fascism – Anarres Project for Alternative Futures

Astroturf Protests Have Some Grassroots Backing

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Aoril 23, 2020)

The face of US fascism/white nationalism, a right wing populist element to it, but also the major Republican party donors, Koch, DeVoss, Coors, etc.

The Republican Party has become a US-style Fascist organization with its storm troopers and radical ideology, the price worth paying apparently for the billionaire donors, themselves libertarian and neoliberal (privatize everything).

But, it’s important to understand that it is not all top down; it does have a popular base that is not in it for the money, and in fundamental ways, the foundation of the fiscal military state (a state designed for war) that is the United States, supports their ideology. And, hey, they control every branch of the federal government, except the House of Representative, which is powerless with a fascist Senate; more than half of the states are Republican, and most of the former Confederate states plus several others are solidly right wing. Democratic Party functionaries and most office holding Democrats do not challenge the content of US patriotism but present a candy coated version of it.

Democrats equally strongly support the military, polls show that 75 percent of the US people “strongly support” the military; no other institution comes close (except the post office).

“Open the Economy” is a Right Wing Attempt to Doom Working People

By Zakk Flash (April 20, 2020)

They don’t want to “open the economy.”

That’s bullshit language, cooked up in some think tank and seized upon by the media as a neutral descriptor instead of a right-wing euphemism for dooming hundreds of thousands of immunocompromised, elderly, homeless, imprisoned, and marginalized people to an early, painful death.

These folks need our support. The folks gathering at state houses around the country do too. They need a comprehensive social safety net that would allow them to stay healthy, pay their bills, and live with a decent quality of life. We all do.

The White House and its cadre of corporate goons isn’t working to make that happen. They want a return to the status quo.

The plan to ‘reopen the economy’ is dumping the bodies of service and industrial workers in front of a global pandemic so the wealthy can profit.

What If You Opened the Economy and Nobody Came?

By Mark Naison (April 20, 2020)

As protests against state wide shutdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19 continue to erupt in many states, people are missing one key point. So long as people continue to die in large numbers from COVID-19 and our health care system is stressed well beyond capacity, a large percentage of the population will continue to voluntarily quarantine themselves and avoid situations which put them and their families at risk.

Given the legitimate level of fear people have of devastating consequences to their health if they resume “normal” ( pre-pandemic) activity in the absence of widespread testing and a vaccine, there will be no sudden rush to take advantage of openings of stores, restaurants, theaters, ball parks, hotels and amusement parks without the most extreme precautions being followed

You can change what governments impose , but you can’t change people’s behavior when it has been reinforced by trauma and death. Enough people now know of people who have been hospitalized or died as a result of COVID-19 that they are going to be extremely resistant to resuming activities where social distancing isn’t rigorously enforced.

The “Liberate America” protesters are a far smaller percentage of the population than those who have been traumatized by COVID-19 and fear what it could do to themselves and their families

If you “open the economy” without taking the necessary precautions, the surge in consumer behavior required to make a dent in unemployment will simply not take place.

When people have been traumatized my something real, they will not change their behavior until the source of the trauma has been removed.

Unless the “Liberate America” protesters are ready to drag people out of their homes and force them to shop, go to school and go to work, their protests will have limited impact on the level of economic activity in the country.

United States of Sinverguenzas

By Julio Covarrubias (April 2, 2020)

United States of Sinvergüenzas

“Intellectuals still argue whether Amerika is a fascist country. This concern is typical of the Amerikan left’s flight from reality. … This is actually a manifestation of the authoritarian process seeping into its own psyche.” —George Jackson

Watching DNC running dogs pile-on on Bernie’s National Press Secretary Brie Joy’s Twitter the other day—just for asking a politician as powerful as Kamala Harris to support Medicare for all; at a moment in which it is clear that millions of people stand to suffer without health insurance during this pandemic, and, as David Sirota pointed out, just 24 hours before the millions of newly unemployed will lose their health insurance—it dawned on me that liberal centrists who appropriate “social justice” language to attack and silence the left are, in fact, using the same gaslighting strategy that fascists use. After all, the M.O. of fascists has been to use the language of liberal ideals, like “freedom of speech,” to normalize their violent ideologies and to use the mechanisms of liberal systems to obtain political power.

This age-old strategy was given a name, finally, in an old Koch-funded libertarian magazine, REASON. As Mark Ames reports, the strategy is outlined in a series of articles on how to “market” libertarianism and convert both right-wingers and leftists to the libertarian cause. They named this strategy “political cross-dressing.”

Here is how they explained it: “‘Cross-dressing,’ of course, refers to the adoption of the dress and behavior of members of the opposite sex. For the libertarian, political cross-dressing means using right-wing words, evidence, and arguments to support civil liberties, and left-wing terms and reasons to support the free market.”

Ignoring the transphobia of the name for a moment, it is obvious that the Democratic establishment has deployed this strategy to win voters. Beginning perhaps with Bill Clinton, and perfected by Barack Obama—the “political crossdresser” par excellence—this strategy has since risen to its most cynical and decadent forms during and after Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency. For liberal centrists, “political cross-dressing” means using the language of “intersectional feminism” to market their brand of neoliberal governance, which differs from the right-wing not by the lack of class warfare, racism, patriarchy, imperialism, or even genocidal border policies, but only by the face we put on the system and who it is that gets to lie to us.

The pile-on on Brie is only a recent item in a long list of centrist liberals either acting in bad faith (consider this unbelievable response by David Frum to Joe Biden’s “incident” with an auto-worker) or hijacking the language of social justice for their own aims (consider this lame attempt at construing an inane gesture by Speaker Pelosi as an act of resistance). The truth is that the Democrats have no integrity. They are completely shameless. They are the party that, today, holds a better future hostage, while promising to parcel it out in crumbs to those who remain loyal. This is the relationship between the medieval Lord and the deluded serf, and it speaks to a deep seated form of moral and social decay.

When we talk about corruption, we have to understand that it’s much more than taking bribes or rigging elections. It’s a kind of moral sickness that sets in on the social fabric. It’s this sickness that lets the shameless get away with what should be shameful. There is no other way to describe the way liberals think and act, and the way they’ve taught their base to think and act. In this, and in their commitment to serving at the pleasure of capital, DNC centrists and ultra-right fascists are companions in guilt.

The Spanish language has a wonderful word for this kind of personality—sinvergüenza (=literally, “without” + “shame”). A sinvergüenza is a person lacking in any sense of decency or propriety, someone whose moral constitution simply provides no internal sanction against dishonorable action. Observing that there were even gay and Jewish Nazis, Dorothy Thompson, too, observed, long-ago, that “going Nazi” had more to do with being a certain type of person—a person with certain moral defects, a person with a certain type of bad character—than with race, ethnicity, or social background.

In this respect George Jackson was right to say that fascism “has established itself in a most disguised and efficient manner in this country.” The political structure of the US simply is a form of structural fascism: “An electoral choice of ten different fascists,” he said, “is like choosing which way one wishes to die.” What defines fascism at its base, Jackson claimed, was the joint commitment to facilitating the expansion of racial capitalism while repressing the democratizing demands of labor. “Any action that threatens the right of a few individuals to own and control public property must be prohibited and curtailed whatever the cost.” It’s in that sense, also, that neoliberalism is a form of fascism: it is the subordination of every aspect of governance, of social life, of inner will, to a totalitarian and nihilistic ideology; it is the worship of the market and of unaccountable corporate power.

Liberal centrists use the same strategies as fascists, then, because they are themselves, in fact, fascists.

Coronavirus Could Normalize Authoritarianism

By Arun Gupta (Feburary 25, 2020)

The coronavirus is an extremely dangerous moment.

Not really for the spread of the virus; there is nothing really that can be done to stop it at this point from becoming a pandemic. But from governments “locking down” entire cities, closing borders, and in effect using military and police to impose martial law.

The virus, sensationalistic media, and mass panic combine to normalize public-health authoritarianism. Blocking international travel and exchange will only make the situation worse by hindering the response, preventing shipments of vital medical supplies, and encouraging countries to conceal outbreaks as they don’t want to be the next one to have bans placed on them. It also encourages xenophobia and nativism.

If there is a silver lining, it’s the potential disruption of global supply chains could trigger a recession that would doom Trump.

It’s Not Exaggeration to Say White Nationalism is at the Heart of US Power

By Rebecca Hill (November 16, 2019)

The Stephen Miller emails bring up some important issues that I see often in strategic discussions of anti-fascist politics.

That is, I often see people debating whether traditional fascists or overt white nationalists represent the “real” danger, or whether they are a vanguardist fringe full of FBI informants, while the really dangerous white supremacists are those in the corridors of power making policy as liberals and conservatives.

The problem is that white nationalist ideologies pull from much more every day racism, and they are enabled by the kind of color blind white supremacy that also wants to pretend that White Nationalism is a phantom that doesn’t matter.

Miller’s emails include making recommendations from VDARE, American Renaissance, and “Camp of the Saints” and advocating a return to the 1924 immigration act. They show that open, organized white nationalism has come to the center of US power through Trumpism. These are emails he sent an open white nationalist in 2015 and 2016 while he was an aid to Jeff Sessions, former Attorney General of the U.S. Now he is writing presidential speeches and writing US immigration policy.

It is not a figure of speech, or hyperbole for emphasis to talk about Miller as a white nationalist.

You Plan to Go Hand to Hand with Robocop?

By Teka Lark (October 30, 2019)

The current Bosstown Dynamics video circulating is a parody of the very real Boston Dynamics and you should still be concerned.

The only thing fake about it is that the technology isn’t quite there yet, but it is only a decade off. According to Stars and Stripes (June of 2018), Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert was a former military contractor who got much of his funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Since 1994, Boston Dynamics has received over $150 million in defense funding.

I have talked about this for a decade. The police are tools. And yes, we need to discuss the individuals, but we also need to discuss the unsexy-might-be-longer-than-a-tweet policies, economic and constitutional. What kind of anti-bias and unconscious bias training do you have planned for police robots? What kind of advisory board do you have planned for drones? How long should a robot sit in jail for murdering you?

So you plan on fighting back in hand to hand combat? You are going to do a shootout with a robot? What damage do you think you can do when technology can come at you from above with a drone that never goes to sleep.

As we need to think tactically about the knowledge we have in regards to labor and technology, we also need to start thinking this way when it comes to the criminal injustice system.

The future wealthy won’t need humans to do the killing directly, they will only need the police and a system that enables them to enact those policies.

Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University Regarding Book Burning

By Mark Naison (October 13, 2019)

Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University regarding book burning at his school

President@georgiasouthern.edu
Kyle Marrero
President, Georgia Southern University

Dear President Marrero

As a historian of race in the United States, who has written 7 books on the subject, and a professor for 49 years at one of the nation’s major universities, I am writing to express my extreme dismay at the burning of the books of a prominent LatinX author who spoke at your campus. In all my years of college teaching, this may be the single most disturbing act of racial harassment I have heard, both because of the specter of Nazism it invokes, and the chilling message it sends to students of color in an already highly charged political climate.

If students of color at your university are to feel protected from racial violence- and book burning is a violent act- and if your university’s reputation is not to be permanently tarnished, you must take much more dramatic action than you have so far done.

First of all, the book burning must be described as an act of racial violence and harassment, not as a manifestation of free speech. You must say, in the loudest possible voice, that this action has covered Georgia Southern with shame, and that it must NEVER happen again on your campus or at any campus in the nation

Secondly, you must take some disciplinary action against the students involved, ranging from academic probation to suspension. Your students of color will never feel safe unless those responsible for the book burning are punished

Let me close with one more reminder. There was another time when the state of Georgia was known for the use of fire as an expression of rage- the burning of Black bodies during lynchings. If you don’t believe me, look up the lynching of Sam Hose, who was burned at the stake in your home state after his body was dismembered

The history that comes before us should be a guide to greater wisdom, not an excuse for looking the other way when racial violence and harassment occurs.

Please consider what I say very carefully, because it is in the minds of thousands of my peers who teach at universities around the nation

Sincerely

Mark D Naison

—
Dr Mark Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Founder and Director, Bronx African American History Project

Waking Up to the Lie of the Second Amendment

By Teka Lark (August 4, 2019)

The United States is a country which creates narratives to not only create policies, but to shape minds. When the Pilgrims arrived to what is now the Massachusetts in 1620, the tribes of the Wampanoag people prevented them from starving and as a thank you the Europeans brought communicable diseases and enslaved them.

In 1643, William Penn said of the Lenni Lanape “In liberality they excel, nothing is too good for their friend; give them a fine Gun, Coat, or other thing, it may pass twenty hands, before it sticks; the most merry Creatures that live, Feast, Dance almost perpetually; they never have much; Wealth circulateth like the Blood, all parts partake; and though none shall want what another hath, yet exact Observers of Property.” The Europeans saw this and stole the Lenni Lanape’s land between what is now Delaware and New Jersey– in one of the United States’ first narratives of the “fair” and “honest” deals this country “offered” to the Indigenous inhabitants of the country they would later just outright steal.

You probably read about the finished draft of this United States’ “narrative” –the Manifest Destiny.

“And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us,” from John Louis O’Sullivan in an essay entitled Annexation, in 1845, advocating that the U.S. admit the STOLEN Republic of Texas into the Union.

The United States learned quickly in the beginning in order to continue to enslave, murder, and steal from the Indigenous people of the country they stole and in order to continue kidnapping and enslaving Africans –they couldn’t have the people of the world viewing either of these two groups of people, as people or innocent.

They had to be dehumanized and demeaned, because the average person is not going to sign on to kill and steal from their fellow person, at least not just because, but if the person wasn’t characterized as a person or even better, they were characterized as an enemy, well that might be a better sell.

And it was a better sell.

Had the Indigenous people had been even a ¼ as violent as the Europeans said they were, the great experiment of “America,” would have never happened.

Fast forward to modern day. The European, now the white man has ended slavery, because, apparently Abraham Lincoln was a generous and just man, at least that was the story told in African children (now Black) history books.

“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature — opposition to it is in his love of justice,” Abraham Lincoln, 1854.

On December 26, 1862 President Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution of 38 Dakota Indians in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in US history.

We didn’t hear that part of the story, because Lincoln freed “the slaves.” Lincoln murdering the people whose land the United States stole, well that wouldn’t have been very consistent.

Because it is all about the consistent lie folks.

The United States has been built on the backs of Black and Brown people.

Both of our names have been changed –to protect the guilty. Our histories have been hidden, and our borders and histories keep shifting to fit whatever lie the United States wants to tell on a particular day.

The Samba, the Tchamba, the Daka. the African, the slave, the n*%ger, the negro, the Negro, the Colored, the Black, the Afro-American, the African American are not really African, according to the United States.

AND

The Nahuatl, the Maya, the Indian, the s*vage, the Native American, the Mexican, the *illegal, the Chicano, the Latino, the Chicanx/Latinx have crossed the border into OUR (white people’s) country “illegally,” according to the United States.

The Second Amendment was ratified to protect the Slave Patrol. The slave patrol is the basis for modern publicly funded police departments (aka white men vigilante types with guns who are institutionally supported to murder and/or round up and detain Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people), the Feds, the Border Patrol, ICE…the reason that Black and Indigenous people die at higher rates by these departments is no accident.

It is by design.

The Second Amendment was created so that white men could continue to kill Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people with the power of the narrative that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are violent, that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous are stealing white people’s job, that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous are raping white women, that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous are sucking up resources that could go to white people, that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are loitering in spaces where white people want to walk around and not see us, that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people have crossed the border without the proper paperwork, and that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people need to be controlled lest they do to white men what has been done to them.

Removing the Second Amendment is not about gun control.

Stripping the Second Amendment is about stripping the lie away, from white men that they have the right to kill people for being Mexican, for being Black, and/or for being Indigenous.

This is what I don’t think white men on the far left understand or they don’t care about.

Stripping the Second Amendment from our US Constitution isn’t taking away anyone’s rights, but the white man’s.

Who else can use the Second Amendment, maybe white women…I can’t use it, Chicanx/Latinx people can’t use it, only white people can use it.

Twelve year old Tamir Rice can’t use it. He was sitting around with a toy gun and white men emboldened by their Second Amendment rolled up and shot him.

Philando Castile couldn’t use it, when they shot him with 4-year-old Diamond Reynolds in the car who said after the murder, “Mom, please stop screaming ’cause I don’t want you to get shooted”

Stripping the Second Amendment is removing the symbol and protection that white men have as their god given manifest destiny right to murder people for not just not being white, but for being a descendant of the the people whose land this was stolen from or for being a descendant of the people who were kidnapped and brought here, because that is the only reason the Second Amendment exists. The Second Amendment exists to hold up the lie that built this country and keeps this violent sadistic place pasted together with the blood and tears of our ancestors.

I’m not fighting or debating for the right to empower white men to kill me, again.

The lie told over and over again is one of the most powerful tools the United States has at its disposal, stop letting them tell this one.

“Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity”

By George Ciccariello-Maher (August 4, 2019)

Two and a half years ago, I sent a tweet mocking the white supremacist myth of “white genocide,” which posits that white people are being “replaced” by a combination of migration, birth rates, and racial mixing. Twitter and the media briefly lit up, with thousands discussing the absurdity of the white genocide myth—this was a good thing indeed.

But a great coalition of liberals, conservatives, and cowardly academics, hand-in-hand with white supremacists, found my words too controversial (more controversial, apparently, than the words of the Nazis themselves). Today, two and a half years later, I don’t have a job as a result.

Since then, the myth of “white genocide” and “the great replacement” has metastasized, fusing seamlessly with Trump’s demonization of Central American migrants among others. It has been the direct cause of—among other things—the mass slaughter of 51 in Christchurch, New Zealand only a few months ago, and in just the past week, 4 deaths in Gilroy (targeting “hoards of mestizos”) and now at least 20 in El Paso (targeting the “invasion” of Texas by Mexicans—explain this to the people who were there before 1848).

Despite this roaring cognitive dissonance, too many Democratic Party hacks, handwringing liberals and trash professors continue to make excuses for the Nazis in our midst. CNN headlines grant credence to the myth of a disappearing white America. They tell us that Antifa and the Nazis are the same thing, that fighting white supremacy only makes it stronger. When liberalism coddles the right and legitimizes its theories, the deaths in El Paso and elsewhere are the only logical result.

But we know that material force defeats material force, that fascism and white supremacy will not go away until we make them go away. We know that white supremacist movements and ideas must be destroyed before they kill again.

Every Proud Boy, neo-Nazi, and Identity Europa member is a mass shooting waiting to happen. And every mealymouthed liberal is an accomplice.

Death to the Klan. Death to fascism. Death to white supremacy. Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.

Choosing Non-Violence in an Awful Time

By Mark Naison (August 3, 2019)

As I sit here in shock and mourning over the mass murders in El Paso, once again engineered by a white supremacist, I feel compelled to share some thoughts about why, when I decided to start a new organization to fight racism, I wanted it to be strictly non violent.

There are two reasons for this choice, The first is that we live in a society with far too much violence, not only violence undertaken in the name of hatred and the quest for power, but violence in our families and communities where no political motive is present. In organizing to protect people under attack, the last thing I want to do is legitimize armed violence as a means of self expression through actions of a group I started. As much as I understand the need for self-defense and the emotional appeal of revenge, I am convinced we need to create ways of protecting ourselves and fighting for things we believe in without turning our country into ever more of a war zone.

The second reason is personal. When it comes to dealing with racists and white supremacists, I have hatred in my heart. As someone who grew up fighting in the streets of my neighborhood and in every school I attended, I have recurrent fantasies of beating up white supremacists who try to intimidate and terrorize people in places where I am present. On a personal level, i NEED to be in a group that practices and promotes non-violence to keep my own rage in check, and to make sure that I do not make things worse than they already are in a fit of rage

We are in deep trouble as a country. We have a huge problem with racism. We have a huge problem with violence. In fighting to solve the first problem, I don’t want to contribute to intensifying the second

I am glad I am part of a great new NON VIOLENT organization
NARA- The National Anti Racism Alliance

Peace and Love to All.