Below is my final year dissertation from February 2008. The seemingly random numbers refer to footnotes which can be found at the end.
AESTHETIC POLITICS AND THE SLIDE INTO FASCISM
(Finished 08/02/2008)
ABSTRACT
In this dissertation, I aim to demonstrate that fascism is not only inherent in 21st century politics but that it also has the capacity to become the foremost ideology if left unchallenged.
To do this, I will firstly argue that corporate driven globalisation is essentially a form of cultural hegemony that economically and politically oppresses the masses on a global scale.
I will then go on to discuss the aestheticisation of global politics with special reference to the post-war ideologies and culture industries of Britain and The United States.
Lastly, I will argue that all these factors combined have provided the ideal conditions for a genuine 21st century form of fascism to prosper and prevail if allowed to do so.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1
ABSTRACT
In this dissertation, I aim to demonstrate that fascism is not only inherent in 21st century politics but that it also has the capacity to become the foremost ideology if left unchallenged.
To do this, I will firstly argue that corporate driven globalisation is essentially a form of cultural hegemony that economically and politically oppresses the masses on a global scale.
I will then go on to discuss the aestheticisation of global politics with special reference to the post-war ideologies and culture industries of Britain and The United States.
Lastly, I will argue that all these factors combined have provided the ideal conditions for a genuine 21st century form of fascism to prosper and prevail if allowed to do so.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1
The Problem with Globalisation
1.1: Capitalism vs. Marxism
1.1: Capitalism vs. Marxism
1.2: Keynes & Bretton Woods
1.3: Economic Liberalism
1.4: Globalisation in a Fair Trade Nutshell
PART 2
PART 2
When Politics & Aesthetics Collide
2.1: The Aestheticisation of Politics
2.2: The Politicisation of Art
2.3: The Cultural Abyss
2.4: Advertising as Propaganda
PART 3
PART 3
21st Century Fascism: A Genuine Danger
3.1: The Fundamentals of Fascism
3.1: The Fundamentals of Fascism
3.2: McCarthyism in America
3.3: PNAC, 9/11 & the War on Terror
3.4: The Lessons of History
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX & BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." - Mary Flannery O'Connor1
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX & BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." - Mary Flannery O'Connor1
Since I have been old enough to read a newspaper, I have been constantly afflicted with a pervasive sense of dread. I have long been haunted by a feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world around me, something staring me in the face that somehow manages to remain obscured and tantalisingly out of reach. I was roughly fifteen when I started paying attention to current affairs and there has always seemed to me to be a distinct gap between that which I'm being told and that which my instincts on a given matter tell me. The apparent absence of this feeling in most other people and their willingness to accept everything at face value has always deeply alarmed me. In the absence of answers, or the willingness to seek answers, it is generally advisable not to question such things and for many years, I didn't. In fact, I went out of my way to avoid engaging with the issues of the day for the sake of a quiet life, choosing instead to fully immerse myself in music and the arts. I feel I can do this no longer. The global events of the last ten years have forced me to seriously re-evaluate my former position of self-enforced ignorance. What effect this will have on my artistic endeavours only time will tell.
I have always been interested in politics. My father studied it at length and spent many years campaigning as a Liberal Democrat councillor in the South East of England. I myself have always avoided pledging my allegiance to any particular political party due to my deeply felt instincts that they are all as bad as each other and that Westminster is largely populated by liars and thieves. The political superficiality that seems to me to typify the age I live in was always destined to manifest itself in any dissertation I write, it was just a question of degree and context. In the end, it has wound up taking centre stage and for that, I make no apology. American novelist and short story writer Mary Flannery O'Connor was quite right. While this paper may well fall short of establishing any absolute truths, you can be sure that it will have had a damn good go.
While having a break from writing this dissertation, I was absent-mindedly reading the paper when the following words leapt out at me:
"The culture is now so enslaved to the image of things, their glossy surface, that even those who should know better fall for the illusion." - Terence Blacker, The Independent, 23/01/08
If ever there was a sentence that summed up my feelings towards the subject matter of this dissertation, this is it. Terence Blacker's words were actually in relation to the writers strike in America over internet royalties, which has seen a number of nightly or weekly entertainment shows either go off the air completely or continue with the hosts performing their own material with no autocue. In the article, he was suggesting that the drop in quality is so apparent that the illusion of slickness is lost and that it takes something like a writers strike for people to realise the choreographed and rehearsed nature of things that are designed to appear otherwise spontaneous and off the cuff. I couldn't help wondering what would happen if the same thing occurred in newsrooms around the world. My alternate reading of Blacker's sentence certainly goes to show how powerful words can be when taken out of context, but my initial interpretation seems so poignant that by the end of this dissertation, I intend to have recast Terence Blacker's thought provoking sentence in the context of the arguments herein.
It is my intention to approach this paper from a layman's point of view, as I am one, and to write it in a manner accessible to all. On the subject of methodology, and on the basis that methodology refers to more than a simple set of methods but also to the rationale and philosophical assumptions that underlie a particular study, I feel I ought to take a moment to clarify mine. I am often charged with being an idealist to which I invariably take offence. My philosophy leans more toward existentialism than idealism and is essentially this: we come into being as free spirits, free to determine our own values and moral codes and free to define our own purpose and attribute meaning to our existence as we see fit. I myself choose common sense morality based on compassion, respect for oneself and others and individual freedom as basic human rights and, in a world I deem to be increasingly lacking these things, I define my purpose in life as to forcefully fight for them. This informs all of my endeavours and will inevitably permeate any analytical study I make such as this one. I am also occasionally dismissed as being a conspiracy theorist, although usually only by people who have done no research of their own and who are merely presupposed to react that way to anything that shatters their bubble of existence (to which they are utterly entitled!). Needless to say, in constructing this paper I have painstakingly verified all my sources and avoided the inclusion of anything that could even remotely be regarded as wild conspiracy in the interests of academic gravitas. However, I firmly believe, as Descartes said, that: "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things"2 In relation to the current global political climate, I most certainly do. Beyond that, the research data I have assembled is largely qualitative and derived from the wealth of books, articles, essays and reports available on the various topics associated with my dissertation, with the occasional quantitative inclusion where appropriate, usually statistical.
Writing this dissertation has been not just an exercise in academic discipline for me, but also a timely voyage of personal discovery and demystification of the world around me. I hope it lives up to its introduction.
PART 1
The Problem with Globalisation
"The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope." - Karl Marx3
In order to fully understand the arguments I will be making in later sections, I believe a firm grasp of the economics landscape of the world in early 2008 is essential. To that end, in this opening section I intend to outline the various factors that currently, and historically, shape the global economic landscape. In particular, I will examine globalisation and discuss the extent to which it can be described as a vehicle for the ongoing cultural and corporate hegemony of a privileged few at the expense of an exploited majority.
1.1: Capitalism vs. Marxism
Capitalism is essentially a social and economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit with little or no state intervention.4 In a capitalist system, everything involving finance and private property (production, distribution, investments, incomes, pricing of goods etc.) is determined by the market economy.5 Via the market economy, individuals and groups of individuals have the right to trade in goods, services, property, land, even money itself. This unleashes a vastly complex socio-economic matrix incorporating spending, saving, borrowing, debt, interest rates, inflation, taxation, unemployment and more or less everything else most people associate with modern life. One defining feature of a capitalist economic system is that ideally all of this is self-organising and therefore always at the mercy of the markets. This is in direct contrast to a planned economy or a command economy in which the whole social economic system is governed and regulated by the state. In 2008, there are hardly any of these economies left, Cuba and North Korea are still notable exceptions,6 the rest of the world is almost entirely made up of capitalist market economies. Due to a process of globalisation, the distinctions and boundaries between these economies are constantly changing and are in fact to some extent disappearing altogether.
In the opening of his Communist Manifesto, 19th century political economist and revolutionary thinker Karl Marx declared:
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"7
He believed that capitalism was so riddled with contradictions that it would eventually destroy itself and be replaced by a classless society and a new form of socialism called communism. He argued that in a capitalist system an employee's labour is as much a commodity as the produce of that person's labour and is viewed as such by the owners of the means of production (the employers). The workers labour is traded in exchange for a wage and then turned into profit solely for the benefit of the employer. In capitalist societies, Marx argues, there is therefore a necessary gap between the exchange value of this labour and the exchange value of the resulting produce in order for the employers to turn a profit and propagate the system. This process, which Marx calls the extraction of 'surplus value' from the working class, is central to Marx's view of the exploitative nature of capitalist social relations. It leads to vast economic growth of society as a whole at the expense of the workforce, creating an unbridgeable poverty gap between the exploited (employees) and the exploiters (employers).
Workers exchange the commodity of their labour for the commodity of money in order to purchase other commodities but, according to Marx, the exchange value of a commodity bares no relation to its use value, hence diamonds are more valuable than coal even though a comparable amount of a workers skill and effort is spent in the mining of each and coal is (or at least was) much more useful than diamonds. The result is that by relying on the market forces of the exchange of commodities alone to shape society with no concern for the usefulness of those exchanges, the illusion of commodity fetishism arises. In 1867's Das Kapital, Marx defined commodity fetishism as the illusory social state that occurs in capitalist societies in which social relationships are defined by the values that are placed on commodities as opposed to any actual, tangible social values.8 Eventually, according to Marx, individuals in society succumb to 'conspicuous consumption', the purchasing of commodities for the sole purpose of displaying ones wealth. They spend all their money on things they have little or no use for (if they can afford to) or envy those who do (if they can't). In Marxist thinking, this situation inevitably leads to revolution: an overthrowing of the bourgeois capitalists by the proletariat workers and the implementation of a classless, communist society.
There is much debate on whether or not this assertion of inevitable revolution is correct and there are many factors to suggest that it may not be. Nevertheless, it is clear that the work of Karl Marx, far from being a rallying cry to the exploited masses to revolt, is merely a clinical and persuasive study of capitalism and what he saw as its logical progression. It is often noted that the true communism that orthodox Marxism speaks of has never seen the light of day as no fully developed capitalist state has ever been subject to a proletarian revolution. As Terry Eagleton notes in his little book on Marx:
"A socialism which needs to develop the forces of production from the ground up, without the benefit of a capitalist class which has accomplished this task for it, will end up as that authoritarian form of state power we know as Stalinism"9
1.2: Keynes & Bretton Woods
The capitalism of the early 20th century was certainly flawed as testified to by the worldwide economic slump that followed World War I and typified much of the interwar years culminating in The Great Depression.10 The only unaffected economies of note were the young Soviet Union's planned economy under Stalin's take on communism and that of Mussolini's fascist Italy which purported to be a 'third way' between communism and capitalism. Many economists and governments of the day came close to embracing one or the other but for the economic theories of one man: British economist John Maynard Keynes. His ideas were instrumental in turning the slump around in 1933 and rescuing capitalism from an early demise.
Keynes's theory suggested that active government policy could be effective in managing the economy and therefore advocated government intervention, contrary to the ideals of capitalism. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called counter-cyclical fiscal policies, policies which acted against the tide of the business cycle e.g.: deficit spending when a nation's economy suffers from recession and the suppression of inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on government outlays.11 He argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than waiting for market forces to do it in the long run, because, as he is often quoted as saying: "…in the long run, we are all dead."
He is also widely credited as paving the way for the welfare state due to his policies of redistribution, specifically that fiscal policy should be directed at lower income citizens as they are likely to spend more and save less thus oiling the wheels of the system. Later economists amended this somewhat, concluding that excessive redistribution leads to incentive traps, free-loading, high operational costs and corruption in the redistribution system, all reducing a country's growth potential, whilst extreme inequality diminishes growth potential through the erosion of social cohesion, increasing social unrest and causing uncertainty of property rights. Therefore public policy should target an 'efficient inequality range'.12
Keynesian economics and it's wholesale application was certainly progressive and crucial to the survival of capitalism and was also central to the Bretton Woods System of international monetary management that was established at the end of World War II specifically to prevent another Great Depression. However, two World Wars had left the economies of Britain and much of Europe in pieces and many countries, including Britain, had little choice but to accept huge U.S. loans for reconstruction. Not surprisingly, the U.S. duly seized the opportunity to inherit Britain's previous economic dominance and, having also effectively ended the war with a show of nuclear military might, became the dominant superpower almost overnight. Needless to say, the U.S. called the shots with regards to implementing the Bretton Woods system. It was a never before tried international monetary regime joining an essentially unchanged gold exchange standard, supplemented by a centralized pool of gold and national currencies, with an entirely new adjustable exchange rate system.13 At this point, due to its overwhelming dominance, the U.S. dollar became the reserve currency used to back all international transactions and was therefore 'as good as gold.'14
Bretton Woods established The International Monetary Fund along with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.15 Both institutions were intended to manage international monetary issues and establish free trade as the global benchmark. Never before had international monetary co-operation been attempted on a permanent institutional basis. Even more progressive was the decision to allocate voting rights among governments not on a one-state, one-vote basis but rather in proportion to quotas. With one-third of all IMF quotas, the United States assured itself an effective veto over future decision-making from the outset. Because of their role as sole creditor to a large portion of the rest of the world, the initial scheme, as well as its subsequent development and ultimate demise, was directly dependent on the preferences and policies of its most powerful member, the United States.
1.3: Economic Liberalism
In 1973, the Bretton Woods system was officially dismantled due to the untenable nature of U.S. economic hegemony in light of an overstretched U.S. military and a consequently devalued dollar, pressure from emerging economic powerhouses such as Japan and widespread distrust in U.S. foreign policy because of the hugely unpopular Vietnam War. With it, much of Keynesian economic theory was discredited too as a new breed of economists sought to de-regulate the international monetary system and encourage economic liberalism or neo-liberalism.16
Essentially, neo-liberalism rejects government intervention and therefore public sector control of free market economies in favour of free market reform via the private sector. Historically, the most notable neo-liberal economies are that of Chile in the 1970's and 1980's under Augusto Pinochet17 and Britain and the U.S. under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan throughout the 1980's. The U.S. controlled IMF and the World Bank became instrumental in supporting the establishment of neo-liberal economies throughout the rest of the world, particularly in Latin America, notable exceptions being Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela who have managed to remain defiantly autonomous in spite of constant economic pressure. Along with Russia and much of Eastern Europe, Latin America has been routinely subjected to the neo-liberal policies that came to be known as the Washington Consensus, a mechanism supposedly for resurrecting countries ravaged by war or economic meltdown by opening up their markets to international trade and lessening the role of the state.18 Arguably, this benefits multinational corporations first and citizens second, if at all. The level of poverty and inequality in these neo-liberal economies is invariably high while capitalist big business makes huge profits through trade agreements that are strongly in their favour and the 'democratic' puppet governments languish in the decadent spoils of the arrangement.19
Proponents of neo-liberalism argue that we are all entrepreneurs at heart, therefore a healthy economy benefits all and the end justifies the means. Critics of neo-liberalism point out that whilst it is a highly efficient system in terms of sustaining economic growth, it is far from fair, is essentially the politics of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and as such merely reinforces the counterproductive class divide that Marx talks about. It could be argued that Reagan and Thatcher's economic liberalism laid the groundwork for widespread working class traumatisation both domestically and worldwide by eliminating collective assets via sales to the private sector, enacting policies to diminish the power of trade unions and promoting militarisation. For author and neo-liberal critic David Harvey:
"The massive U.S. military-industrial complex adds an extra layer of repression to working class traumatisation, making resistance seem unfeasible to most workers."20
Harvey claims that a 'traumatised' working class allows the capitalist class absolute reign which, if the 1920s and The Great Depression is anything to go by, can be disastrous for economies, states, and working class people around the globe, whilst hardly directly impacting on the capitalists themselves. Harvey sums up neo-liberalism as:
"a global capitalist class power restoration project."'21
He also observes that neo-liberalism has become hegemonic worldwide, often by coercion. Critics therefore argue that neo-liberalism is essentially nothing more than the implementation of global capitalism through government and/or military interventionism to protect the interests of multinational corporations.
Ideologically, neo-liberals promote entrepreneurialism as the primary source of human happiness. One of the biggest proponents of neo-liberalism is billionaire and independent American businessman David Rockefeller of the hugely wealthy and influential Rockefeller family. For over fifty years, he has enjoyed statesman-like receptions from heads of government around the globe and has been instrumental in the economic policy developments of successive U.S. administrations since the end of World War II. In his capacity as head of the enormous Chase Manhattan bank, he took it upon himself to set up the Trilateral Commission in 1972:
"an 'International Commission for Peace and Prosperity', comprising 'leading private citizens' from Europe, North America and Japan who would devise solutions to the world's problems."22
Unshackled by the restraints of political office, namely being accountable to the electorate every five years, David Rockefeller has been freely shaping the world's economic and political systems for decades and is therefore arguably the most important globalist alive. While reportedly not a neo-conservative himself, Rockefeller's neo-liberalism and its commitment to belligerent capitalism is closely linked to the current neo-conservative movement in America. It is not known whether he was in favour of the neo-cons long planned invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (see part three) but he had this to say in relation to the motivation behind them when asked by a Washington Times journalist if the U.S. interest in Iraq was really all about oil:
"Seventy percent of the world's oil reserves are found there. Our industries are dependent on oil, and we have a compelling reason to use Iraqi oil as well as oil from other countries. Without Iraqi oil, not enough oil is being produced today for our country to function. That's just a fact."23
Rockefeller is also thought to have been instrumental, along with the predominantly neo-con Bush administration, in setting up the 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (SPP), which purports to be:
"…a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater co-operation and information sharing."24
Observers have commented that this was done entirely under the radar of the media and the public, was never put before congress and is as such wholly undemocratic, unconstitutional and ominously totalitarian.25 I will be discussing the global significance of David Rockefeller and the neo-cons more in part three.
1.4: Globalisation in a Fair Trade Nutshell
Globalisation is loosely defined as a process through which an increasing proportion of economic, social and cultural transactions take place directly or indirectly between parties in different countries resulting in various forms of global unification. The benefits of this are arguable. As one commentator puts it, in relation to globalisation:
"The growing mobility of capital and new productive and information technologies have led to a concomitant mobility and fluidity of the economic bases of accumulation and exploitation."26
However, at the same time:
"…the period of national Keynesian welfare states and differentiated norms of redistribution [of wealth] has come to a close, in the face of a new orthodoxy intent on reversing all welfarist trends on a universal scale."27
There is much evidence to suggest that the machinations of globalisation, in the context of capitalist democracy and neo-liberal economics, are actually wholly undemocratic. Globalisation depends upon the existence of international institutions like the IMF and non-government bodies such as the Trilateral Commission all of which operate autonomously and are not subject to any significant democratic process. As Joachim Hirsch puts it:
"…the liberal democratic assumption of a system of nation states is clearly undermined when subjects cannot vote on political decisions because they do not have the rights of citizenship; when people live outside state borders; or when the relevant decisions do not fall within the institutional remit of the nation state."28
With all this in mind, it can be argued that globalisation is merely empire building by another name, but not in a nationalistic sense, in an economic sense. Modern imperialism no longer depends upon a superpowers ability to unilaterally invade and conquer territories in the name of colonisation, it can be achieved through aggressive economic warfare that is dictated by the dominance of the aggressor i.e.: big business. The military can still have a role to play, however, as the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan attest. In these instances, democracy is always put forward as the intended aim. Invariably, however, as Atilio A. Boron puts it:
"The heroic enterprise of creating a democratic state is reduced to the establishment of a system of rules and procedures unrelated to the ethical and social context proper to democracy and indifferent to the implications that deep-seated social contradictions and class inequalities have for the political process. Thus misunderstood, democracy is completely 'depoliticised', becoming a set of abstract rules and procedures that only pose technical problems."29
I would argue that this process of misunderstanding, misrepresenting and depoliticising democracy is central to the aestheticisation of the politics involved (see part two). It is all very eloquently presented, seems utterly detached from our daily lives and the resultant mantra is inwardly chanted thus: 'democracy is a good thing; democracy comes through globalisation; globalisation is a good thing'. However, for a significant portion of the worlds population globalisation is not a good thing. It exploits farmers, child workers and vague, unenforceable international laws to turn a huge profit from the coffee, chocolate, fruit, tea and countless other products that we in the west take for granted every day. Capitalist free trade is the antithesis of Fair Trade, which is defined as follows:
"Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers - especially in the South (southern hemisphere). Fair Trade organisations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising, and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade."30
Fair Trade is a beacon of hope for many people around the world for lots of reasons.31 Aside from assuring a fair price for the labour and produce of an otherwise exploited international community of farmers and workers, it also represents a synthesis between the economic realities of a market based system of economics and a social and egalitarian responsibility to humankind. As such, it is thoroughly progressive and forward thinking. Fair Trade is, however, criticised by both ends of the political spectrum for either being too radical or not radical enough. The latter believe it falls short of making any lasting change to exploitative global economics by trying to work within the established system whereas the former, usually macroeconomists and capitalists, say it is damaging to the pricing of goods worldwide. In response, defenders argue that trying to operate outside the current system would be counter productive for all concerned whilst acknowledging that the application of neo-liberal economics does not work at a microeconomic level as the conditions for it to do so are invariably never met. Needless to say, big business seems in no hurry to adapt to a potentially groundbreaking, level playing field.
Globalisation, as practised by multinational corporations, invariably leads to inequality, exploitation and everything that comes with it: poverty, homelessness, unemployment, underemployment, illegal employment of migrants, a criminal underclass, the black market, a two-tier society of haves and have-nots and a general increase in severe economic instability for all but a privileged few. Yet, the corporately owned mainstream media presents it as a wholly benign, unifying and evolved, logical and democratic progression. Real democracy is significantly devalued when it is embedded in a capitalist society characterised by structures such as this, institutions and ideologies that are antagonistic or hostile to the masses sense of truth and freedom. Globalisation, I would argue, is primarily and demonstrably concerned with the betterment of the richest and most powerful individuals and organisation on the planet, whose numbers account for only a tiny percentage of the world's population. Using systems of government that they have control or influence over, they exploit weak countries for their own capital gain and by doing so economically colonise those countries. By presenting it as otherwise, I believe there is a necessary, concerted effort being made to conquer and colonise ordinary people's hearts and minds also.
PART 2
When Politics and Aesthetics Collide
"All over the place, from popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume." - Noam Chomsky32
In this second section, I intend to outline the ongoing sociological relationship between politics and aesthetics and its implications on mass culture. To do this, I will be drawing heavily on the work of the Frankfurt School, in particular the writings of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, along with other political and cultural commentators.
2.1: The Aestheticisation of Politics
The word aesthetic is derived from Aisthitikos, the ancient Greek word for that which is 'perceptive by feeling.'33 According to Susan Buck-Morss, the original field of aesthetics is not art but reality and as such, aesthetic experience is essentially a form of cognition, achieved through taste, touch, hearing, sight and smell. Latterly, aesthetics is of course more synonymous with the experience and critique of art and so for our purposes can broadly be defined as a critical reflection on art, culture and nature. All aesthetic evaluation inevitably throws up issues of taste and subjectivity. A rose in bloom may be considered universally beautiful but that same rose in a state of decomposition can just as easily be considered beautiful if a person is subjectively inclined to do so. Clearly, these complexities not withstanding, the notion of aesthetics is fundamentally concerned with human sensory experience.
The word anaesthetic refers to the numbing or negation of sensory experience, most commonly used in relation to the use of anaesthetising drugs in the operating theatre. Central to the study of aesthetic politics is the notion that a modernised, post-enlightenment society, with all it's mechanisation and technological advancements, has an increasingly anaesthetising effect on our sensory experiences.34 This can be seen as an inevitable reaction to the over stimulation of the senses that typifies the modern age. Over-stimulation and its capacity to 'shock' our senses is something that we have naturally adapted to and overcome, the result being a numbing of our aesthetic experience. The aesthetics of nature, culture or art that once would have moved us emotionally can now often leave us unaffected. The most obvious example of this is the desensitising effect of the media. We are so used to seeing on screen violence that most of us are no longer shocked or repulsed by it. Our instinctive aesthetic experience has been overridden and replaced with instinctive passive observation. As Susan Buck-Morss says:
"This reversal, whereby aesthetics changes from a cognitive mode of being "in touch" with reality to a way of blocking out reality, destroys the human organism's power to respond politically even when self-preservation is at stake."35
This is obviously of particular significance to the notion of aesthetic politics. If we apply the notion of the aesthetic to the political world, it can incorporate many things: leadership style, rhetorical use, politics as a performative or theatrical display, the construction of political ideologies etc. There can be no denying the artistry involved in the construction and delivery of a powerful political speech. Indeed, the artistry often seems to be of more importance to all concerned than the actual content. This representation of politics as art desensitises us to any immediacy or relevance to our daily lives that it would otherwise have. We come to view it as a separate, unrelated entity to ourselves even though it directly affects us, often in profound ways. Unsurprisingly, this leads to widespread political apathy. It seems that the only way to get anybody to pay attention to politics in the 21st Century is to aestheticise it further and present it in ever more populist ways. The Politics Show on the BBC is a case in point. It has a formula that more resembles a daytime light entertainment show with regular features such as Top of the Political Pops.36
The aestheticisation of politics is closely related to the writings of early Frankfurt School scholar Walter Benjamin, indeed he is credited as coining the phrase. In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he suggested that beyond the aestheticisation of political systems, figures and events there is a fundamental aestheticisation of human practice that amounts to an alienation from our own species, to the extent that we even accept and enjoy viewing our own destruction. The most obvious example of this is of course war. For Benjamin, war has become the ultimate artistic event, because it satisfies the new needs of human senses that have been reconfigured by modernity and technology. As Benjamin puts it:
"Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself."37
By extension, it seems humankind has claimed the role of all-powerful God for itself.
War is an inevitable by-product of neo-liberal capitalism, so much so that we increasingly accept it. The power of the modern news media to desensitise war is undeniable. The since proven to be illegal Iraq war is a good example of this. It was the first war with 24 hour rolling news coverage and because of this, there was a conscious effort made by the U.S. and its allies to control all media coverage by embedding 'friendly' journalists on the ground with their troops. This had the dual function of spinning all coverage in favour of the home side while further aestheticising the war by enabling the world to watch as it unfolded. We duly subjected ourselves to a daily visual bombardment of state of the art images of actual people caught in actual 'shock and awe' bombardments until any horror that may have been initially felt at such a cynical, politically and economically motivated act had dissolved into resigned acceptance. The very fact that the richest countries on the planet named their initial, uniquely severe air strike upon one of the poorest countries in the world 'Shock and Awe' is the height of political aestheticisation, in my view.
The aestheticisation of politics is everywhere today. We live in a world of mediated political spectacle that encourages either passivity or knee-jerk reactions, usually forgotten by teatime. Politics is a show that we occasionally feel compelled to watch and one where any distinction between sides is all but meaningless. In a world where everything is an aesthetic experience, even war, moral considerations become increasingly marginalised. Political dramas unfold like soap operas, drawn out over weeks and months, aestheticised to the point where the issues become irrelevant. Who could forget the death of Dr. David Kelly and the risible Hutton Report? Well, most people actually, and that's rather the point. Like a momentarily gripping, incestuous love triangle in a small Yorkshire village, the story reaches its predictable climax and we shuffle on regardless. The only way to counter this, according to Benjamin, is to politicise art and culture itself.
2.2: The Politicisation of Art
For Benjamin, technological advances that enable art to be mass produced have a democratising effect on both access to cultural objects and the act of having a critical attitude toward them: "Instead of being based on ritual, [art] begins to be based on another practice - politics."38 In other words, art and its creation shifts from being ritualistic and shrouded in mystique to being available to all, which naturally politicises and demystifies it. For Benjamin, the conscious politicisation of art should be the goal of Communism, in contrast to Fascism, which aestheticised politics for the purpose of social control. Historically, however, Communist attempts to politicise art have more often than not merely resulted in the further aestheticisation of politics. In the Soviet Union of the 1920's and 1930's, art and music were totally controlled by Stalin and anything that was considered not to be in keeping with the triumphant, revolutionary regime that Stalin liked to depict was denounced. One notable victim of this was Dmitri Shostakovich who suffered two career-damaging denunciations under Stalin.39 He also narrowly avoided being rounded up and executed alongside his friends and colleagues during 'the great terror' of 1936. He only survived by toeing the party line at various points throughout Stalin's dictatorship. His consciously conservative 5th symphony put him back in Stalin's favour and he actively contributed to the war effort against Hitler's Germany during World War II with his nationalistic 7th symphony. This is a good example of the failed politicisation of art wherein it is ultimately subordinate to political life and thus a result of it, and is subsequently incorporated for political use.
It might on the surface appear as if Benjamin's politicisation of art has been adopted in a widespread manner within the artistic communities of the west. Exhibitions, film and music often draw attention to political questions of poverty, gender, ethnicity, globalisation, war etc. However, the nature of capitalism devalues this politicisation in much the same way as Stalinism did. Esther Leslie writes that:
"… politically correct art that largely satisfies itself with and within the gallery and grant system, competing within the terms of the creative and cultural industries … is in fact a further symptom of the aestheticisation of politics."40
The real politicisation of art would mean:
"a thorough rejection of systems of display, production, and consumption, monitoring and inclusion as well as elitism and exclusion."41
The argument here is that a work of art that is arrived at within, and as a result of, the conventional, capitalist system of controlling it, is more a triumph of the aestheticisation of politics than of the politicisation of art.
2.3: The Cultural Abyss
Theodor Adorno, one of the Frankfurt School's most notable scholars, is a central figure in the study of mass culture. He and Max Horkheimer coined the term 'the culture industry' in their seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment, published in 1947. For Adorno, mass culture, rather than being an organic entity born of the masses, is actually engineered by culture industries cultivating false needs that can be created and satisfied by capitalism. The culture industry claims to serve the consumer need for entertainment, but conceals the way that it standardises these needs, manipulating the consumers to desire what it produces, thus manipulating the masses into passivity. The outcome is that mass production feeds a mass market that minimizes the identity and tastes of individual consumers who become as interchangeable as the products they consume. The standardization of the cultural product effectively leads to the standardization of the audience or consumer:
"…any person signifies only those attributes by which he can replace everybody else; he is interchangeable."42
In his 1967 essay Culture Industry Reconsidered, Adorno states:
"the power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness … The consensus which it propagates strengthens blind, opaque authority."43
Adorno supports Marx's theory of capitalist oppression and proletariat revolution, but believes that the culture industry completely undermines the revolutionary movement and suggests that, consequently, the time when the working class could be the tool of overthrowing capitalism has passed.
Adorno believes that, via the culture industries, capitalist production so confines people that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them and, by extension, an ingenious form of social control. For many, not to conform means to be rendered powerless, economically and therefore spiritually. Adorno claims that in much the same way that the masses have always taken the morality imposed upon them more seriously than the ruling classes that impose it, they are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Consequently, and ironically, they demand the very ideology that potentially enslaves them.
Adorno and Horkheimer suggested in 1947 that this demand, albeit manufactured, has not yet been replaced by obedience. In 2008, I would suggest that it has. One only has to observe the herd-like behaviour of the masses with regard to January sales, star-studded film premiere's and the like to suspect that this may well be true. We live in a society where an alarming number of people regularly cue for hours and even camp outside bookstores over night to be the 137th or 15th person to buy the new Harry Potter book when it goes on sale, as if this were an event of some real human significance. According to Adorno, intellectuals eager to reconcile themselves with the culture industry and consumers alike view all this as:
"…harmless and … even democratic since it responds to a demand, albeit a stimulated one."44 It follows therefore that people perceive that the culture industry: "…bestows all kinds of blessings … advice and stress reducing patterns of behaviour."45 In reality of course: "…the advice to be gained from manifestations of the culture industry is vacuous, banal or worse, and the behaviour patterns are shamelessly conformist."46
Critics of Adorno cite that he had a contradictory tendency towards elitism and none of the faith that later pop culture theorists have had in the ability of consumers to subvert the culture industry and find liberating, creative uses for the likes of Britney Spears Inc. and Hollyoaks. This is no doubt partially true, but for me the fact that people mistake mocking the culture industry for a kind of freedom simply shows how powerless and short-sighted we have become. In an advanced capitalist society, culture is valuable only if it contributes to the economy. The second something contributes to the economy, it becomes subject to government intervention, in this case 'cultural policy'. According to Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London:
"The rhetoric of much cultural policy is, at best, propagandistic hot air or consolatory compensation, and, at worst, partner to the economic remodelling of the cultural front, akin to neo-liberal IMF restructuring of economies."47
For Leslie, the neo-liberal colonisation of global economics is comparable to a perceived colonisation of art and culture by the culture industry. For me, this colonisation is no more apparent than in the ever more creative and artistic corporate advertising that we are all subjected to on a daily basis.
2.4: Advertising as Propaganda
Central to the success of the culture industry, and by far the most powerful weapon in capitalism's arsenal, is advertising. In the U.S. alone in 2006, spending on advertising reached $155 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence.48 In a report titled Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010 issued by global accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, worldwide spending on advertising is expected to exceed half-a-trillion dollars by 2010.49 By Adorno's thinking, the bulk of this advertising will only lead to sales indirectly as the real reason for such an emphasis on advertising is that it has become an art form in itself: "Advertising becomes art and nothing else … l'art pour l'art, advertising for its own sake, a pure representation of social power."50 This abundance of advertising permeates and saturates most aspects of our daily lives in some way or another, often in intrusive ways. It is a highly visible show of corporate power that exists primarily to reinforce the doctrines of a capitalist society. As such, it can legitimately be considered propaganda.
The term propaganda can refer to any attempt to use words and images to promote particular ideas and persuade people to believe certain concepts. This definition clearly applies to advertising images, in its most basic form, as well as any image that overtly or covertly attempts to convey a political message. In communication theory, it is described as framing. The words or images selected are packaged to sell an interpretation of events to a specific audience. In wartime, propaganda is often used to persuade the public to endorse the use of violence against a supposedly common enemy. If the framing is successful, the paradigms will expand to admit the proposed violence into the class of events considered acceptable or even desirable by the viewer.51 The negative aspects of propaganda are well documented, an obvious example being Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will which did much to bolster the support for the Nazi party in Germany before it's anti-Semitic agenda had become apparent. Hitler is often quoted as saying, in relation to the use of propaganda to coerce the public:
"The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one."52
This relationship between the size of a lie and the likelihood of it being commonly accepted is surely a consideration in politics and the advertising industry alike as both use propaganda techniques to tap into people's Freudian unconscious and repressed desires. The seemingly benign art, or culture, of advertising equates happiness to consumerism and by doing so has the capacity to succeed, even if the lies are small and transparent:
"The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them."53
Between them, Benjamin and Adorno indicate how the aestheticisation of politics on the one hand and the industrial control of art and culture on the other can have a blurring effect on the ideology behind it all, thus giving that ideology more power:
"Its very vagueness, its almost scientific aversion from committing itself to anything which cannot be verified, acts as an instrument of domination."54
For Adorno, the ideological control of art, culture and society as a whole, through advertising as propaganda and the culture industries, consciously and deliberately:
"…impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves. These [individuals] would be the precondition for a democratic society which needs adults who have come of age in order to sustain itself and develop."55
When a social system consciously impedes the autonomous, individual development that would otherwise engender the emergence of a self-sustaining, truly democratic society, questions of near-totalitarianism, in my view, ought naturally to be raised.
PART 3
21st Century Fascism: A Genuine Danger
"It would be easy for us, if we do not learn to understand the world and appreciate the rights, privileges and duties of all other countries and peoples, to represent in our power the same danger to the world that Fascism did." - Ernest Hemingway56
In this final section, I will attempt to demonstrate that corporate sponsored globalisation and the ongoing aestheticisation of global politics have combined to provide dangerously fertile ground from which a form of 21st Century fascism could grow.
3.1: The Fundamentals of Fascism
Defining fascism has occupied the minds of many a great scholar in recent history. I have investigated numerous attempts to do so and the common thread always seems to be the same; that ultimately the word fascism is in fact so all encompassing and open to misuse as to be increasingly vague. The word is often trotted out by anyone seeking to discredit an opposing force or ideology to their own, regardless of whether or not there is any factual basis for it.57 This blurring of the words meaning is itself a huge problem for anyone who might suspect that fascism is alive and well and still has the potential to engulf humanity. Even comparing Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, the two most accepted and established fascist regimes of all time, throws up contradictions. It is generally accepted that they had enough in common for both to be considered fascistic, even though there are clear distinctions to be made.58 With this in mind, I think it would be prudent to suggest that within the definitions of fascism I intend to cite for the purposes of this section, there can be no absolutes.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines fascism thus:
fascism - 1. an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government. 2. extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
The Merriam Webster dictionary goes further:
fascism - a political philosophy, movement, or regime 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.
Former Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton went further still:
"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."59
These insights not withstanding, the most striking definitions of fascism for me come from the horse's mouth, Mussolini himself, and the aptly named American Heritage Dictionary:
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."60 - Benito Mussolini
fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."61
If we accept also that fascism is, in the words of David Baker: "…typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic"62 then we are well on the way to establishing some fascist fundamentals with which to work.
My central argument here is not that a global, fully blown fascist regime exists but that all the conditions are in place for one to emerge in the very near future. Central to this argument is the idea that a widespread denial or rejection of such an alarming possibility is the very reason why it is increasingly plausible. Through dark but ingenious propaganda, Hitler was able to utterly aestheticise his political ideology to the point where it was perceived in Germany as not only benign but actually progressive and necessary. Ordinary citizens of the country weren't fascistic people with evil intent, they were simply disillusioned sheep who knew no better, albeit vital and significant sheep in terms of Hitler's rise to power. As the man himself famously stated:
"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."63
One argument against the possibility of a globalised form of fascism is that we in the west are vastly wealthy compared to the rest of the world and are therefore far too comfortable and looked after to be oppressed in any way. Anyone who's ever had to catch a London tube train at rush hour every day for any substantial period of time knows that much of the 'comfort' that ordinary, working citizens of the UK settle for can come at a gargantuan spiritual cost. I would argue that many people in the west are not genuinely 'comfortable' or 'content' with their lives; they are merely suitably conditioned and distracted enough to not really care anymore. The tools of distraction are, naturally, the property of a superrich power elite. That hardly constitutes fascism but it certainly, to my mind, provides the fertile ground I mentioned at the top of this section. The notion of creeping fascism is the gradual loss of freedoms of the masses to the power elite over time. The Nazis were in power for five years before Kristallnacht, the campaign against German Jews that many believe marks the beginning of the Holocaust.64 I would argue that if the right conditions are in place, similar actions could still occur today without appearing fascistic, to some even appearing reasonable. I would even go so far as to say it has already happened. Its only when the summation of many such actions ends in a fascist state that they can be seen as a step towards fascism. To my knowledge, full-blown fascism has never appeared all at once.
3.2: McCarthyism in America
The 1940's and 1950's were a time of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States. As soon as World War II ended, the cold war began, as Stalin's totalitarian take on Communism in the Soviet Union gained ground and started to spread through much of Eastern Europe. There was a genuine fear that the dream of American capitalism was under threat from within, as membership of the 'Communist Party of the United States' (CPUSA) had increased significantly throughout the 1930s, reaching a peak of 50,000 members in 1942 thanks largely to its success in organising labour unions and its early opposition to fascism.65 With Hitler defeated, the fragile alliance the U.S. and the Soviet Union had briefly enjoyed evaporated and once the Cold War was in full swing, deep seated anti-Communist feelings began to resurface across the country.
According to historian Ellen Schrecker, although the CPUSA had a soviet connection, most party members:
"…did not see themselves as soldiers in Stalin's army, but as American radicals committed to a program of social and political change that would eventually produce what they hoped would be a better society".66
Reflecting this, conservative politicians had long been in the habit of referring to liberal reforms such as child labour laws and women's suffrage as "Communist" or "Red plots."67 In the post war climate, these politicians, most notably Republican Senator Joe McCarthy, were able to conduct what many subsequent observers and analysts would characterise as a wholesale witch hunt of any American citizens suspected of Communist affiliations. Those targeted included Government officials, Hollywood actors, musicians, teachers, lawyers, doctors - no one was exempt.
McCarthyism, as it came to be known, was largely orchestrated through various specially founded agencies set up by the FBI and its notorious director J. Edgar Hoover. As a result of 'loyalty reviews', many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment. Ellen Schrecker estimates that the number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs.68 Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that would later be declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.69 These procedures included blacklists, FBI break ins, the planting of incriminating documents on suspected Communists and the banning of supposedly subversive books.70 Some libraries even felt inclined to burn these books.71
The government's prosecutions of Communist Party members were based not on specific actions or statements by the defendants, but on the premise that a commitment to violent overthrow of the government was inherent in the doctrines of Marxism. Passages of the CPUSA's constitution that specifically rejected revolutionary violence were dismissed as deliberate deception.72 Suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. According to some scholars, this resulted in more persecutions than alleged connection with Communism.73 Thankfully, McCarthyism and it's legacy was relatively short lived as it quickly came under criticism from all sides and by the late fifties was largely discredited. For many, however, the scars were deep and permanent.
"Though distorted in many ways, the perception of an internal Communist threat had just enough plausibility to be convincing--especially to the vast majority of Americans who had no direct contact with the party or its members. Above all, it legitimated the McCarthy era repression by dehumanising American Communists and transforming them into ideological outlaws who deserved whatever they got." - Ellen Schrecker74
Only a few years earlier, in the Soviet Union itself, Stalin's reign had come in to it's own with the 'The Great Terror' of 1936 in which many thousands of people deemed to be anti-Stalin, and therefore presumed in favour of capitalism or a return to Tsarist Russia, were rounded up and executed. Books were burnt, history was doctored and troublesome, prominent members of the Communist Party itself were publicly tried and made to give false confessions after months of torture. The close similarities and vast differences between Stalinism and McCarthyism are self-evident. Historically speaking, Stalin's regime will always be characterised as totalitarian. The U.S., as leading superpower, is considered above that kind of thing, even when there is significant evidence to the contrary.
3.3: PNAC, 9/11 & the War on Terror
PNAC stands for The Project for the New American Century.75 It's website proclaims that it is:
"…a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle."76
It is an American neo-conservative think tank based in Washington that was co-founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in early 1997. In 1998, PNAC posted an open letter on its website to then President Bill Clinton urging a change of policy on Iraq to 'end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies.'77 This change of policy should 'include a willingness to undertake military action' as 'American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.' Signatories of this letter included notable future members of the George W. Bush administration Donald Rumsfield, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and 'The End of History' author Francis Fukayama.
In 2000, George W. Bush came to power on the back of an election result that has subsequently been found to be fraudulent on a number of levels. George's brother Jeb Bush, signatory to the PNAC Statement of Principles and then governor of Florida, along with Katherine Harris, his secretary of state, were accused by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights of 'injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency,' and 'gross dereliction of duty' for their role in preventing four thousand black and Hispanic ex-felons and non-felons from being able to vote due to their erroneous inclusion on a felons register. This is a critical number considering that 93% of Florida's black and Hispanic population voted for Al Gore and Bush only won the state by around 500 votes.78 No charges were bought due to 'insufficient evidence' of a conspiracy. Since this dubious inauguration, no less than seventeen members of PNAC have held high-ranking positions in the Bush administration.
Later that same year, PNAC published the highly controversial and much criticised Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century.79 In its preface it states that it aims to establish four core missions for the U.S. military:
- defend the American homeland;
- fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars;
- perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
- transform U.S. forces to exploit the 'revolution in military affairs'
- DEVELOP AND DEPLOY GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and American allies and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.
- CONTROL THE NEW "INTERNATIONAL COMMONS" OF SPACE AND "CYBERSPACE," and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.
- INCREASE DEFENSE SPENDING gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually.
"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor."81
On September 11 2001, the neo-cons in Washington got their new Pearl Harbour: a highly co-ordinated, multi-pronged attack that struck at the heart of America's defences and demolished the singularly most iconic landmark of America's economic power killing 2,974 innocent civilians in the process. The attacks were attributed to nineteen hijackers loyal to Osama Bin Laden and belonging to an Islamic terrorist organisation known as al-Qaeda. The official version of events is that four commercial airliners were hijacked on the morning of 9/11, two were deliberately flown into the North and South towers of the World Trade centre respectively, both of which subsequently collapsed, one was deliberately flown into the West side of the Pentagon in Washington, which sustained substantial but localised damage, and the other was bought down in a field in Pennsylvania after a heroic cockpit intervention by passengers on board. According to Dr. David Ray Griffin of the 9/11 Truth Movement, this version of events, the official investigation into the attacks and the subsequent 9/11 Commission Report throws up so many contradictions, inconsistencies, unanswered questions, omissions and outright lies that there is clear evidence of a government cover up.82 Subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to secure U.S. interests83 have led to further speculation that the attacks on 9/11 could even have been a 'false flag' operation. A 'false flag' is an operation conducted by a government, corporation or other organisation which is designed to appear as though carried out by other entities thus enabling the real perpetrators to gain a political or military advantage via legitimised retaliation.84 Pearl Harbour has long been suspected in conspiracy theory circles of being a 'false flag' operation designed to facilitate America's entry into World War II so the decision to mention it by name in section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses is often considered significant. The plethora of controversial claims and counterclaims surrounding the events of 9/11 is a dissertation in itself and far beyond the remit of this paper.85 Suffice to say, 9/11 marks a pivotal historical landmark in relation to American and British foreign and domestic policy and the beginning of the Bush administrations 'War on Terror.'
Less than two months after 9/11, the Bush administration passed the highly criticised USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which stands for 'Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.'86 Opponents of the law on all sides, including some conservatives, claimed that it severely undermined American civil liberties.87 Since its passage, several legal challenges have been brought against the act and much of it was due to be scrapped in 2005. However, after being repeatedly bounced between senate and congress and redrafted twice, Bush was able to sign in a virtually unaltered version in 2006. As well as significantly strengthening the powers of the state to investigate, arrest and detain suspected foreign terrorists the Patriot act also widens those powers to include American citizens deemed to be 'domestic' terrorists. Amongst other things, it enables government agencies to detain immigrants indefinitely, access a suspects telephone, email, financial, medical and library records without a court order and even break into a suspects home and conduct a secret search without notifying them.88 The act also alters long held definitions of terrorism and establishes or re-defines rules with which to deal with it. The term 'domestic terrorism' is redefined to encompass all activities that are "dangerous to human life and that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" and are intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population," "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or are undertaken "to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping" while in the jurisdiction of the United States.89 In 2003 the Department of Justice drafted the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, dubbed Patriot II, which went even further and included provisions for a DNA database of suspected 'terrorists', denial of bail, revocation of U.S. citizenship and deportation to a foreign country of suspected domestic 'terrorists'. It was never passed but some provisions of the act have been tacked on to other bills.90 The home page of the Whitehouse's Patriot Act website states, in George W. Bush's own words:
"…the bill gives law enforcement new tools to combat threats to our citizens from international terrorists to local drug dealers."91
Clearly, the Patriot Act has the capacity to be applied to anybody deemed by the state to be a 'terrorist' which, by the new definitions, can be more or less anybody at all. David D. Cole has written that the Patriot Act:
"in effect resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting 'communist' for 'terrorist'."92
The ongoing detention of 'terrorist' suspects from the Afghan and Iraq wars held in Guantanamo Bay and the horrific abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by U.S. soldiers during the ongoing occupation did little to reassure the world of America's supposed commitment to human rights. All these prisoners were, and still are, classified as 'enemy combatants' rather than 'prisoners of war' which means they are not covered by the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. Also, until recently, the U.S. Administration had held that, though Guantanamo Bay is leased, run, administered, and controlled by the United States, the land is still effectively Cuban, and that therefore U.S. courts should not have jurisdiction over that tract of Cuban territory, thus negating any rights to appeal that the prisoners would otherwise have had. This is no longer the case thanks to much pressure from human rights groups such as Amnesty International on U.S. lawyers and judges to intervene. According to a report on Guantanmo detainees by Mark Denbeaux, Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law and counsel to two of the detainees, since Guantanamo Bay became officially under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, of the 775 original detainees, more than half have been released without charge and less than ten have been tried under U.S. law.93 This is largely because:
"…86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies."94
The rest remain indefinitely incarcerated despite the fact that, according to the professor:
"… 55% of the [remaining] detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies"95
This is because the Bush administration introduced the Military Commissions Act in 2006 which effectively removes a prisoners right to habeas corpus if they are determined to be an 'enemy combatant'. Habeas Corpus is a long standing, hard fought for right in common law countries for a prisoner to be brought before a court so that the court can determine whether the captor has lawful authority to hold that person. If not the prisoner should be set free. Clearly, in the 21st century, if the law becomes troublesome or starts to make a government look bad, they can simply change it, no matter how unconstitutional or draconian the resulting legislation is. In The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, author Haynes Johnson compares the abuses suffered by suspected terrorists in high security U.S. prisons in the wake of 9/11 to the excesses of the McCarthy era.96 I would suggest that they are actually much worse.
Only in America? Hardly. After 9/11, the British government rushed through emergency legislation giving them new powers to deal with suspected 'terrorists' despite having passed permanent counter-terrorism legislation only a year earlier in the shape of the Terrorism Act 2000. These included powers of internment without trial if suspects could not be deported to another country without breaching British human rights legislation i.e.: if there was a chance they may be tortured or executed. The first time these powers were executed the House of Lords ruled it to be a breach of the Human Rights Act 1998. The later Prevention of Terrorism Act, introduced in February 2005, sought to get round this and is essentially a very British take on the Patriot act.97 It enables the government to place control orders on a 'terrorist' suspect, without arrest or charge, which include placing them under house arrest, restricting their access to mobile telephones and the internet and requiring that visitors be named in advance so that they may be vetted by MI5, as well as electronic tagging and the imposing of curfews.98
The British government claims that these measures are necessary in light of the 'unprecedented' level of the 'terrorist' threat, although it's worth noting that none of this legislation managed to stop the London bombings of July 2005. UK Anti-terrorism laws have also been abused on a number of occasions. According to the Daily Telegraph:
"…in the financial year after the Terrorism Act 2000 came into force there were 8,500 stops and searches under the Act. The following year, there were 21,500 and for the financial year 2003-04 there were 29,407."99
Only a handful of these resulted in arrests for 'terrorism-related' offences. For example, in October 2005 a 34 year old woman named Sally Cameron was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and held in police custody for four hours for walking on a cycle path in Dundee's harbour area having been deemed a security threat by a somewhat overzealous harbour master.100 UK Anti-terrorism laws have also been used to prevent legitimate peaceful protest as in the case of a small group protesting at an arms fair in London's Docklands in 2003 and the coach load of elderly veterans of 1960s ban-the-bomb marches on their way to protest at the use of RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire by American B-52 bombers during the Iraq war, also in 2003. One of the alleged 'terrorists' stopped and searched on this occasion was an 11 year old girl.101 However, the most ominous case of misuse of anti-terror laws has to be that of Walter Wolfgang who dared to heckle Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the Labour Party's 2005 conference in Brighton. The 82 year old war veteran and life long Labour Party member was physically removed from his seat, ejected from the building and subsequently arrested under the Terrorism Act of 2000 when he tried to get back in. The current anti-terror legislation allows for the detention without charge of alleged dangerous radicals like Mr Wolfgang for up to twenty-eight days. As I write, the British government is pushing for ninety.102
There can be no doubt that the events of 9/11 led to an opportunistic tightening of British and American national security that has significantly reduced the freedoms and civil liberties of the very people that it is supposedly designed to protect. My argument here is that national security in this sense has little to do with the protection of citizens from perceived threats from actual terrorists and quite a lot more to do with the protection of governments from perceived threats from their citizens. On Saturday 15th February 2003, in the largest anti-war demonstration of all time, 20 million people took to the streets simultaneously around the globe to protest at the imminent Iraq war. On the Tuesday prior to this protest, the British government deployed British army tanks and armed troops at Heathrow airport as a visible sign of the 'War on Terror' that was being criminally used to justify the illegal invasion. Given the overwhelming opposition to the invasion in the UK at that time, it seems highly unlikely that there was any genuine terrorist threat. Even if there was, surely anti-terror policing is meant to be covert. It was Newsnight and CNN gold and the closest thing I've ever seen to the true face of our political elite. Many people were almost certainly panicked into falling in line with the government's plan for war and boycotting the demonstration upon seeing tanks at Heathrow. For me, this begs the questions: Whom exactly is the 'War on Terror' being fought against and to what end?
3.4: The Lessons of History
It is clear from all of the above that the Bush administration and it's allies have managed to strike a harmonious balance between the neo-liberal economic philosophy of the likes of David Rockefeller and the neo-conservative defence strategy of the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney. Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco in Spain, Suharto in Indonesia and Pinochet in Chile, political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt found each regime had fourteen key elements in common which I have reproduced in Appendix A. Each of the regimes Dr. Britt studied contained elements of all fourteen characteristics to greater or lesser degrees, not necessarily in equal measure. As already stated, but worth reiterating, an absolute definition of fascism is nigh on impossible and it would be misleading to suggest that any new fascist regime must exhibit all fourteen characteristics to qualify. In my opinion, every single one of these fourteen characteristics of fascism can, to some degree or another, be legitimately levelled at the current U.S. administration and it's allies. The weakest link here is rampant sexism, simply because of the presence of Condoleeza Rice and a handful of other female politicians, but even if Hilary Clinton became President and the other thirteen factors still applied, it would hardly make them any less valid. I firmly believe that ignoring these warning signs could be catastrophic for the future of the human race.
In his book 'The End of History and the Last Man', PNAC member and member of George W. Bush's 'Council on Bioethics' Francis Fukyama declared that History, "…understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary process, when taking into account the experience of all peoples in all times",103 had ended. He, like Marx before him, believed that the evolution of human societies was not open-ended, but would end when humankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. This doesn't mean an end to life as we know it, merely:
"…that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled."104
For Marx this final state is communism. For Fukyama it is capitalism, although he likes to call it 'liberal democracy'. In 1992, I suspect it all sounded quite feasible but I defy anybody to stand by such a claim in light of the last ten years. The supposedly ultimate society that Fukyama would have us shackled to for all eternity is one that clearly only satisfies the deepest and most fundamental longings of a superrich, small minded, militarily inclined and increasingly fascistic power elite. In my opinion, their longings are more mental than fundamental and I suspect they are not particularly deep. It is my contention that any further loss of civil liberties in supposedly civilised nations under the guise of anti-terror legislation, coupled with widespread apathy and ignorance of the real dangers of such a society, will begin an irreversible global slide into a nightmarish, largely unforeseen end of history state: the inescapable abyss of fascism.
CONCLUSION
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. Ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power - that in its essence is fascism." - Franklin D. Roosevelt105
By any reasoned analysis, the human race as a whole is facing a number of unprecedented and potentially fatal crises in the 21st century. Climate change, political and economic instability, 'terrorism' of all forms and the spectre of nuclear, chemical or biological warfare are the most commonly cited but I believe these are both secondary to, and products of, a much greater crisis. To my mind, the most significant crisis we face as a species is a cultural crisis of conscience. We can forlornly declare that people always get the government they deserve and resign ourselves to the potentially lethal fallout of neo-con led corporate globalisation i.e.: war for resources, increased 'terrorism', the subsequent erosion of civil liberties and the potential slide into fascism that all of this represents, or we can summon up the self respect, courage and determination of our most evolved and forward-thinking forefathers, the likes of Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Che Guevara, and resist in numbers. Essentially, we can succumb to what is arguably the end of civilisation as we know it or we can strive to overcome it for the sake of our children and our children's children. It ought to be a simple choice. Sadly, in this day and age it is not.
In the west, and increasingly all over the world as 'globalisation' marches on, poor people put on a brave face while they struggle to co-exist in a high tech, fast paced, cut throat, kill or be killed, utterly computer dependent age fuelled by consumerism, chronic greed and blinkered self interest. The daily media bombardment of culture industry sponsored irrelevances, advertising as propaganda and 'terrorist' threats does an efficient job of keeping us simultaneously looked after, distracted and fearful for our future. The lowest common denominator reduction of popular culture, music, television, radio, cinema and every aspect of our culture serves to stifle any widespread intellectual discourse or reflection upon the state we're in. As a result of these things, the overwhelming majority of the population of the planet live either in not particularly blissful ignorance, abject denial or outright self-confessed apathy, inadvertently funding and promulgating a corrupt system through taxation and consumption. The truth is that an alarming proportion of the 'civilised' world would rather spend their time and money texting 'Big Brother' presenters their opinions on the latest house 'developments' and downloading ringtones and pornography to their mobile phones than engaging in anything that could be considered living. If this is the sorry truth about the un-represented majority for whom one might seek to make a difference, it begs the question: why bother?
It could be argued that there is no place for the likes of me in this day and age: a person so disgusted by the injustices, corruption and seemingly inescapable apathy of the world around me that I'm compelled to challenge it and rally against it on a daily basis, regularly offending less morally inclined people and gradually isolating myself from the bulk of society. It could be argued that a wiser thing to do would be to stop caring, keep my head down and shuffle through the day to day never realising my full potential until I exit this mortal coil having achieved precisely nothing for myself or my fellow man. The answer to the question 'why bother?' is self evident and contained in this paragraph. In my humble opinion, it ought to be the duty of every educated, politically and morally developed citizen on earth to educate, politicise and raise awareness of the issues contained in this body of work. It does not matter if it's too late or if the malaise has become self fulfilling and organic. It does not matter if the majority of the population would neither know nor care if they woke up and found themselves the victims of a fully-fledged, bonafide fascist regime. To ignore or wish away the very serious threat that proto-fascists like Donald Rumsfeld pose to the most basic civil rights of humankind as a whole is to condemn it to certain incarceration. Ignorance is lamentable and excusable, denial and avoidance is not, it is pitiful and unforgivable.
In order for such a tiny, fascistic percentage of the population to succeed in this betrayal of the rest of us, it is essential that we believe in globalisation as a force for the good of all when it patently is not. However, corporately owned and run media organisations with a vested interest in dictating the terms on which reality is delivered to the populous tell us otherwise. The illusion of security that media managed globalisation presents coupled with the perpetual spectre of 'terrorism' as it's diametrically opposed natural offspring has the capacity to totally subjugate and coerce the masses into blind compliance with everything their governments carry out supposedly in their name, including the removal of their civil liberties, when really it is all done in the name of power and commerce. Indeed, the complicity of the tax paying, ever-consuming masses and their collusion via their role in the economy and occasional cosmetic elections is essential in terms of perpetuating the mythology necessary for the proto-fascists to succeed. The subtle aestheticisation of world politics and economic affairs serves to further reinforce the perceived benign nature of the ideologies that drive them while the likes of Amy Winehouse Inc. and Spice Girls Inc. do a sterling job of keeping everyone suitably distracted and 'entertained'.
We in the west do not live in a brazen dictatorship such as Stalin's where our every thought and action must be in tune with the ruling minority on pain of death. We do however live in a society where our every movement has the potential to be monitored via third generation mobile phones, CCTV cameras, chip and pin cash and credit cards and Oyster style travel cards. Britain is a society where more people vote in the not particularly ironically named Big Brother than do in the general election. If Britain were to become a fully-fledged fascist regime, the majority probably wouldn't notice and the rest of us would be in Belmarsh or Room 101 before we even got as far as the local cornershop. In America, the situation is even worse. Anybody who has been paying attention for the last ten years and with a basic understanding of liberal economics and the politics of oil knows that the only people so far to benefit directly from 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the neo-conservatives within the George W. Bush administration. As a result of their 'War on Terror,' ordinary innocent civilians around the world are being subjected to the passing of ever more totalitarian laws that have the potential to criminalise them if they dare to lay claim to the basic democratic human rights of peaceful protest and free speech.
In George Orwell's book 1984 the entire population of the planet lives in fear of invisible 'terrorist' enemies that can never be defeated on account of the fact that they are either non-existent or purposely created to justify a wholesale removal of their civil liberties. Anyone suspected of having a subversive thought is labelled a 'terrorist' and dealt with accordingly. Consequently, in an effort to demonstrate loyalty to the state, everybody spies on everybody else and reports all suspected thought crime to the thought police. If the thought police come for you, you simply cease to exist. You are incarcerated indefinitely with no charges bought and no right to any kind of trial. You are abused, tortured and utterly broken purely for the fulfilment of the states addiction to power for power's sake. You may be released pending execution as an example to everybody else, you may not be. Either way, you might as well be dead already. Meanwhile, the population carries on regardless, locked into a constant act and superficial routine, unable ever to reveal their true thoughts or selves for fear of what might happen. If this doesn't sound familiar, it should.
We live in a highly paranoid age. Everyone is frightened of something or someone, whether it's crime, global warming, terrorists, students, the 'chavs', the poor, the gays, the blacks, the neo-cons or whatever. The government and media perpetuate this of course. Any objective viewing of the mainstream evening news with its emphasis either on the latest localised atrocities (in resigned, worried tones) or on far away conflicts and disasters (in thoughtful but detached, matter of fact tones) reveals this to be true. Simultaneously, the overly venerated icons of unavoidable celebrity we endure daily and our dubious leaders with their hypocrisy and double standards combine to batter even the most compassionate and evolved of us into submission to the myth that the world has gone to the wall and the inevitable apathy that comes with it. The corporate wheels keep turning, the advert breaks get longer and more hypnotic, the Dick Cheney's and David Rockefeller's of this world keep lining their pockets and the war machine rolls on while no-one really bats an eyelid. Terence Blacker never knew how right he was: the culture is now so enslaved to the image of things, their glossy surface, that even those who should know better fall for the illusion. Where does all this lead? Time will tell, but don't be surprised if it begins with an F. The real question is this: what are we going to do about it?
FOOTNOTES
1 www.quotationspage.com - accessed 02/01/08
2 www.quotationspage.com - accessed 02/01/08
3 www.quotationspage.com - accessed 02/01/08
4 There is evidence to suggest that primitive forms of capitalism existed as far back as the middle ages but it is generally accepted that it didn't become an institutional phenomena as such until somewhere between the 16th and 19th centuries when it began to replace the hierarchical, monarchy-orientated system of feudalism as the social and economic norm - Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2006 - accessed 02/01/08
5 Understanding Principles of Politics and the State - John Schrems, PageFree Publishing, 2004.
6 The Planned Economies and International Economic Organizations - Jozef M von Brabant, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
7 The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx, 1848 - www.gutenberg.org - accessed 05/01/08
8 Das Kapital - Karl Marx, 1867 - www.gutenberg.org - accessed 05/01/08
9 Marx - Terry Eagleton, Phoenix, 1997.
10 A worldwide recession that lasted from 1929 to 1933.
11 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - Keynes, John Maynard, London: Macmillan, 1936.
12 In other words, a healthy capitalist economy should allow just enough redistribution of wealth to benefit the system as a whole, regardless of any humanitarian concerns, and maintain the degree of inequality necessary in order for the system to survive.
13 www.polsci.ucsb.edu/faculty/cohen/inpress/bretton.html - accessed 02/01/08
14 This is indeed where the common phrase originates.
15 This went on to become the World Bank.
16 Neo-liberalism is the name given to the economic philosophy that came to the fore following the collapse of Bretton Woods and isn't to be confused with any other form of liberalism as it relates specifically to the world of economics.
17 Pinochet's military coup was famously assisted by the CIA and Chile was largely seen by the then U.S. administration as an experiment in neoliberal economics. Pinochet then went on to preside over a largely totalitarian regime with an appropriately lamentable human rights record.
18 "State Decay and Democratic Decadence in Latin America" - Atilio A Boron from Global Capitalism vs. Democracy - Merlin Press, 1999.
19 Ibid (as previous footnote)
20 A Brief History of Neoliberalism - David Harvey, Oxford University Press 2005
21 Ibid
22 THE "PROUD INTERNATIONALIST": The Globalist Vision of David Rockefeller- Will Banyan, 2006 (www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/third_section/The_Proud_Internationalist_2006.pdf)
23 "A life of Rockefeller achievement" - David Chaffee, The Washington Times, January 10, 2003
24 THE "PROUD INTERNATIONALIST": The Globalist Vision of David Rockefeller- Will Banyan, 2006 (www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/third_section/The_Proud_Internationalist_2006.pdf)
25 Many conspiracy theorists, as well as 2008 presidential candidates Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter, assert that the SPP paves the way for a North American Union, much like the European Union, that will effectively revoke the independence of the United States and render the constitution, and indeed the dollar, obsolete in favour of a new trilateral constitution and a new currency: the Amero. Some believe this is evidence of a push towards a 'One World Government' by the 'New World Order'.
26 "Globalisation and 'The Executive Committee': Reflections on the Contemporary Capitalist State" - Konstantinos Tsouklalas from Global Capitalism vs. Democracy - Merlin Press, 1999.
27 Ibid
28 "Globalisation, Class and the Question of Democracy" - Joachim Hirsch from Global Capitalism vs. Democracy - Merlin Press, 1999.
29 "State Decay and Democratic Decadence in Latin America" - Atilio A Boron from Global Capitalism vs. Democracy - Merlin Press, 1999.
30 www.maketradefair.org - accessed 02/01/08
31 In 2006, Fair Trade certified sales amounted to approximately $2.3 billion worldwide, a 41% year-to-year increase. This represents less than one hundredth of a percentage point of world trade in physical merchandise but fair trade products still generally account for 0.5 - 5% of all sales in their product categories in Europe and North America. In October 2006, over 1.5 million disadvantaged producers worldwide were directly benefiting from fair trade while an additional 5 million benefited from fair trade funded infrastructure and community development projects - Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (2007). www.fairtrade.net - accessed 02/01/08
32 www.quotationspage.com
33 "Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered" - Susan Buck-Morss, October, Vol. 62., The MIT Press, 1992
34 Ibid
35 Ibid
36 By virtue of the fact that it is still .. four years, it presumably enjoys a reasonable amount of viewers as a result. Whether any of them are at all politicised by this approach is debatable. I would suggest that a momentary sensation of inclusion is all that can realistically be hoped for in such cases.
37 "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" - Illuminations, Walter Benjamin, Shrocken Books, 1969
38 Ibid
39 http://www.classiccat.net/shostakovich_d/biography.htm - accessed 25/01/08
40 Add Value to Contents: The Valorisation of Culture Today - Esther Leslie (www.framework.fi/6_2007/locating/artikkelit/leslie.html - accessed 25/01/08)
41 Ibid
42 Dialectic of Enlightenment - T. Adorno& M Horkheimer, Stanford University Press, 2002
43 "Culture Industry Reconsidered" - New German Critique, No. 6, Fall 1975 (http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/SWA/Culture_industry_reconsidered.shtml - accessed 23/01/08)
44 Ibid
45 Ibid
46 Ibid
47 "Add Value to Contents: The Valorisation of Culture Today" - Esther Leslie (www.framework.fi/6_2007/locating/artikkelit/leslie.html - accessed 25/01/08)
48 http://www.tns-mi.com/news/01082007.htm - accessed 21/01/08
49 http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid - accessed 21/01/08
50 Dialectic of Enlightenment - T. Adorno& M Horkheimer, Stanford University Press, 2002
51 News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality (Communication, Media, and Politics) - Karen S. Johnson-Cartee, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2004
52 Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler, 1923
53 Dialectic of Enlightenment - T. Adorno & M Horkheimer, Stanford University Press, 2002
54 Ibid
55 Ibid
56 www.quotationspage.com
57 Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear such accusations from quarters that are arguably fascistic themselves. Neo-con journalist Jonah Goldberg's book 'Liberal Fascism' attempts to re-write history by declaring that because much of the politics of Hitler and Mussolini were essentially socialist, fascism is actually the ideological domain of liberals - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/books/review/Oshinsky-t.html
58 For example, Italian fascism considered individuals utterly subordinate to the state whereas Nazi fascism considered individuals and the state to be utterly subordinate to the master race - Key Ideas in Politics, Moyra Grant, Nelson Thomas, 2003
59 The Anatomy of Fascism - Robert O. Paxton , Knopf Publishing Group, 2005
60 www.quotationspage.com - accessed 02/01/08
61 www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Fascism.html - accessed 02/01/08
62 The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality? David Baker, New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2, June 2006.
63 Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler, 1923
64 www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/knacht.htm - accessed 10/01/08
65 A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States Vol. 3. - Bernard K Johnpoll, Greenwood Press, 1994
66 Communism and National Security: The Menace Emerges - Ellen Schrecker (www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/mccarthy/schreker1.htm - accessed 10/01/08)
67 Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective - Richard M. Fried, Oxford University Press, 1990
68 Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America - Ellen Schrecker, Brown Little, 1998
69 McCarthyism, The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History - Albert Fried, Oxford University Press, 1997
70 Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America - Ellen Schrecker, Brown Little, 1998
71 The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate -Robert Griffith, University of Massachusetts Press, 1970
72 Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America - Ellen Schrecker, Brown Little, 1998
73 Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities - John D'Emilio, University of Chicago Press; 2nd Edition, 1998
74 Communism and National Security: The Menace Emerges - Ellen Schrecker
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/mccarthy/schreker1.htm - accessed 02/01/08
75 www.newamericancentury.org - accessed 10/01/08
76 Ibid
77 www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm - accessed 10/01/08
78 "Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election" - Julian Borger in the Guardian Unlimited, 6th June 2001
79 www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
80 Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and The Evidence of History -Colin S Gray, London, Frank Cass, 2004
81 www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
82 The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie - www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050523112738404 - accessed 10/01/08
83 Prior to 9/11 the Taliban in Afghanistan had refused to safeguard the construction of an American pipeline to pump natural gas from the Caspian Sea; Iraq produces more than half of the world's oil and has long been considered a U.S. strategic and territorial outpost due to it's location and its abundance of oil - The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, Michael Moore, Penguin, 2002.
84 A famous example of a 'false flag' is the U.S. and British-orchestrated Operation Ajax of 1953 against the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. Information regarding the CIA-sponsored coup d'etat has been largely declassified and is available in the CIA archives - https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no2/article10.html - accessed 02/02/08
85 Sceptics on all sides should watch the film Loose Change: Final Cut and make up their own minds here: http://www.joiningthedots.tv
86 www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/patriotact - accessed 05/01/08
87 American Civil Liberties Union website - www.aclu.org/safefree/general/17244res20040415.html - accessed 05/01/08
88 American Civil Liberties Union website - www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/17343res20031114.html - accessed 05/01/08
89 USA PATRIOT Act (U.S. H.R. 3162, Public Law 107-56), Title VIII, Sec. 802.
90 American Civil Liberties Union website - www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18623prs20040927.html
91 www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/patriotact - accessed 05/01/08
92 "The New McCarthyism: Repeating History in the War on Terrorism" - David D. Cole, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Vol. 38 (no. 1), Harvard Law School, 2003 (http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/vol38_1/cole.php - accessed 05/01/08)
93 A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data - Mark Den beaux - http://law.shu.edu/aaafinal.pdf - accessed 05/01/08
94 Ibid
95 Ibid
96 The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism - Haynes Johnson, Harcourt, 2005
97 It has also been compared to South Africa's apartheid-era Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 in it's power to detain terrorist suspects.
98 Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 - www.statewatch.org/news/2005/mar/uk-pta-2005.pdf - accessed 05/01/08
99 "The police must end their abuse of anti-terror legislation" -www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/10/03/do0304.xml - accessed 05/01/08
100 "Two wheels: good. Two legs: terrorist suspect" - www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1829289,00.html
101 "The police must end their abuse of anti-terror legislation" - www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/10/03/do0304.xml - accessed 05/01/08
102 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4326364.stm - accessed 05/01/08
103 The End of History - Francis Fukyama, Penguin, 1992
104 Ibid
105 www.quotationspage.com
APPENDIX A
Dr.Lawrence Britt's 14 Characteristics of Fascism
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorised.
5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship in war time is common.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common, even when the tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labour Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labour is the only real threat to a fascist government, labour unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Often elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations typically use judiciaries to manipulate elections.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS:
The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism - Haynes Johnson, Harcourt, 2005
The Anatomy of Fascism - Robert O. Paxton , Knopf Publishing Group, 2005
Animal Farm - George Orwell, Longman, 1989
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley, Perrenial Classics, 1998
A Brief History of Neo-liberalism - David Harvey, Oxford University Press 2005
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx, 1848 - www.gutenberg.org
Das Kapital - Karl Marx, 1867 - www.gutenberg.org
Dialectic of Enlightenment - T. Adorno & M Horkheimer, Stanford University Press, 2002
A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States Vol. 3. - Bernard K Johnpoll, Greenwood Press, 1994
The End of History - Francis Fukyama, Penguin, 1992
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - John Maynard Keynes, London: Macmillan, 1936.
Global Capitalism vs Democracy - Ed. Leo Panitch & Colin Leys, Merlin Press, 1999
Key Ideas in Politics - Moyra Grant, Nelson Thomas, 2003
Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America - Ellen Schrecker, Brown Little, 1998
Marx - Terry Eagleton, Phoenix, 1997.
McCarthyism, The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History - Albert Fried, Oxford University Press, 1997
News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality (Communication, Media, and Politics) - Karen S. Johnson-Cartee, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2004
Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective - Richard M. Fried, Oxford University Press, 1990
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell, Penguin,1949
The Planned Economies and International Economic Organizations - Jozef M von Brabant, Cambridge University Press, 1991
The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate - Robert Griffith, University of Massachusetts Press, 1970
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities - John D'Emilio, University of Chicago Press, 1998
Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and The Evidence of History - Colin S Gray, Frank Cass, 2004
Understanding Principles of Politics and the State - John Schrems, Page Free Publishing, 2004
The Anatomy of Fascism - Robert O. Paxton , Knopf Publishing Group, 2005
Animal Farm - George Orwell, Longman, 1989
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley, Perrenial Classics, 1998
A Brief History of Neo-liberalism - David Harvey, Oxford University Press 2005
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx, 1848 - www.gutenberg.org
Das Kapital - Karl Marx, 1867 - www.gutenberg.org
Dialectic of Enlightenment - T. Adorno & M Horkheimer, Stanford University Press, 2002
A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States Vol. 3. - Bernard K Johnpoll, Greenwood Press, 1994
The End of History - Francis Fukyama, Penguin, 1992
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - John Maynard Keynes, London: Macmillan, 1936.
Global Capitalism vs Democracy - Ed. Leo Panitch & Colin Leys, Merlin Press, 1999
Key Ideas in Politics - Moyra Grant, Nelson Thomas, 2003
Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America - Ellen Schrecker, Brown Little, 1998
Marx - Terry Eagleton, Phoenix, 1997.
McCarthyism, The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History - Albert Fried, Oxford University Press, 1997
News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality (Communication, Media, and Politics) - Karen S. Johnson-Cartee, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2004
Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective - Richard M. Fried, Oxford University Press, 1990
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell, Penguin,1949
The Planned Economies and International Economic Organizations - Jozef M von Brabant, Cambridge University Press, 1991
The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate - Robert Griffith, University of Massachusetts Press, 1970
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities - John D'Emilio, University of Chicago Press, 1998
Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and The Evidence of History - Colin S Gray, Frank Cass, 2004
Understanding Principles of Politics and the State - John Schrems, Page Free Publishing, 2004
ARTICLES / ESSAYS / REPORTS:
The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie - Dr. David Ray Griffin
Add Value to Contents: The Valorisation of Culture Today - Esther Leslie
Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered - Susan Buck-Morss (October, Vol. 62., The MIT Press, 1992)
Communism and National Security: The Menace Emerges - Ellen Schrecker
Culture Industry Reconsidered - T.Adorno (New German Critique, No. 6, 1975)
Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - Julian Borger (The Guardian, 6/6/2001)
A Life of Rockefeller Achievement - David Chaffee (The Washington Times, 10/01/2003)
The New McCarthyism: Repeating History in the War on Terrorism - David D. Cole (Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Vol. 38 - Harvard Law School, 2003)
Paul believes in threat of North American superhighway - Steven Braun (Los Angeles Times, 30/11/2007)
The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality? - David Baker (New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2, June 2006)
A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data - Mark Denbeaux
THE PROUD INTERNATIONALIST: The Globalist Vision of David Rockefeller- Will Banyan
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Walter Benjamin (Illuminations, Shrocken Books, 1969)
Add Value to Contents: The Valorisation of Culture Today - Esther Leslie
Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered - Susan Buck-Morss (October, Vol. 62., The MIT Press, 1992)
Communism and National Security: The Menace Emerges - Ellen Schrecker
Culture Industry Reconsidered - T.Adorno (New German Critique, No. 6, 1975)
Jeb Bush blamed for unfair Florida election - Julian Borger (The Guardian, 6/6/2001)
A Life of Rockefeller Achievement - David Chaffee (The Washington Times, 10/01/2003)
The New McCarthyism: Repeating History in the War on Terrorism - David D. Cole (Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Vol. 38 - Harvard Law School, 2003)
Paul believes in threat of North American superhighway - Steven Braun (Los Angeles Times, 30/11/2007)
The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality? - David Baker (New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2, June 2006)
A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data - Mark Denbeaux
THE PROUD INTERNATIONALIST: The Globalist Vision of David Rockefeller- Will Banyan
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Walter Benjamin (Illuminations, Shrocken Books, 1969)
WEBSITES:
www.911truth.org
www.aclu.org
www.classiccat.net
www.britannica.com
www.fairtrade.net
www.gutenberg.org
www.historyplace.com
www.law.shu.edu
www.maketradefair.org
www.newamericancentury.org
www.news.bbc.co.uk
www.polsci.ucsb.edu
www.quotationspage.com
www.secularhumanism.org
www.sourcewatch.org
www.statewatch.org
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.timesonline.co.uk
www.thirdworldtraveler.com
www.tns-mi.com
www.whitehouse.gov
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