Did somebody say "Totalitarianism"?
I trust that none of my readers (I have readers?) are familiar enough with Slovenian radical philosopher Slavoj Zizek to denounce my invocation of a piece of his work before familiarising myself with it. Well whether Mr. Zizek would agree with me or not, I have detected this morning what I believe to be an extreme "misuse" of the concept of totlitarianism. Actually, the concept of Fascism. Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman have written an article praising Robert F. Kennedy Junior, hopefully predicting that Kennedy may announce his candidacy for Attorney General of New York State, and gushing over his "great book" about the Bush administration's environmental policies and its connections with big business.
If Mokhiber and Weissman are right (and they generally are), Kennedy is very keen on comparing the Bush administration with German Nazism, on the basis that his "American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as '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.' Sound familiar?"
The problem I have with this is that it misses the point. By comparing the Bush adminstration to the Nazi party, Kennedy suggests that the relationship between the state and corporations that he has identified is exceptional. It isn't, it's standard in every "market democracy" and that is what a "market democracy" is. What is exceptional about the Bush Administration is their disregard for the opinion of Americans and the rest of the world and their audacity in the quest for global hegemony.
One interesting element is the messianic rhetoric identified by David Domke in a recent book called "God Willing?" (Pluto Press, 2004). Compare Domke with Kershaw's "Ideology, Propaganda and the Rise of the Nazis" in Peter Stachura's collection "The Nazi Machtergreifung" (Allen & Unwin, 1983) and the rhetorical parallels are interesting. I guess the New Age of Terror or whatever this is gives as much scope for chiliastic rhetoric as the 30s... But things like this are marginal.
The main things that make the Bush administration so dangerous to the USA and to the world are structural and have little to do with who is in power. Some useful discussion can be found in Noam Chomsky's article on the November elections.
Having said all of that, I would probably vote for RFK Jr. given the likely alternatives, but getting people like him in to power gives a less bad expression of a terribly oppressive system, rather than a different kind of system that empowers people. Caricaturing Bush and his cohorts as Nazis only disguises this elementary truth, making the struggle for democracy even harder to win.
If Mokhiber and Weissman are right (and they generally are), Kennedy is very keen on comparing the Bush administration with German Nazism, on the basis that his "American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as '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.' Sound familiar?"
The problem I have with this is that it misses the point. By comparing the Bush adminstration to the Nazi party, Kennedy suggests that the relationship between the state and corporations that he has identified is exceptional. It isn't, it's standard in every "market democracy" and that is what a "market democracy" is. What is exceptional about the Bush Administration is their disregard for the opinion of Americans and the rest of the world and their audacity in the quest for global hegemony.
One interesting element is the messianic rhetoric identified by David Domke in a recent book called "God Willing?" (Pluto Press, 2004). Compare Domke with Kershaw's "Ideology, Propaganda and the Rise of the Nazis" in Peter Stachura's collection "The Nazi Machtergreifung" (Allen & Unwin, 1983) and the rhetorical parallels are interesting. I guess the New Age of Terror or whatever this is gives as much scope for chiliastic rhetoric as the 30s... But things like this are marginal.
The main things that make the Bush administration so dangerous to the USA and to the world are structural and have little to do with who is in power. Some useful discussion can be found in Noam Chomsky's article on the November elections.
Having said all of that, I would probably vote for RFK Jr. given the likely alternatives, but getting people like him in to power gives a less bad expression of a terribly oppressive system, rather than a different kind of system that empowers people. Caricaturing Bush and his cohorts as Nazis only disguises this elementary truth, making the struggle for democracy even harder to win.
posted by UK plc at 1:41 PM
1 Comments:
Posting at 5.41 am? Anyway, not wanting to sound like a broken record, but again I think Thucydides' account of the Delian League provides such striking parallels that this kind of misunderstanding can be avoided. The missing link is the liberal essence of citizenship. The representative nature of governmet went awol in Nazi German (which is not totally to deny popular consent to that regime.) The US could have defeated Bush in the election; the Athenians could have brought down or ostacised their generals and demagogues. But in both cases foreign policy was supported by ideologically based mass support (in both cases, bring freedom and democracy to the world to avoid an oriental - Middle eastern, no less- threat), and in both cases using this pretext to extract tribute (in the Delian League in ships; in the US sphere in the exercise of economic control. In both cases the regime had a mandate renewed by the citizen body. In Nazi Germany, on the other hand, the aim was the creation of some kind of uber-Gemeinschaft, if you will. The program was self-evident, and no longer asked for legitination.
All little to do with totalitarianism, as I understand it. In any case, I would rather see totalitarianism at one extreme of a continuum, not as a digital possibility.
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