The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.
“We are ruled not by two parties but one party,” Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, told me. “It is the party of money and war. Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded.”
The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die.
The unraveling of America mirrors the unraveling of Yugoslavia. The Balkan war was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia. The petty criminals and goons who took power harnessed the anger and despair of the unemployed and the desperate. They singled out convenient scapegoats from ethnic Croats to Muslims to Albanians to Gypsies. They set in motion movements that unleashed a feeding frenzy leading to war and self-immolation. There is little difference between the ludicrous would-be poet Radovan Karadzic, who was a figure of ridicule in Sarajevo before the war, and the moronic Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. There is little difference between the Oath Keepers and the Serbian militias. We can laugh at these people, but they are not the fools. We are.
The longer we appeal to the Democrats, who are servants of corporate interests, the more stupid and ineffectual we become. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, and they are right. Only 25 percent of those polled said the government can be trusted to protect the interests of the American people. If we do not embrace this outrage and distrust as our own it will be expressed through a terrifying right-wing backlash.
“It is time for us to stop talking about right and left,” McKinney told me. “The old political paradigm that serves the interests of the people who put us in this predicament will not be the paradigm that gets us out of this. I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it came from the Supreme Court. Our problem is a problem of governance. I am willing to reach across traditional barriers that have been skillfully constructed by people who benefit from the way the system is organized.”
We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy, to a demand for quality and affordable public education, to a concern for the jobs of the working class. And the hatred expressed within right-wing movements for the college-educated elite, who created or at least did nothing to halt the financial debacle, is not misplaced. Our educated elite, wallowing in self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique activism of political correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their jobs. The shouting of racist and bigoted words at black and gay members of Congress, the spitting on a black member of the House, the tossing of bricks through the windows of legislators’ offices, are part of the language of rebellion. It is as much a revolt against the educated elite as it is against the government. The blame lies with us. We created the monster.
When someone like Palin posts a map with cross hairs on the districts of Democrats, when she says “Don’t Retreat, Instead-RELOAD!” there are desperate people cleaning their weapons who listen. When Christian fascists stand in the pulpits of megachurches and denounce Barack Obama as the Antichrist, there are messianic believers who listen. When a Republican lawmaker shouts “baby killer” at Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, there are violent extremists who see the mission of saving the unborn as a sacred duty. They have little left to lose. We made sure of that. And the violence they inflict is an expression of the violence they endure.
These movements are not yet full-blown fascist movements. They do not openly call for the extermination of ethnic or religious groups. They do not openly advocate violence. But, as I was told by Fritz Stern, a scholar of fascism who has written about the origins of Nazism, “In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented.” It is the yearning that we now see, and it is dangerous. If we do not immediately reincorporate the unemployed and the poor back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American society will become a full-blown conflagration.
Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood.
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Commentary: has anybody noticed that Chris Hedges has been on a spree of very good articles recently? If not, goggle his recent stuff, there is a lot of very insightful pieces there.
While I have some disagreements about his characterization of the causes of war in the former Yugoslavia, I do agree with him that the potential for Fascism in the USA is huge and frightening. I would even go further and argue that while the US population might have a potential for Fascism, the regime in Washington and the elite which runs the USA is *already* clearly Fascist. I have written several articles about the growth of Fascism in the USA (Rudy Guiliani – the face of American Fascism, When is the use of the ‘F’ word appropriate?, The only thing which can prevent a Fascist President in 2008) and I would say that all my worst fears soon became true: Obama and his Democracts are Fascists is the worst sense of the word and I don’t see *any* reason to hope in the foreseeable future.
So yes, combine a collapsing economy, militarism run amok, nationalist and outright xenophobic feelings on the rise, a totally crushed labor movement and, worse, a totally crushed labor class, and you get a lot of unreleased anger which can very easily be channelled into exactly the kind of ‘Imperial’ ideology which both factions of the Republicrat Party have been promoting since WWII.
It is true that there are millions of Americans out there who hate Washington and many of them fully understand that things are only going to get worse. The frightening thing is that these Americans are the biggest danger for the elites who have taken over the country. This, in turn, means that it is quite possible that martial law might be introduced in the country under some ‘patriotically pious’ pretext. More cops, more jails, more prisons, the National Guard under Federal authority, FEMA camps, ICE raids, DEA raids, FBI raids, Blackwater, a USNORTHCOM, Presidential authority to suspend the Constitution in a national crisis, the CIA and NSA on an orgy of snooping targeting Americans, the iron grip control of the press by Jewish and Christian Zionists, the PATRIOT act and all the rest of it are only more dots connecting a line which can only be called Fascism.
Sooner or later, they will be arresting and jailing people for ‘crimethink’. Of course, there are already political prisoners in the USA, but their number will shoot through the roof.
The Saker
If there was a Labor, Libertarian or Green movement with a candidate who had a realistic shot at being elected president then the establishment would play all manner of dirty tricks including rigging the election. If a Labor president got elected I can well imagine a seven days in May scenario. Didn’t the guy in Gangs of New York say you can always bribe half of the poor to murder the other half?
But as things stand they don’t need to go fascist. Better to remain a formal democracy with a democratic process that is ever less meaningful. So long as campaigns are won by whoever has most money to buy advertising as so long as the Republicrat party monopolises power the elite can keep the sheeple blaming liberals or conservatives for their problems when on all the crucial issues the lib cons are one and the same.
Chris Hedges is too preoccupied with his hatred of nativists and right wing populists. Even though he can quote Cynthia McKinney at length, frankly, I don’t think he gets it. He still thinks of right wing populists as either the enemy or as latent enemies.
The far right wing which is populated by the likes of Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and David Duke actually despises the likes of Sarah Palin or Rudy Giuliani. They are not a threat to the stability or prosperity of this country. In fact their critique of the ruling elites is not that different from what Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney would say. It is only their solutions that differ.
The truth is that it is only the center right who despise Muslims, not the far right. That’s why you’ll see Jewish neocon puplications like FrontPage, AmericanThinker,Breitbart, DrudgeReport,or PAjamas Media trashing Muslims. On the other hand, David Duke was the keynote speaker at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust Revisionist conference. Ahmadinejad made a personal video for the right-wing “No Wars for Israel” conference. You can see what Willis Carto’s paper “American Free Press” says about Sarah Palin here:Sarah Palin.
Worst of all, Hedges falls victim to the usual Zionist/internationalist propopaganda that equates fascism with militarism. Fascism is about forming a government that advances the interests of its people. It works closely with big corporate power and regulates heavily, but it does not subordinate the interests of the people to that of elite business and financial class. Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Nasser, and a whole host of Japanese governments have been fascist, even if they do not call themselves that. What is the much touted “Asian economic model” if not a thinly disguised fascist economic model? Why do you think Nick Griffin and Tyndall approached Muammar Qaddafi in search of financing and support for the UK’s National Front in the 1980’s. Was it because they were true Islamphobes? Of course not. That’s an issue they exploit now, but it is not who they are.
Fascism does not necessarily imply soldiers goose stepping down your street, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder. If anything the internationalist /globalist regime which holds sway in America presently is at least as militaristic and violent as any fascist regime would be. Even in America the foremost fascist thinker of the early 20th century, Dennis Laurence, was a man of mixed race, much like Obama himself.
Take a look at the video on this page and you’ll see that the American far right has in fact praised Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as true populists who advance the interests of their people and who stand up to the “New World Order”, a shorthand moniker they have given to the globalist/internationalist class which is largely dominated by transnational Jewish financial oligarchy.
These people may be crazy and dangerous to a dyed-in-wool liberal like Hedges, but they are no threat to Cynthia McKinney. Even the son of George, Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, endorsed Cynthia McKinney’s candidacy.
It’s about time Chris Hedges wakes up to the fact that nativists are not the threat he imagines them to be. In fact they may even be part of the solution.
@Nationalist: What exactly are you calling a “nativist”? This is a new category for me. Could you please explain what you mean by that?
Thanks!
A nativist would be anyone who believes that the political class should promote the intersts of the majority population. Lega Nord, BNP, Front National, Vlaams Belang are but a few examples. In America David Duke and Pat Buchanan come to mind as a few examples.
There are other forms of nationalism as well. You can read about Orthodox nationalism in eastern Europe here. Tom Sunic has written extensively about pan-European nationalism. You can read his stuff here or here. Of course there is also Arthur Kemp.
The problem with Chris Hedges is that he only addresses or names the half of the problem by talking about the excesses of unrestrained capitalism. This is a big part but corporations are hardly the be-all and end-all of the problem. The Jews who fill the ranks of the media, intelligentsia, and government are perhaps an even greater problem.
Jews are an elite classs who think of themselves as outsiders. They are hostile to the traditions, values, beliefs, and people who form the ethnic majority in the Western world. That is what makes them dangerous.
The other problem is the excessive individualism and the stigmatizing of group identity politics among the majority. Our Jewish oilgarchs like to promote the sort of rampant individualism that alienates people from natural ties to nation, race, or religion. It creates a disorganized and fractured mass of people that can easily be dominated by a firecely ethnocentric group of Jews who possess elite group consciousness and are anything but individualistic in the way they play their power politics. The only way Jews can stay on top is to function as an organized, tightly knit, cohesive minority in a sea of disorganized and atomized individuals who lack a similar group consciousness.
In his own way Chris Hedges is every bit as naive as libertarians. Whereas libertarians reduce every problem to excessive regulation, anti-capitalist liberals reduce every problem to capitalist excesses. It’s really not much different from the Marxists who claim that the failures of Communism can be attributed to not having adhered faithfully enough to the tenets of Marxism. Basically it’s bunk.
America offshored its real economy and welcomed in a flood of third world people because the Jews wanted to see these changes.
Until we can talk candidly about Jewish power and organize to oppose it or at least to promote the ethnic interests of the majority population, we are doomed.
@Nationalist: thanks for the explanations, I had never heard of this expression. It is true that the real, most meanigful divide in the USA is not some left-right (pseudo)-conversative versus (pseudo-liberals) but what one could call “The System” versus those who oppose it. But that should not obsucre the very real differences that, say, McKinney or Nader or Chomsky on one side have with Buchanan or Duke on the other side. While it is true that the Zionists (I don’t believe that there is such thing as “the Jews”) have taken over the USA and while it is true that both of these “anti-System” currents oppose them, I think that they dramatically differ in the values they stand for and the ideas in the name of which they resist.
While I am definitely open to dialog between these to groups, in fact I encourage it, do firmly reject any forms of nationalism, of separating ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’ in particular when the so-called ‘natives’ are the descendents of the genocidal colonial invadors of the *real* natives, the American Indians. Far from thinking that immigrants are the problem for the USA, I have some hopes that, with time, they will become the solution to an anglo population which has been stupidified beyond recovery and whose typical ignorance never ceases to amaze me.
As to Fascism, I believe that it is an evil and arrogant ideology which always serves the few and, just like capitalism, oppresses the many. I have seen Fascism in action in Argentina and I don’t wish that kind of miserey on anybody. First and foremost, though, Fascism is a mindset, and it is one which is deeply repulsive to me.
I hope that my sincere reply does not offend you.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
Nationalist we’ve seen antisemitic “solutions” to capitalism before and we know where it leads – nowhere good.
August Bebel once said that antisemitism is “the socialism of fools” There was plenty of that kind of socialism about in the 1930s, and all too little of the genuine socialism, in the era of the Great Slump and of the mass unemnployment and mass despair of the 30s. The European working class was unable to overthrow capitalism but the hatred of capitalism was intense and widespread enough to force an outlet for itself and focus on a scapegoat.
In Europe this time round antisemitism has become taboo and the nativist scapegoat appears to be Muslims. It is the duty of the left, and all people of goodwill to defend vulnerable minorities and to unite against the real enemy which is callous and irresponsible high finance and corporate rule.
@Nationalist: I fully agree with what Robert said above, but I would like to add to important things here:
a) there are many, many, Jew who are anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist, and anti-imperialist. Shall I really start making a full list here? how then can we speak of “the Jews” as being the enemy? This makes no sense at all to me.
b) every time, and I mean EVERY TIME sombody unfairly blames a Jew for something he/she is did not do, there is a grinning goy SOB who is quietly getting away. Is that good for anybody at all?
No, as Saint Paul wrote, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12)
Cheers!
The Myth of “America”
http://www.truthout.org/1012091