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Reuters Exclusive: Russian Troops Near Ukraine’s Border
European Union sanctions against Russia are up for renewal. To prevent them from being lifted some additional NATO propaganda hyping the Russia threat and warning of an imminent invasion if Ukraine is necessary.
Reuters is always willing to be helpful with this. Consider its record of uncritical Exclusive News on the topic:
In none of the above stories have I seen any real reporting with a critical assessment of the veracity of such news.
Russia, like any normal state, always has some troops near its borders as well as training areas for larger unit exercises. Troops moving within the wider border area is simply normal.
Some 90% of the Canadian army is stationed less than a hundred miles from the U.S. border. When will Reuters finally manage to report that threat of an immediate invasion?
in re fascism.
An apple seed is not an apple tree. Bad analysis leads to incorrect and ergo ineffective action. Given the problems humanity faces, such errors are a luxury we can’t afford, IMHO.
From Merriam-Webster Online: A Full Definition of Fascism
1: often capitalized: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
In neither the strong or weak sense of the word do we qualify. I would further note that a as an historic phenomena fascism is inexorbably bound up with the complete destruction of working class parties and unions. See the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, as summarized in the famous words of Niemoller, “First they came for the communists….”
On the level of practice, while drone strikes, renditions, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” right-to-work-for-less laws, Jim Crow (Old and New), mass surveillance, militarized police, and oligarchic bankster capitalism are all repressive, brutal, and profoundly distasteful, they do not rise to the level the industrialization of death begun at Dachau and perfected at Auschwitz.
This is not to say that things cannot or will not proceed in that direction, should a sufficiently organized and militant challenge to finance capital and imperialism develop (see rising wage and unionization demands, resistance as in Baltimore).
For a very concrete example of what fascism looks like, Russia Insider has this convenient reminder today. Kiev Regime Represses Anti-Fascism in Odessa.
Kiev is not only engaged in an assault on political freedoms, but also a class war against the working class of Odessa and Ukraine generally. That the events leading up to the massacre took place at Kulikovo Field – a famous staging area for Soviet era demonstrations of working class politics – and the massacre itself took place in the adjacent Trade Unions House, there’s a symbolic resonance, the significance of which is not lost on the people of Odessa. It is the attempt to both erase the legacy of working class struggle and leftist politics, as well as the sacrifices of previous generations in a place where historical memory runs deep, and the scars of the past have yet to heel. – emphasis added, rm.
This analysis suggests that although they are certainly trying hard, the Banderists are not particularly good at being fascists. Glory Ukraine? The Kiev government are such losers they can’t even get fascism right. “The Kiev government is bad at just about everything. From diplomacy to history, economics, society and war. They are a complete disaster. They even fail as a nationalist, fascist regime.”
For the curious, there is a well-known analysis that offers a much weaker variant. Bertram Gross’s Friendly Fascism, published in 1980, overstates matters, it seems to me. But he did extrapolate a number of trends of our present oligarchy. One might find this review a useful introduction. “In seeking the gist of fascism Gross skips the optional extras: the single charismatic leader, the one-party dictatorship, rigid censorship, regimentation of industry/commerce/finance, etc. What remains is big government in alliance with big business: corporate authoritarianism that subverts constitutional democracy.”
Personally, I think it’s all standard equipment. We’ve had a corporate subversion of democracy since at least the Gilded Age. It’s power ebbs and flows in the face of the tides of popular resistance. I hope the tide is coming in….
Posted by: rufus magister | May 29 2015 0:47 utc | 18
rufus
I have to disagree with key points you make, concerning whether this country has reached the point of fascism.
The claim of exceptionalism is often heard, and is voiced habitually in our national leadership, under circumstances where yet another country is being threatened with destruction, its economy simultaneously attacked, while its sense of well being, its peace and sovereignty, is being assaulted and mutilated in the crudest way.
To talk about fascism in a superficial aspect that only reflects classic despotic control of one man, under a charismatic cult of personality of an exalted leader, could serve to define other brands of totalitarian power.
Fascism has been otherwise defined, by figures as different as FDR and Mussolini, as government in the hands of corporate power. President Roosevelt described it as power in private hands, government of the few.
The Miriam-Webster entry is incomplete as a definition; and doesn’t take into consideration either the unbounded process of fascism, or the deep seated irrationality of what we call fascism. You say we do not qualify. You write as follows–quote–
“On the level of practice, while drone strikes, renditions, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” right-to-work-for-less laws, Jim Crow (Old and New), mass surveillance, militarized police, and oligarchic bankster capitalism are all repressive, brutal, and profoundly distasteful, they do not rise to the level the industrialization of death begun at Dachau and perfected at Auschwitz.”
And yet somewhere we can read “America ruins the world to rule it”. An apt comment.
For it is one thing to depose a government, in imperial fashion, and make the venal arrangements necessary, to install an accommodating puppet. But it is quite another thing to kill hundreds of thousands, to drive whole nations, their societies, into political incoherence and anarchy, and endless misery. And like the fascism of the past, it is pathological and a serial crime; and a new victim is selected.
This also qualifies as an industrialization of death.
Big government is not allied with the corporate world; the corporate world and the oligarchs and weapons makers, and organized crime control government. Fascism is a vulture that feeds on the corpse of democracy.
Military Keynesianism, the institutionalizing of permanent war, is the broad highway that leads to fascism. The standing army that George Washington warned us against, will be staring down at our own people when it has finished terrorizing the wider world.
Posted by: Copeland | May 29 2015 5:16 utc | 20
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