trump, as with most demagogues, fear is the most valued currency of
politics. In his speech, he suggested that the visa lottery system and
"chain migration" -- in which individuals can migrate through the
sponsorship of their family -- posed a threat to the US, presenting "risks
we can just no longer afford." In response to the Dreamers, he moved
between allegedly supporting their bid for citizenship to suggesting they were
part of a culture of criminality. At one point, he stated in a not-too-subtle
expression of derision that "Americans are dreamers too." This was a
gesture to his white nationalist base. On Twitter, David Duke, the former head
of the Ku Klux Klan, cheered over that remark. Trump had nothing to say about
the challenges undocumented immigrants face, nor did he express any
understanding of the fear and insecurity hanging over the heads of 800,000
Dreamers who could be deported.
Trump also indicated that he was not going to close Guantánamo, and once again
argued that "terrorists should be treated like terrorists." Given the
history of torture associated with Guantánamo and the past crimes and abuses
that took place under the mantle of the "war on terror," Trump's
remarks should raise a red flag, not only because torture is a war crime, but
also because the comment further accelerated the paranoia, nihilist passions
and apocalyptic populism that feeds his base.
Fascism is hardly a relic of the past or a static political and ideological
system.
Pointing to menacing enemies all around the world, Trump exhibited his love for
all things war-like and militaristic, and his support for expanding the nuclear
arsenal and the military budget. He also called on "the Congress to
empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers --
and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the
American people." Given his firing of James Comey, his threat to fire Jeff
Sessions, and more recently his suggestion that he might fire Deputy Attorney
General Rod J. Rosenstein -- all of whom allegedly displayed disloyalty by not
dismantling the Russian investigation conducted by Special Council Mueller --
Trump seems likely to make good on this promise to rid the federal workforce of
those who disagree with him, allowing him to fill civil service jobs with
friends, family members and sycophants. This is about more than Trump's disdain
for the separation of power, the independence of other government agencies, or
his attack on potential whistleblowers; it is about amassing power and
instilling fear in those he appoints to government positions if they dare act
to hold power accountable. This is what happens when democracies turn into
fascist states.
Trump is worse than almost anyone imagined, and while his critics across the
ideological spectrum have begun to go after him, they rarely focus on how
dangerous he is, hesitant to argue that he is not only the enemy of democracy,
but symptomatic of the powerful political, economic and cultural forces shaping
the new US fascism.
There are some critics who claim that Trump is simply a weak president whose
ineptness is being countered by "a robust democratic culture and set of
institutions," and not much more than a passing moment in history. Others,
such as Wendy Brown and Nancy Fraser, view him as an authoritarian expression
of right-wing populism and an outgrowth of neoliberal politics and policies.
While many historians, such as Timothy Snyder and Robert O. Paxton, analyze him
in terms that echo some elements of a fascist past, some conservatives such as
David Frum view him as a modern-day self-obsessed, emotionally needy demagogue
whose assault on democracy needs to be taken seriously, and that whether or not
he is a fascist is not as important as what he plans to do with his power. For
Frum, there is a real danger that people will retreat into their private
worlds, become cynical and enable a slide into a form of tyranny that would
become difficult to defeat. Others, like Corey Robin, argue that we overstep a
theoretical boundary when comparing Trump directly to Hitler. According to
Robin, Trump bears no relationship to Hitler or the policies of the Third
Reich. Robin not only dismisses the threat that Trump poses to the values and
institutions of democracy, but plays down the growing threat of
authoritarianism in the United States. For Robin, Trump has failed to institute
many of his policies, and as such, is just a weak politician with little actual
power. Not only does Robin focus too much on the person of Trump, but he is
relatively silent about the forces that produced him and the danger these
proto-fascist social formations now pose to those who are the objects of the
administration's racist, sexist and xenophobic taunts and policies.
The ghosts of fascism should terrify us, but most importantly, they should
educate us and imbue us with a spirit of civic justice.
As Jeffrey C. Isaac observes, whether Trump is a direct replica of the Nazi
regime has little relevance compared to the serious challenges he poses; for
instance, to the DACA children and their families, the poor, undocumented
immigrants and a range of other groups. Moreover, authoritarianism is looming
in the air and can be seen in the number of oppressive and regressive policies
already put into place by the Trump administration that will have a long-term
effect on the United States. These include the $1.5 trillion giveaway in the
new tax code, the expansion of the military-industrial complex, the elimination
of Obamacare's individual mandate, the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's
capital, and a range of deregulations that will impact negatively on the
environment for years to come. In addition, there is the threat of a nuclear
war, the disappearance of health care for the most vulnerable, the attack on
free speech and the media, and the rise of the punishing state and the
increasing criminalization of social problems. As Richard J. Evans, the
renowned British historian, observes, "Violence indeed was at the heart of
the Nazi enterprise. Every democracy that perishes dies in a different way,
because every democracy is situated in specific historical circumstances."
US society has entered a dangerous stage in its history. After 40 years of
neoliberalism and systemic racism, many Americans lack a critical language that
offers a consistent narrative that enables them to understand gutted wages,
lost pensions, widespread uncertainty and collapsing identities due to feeling
disposable, the loss of meaningful work and a formative culture steeped in
violence, cruelty and an obsession with greed. Moreover, since 9/11, Americans
have been bombarded by a culture of fear and consumerism that both dampens
their willingness to be critical agents and depoliticizes them. Everyone is now
a suspect or a consumer, but hardly a critically engaged citizen. Others are
depoliticized because of the ravages of debt, poverty and the daily struggle to
survive -- problems made all the worse by Trump's tax and health policies. And
while there is no perfect mirror, it has become all the more difficult for many
people to recognize how the "crystalized elements" of totalitarianism
have emerged in the shape of an American-style fascism. What has been forgotten
by too many intellectuals, critics, educators and politicians is that fascism
is hardly a relic of the past or a static political and ideological system.
Trump is not in possession of storm troopers, concentration camps or concocting
plans for genocidal acts -- at least, not at the moment. But that does not mean
that fascism is a moment frozen in history and has no bearing on the present.
As Hannah Arendt, Sheldon Wolin and others have taught us, totalitarian regimes
come in many forms and their elements can come together in different configurations.
Rather than dismiss the notion that the organizing principles and fluctuating
elements of fascism are still with us, a more appropriate response to Trump's
rise to power is to raise questions about what elements of his government
signal the emergence of a fascism suited to a contemporary and distinctively US
political, economic and cultural landscape.
What seems indisputable is that under Trump, democracy has become the enemy of
power, politics and finance. Adam Gopnik refutes the notion that Trumpism will
simply fade away in the end, and argues that comparisons between the current
historical moment and fascism are much needed. He writes:
Needless to say, the degradation of public discourse, the acceleration of
grotesque lying, the legitimization of hatred and name-calling, are hard to
imagine vanishing like the winter snows that Trump thinks climate change is
supposed to prevent. The belief that somehow all these things will somehow just
go away in a few years' time does seem not merely unduly optimistic but crazily
so. In any case, the trouble isn't just what the Trumpists may yet do; it is
what they are doing now. American history has already been altered by their
actions -- institutions emptied out, historical continuities destroyed,
traditions of decency savaged -- in ways that will not be easy to rehabilitate.
There is nothing new about the possibility of authoritarianism in a
particularly distinctive guise coming to the US. Nor is there a shortage of
works illuminating the horrors of fascism. Fiction writers ranging from George
Orwell, Sinclair Lewis and Aldous Huxley to Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick and
Philip Roth have sounded the alarm in often brilliant and insightful terms.
Politicians such as Henry Wallace wrote about American fascism, as did a range
of theorists, such as Umberto Eco, Arendt and Paxton, who tried to understand
its emergence, attractions and effects. What they all had in common was an
awareness of the changing nature of tyranny and how it could happen under a
diverse set of historical, economic and social circumstances. They also seem to
share Philip Roth's insistence that we all have an obligation to recognize
"the terror of the unforeseen" that hides in the shadows of
censorship, makes power invisible and gains in strength in the absence of
historical memory. A warning indeed.
Trump represents a distinctive and dangerous form of US-bred authoritarianism,
but at the same time, he is the outcome of a past that needs to be remembered,
analyzed and engaged for the lessons it can teach us about the present. Not
only has Trump "normalized the unspeakable" and in some cases, the
unthinkable, he has also forced us to ask questions we have never asked before
about capitalism, power, politics, and yes, courage itself. In part, this means
recovering a language for politics, civic life, the public good, citizenship
and justice that has real substance. One challenge is to confront the horrors
of capitalism and its transformation into a form of fascism under Trump. This
cannot happen without a revolution in consciousness, one that makes education
central to politics.
Moreover, as Fredric Jameson has suggested, such a revolution cannot take place
by limiting our choices to a fixation on the "impossible present."
Nor can it take place by limiting ourselves to a language of critique and a
narrow focus on individual issues. What is needed is also a language of hope
and a comprehensive politics that draws from history and imagines a future that
does not imitate the present. Under such circumstances, the language of
critique and hope can be enlisted to create a broad-based and powerful social
movement that both refuses to equate capitalism with democracy and moves toward
creating a radical democracy. William Faulkner once remarked that we live with
the ghosts of the past, or to be more precise: "The past is never dead.
It's not even past."
However, we are not only living with the ghosts of a dark past; it is also true
that the ghosts of history can be critically engaged and transformed into a democratic
politics for the future. The Nazi regime is more than a frozen moment in
history. It is a warning from the past and a window into the growing threat
Trumpism poses to democracy. The ghosts of fascism should terrify us, but most
importantly, they should educate us and imbue us with a spirit of civic justice
and collective courage in the fight for a substantive and inclusive democracy.
The stakes are too high to remain complacent, cynical or simply outraged. A
crisis of memory, history, agency and justice has mushroomed and opened up the
abyss of a fascist nightmare. Now is the time to talk back, embrace the radical
imagination in private and public, and create united mass based coalitions in
which the collective dream for a radical democracy becomes a reality. There is
no other choice.
What are the longer-term trends that gave rise to the presidency of Donald
Trump? What will be the national and global impacts? And what do we need to do
to resist? Henry A. Giroux tackles these questions in The Public in Peril:
Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism. "This courageous and
timely book is the first and best book on Trump's neo-fascism in the
making," says Cornel West. To order your copy, click here and make a
tax-deductible donation to Truthout now!
HENRY A. GIROUX
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship
in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the
Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books
are America's Addiction to Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, 2016) America at
War with Itself (City Lights, 2017) and American Nightmare: Facing the
Challenge of Fascism. Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors.
His website is www.henryagiroux.com.