Re: whitehouse web incident, viva la web revolution

At 01:17 PM 6/5/96 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:

>rather than reasoned argument. His dislike for the Clinton is 
>well known - he recently accused the administration of being
>fascist. I know of no evidence that the Clinton administration
>has a genocide policy, it is an insult to the 10 million civilians
>murdered by Hitler to use the term facist simply as a term of abuse,
>especialy if it is being used as a substitute for an argument.

Fascism has no intrinsic link to genocide. It is a theory of economics,
basically, in which the state has ultimate authority over production and
distribution without (as in socialism) actually _owning_ the means of
production or distribution. This is generally accomplished through
cartelization, the creatin of industry-wide councils in which the
representatives of the most powerful firms set policy in conjunction with
the representatives of the government.

The US has been at least moderately fascist since the 1920s (Hoover was a
big fan of cartelization, and pushed it actively). While the mechanisms of
the modern regulatory state aren't those of classic fascist theory, in
practice most strongly regulated industries in this country operate
_exactly_ the way fascist theory says they should.

And various of Clinton's policies have, in fact, been fascist in this sense.
The man has no doctrinal commitment to fascism (under that name or any
other), but in practical terms virtually all modern Western politics are
either fascist or socialist.

None of this is secret lore, by the way.

--
Bruce Baugh
bruce@aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Bruce Baugh, who usually knows better, wrote:

> Fascism has no intrinsic link to genocide. It is a theory of economics,
> basically, in which the state has ultimate authority over production and
> distribution without (as in socialism) actually _owning_ the means of
> production or distribution. This is generally accomplished through
> cartelization, the creatin of industry-wide councils in which the
> representatives of the most powerful firms set policy in conjunction with
> the representatives of the government.
> 
> The US has been at least moderately fascist since the 1920s (Hoover was a
> big fan of cartelization, and pushed it actively). While the mechanisms of
> the modern regulatory state aren't those of classic fascist theory, in
> practice most strongly regulated industries in this country operate
> _exactly_ the way fascist theory says they should.
> 
> None of this is secret lore, by the way.

Yes, I'm afraid these ahistorical myths are widespread. What _do_ they teach
in these schools?

Pick up anything by Renzo De Felice to gain a basic historical understanding
of what fascism was about, from someone who was sympathetic to them. 

I'd also recommend a biography of the very influential and gifted American
modernist poet Ezra Pound, who led the Italian fascist propaganda effort
from 1941 to 1943 and spent six months in an American POW camp, followed by
some time in mental hospitals as his rants against jewish conspiracies under
every bed became increasingly incoherent, for his trouble. Like Orwell's
very complicated views towards socialism and Stalinism (see Homage to
Catalonia), e. e. cummings' anti-government pacifism, Whitman's queerness,
and Byron's essential kookiness, this is something your high school english
teacher probably failed to mention.

-rich

On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Bruce Baugh wrote:

<concerning facism--you know what you wrote>

	Thanks. You said it much better than I could have. 

Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@crash.suba.com