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canchewread · 1 year

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Editor’s note: Bookish Bits is a regular literary writing column on Can’t You Read. Featuring both traditional book reviews, and expanded essays, this book blog encompasses all of my writing about the volumes in my extensive library.

Birdwatching With Liberal Antifascism: A Review of “How Fascism Works: the Politics of Us and Them” by Jason Stanley.

If you've been reading my anti-fascist analysis long enough, you'll know that I'm often quite critical of the imagined efforts of "liberal antifascists" in the Pig Empire. This is in part because foundationally, it's awfully hard to be an effective antifascist without also being an anticapitalist. It has also been my experience however that affluent liberals in positions of actual power are often far less interested in fighting fascists, than protecting their own wealth; if forced to choose between the two, they will quickly abandon all pretenses at opposing the fascist creep and side with hierarchal capitalist power to the bitter end. There is after all a reason I refer to this as our collective "Weimar America" period.

How then are we to approach an intelligent, well-read, genuinely sincere liberal antifascist? Even more perplexing, what does a reasonable observer do when this sincere liberal antifascist has produced what amounts to a fantastic birdwatching guide that allows even small children to recognize fascist politics in action, but offers up only vaguely reformist solutions that flatly will not stop the fascist creep? In short, how do we address a book like Jason Stanley's 2018 work "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them?" In the end, I've decided that the only honest way forward is to critique what Stanley's book is, rather than focus on what it is not.

So what is it? Expressed simply, How Fascism Works is a collection and analysis of ten objectively fascist political tactics being used to seize control by contemporary far right, ultranationalist movements across the Pig Empire. A study of both rhetoric and process, the author's work isn't about fascist governments, so much as the political movements that put them in power. Although Stanley does spend some time discussing twentieth-century fascist regimes like the Nazis in Germany, or Mussolini's fascist Italy, his focus is very much in the here and now, along with the type of reactionary, eliminationist politics that empowered leaders such as Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and of course Donald Trump in America.

Just what are these fascist political techniques? Stanley identifies them as a call to a "mythic past," inverted reactionary "propaganda," fervent "anti-intellectualism," the enforcement of "unreality," insistence on the existence of a natural "hierarchy," imagined "victimhood," rigid enforcement of authoritarian "law and order," manipulation of "sexual anxiety," casting internal lifestyle differences in the mold of "Sodom and Gomorrah," and otherized presumptions about work ethic and productive value to society. Although each of these pillars are individually present in all types of reactionary politics across the Pig Empire; taken together, they represent clear evidence of a fascist movement in progress - which is the best time to identify fascism; since once it's no longer a fascist movement, but rather a fascist regime, it's far too late to stop it.

Within the narrow, but still relevant confines of studying fascist political practices on the path to power in a faux liberal democracy, I'd have to say How Fascism Works is a smashing success. Drawing heavily from thinkers like Eco, Adorno, and Arendt, Stanley's analysis highlights not only the practices of fascist politicians, but also why they're so effective in convincing the classic "authoritarian personality" type to surrender all autonomy, and indeed rational thought, to fascist charlatans and strongmen. In this regard, Stanley's book might more accurately be called "How Fascism Works (on bootlickers, to dismantle capitalist faux democracies)" instead. Still, for folks primarily concerned with the practical realities of identifying modern fascist movements, and unwinding their poisonous political arguments, How Fascism Works will definitely deliver the goods.

Which unfortunately brings us to the pushback against Stanley's work, and why How Fascism Works is simultaneously a valuable resource, and a dangerous diversion from effective antifascist practices. While many reactionary observers have criticized Stanley for failing to define what fascism is; I don't think that critique is accurate or in good faith. Stanley does define fascism in a purely political context; wingers simply don't like that his definition accurately describes their current political practices. The author clearly states he's not talking about the policies of established regimes, or even the ideology of fascist movements, but rather their methods of acquiring power; you can't crush a guy for failing to write the book you would have preferred to read, and I don't give two wet horse apples whether or not American fascists dislike a Yale professor calling them, well, fascists.

Perhaps more surprisingly however, How Fascism Works has also drawn criticism from some antifascists; particularly those like myself, who largely agree with Trotsky's analysis about what fascism really is, and why it is unleashed by the ruling classes in a liberal democratic society that appears more free than it is. There is literally no anticapitalist component to either Stanley's analysis, or his wholly inadequate proposed solutions; which more or less boil down to "liberal politicians need to be better true liberals and we all need to vote harder to protect our democratic institutions." The end result is in effect a wonderful book about types of nazi birds, and the modern habits of those birds, without much discussion of why the birds are there and what to do if they're trying to kill you for capitalists and hierarchal power.

Does that ultimately matter? Well, that depends on what you want a book like How Fascism Works to accomplish. In light of its widespread popularity, I would say it has been an effective part of the mainstream discourse that has finally at this late a date, allowed liberals to accurately describe the American right's current evolution as fascist; albeit, tepidly so. By that same measure, Stanley's insistence that the liberal democratic order that birthed this fascist movement is the only answer to the problem, probably hasn't helped many of those people become effective antifascists; as evidenced by the fact that Joe Biden has been president for almost two years, and American fascism is still growing politically stronger by the day.

In the final analysis, all of this makes Stanley's How Fascism Works a wonderfully written, extremely informative "birdwatching" book for liberals who'd like to be antifascists, but don't know how to spot and resist the fascist propaganda all around them. If you're looking for an accessible way to get your Dem-voting Auntie who really misses the quiet dignity of bygone liberal politicians like Bobby Kennedy, or John Lewis, onside in the war against contemporary fascism, this is probably the book you want to buy for her. If on the other hand you're looking for a deep theory discussion about why capitalist societies are always capable of turning fascist at any moment, and how we can stamp out the serpent of violent reaction forever; this book doesn't have a whole lot to offer you.

On the basis that you can't punish a book for failing to be something it never promised you in the first place, I'm going to give How Fascism Works three and a half stars. Although I acknowledge that Stanley's work here is excellent, his ideological concessions to capitalist realism make it impossible to call this great antifascist scholarship. Plus I felt obligated to dock him a half star for excessive West Wing-esque rhapsodizing about liberal democratic institutions that can't stop fascism; because they were designed by, and are controlled by, reactionary capitalists who prefer fascism to sharing.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#Bookish Bits #Fascism #American Fascism #Jason Stanley #How Fascism Works #Nina Illingworth #book reviews #antifascism #US Politics #liberal antifascism #anticapitalism #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #Trumpism

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canchewread · 1 year

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Editor’s note: Featured weekly on NIDC and Can’t You Read, our Quickshot Quotations post combines a relevant quote, and short analysis about a current issue; presented from a left wing perspective.

Quickshot Quotations: Sacrifice and Greed

Recently on NIDC, I wrote about the ways in which fully embracing capitalist ideology is facilitating an openly fascist future in Pig Empire society. Furthermore, I've also written about the intimate connection between this fascist turn, and a reactionary ruling class running headlong into the reality that we've run out of planet to exploit; either capitalism dies, or the human species perishes instead. Taken together, these arguments represent two sides of a deadly triangle driving us all to the brink of extinction. Today's quote, which comes to us from Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, helps fill in the third side of that triangle by highlighting the foundational relationship between capitalist ideology, and climate catastrophe.

The quote itself, is often misattributed as "Cree prophecy" by racist Americans, but in reality Obomsawin's prescient critique is actually a profound repudiation of the capitalist way of life. Rooted firmly in Indigenous conservational thought, this haunting passage touches on short term profiteering, the prioritization of profit over even life itself, and the institutionalized looting of the commons represented by extractivist capitalism. Although Obomsawin was talking about Canada specifically, the reality is this genocidal economic system reigns supreme across literally the entire Pig Empire; for the benefits of much the same people, at the expense of us all, regardless of borders.

Naturally then, as I was sifting through economic report after economic report about the catastrophic long term effects of climate catastrophe on global economics, it was this underlying socioeconomic critique in Obomsawin's words that sprung to the forefront of my thoughts; because she's right. On a theoretical level, nothing in the quote above is news to Pig Empire economists today; as celebrated entrepreneur and economist Paul Hawken has famously noted, "at present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product." On a tangible level, robbing the future to enrich a billionaire ruling class is already reaping a very real harvest of corpses.

Of course, it's hardly breaking news that capitalism is built on ruthless exploitation and an inhuman disregard for life itself; maybe it shouldn't be surprising when the fallout from this ideology scales with the vastness of its influence. What is perhaps more instructive, is examining the obvious reality that capitalism cannot stop killing the planet even when that fallout threatens the very existence of capitalism itself! None of this is theoretical either; top financial institutions, economists and scientists all say that climate crisis is as much a threat to capitalism, as it is a product of it. Capitalist ideology in the present, is demonstrably an existential threat to capitalism in the future.

Folks, this goes way beyond the snake eating its own tail here. We're talking about a ruling class actively boiling the planet to death to accumulate piles of money so large no one human being could spend it all, and to what end? The truth is, not even the billionaires know; for all their rhetoric about longtermism and running away to Mars, back here on Earth they're preparing for bunker life in the coming apocalypse. The horrifying reality is that Obomsawin's statement isn't some hokey prophecy, it's a social analysis of capitalism itself; it's not a mystical warning, it's a studied prediction - and fifty years later, we're all living in the evidence that she was correct.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#Alanis Obomsawin #Climate Crisis #Quickshot Quotation #nina illingworth #capitalism #anticapitalism #looting #NIDC #ecofascism #Blog #extractivism #longtermism #there is no planet b #Mars #Paul Hawken #tragedy of the commons

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canchewread · 1 year

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Proud Of Our Boy: A Review of We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered In a New Era of American Extremism, by Andy Campbell, from Hatchett Books.

To be completely honest with you, I didn't even want to read this book. In my opinion a book about the Proud Boys, published at this moment in Pig Empire history, could go one of two ways; it could be a serious work of antifascist scholarship, or it could be a true crime story full of reactionary sensationalism and ultimately portraying a fascist street gang as antiheros. I'd ordered the book sight unseen, and when I saw it was titled "We Are Proud Boys" and the front cover featured a far-too coy little cartoon of right wing terrorists hoisting up a US flag ala the U.S. Marine corps atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima; I became concerned.

After actually reading We Are Proud Boys however, I'm happy to report that this appears to be a marketing fail by Hatchett Books; because Campbell's work here is actually a fine example of how to write about fascism in our modern Pig Empire. A journalistic work at heart, the pacing in We Are Proud Boys is crisp, Andy doesn't try to both sides the rise of organized reactionary political violence, and most importantly he correctly calls the Proud Boys fascist a lot; which longtime readers will know I consider extremely relevant here in the Pork Reich era.

On review, the book is divided into two sections. In the first half, Campbell offers up a detailed history of the gang; including its origins, its numerous acts of political violence, and the path by which the Proud Boys were able to become part of mainstream "conservative" politics. Exploring national figures like Gavin McInnes, or Enrique Tarrio, as well as regional leaders like Mike Nordean, the who, what, and how is all laid out perfectly in We Are Proud Boys; with a heavy focus on the fascist struggle to literally invade and overwhelm the nominally liberal government of Portland, as well as the Proud Boys rarely-reported involvement in the January 6th, 2021 fascist coup attempt on Capital Hill.

If, like many folks, your only exposure to the Proud Boys is very poor mainstream media reporting, the first half of the book is a vital read. Although this is definitely a history of the gang, it's not just a summary. Andy's book also does a great job of demonstrating the explicitly political nature of Proud Boy terrorism, and doesn't pull any punches about how easily these guys duped a complicit American media into spreading their propaganda. While this is all high quality work, the fact is most of the reporting in this first section is already available in the public sphere; including numerous Huffington Post articles published by Campbell himself on the subject.

It is however in the second half of We Are Proud Boys, where Campbell's analysis really shines. Taking everything we learned earlier, Andy meticulously exposes the direct connections between the Proud Boys, fascist political violence, and the mainstream American right; including Trump, the GOP, and much of the proto-fascist right wing media ecosphere. Reading the author's work, it's quickly apparent that the Proud Boys are not a violent entity operating outside the public political right, but rather a violent expression of, and a useful tool for, the fascist movement that has become the mainstream American right. The calls are coming from inside the house; funded by both conservative wealth and small dollar donations by the volk.

In a refreshing change of pace, Campbell also does a great job of covering antifascist protest honestly and accurately. We Are Proud Boys contains an entire chapter on "antifa" and the fascist right's attempts to conjure up a left wing terrorist organization to justify all this fascist repression, around the term. You can tell Andy has spent a lot of time on the ground in this fight however, because he immediately rejects this framing and portrays antifascists protestors as they are - totally normal people who don't want their communities and civil rights imploded by nazi street gangs. It says something about American journalism that this is worthy of applause, but Andy doesn't let his readers, or the truth, down here.

Perhaps as importantly, We Are Proud Boys goes beyond the realm of exposé to examine the real ways the Proud Boys have changed politics in America forever; and not for the better. The chapter where Campbell discusses the now-ubiquitous presence of an armed, openly fascist counter-protest at every democratic or progressive protest action in America was particularly insightful, and chilling to read. As our author notes, this isn't just about the Proud Boys themselves anymore either; the gang has created a blueprint for organized fascist political terrorism that can be, and is being, copied by other reactionaries as we speak. The modern American "shirt group" is here to stay; and working to overthrow liberal democratic society out in the open.

Frankly speaking, most of my complaints about We Are Proud Boys are stylistic. Campbell still writes like a journalist; he tends to lay out the facts, put them in context, and draw conclusions, pretty much in that order. Although his work isn't dry, I can't say he's mastered the art of narrative; with the caveat that this also means he's not distorting the facts to fit his own preferred story. I also think he lets noted fascist propagandist Roger Stone off a little light by portraying him as merely an influential ally linking the Proud Boys to the mainstream American right. In reality, Stone is clearly helping to politically steer numerous "grass roots" fascist movements online and in the streets.

In the final analysis, We Are Proud Boys is an excellent book. Timely, insightful, and explicitly antifascist, there honestly might not be a better examination of organized fascist political violence on the mainstream market. This unquestionably makes it the best mass-market book about the Proud Boys, if not the best mass-market book about fascism in the Trump era as a whole. I'd happily recommend Andy's book to my friends and family; people who can actually seek reprisal for a bad recommendation. Campbell may write like a liberal crime and justice reporter, but he's no fool for reactionary power; I'm delighted to give "We Are Proud Boys" four and a half stars.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#Bookish Bits #Fascism #Antifascism #us politics #Andy Campbell #We Are Proud Boys #Book Review #Review #Theory #Nina Illingworth #Book Blog #Gavin McInnes #Trumpism #Pork Reich #Amerikan Musik

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canchewread · 1 year

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Editor’s note: The War on Sharing is an informal journal about my life as an anti-capitalist dissident in a burgeoning Pig Empire police state, during a time of normalized fascist reaction. Given the deeply personal nature of this writing, please consider citations to be arbitrary, profanity to be praxis, and slang to be artisanal.

The War on Sharing: No More Murderpigs

I'm not going to lie to you, as someone who has been actively warning about Amerikkka's ongoing descent into overt fascism for well over half a decade now, the past couple of weeks have been difficult to watch. On one hand, I am extremely sympathetic to the plight of labor class liberals who just now may be realizing that if their leaders cannot protect themselves from fascist violence, they have little hope of protecting the marginalized, or for that matter the population at large. On the other hand, that sympathy is absolutely tinged with a sense of outrage at a liberal establishment who ignored these warnings at every turn, and encouraged their supporters to mock those on the left giving them; with a few noted exceptions, of course.

Take for example the twin issues of fighting stochastic terrorism, and resisting a politically empowered fascist movement in America. Even before his election and the subsequent fascist coup attempt on January 6th, 2021, Joe Biden was actively "both-sides-ing" violent fascists and antifascist anarchists, while promising to fund and build out the American police state as a solution to the political violence. In response to that fascist coup attempt, the larger liberal establishment once again resorted to demanding more police powers to combat right wing domestic terrorism in broader society; despite the fact that many of the folks most responsible for the assault on Capital Hill, were actually sitting across from them in the Senate and Congress.

Naturally many on the left, myself included, objected to this idea and pointed out the obvious; a so-called democratic society that tries to fight the rise of fascism, by expanding an empowering a fascist police state, is utterly incapable of stopping a fascist takeover. Indeed, refusing to arrest fascist leaders who have committed crimes even while they go about rigging democracy, while arming up and empowering the fascist murderpigs they will control once they seize power isn't just bad antifascism, it's a recipe for violent fascist suppression against anyone who would resist the fascist order even in the future.

Is it leftist hyperbole to say American policing is riddled with fascists? Hardly, unless you think organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation are pinkos; an absurd position that still somehow has a bit of traction in mainstream reactionary propaganda these days. Furthermore, while reformers and liberals will blather on about training and diversity in policing, the simple truth is that even if individual police officers aren't low-key fascist terrorists themselves, the job ultimately puts them on the side of rich fascists, and against those who oppose those rich fascists, as a matter of course. Given the continued rise of fascism in our society, and the growing body of evidence that many police officers in America aren't just sympathetic to violent fascist vigilantes but actually working with them, I think it's simply fair observation to say that the left's criticisms of "funding the police" to fight right wing extremism, have been born out in real time.

Despite this, the recent act of political violence by a radicalized fascist targeting the US Speaker of the House have once again revived the mainstream calls for expanded police power to fight far right terrorism. This is absurd for many reasons; not the least of which being that extra police or police powers wouldn't have made it any easier to pick David DePape out from numerous "conservative" media influencers; they more or less believe and talk about the same odious things. Furthermore, unless these extra police are going to be stationed outside the homes of American politicians, it's a pretty difficult to understand how they would actually have prevented the attack on Nacy Pelosi's 82 year old husband, Paul; an act of stochastic terrorism that was ended by the intervention of, you guessed it the police, and at their current level of authority.

Of course I can't really say I'm surprised that in a country thoroughly saturated by copaganda, ruled by an establishment who seems to believe more police is a solution to every problem no matter which political party we're talking about, folks respond reflexively to a fascist political violence with calls for more cops. What I can say is that when you're watching police violently assault the journalists covering racial justice protests, usurp constitutional power from the U.S government, and actively work to help rig elections for a now openly fascist political party in Amerikka, there's no reason anyone with a brain has to take that position seriously.

If American liberals have any interest in stopping fascism, they should tell their leaders to arrest rich fascists driving this violence while they still have some control over the American police state. Hiring more reactionary murderpigs while giving them broad sweeping powers to root out anti-government dissent, is more or less just building the Gestapo for what certainly looks like a new Pork Reich in our very near future. I encourage those of you who don't want to die under a fascist boot to resist these public calls to "do something" in the here and now, if that something is throwing power at an already violent, objectively fascist police state. Serious antifascists don't arm and empower a homicidal enemy; and we're all out of time for liberal tomfoolery now.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 1 year

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TWoS: Godwin Wept

One of the themes I find myself constantly returning to in my anti-fascist analysis, is the idea that because Pig Empire society has been willfully misinformed about both the history of fascist movements, and the process by which they are installed into power, we are collectively unable to properly recognize fascist political tactics and methodology being deployed in real time. Although the motivations for this deception lie deep in Western colonial history, the particularly Amerikkkan form of this simplified understanding of fascism likely comes from both an enthusiastic embrace of capitalist triumphalism in our society, as well as the reactionary influence of anti-Communist propaganda, and open alliances with fascist regimes during the Cold War.

The effects of this “education” however, are far easier to identify than the origins of this disease. Having been taught a false history of how fascism happened, and an extremely narrow definition of what fascism looks like, folks in the modern Pig Empire are more or less encouraged to adopt the idea that “it’s not fascism until Hugo Boss uniforms and funny little moustache” or more ominously, “it’s not fascism until death camps.” Obviously this is ridiculous; there have after all been fascist movements and dictators who’ve seize power long after the fall of the Third Reich, and the Nazis were certainly still fascists before they began the Holocaust, and indeed, before they obtained political power in Germany. This misinformation about fascism is mostly harmless if all you’re doing is debating World War II history with your drunk uncle; but when false ideas about fascist movements cause a categorization failure that prevents a broader democratic society from even recognizing the fascist movement around them, let alone organizing to stop it, the threat to us all becomes very real, very quickly.

To find a couple of examples the show how this actually works, let’s return again to common misconceptions of how Nazism happened in Germany and briefly relate them to modern American politics.

First up, most Americans genuinely believe Adolf Hitler cast some sort of hypnotic spell over the German people in the interwar period, and the Nazi Party was elected to widespread acclaim. This in turn engenders the idea that as long as a fascist movement remains in the minority, and doesn’t get too popular, they’re not really all that dangerous. The truth however is that the fascists in Germany never won an election, not even the one they heavily rigged while in power; Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the reactionary ruling class, including most notably Paul von Hindenburg. Pondering what that might look like in America? How about a fascist political party refusing to certify election results they don’t agree with and then using six never-elected reactionary judges to sanctify it in the Supreme Court after the fact; or maybe just the actual 2000 U.S. Presidential election? A politically empowered fascist movement, backed by ruling class wealth and influence, is more than capable of seizing control of political power and abolishing democratic rights; this is in fact, more or less the way it has always happened in the history of fascism.

This plays into a second popular misconception about fascist movements that actively clouds our ability to recognize the danger a burgeoning fascist movement presents; the myth that fascists are hyper-competent, disciplined machine men who know how to run a capitalist society. The idea here is that these are very serious, highly successful people and as such if the reactionaries in Pig Empire politics are absolutely shambolic clowns who can’t tell their own arse from their elbow, we have nothing to worry about.

In reality, every fascist movement in history has been full of fundamentalist cranks, losers, bigots, failed revolutionaries and thieves. As detailed in The Kaiser’s Holocaust by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, the Nazi party in particular was riddled with cultists, disgraced politicians, conspiracy theorists, failed colonial businessmen, child abusers, fascist street thugs, race scientists, and other deeply unserious people. Despite protestations to the contrary, Hitler himself wasn’t much of a train conductor; he was a lazy babbling weirdo who habitually slept in past noon. As books like Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction prove, the idea that fascists are somehow “good at the economy” is total bunk too. The only economic miracle fascists ever accomplish is looting wealth from their victims, and distributing it to their industrialist backers; it’s no accident “the Thousand Year Reich” only lasted twelve years. Now why does that bit sound so familiar to me?

In other words, just because the fascists in our society happen to be an unpopular minority, populated by an embarrassing series of crass, incompetent, elitist failsons who literally cannot run a message board properly, and organizing around bigoted fantasies that seem batshit crazy to the rest of us, doesn’t mean they can’t, or won’t, win what foolish liberals continue to define as “the culture war.” Fascism itself is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a very real, very terrifying thing that has happened in Pig Empire history, and seems poised to happen again. Laughter has never defeated an ascendant fascist movement; you beat fascists, by organizing against fascism. Neither your comprehension, nor your respect, is required for these people to seize power and unleash Hell on Earth.

I’m sorry kids, your history books lied; and if the folks around you don’t start waking up to that fact real soon, we’re all going to find out how the actual story went in real time.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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Editor’s note: Quickshot Quotations is a semi-regular feature here on Can’t You Read featuring a relevant quotation, and short analysis about a current issue; presented from a left wing perspective. Mine.

It Was Never About the Facts

Today’s quote comes to us from anti-authoritarian scholar Hannah Arendt, and her most important theoretical work, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” While the book itself is quite dated and I’m not really here to talk about it today, I can honestly say that “Origins” has been a priceless tool for myself and many others, seeking to analyze this current fascist moment in Pig Empire history.

Speaking plainly, it’s also safe to say that Arendt is a controversial figure in literary history. Furthermore, I don’t subscribe to her view that there is an equivalency between Nazi Germany, and Stalin’s Soviet Union; and I say this as a socialist who actively opposes the small but annoying authoritarian communist wing of our community. Her writings about fascism in particular however are an invaluable resource and you can clearly see the influence of her work in the thoughts of other anti-fascist scholars, like Umberto Eco, and say Jason Stanley today.

What interests me on this fine Autumn afternoon however, is what Arendt is saying about fascist propaganda and its openly antagonistic relationship with the truth, here in this quote. While intellectually it’s easy to understand the reactionary idea that fascists seek to dictate even reality itself, I don’t think most people have spent much time working to understand the profound damage this fascist political technique has on a society already committed to a “choose your own adventure” form of personally deciding what is true, thanks to capitalist media. This in turn called to mind another quote by a controversial scholar who studied reactionary thought and propaganda, Jean-Paul Sartre:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Of course, neither Arendt nor Sartre specifically use the word “fascist” in these quotes, their primary frame of reference here however is quite literally Nazism, so it’s fair to say the reactionaries and anti-Semites they’re talking about, are definitely fascists - give or take Arendt’s obsession with Stalin, who was admittedly a pretty bad guy.

The important point to grasp in both of these ideas however, is that for fascist political actors, ideologues, and propagandists (including those in the mainstream media,) it’s not just about lying to win; it’s about altering the foundational definition of what is truth for political advantage and ultimately, power. I don’t know about you, but to me this would seem highly relevant to a society currently facing down a fascist movement organizing against the teaching of Critical Race Theory in kindergarten, the forced gender reassignment of American children, and ruling class liberal elite Satanist pedophiles who drink baby brain juice; all things that objectively do not exist, but are nonetheless driving the fascist march to power in Amerikkka as we speak.

Want further proof that we’re living in a society that is wholeheartedly embracing fascist political techniques? Then look no further than the mainstream media narratives around the upcoming American Midterm elections. After the Biden administration has spent just under two years deflecting the complaints of betrayed progressive voters by bringing up his administration’s laser-like focus on economic issues, the media is now blaming falling polls for Democrats on talking about abortion rights, trans issues, and the January 6th fascist coup attempt. Furthermore, it’s working; an objectively fascist party is on the verge of seizing the House, and quite possibly the Senate, because Americans are pretty sure the unhinged nazis who think Bill Gates is microchipping their kids with vaccines, are somehow “better on the economy.” After all, that’s what the media told them to believe; even the ideologically “liberal” media.

The truth is not the point, and that’s why factchecking has done nothing to stop the fascist tide. The point is power, and you generate that power by controlling the narrative; this is what post-truth politics really looks like, and what both capitalist reactionaries, and open fascists in our society, are seeking to accomplish.

Of course none of this is to say that Joe Biden is a good President, or the Democrats have any real answers to fascism whatsoever. But it is quite amazing that we’re on the verge of an open pogrom against trans people, and armed “patriots” are watching voter drop-boxes in Arizona, and the for profit media’s focus here is screaming “it’s the economy, stupid” at a President whose been screaming the same thing at the nominally left flank of his party, without a care in the world for what a fascist future under folks who hate the media, and believe power is truth, might look like.

Unfortunately it would seem that the capitalist media will *also* sell the fascists the rope with which to hang them.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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TWoS: Hell Comes to Frogtown

To tell you the truth, I was settling in for a spot of breakfast when I heard that the fascists had announced their intention to genocide me.

Oh, to be clear, I wasn’t exactly surprised by the news. I’ve been writing about, and warning about the rise of American fascism for more than seven years now, and if a society spends long enough dancing with the devil, eventually it gets burned. Furthermore, it had certainly not escaped my attention that fascists were organizing around repressing trans people and LBGTQ folks who work in public life; although, given the minuscule size of the trans minority in Amerikkka, I have been a little surprised at how effective that organizing has been.

As it turns out however, there is a rather significant difference between logically processing that eventually nazis are going to come and kill you, and watching them successfully generate a movement to start conducting pogroms. I discovered this difference in full force on the morning of October 20th when I learned that The Federalist had published a pile of fascist screeching that appropriated Nazi eliminationist language to discuss “the transgender question.” Purely for the purposes of demonstrating that I’m being quite literal here, I’ll quote the relevant paragraph:

“On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.”

There is of course a little subtext here, you have to realize that what the author means by sexually explicit material is simply discussing queer identities, or living them openly; a position confirmed by the GOP’s current attempts to pass a national persecution law against LGBTQ people that makes Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida look like a Sunday picnic.

There is however not much subtext involved in echoing Nazi propaganda about “the Jewish question” when discussing driving LGBTQ people, especially trans women, out of public life and likely worse. After all what “is the transgender question” so mysteriously being referred to here? Why of course the question is “what is to be done about trans people” and simply asking it implies “leave them alone to live their lives in peace” isn’t on the table.

Naturally, and even despite this clear evocation of the reactionary language of genocide, there will still be some, invariably comfortable people reading this who are certain that I’m overreacting. They will note that street nazis have been talking about murdering trans folks for a very long time, and a pogrom has not occurred yet. They will state that the right’s current attempts to conflate being trans or even just gay with pedophilia, is somehow unrelated to their broader social organization against “the pedophile elites” ruining our society. This is all hogwash, and the type of thing you can only say when you’re not on the firing lines, and powerful nazis largely immune to prosecution are not organizing to exterminate you.

I will however entertain this idea long enough to simply point out that the author of this piece is not some random Proud Boy or Youtuber; John Daniel Davidson is the Politics Editor at The Federalist. The Federalist in turn, is a mainstream far right publication co-founded by disgraced former-Washington Post opinion blogger Ben Domenech. Ben is literally married to Meghan McCain; the "center-right” media personality and surviving daughter of one of the most powerful Senators in U.S. history. The Federalist is certainly fascist trash, but it is by no means fringe - and simply watching how the Republican Party is currently weaponizing attacks on trans people, there’s no reasonable way you can tell me that Davidson’s positions aren’t overwhelming supported in the broader American right these days.

Look folks, when mainstream right wing influencers and politicians are arguing that simply living or talking about LGBTQ lifestyles is child abuse because it sexualizes children, and fascist street gangs are shouting “kill your local pedophile” at rallies, it doesn’t take a genius to see where this all ends; it’s a program in progress, and I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

And what pray tell is the liberal establishment, or even the so-called independent left media doing right now? More or less either screaming about a war in Eastern Europe or shouting “it’s the economy stupid” back and forth at each other like anyone else is even listening. Is it all right to laugh at your own funeral? I ask because I’m pretty much running out of other options here myself; presumably I’m supposed to just hide in my house and wait for the nazis to come get me while y’all sort this “political” situation out?

Buckle up buttercup; the cavalry is not coming and the ride doesn’t get smoother from here.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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TWoS: When Everything Falls Apart

As you may have noted, the above quote isn’t my writing and instead comes to you from Antonio Gramsci; a Marxist philosopher and the founder of the Italian Communist Party. A brilliant thinker, Gramsci wrote the above passage while imprisoned by Mussolini and his fascist government, where he ultimately died at age forty-six; you can read the appropriately titled “Selections from the Prison Notebooks” by clicking here.

If this quote seems simultaneously familiar, and yet off somehow to you, that’s probably because you’ve heard a mistranslation offered by (highly questionable) philosopher Slavoj Žižek. That wording typically goes “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” While both of these quotes relate well to what I’m writing about here today, I went with the Gramsci original as a headliner because I feel some kindred nature with the author; which is certainly not something I’d say about Žižek.

So why does Gramsci’s quote speak to me on this chilly October morning? Because although he could not have intended it, our author has nevertheless spoken what I perceive to be an undeniable truth about our present, and at times, terrifying moment in human history. We too live in a moment when the old, a capitalist liberal democratic order in the Pig Empire, is dying. We too are trapped inside a birthing moment, where the new socio-political and perhaps economic order that will replace it is unclear. More importantly, our society is being artificially rooted inside this old and dying order by powerful forces capable of delaying this transition; but only at great cost, and only for a time.

This is without question a frightening time to be alive. It’s not an accident that fascism is rising, the real wage economy is imploding, the neoliberal foreign policy consensus lies in tatters, life in free market capitalist societies has become a Cyberpunk-esque libertarian dystopia, and the oceans are literally boiling; all at once.

These are all merely the visible symptoms of the same problem; we’ve run out of planet, and it’s either the end of capitalism, or the end of a human habitat that can support several billion people. I’m not telling you this to frighten you, I’m telling you this so that you will understand why everything around you seems to be falling apart at the same time. Knowledge is power; it’s the difference between knowing what to do, and dying because some rich fascist has got you locked in a lie and working against your own class interests.

The plain truth of the matter is that rich people mean you harm; which is why I can’t just disregard Žižek’s translation of this quote entirely. These billionaires, in-pocket politicians, and their pet propagandists are monsters, and right now they have unfathomable power over our society. Given the choice of saving the planet, or continuing capitalism, the ruling capitalist order has more or less en masse chosen capitalism - bodies be damned.

Furthermore, in this frozen moment between the death of the old, and the birth of the new, the laws and social mores of the Pig Empire make truly fighting back almost impossible (or at least highly dangerous) for those of us who don’t intend to go quietly into that good night so oil companies and rich nazi futurists can keep the grand game going for another generation at most. For now.

And so it is that we all must continue to come together on websites, at protests, in discussion groups. Watching, waiting, teaching the truths, ideas, and theories that will carry humanity forward when no amount of money and violence can maintain the dead corpse of the old, in the rightful place of the new. If you’re out there reading this someplace dark and lonely, take heart; the fall of a rigged neoliberal democratic order doesn’t mean the death of democracy, and just because the fascists seize the levers of power doesn’t mean we have to obey.

It is undeniably a time of monsters, but the simple peasant folk still have answers even when the laws of our lords and masters forbid it. Patience is a virtue, and revenge is a dish best served cold - preferably from a height of roughly three feet.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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“You told me to go back to the beginning, so I have.” - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

The War on Sharing: Understanding the Evolution of Ecofascism

Let me ask you a simple question; when I say the word “ecofascist” to you, what do you picture in your mind’s eye? If you’re anything like most people, there’s a pretty good chance you’re picturing a white supremacist in Norse religious cosplay, or a racist chud co-opting the struggle against climate catastrophe to justify eliminationist politics.

Given the current state of journalism in our neofeudalist hellworld, this is nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, I would argue that surface-level definitions like this can be quite helpful if used to spawn a larger conversation about what ecofascism really means, and how it is changing our society. By that same measure however, these extremely narrow signifiers can serve to limit our understanding of ecofascism, and the present ecofascist moment if used improperly. After all, is ecofascism not a form of fascism? Since when are broke rednecks capable of imposing a fascist order, no matter how many guns they own?

In fact I believe such a limited and plainly immaterial definition of ecofascism is quite dangerous if it represents the end of your intellectual journey. Frankly, these surface-level definitions of ecofascism fall into the common liberal trapping of mistaking fascist foot soldiers, for the fascist movement; much in the same way mainstream commentators in the media would greatly prefer to define fascism as brownshirt Proud Boys, and not as dozens and dozens of fascist politicians who voted to overturn an election and the billionaire nazis who own them body, mind, and soul.

So how do we find a better understanding of what ecofascism really is? By examining the material realities around us and the presumed intentions of powerful actors in our society. For example, we know now that it’s capitalism or the planet; both cannot survive. We know that the billionaire class has no intention of giving up capitalism. We can reasonably infer that the billionaire-funded rise of eliminationist politics and fascist movements is not wholly unrelated to the socialism or barbarism moment we’re now facing. Finally, we know that the in-pocket politicians who serve the rich in our society, are already making climate promises that can only lead to ever-widening acts of genocide. Does that sound like it adds up to nothing more than “nazis who’re also fake environmentalists” to you?

No ecofascism isn’t about neo-nazis who love pagan jewelry and camping. And it isn’t really about racist mass shooters leaving wall of spaghetti manifestos behind to justify their murderous actions either. Ultimately, ecofascism is the decision to continue the capitalist way of life for some, at the expense of others, no matter how many lives that costs, and even if that strategy is ultimately unsustainable. Like all fascists movements, it has been nurtured and propagated by a wealthy ruling class, for their own benefit and at the expense of everyone else; starting with brown people, foreigners, trans folks, the poor and otherwise marginalized in our society, and working on upward until there is nothing left to consume.

After all, that’s the problem with all fascist movements - in the final analysis, they’re just death cults that serve the wealthy and powerful till the bitter end; and ecofascism is really no different.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#climate catastrophe #nina illingworth #fascism #anti-fascism #ecofascism #defining ecofascism #The War on Sharing #Journal #informal writing #capitalism #neofeudalism #anti-capitalism #saving our planet #terms and definitions

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canchewread · 2 years

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A Launching Platform for Change

In today's edition of Quickshot Quotations, I'd like to kick things off with the banger quote above from American lawyer and famous civil libertarian, Clarence Darrow. To say that Darrow was a complicated, and not entirely admirable man, would indeed be an understatement, so we're not going to waste a lot of time drilling down on him here. As both a former labor lawyer, and champion for the legal rights of the marginalized however, Darrow makes the grade; and he's certainly on point here.

Although the American education system does an intentionally poor job of teaching labor history, most folks passably on the left in the Pig Empire know at least a little bit about the achievements of labor unions. In the U.S. we owe the eight hour workday to a decidedly anarchist labor movement in the late nineteenth century. Its progeny would go on to win the legal right to collectively bargain, establish the right to a minimum wage, and stamp out child labor; among other accomplishments.

Perhaps more importantly for today's discussion however, the hard won battles fought at least in part by American labor, have contributed to higher wages and a more egalitarian society above and beyond the unionized workplace; for example, organized labor played a huge role in obtaining Social Security benefits for all Americans, and establishing equal employment provisions in the Civil Rights Act. While their track record is far from perfect, there is clear evidence that union organizing, even in America, can be a positive force for all sorts of social changes.

Of course, if we pull the lens back and consider the larger world outside of the U.S., the picture becomes even more inspiring. Unions in places like Canada helped win the fight for universal public healthcare in that country. In Europe, some unions have lent their support to successful battles for childcare rights, environmental conservation initiatives, and the fight against imperialist invasions abroad. Finally of course, virtually every socialist country in human history has relied on the early support of trade unions and their ability to organize; even if socialists often find a union tied to employment, somewhat paradoxical.

I mention all of this here today, in the warm afterglow of perhaps the most significant American organized labor victory in my adult life, to remind folks that this moment can be both an end unto itself, and a beginning of something larger, and even more wonderful. As workers fight to organize against greedbag employers in hyper-exploitative corporate environments, it's important to remember that the very same principles of organizing to build power against capitalist predation, also apply to every aspect of Pig Empire life outside of work too. Like Joe Hill famously noted, "there is power in a union." Not just power against the bosses, but the power to in fact, change the world.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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Anti-Racism Is Foundationally Anti-Capitalist

Today I thought I'd switch things up a bit and bring you one of my all-time favorite quotations from the great Kwame Ture; a revolutionary Trinidadian-American activist, and close associate of the Black Panther Party, who has also been published under his former name, Stokely Carmichael. A complicated, but cherished figure on the revolutionary left, Ture was once identified by noted American fascist FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as being the person most likely to succeed Malcolm X as the "black messiah" the McCarthyistic American establishment of the day feared the most. Which makes him a man worth reading all on its own.

Skipping past the history lesson for a moment however, I am struck by Ture's ability to express such a profound truth about the relationship between capitalism, and racism in the Pig Empire, in so concise a manner. While the author's words here hold special importance in a country that just now, has finally decided to classify lynching as a federal hate crime, Ture's analysis clearly goes beyond simple racialized violence, to stab at the heart of the capitalist order that both funds and encourages it.

While I wouldn't dare to speak for Ture, the simple truth here is that racism, like whiteness itself, is a social structure created, maintained, and propagated for the benefit of capital. These ideological headcages are designed to mark out entire classes, or groups of people, for predatory exploitation by the ruling classes, while still maintaining the thinnest veneer of a free and democratic society. No toothless cracker bigot in the Target parking lot has the power to sustain, and propagate racist ideas; the necessary power inherently comes from the capitalist class and indeed, the structures of the state itself.

Of course, self interested parties will cynically cry out that "ending capitalism won't solve racism," but this statement not only lacks empirical support, but also misses the point; perhaps intentionally. Whether a lack of financial, ideological, and systemic support causes racists to give up the ghost or not, over four hundred years of "American" history demonstrate that racism certainly will not end, until the capitalist class stops funding and promoting it. As long as the powers that be continue to rake in money hand over fist from the ideological assumptions racist or bigoted ideas engender, there remains little hope for a truly free and equal society.

Capitalism doesn't work without someone to exploit, and it's hard to exploit people in a "free" society without offering some form of excuse for violating their humanity and equality under the law. Racism, and bigotry in general, remain the go-to skeleton key for a greedbag ruling order that just can't get enough. Until folks accept that anti-racism and anti-capitalism cannot exist as separate organizing ideologies, but are in fact joined at the hip by necessity, we’re going to continue to lose the most important fight of our lifetime; the war against capitalism.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#Quickshot Quotations #Kwame Ture #Capitalism #Racism #anti-capitalism #anti-racism #stokely carmichael #COINTEPRO #ibram x kendi #racism and capitalism #whiteness #shell game #oppression #exploitation #white supremacy #Hoover #Angela Davis #lynching #hate crimes

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canchewread · 2 years

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An Open Mass Murder Conspiracy

As I alluded to in yesterday's post, a fairly serious injury recently gave me extra time to some new read books. Coincidentally, one of those books happened to be "Gangsters of Capitalism" by Johnathan M. Katz; a biography of Smedley Butler's life as seen through the lens of American Imperialism. At some point, I intend to write a review of that volume, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone by laying some groundwork in today's Quote post. As I've written before, Butler was a complicated figure; less a hero, than a penitent who conducted heroic acts. He did however leave us with one important work; "War is a Racket" and today's quote comes from that extended-length essay.

At first glance, a casual observer may be tempted to dismiss what Butler is saying here as conspiratorial ravings; and indeed, many corpse merchants and war profiteers of his day, did precisely that. The problem of course here is that if the relationship between the state, private capital and war is a conspiracy, it's one being conducted firmly in the open. Furthermore it's important to understand that regardless of who starts the wars, looking at you this time Vladdy Putin; corpse merchants and profiteers everywhere are more than happy to harvest cash from humanitarian catastrophe.

Who are the people in the Pig Empire making "huge fortunes" on back of a fossil fuel war launched by a billionaire fascist? The usual suspects; oil companies and their investors, arms manufacturers and their investors, the occasional human trafficking gang. Nice people, honest. Look, I shouldn't have to tell folks that there's no such thing as a good war for the labor class, but after five weeks of watching most of the people around me clamor to pick a side, it's starting to feel like I'm in a zombie movie. Whether we're talking morally, financially, or physically, this conflict and its ongoing fallout are nothing short of a disaster for the labor class, pretty much everywhere.

Personally, I'm hoping for an unexpected outbreak of peace, but please don't ask me to pretend that position is universal; I wasn't born yesterday. War, all wars, are a racket; it's just a question of figuring out who is getting gamed, and who is doing the gaming. And the best place to do that, is usually the bottom line.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#Quickshot Quotations #Quote #Smedley Butler #War Is A Racket #Nina Illingworth #profiteering #fossil fuel industry #Fossile Fuel War #Putin #Ukraine #Capitalism #Capitalism and War #Labor class #class war #Arms manufacturers #Arms industry #weapons sales

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canchewread · 2 years

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Editor’s Note: please be advised that for some reason, I got flipped over to the new post editor, which “helpfully” resized my quote panel above to 500 px or so; you can get the full version by simply clicking on it to pop it out. I’ve now set it back to “not the Beta” and a test post showed up just fine - this won’t happen again; I like my big beautiful panels.

Well hello there my friends; it’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it? About two weeks before Christmas last year, I took a five and a half foot slip off the top of my back deck, landing directly on my spine across some wooden stairs. Luckily I managed not to paralyze myself, and ended up with “only” a fractured 8th vertebrae. Unfortunately that injury still took six weeks to heal enough that I could get out of bed, and rehab remains ongoing – you can read more about it here on NIDC if you care.

At this point I’m still struggling to get back to work, and deal with fallout in my personal life; it’s also my 45th birthday today and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a bit tilting. I am however, eager to start turning over the engine and getting back to work as best I can. To that end, I’ve decided to move the Quote of the Day feature over from Facebook, to this site, permanently; primarily because I think the quote panel plus short analysis looks better on Tumblr than Facebook, and the longer combined features I was publishing here before Christmas last year look ugly, and will end up on NIDC instead.

Unfortunately, and as I mentioned on Instagram, I’m still not back to 100% and I feel like I might have a long way to go before I get there. This means I’m going to cut down from 4 or 5 of these QotD posts a week, to a more manageable number like 2 or 3. Hopefully this gives me more time and energy to ease back into essay writing because let me tell you, right now, a couple thousand word argument and two hundred citations feels like many, many bridges too far. I’ll try and post the first one at some point tomorrow; today is for moaning about how I’ve suddenly become.

Finally I would like to thank pretty much the entire nation of Canada for helping me get back to a functional state, without forcing me into bankruptcy. The only reason I’m still here and writing this to you, after a simple slip and fall accident that could happen to anyone, is because I’ve been living long term in a country that understands healthcare is a human right. That is ultimately why I chose the John Green quote above; because it highlights the problem with the American for-profit healthcare system succinctly. Different goals, lead to different, and worse, outcomes for the Americans being preyed on by private medical insurance. It doesn’t have to be this way, and as of now, I’m living proof.

Alright, thanks for your time and patience and hopefully we can get back to (new) regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#healthcare #Medicare for All #John Green #Update #Healthcare is a human right #for profit healthcare #class war #Nina Illingworth #Canada #Canadian healthcare #universal healthcare

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canchewread · 2 years

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Editor’s note: the Mini-Skinny is a social media analysis post that aggregates relevant and related posts I made about a given subject over a short period of time. Today’s post features analysis from November 29th and 30th, 2021.

The Corporate Establishment Will Not Oppose Fascism

“The message corporate America delivers when it continues to fund the campaigns of fascists, coup plotters, and white supremacists while pretending to oppose the reactionary policies they put forth, could not be more obvious; they're completely fine with fascism because it doesn't interfere with the capitalist order or their bottom lines.

Frankly, fascism is likely more profitable than neoliberalism is for the Pig Empire private sector; after all, putting Trump in the White House got them all a big tax cut last time.”

Nina Illingworth, November 29th, 2021

One of the barely-discussed historical truths about fascism is that it is rarely, if ever, the result of the actual application of violent force. Rather, fascism is installed quite deliberately by the presupposed guardians of the liberal democratic order. Typically, this takes the form of some combination of a ruling class seeking to purge anti-capitalists, a political class cowed by the threat of violence and perfectly willing to sacrifice the marginalized to continue business as usual, and a culturally conservative petite bourgeoisie seeking to impose its values on those they regard as beneath them in the social hierarchy.

I mention this not to admonish my fellow Americans for their historical ignorance, which I have come to learn, is quite deliberate. Rather my purpose here is to provide some sort of context for the slow slide into overt, as opposed to covert, fascist rule in the Pig Empire. Do you want to know what Weimar America looks like? It looks like powerful corporations signing pledges to protect voting rights, while funding the campaign of pasty Republican fascists who are actively destroying voting rights and protecting coup plotters, for starters.

If you’ve been reading my work over the past few years, it should now be abundantly clear to you that the authorities, whomever they may be, are not going to stop the installation of an actually fascist Pork Reich. This is because fascism is ultimately a defense mechanism for a Pig Empire capitalist order that has every intention of exterminating billions of people to keep the wheels of neofeudalism grinding for another generation or two. Given that it will be awful hard to get a majority non-white society to actively vote for a white supremacist political order intent on murdering them so Elon Musk can continue to chase a path to Mars on a dying planet, this social order, including both the ruling classes and their overseers, is now done with democracy.

I’m not saying that the rise of overt fascism in the Pig Empire is inevitable; but if we keep sitting around waiting for the referee to punish the nazis, it might as well be.

Fascism Is Not Alien to the American Experience

"If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”

Henry A. Wallace

If nothing else, today’s Quickshot Quotation once again demonstrates the staggering effect over a hundred years of reactionary capitalist propaganda has had on the general American understanding of fascism. In this instance, we find the thirty-third Vice President of the United States not only explaining why fascism could *definitely* happen in America, but also, perhaps unconsciously, exposing the paradox at the heart of all liberal anti-fascist efforts. After all, capitalism ultimately requires a marriage to the profit motif, and in a world of enforced scarcity where the poor might literally starve to death unless they pony up some ducats for food, what is profit if not placing money and power ahead of human beings?

I’m not here to pick on Henry for the contradictions of his opinions today however; what’s important to us here is the realization that American fascism is not going to be installed by a marching column of fashionably-kitted neonazi storm troopers. Indeed, as men like Wallace, FDR, and John Maynard Keynes knew all too well, fascism in any “western” liberal democracy will come riding a headwind of popular support; not necessarily a majority, but a significant teaming horde of reactionary capitalists, cranks, and white supremacists. They were able to predict this not only because they’d just witnessed the process in Germany, but also because they understood just how fragile a “democratic” society bent to the will of rich people through a racist, reactionary, violently exploitative capitalist order, actually is. In short, they knew America could fall to fascism because the ideas at the root of the fascist ethos, are quite similar to the ideas at the root of the American system of capitalism. Of course, for reasons of class and privilege, the FDR administration chose to stave off fascism by restraining capitalism, instead of abolishing it; thereby setting us up for an inevitable final conflict with the forces of capitalist reaction at some point in the future.

Are we at the point of that “final” conflict? Well, as anyone who is watching the news can clearly see today, there are in fact millions upon millions of Americans, including numerous rich and powerful entities, who are effectively and openly stating their preference to end democracy, and install fascism. Furthermore, all signs point to a political, judicial, and economic elite who are either feckless and incapable of preventing the cancerous growth of the fascist order, or simply don’t care and would prefer empowering the nazis to paying their taxes.

There is still time to stop the ultimate rise of the Pork Reich, but clearly if it is to be done, it’s going to be everyday people that roll back the tide – our Pig Empire systems of governance are structurally, politically, and indeed morally, incapable of stopping the fascists for us.

Trainspotting in the Heart of the Pig Empire

"Total Asymmetric Warfare" - Georgia GOP Redraws Political Map as US Senate Dems Do Nothing

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if a whole society caught "deer in headlights" syndrome? Yeah, me neither; until I started living it. After Joe Biden's election victory and inauguration, I (and many other observers) warned that with, or without Downmarket Mussolini, American fascism as embodied by the Republican Party, was just getting warmed up. As the forces of reaction seek to intimidate political opponents into submission and force the system to warp around fascist conspiracy theories, we have been proven largely correct. Now we're seeing the poisonous fruits of a longstanding, yet entirely exposed GOP plot to rig the next decade's worth of elections, inside the context of a fascist political takeover being conducted by folks who seemingly regard any vote against them, as foundationally illegitimate.

In this November 23rd, 2021 article by Jessica Corbett over on Common Dreams, we go inside GOP attempts to effectively disenfranchise perhaps millions of predominantly minority voters through the magic of gerrymandering; the art of ensuring all the people who won't vote for cracker supremacists are jammed into the same voting districts. This is of course in addition to other ways the fascist Republican Party is working to rig the next election cycle; including threatening their political opponents until they quit, offering bounties for evidence of presupposed voter fraud, and just downright making it as hard as possible for poor and marginalized people to vote against them.

Now you might be tempted to assume that the ostensible opposition to the fascist party in American politics, the Democrats, would be working night and day to solve this problem; after all, even if they couldn't give a rat's ass about folks living under the threat of fascist violence, this could affect their own political careers in a very direct way. As the article and voting rights author Air Berman noted however, you'd be wrong:

"It’s beyond enraging that Manchin and Sinema continue to say voting rights legislation needs 60 votes when GOP is rigging elections and shutting Democrats out of power for next decade on simple majority party-line votes. Total asymmetric warfare."

Yes, you heard that correctly; literal fascists who at least pretend to believe Trump's "big lie" are about to rig the next decade's worth of elections because two corrupt as f*ck Democratic Party Senators are being bribed to, among other things, keep the filibuster intact. This in turn has allowed the GOP to repeatedly block measures that would at least help secure voting rights, including the For the People Act, Freedom to Vote Act, and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; despite Joe Machin's clown-shoes attempts at bipartisanship and appeasement. Please keep in mind that none of this is any sort of secret, and neither is the fact that corporate America is playing both sides of the battle against the fascist creep; some folks who know Trump well are already promising a second Herr Donald presidency would come with reprisals against his enemies.

This, at the end of the day, is what I mean when I talk to you about Weimar America. It's not so much a set of historical circumstances shared between interwar Germany and modern America, as it is a social ethos built around exceptionalism and liberal capitalist norms, that leads to a seemingly inevitable, and wholly predictable surrender to fascism. Right now, it feels like most of the country knows full damn well that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train full of nazis; the question then becomes, is anyone going to do anything to stop the carnage that's about to ensue, at all? Clearly, if you're asking the corporate liberal establishment, the answer to that question is ultimately "no," and history says that course of (in)action, has consequences.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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Editor’s note: the Mini-Skinny is a social media analysis post that aggregates all of my relevant material about a single subject, over the course of a single day. Today’s post features analysis from November 22nd, 2021.

A Police State Staffed By Fascists

“Protected by qualified immunity, aligned with reactionary political power, and armed to the teeth, American cops have become a "troopified" overseer class that exists above the law, and by extension, above the peasantry.”

Nina Illingworth, November 22nd, 2021

The funny thing about growing up in an ever-expanding police state is that eventually, you live to see the rueful warnings of police abolitionists and civil liberties activists become your everyday horrifying reality. I don’t think out of control cops in America is a particular new phenomenon, but lost somewhere in the vitriolic public discussion about doomed police reform efforts is the reality that policing, power, and class relationships between enforcement, and the enforced upon, have been slowly altering before our very eyes over the past forty or so years. With each new round of “police reform” and “war on crime” policies, the police state has increasingly turned its enforcers into a class above the general populace, and largely above reproach. American cops don’t really enforce the law at this point; they are effectively a law unto themselves. Qualified immunity grants an unrestrained monopoly on violence, asset forfeiture allows the police to effectively rob you, higher salaries and militarized weaponry make the power dynamics of this relationship explicitly clear to the labor class. Now, as it becomes increasingly obvious that this overseer class that is itself immune to oversight, and well beyond the control of its own state, objectively supports the fascist cause, liberal politicians who helped build and nurture this police state are starting to get a little sweaty. Not one public official in America is prepared to even mention cops rioting in NYC the night Trump lost; let alone do anything about it. Clearly, there are consequences involved when you staff your police state with open fascists to protect a capitalist order dependent on white supremacy for its survival. Unfortunately, as is always the case when it comes to police violence, it won’t be bougie lanyard skulls cracking under their batons – it’ll be poor people and folks who refuse to accept fascist rule.

Dismantling Capitalism Requires Police Abolition

“When the police enforce the law, they do so unevenly, in ways that give disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color, and others near the bottom of the social pyramid. And when the police violate the law, these same people are their most frequent victims. This is a coincidence too large to overlook. If we put aside, for the moment, all questions of legality, it must become quite clear that the object of police attention, and the target of police violence, is overwhelmingly that portion of the population that lacks real power.”

Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

If there’s one thing I’ve learned on my almost seven-year ride into analyzing a reactionary neofeudalist dystopia from a left wing perspective, is that sometimes it’s hard to understand the importance of combating one aspect of the capitalist order, when you rarely experience life under its direct occupation. As I get older, read more, and experience more police repression in real time, it’s increasingly becoming clear to me that it is far too easy to regard police and policing as a side issue, or perhaps a symptom of other, larger problems.

The simple truth is that we are all trapped together on a dying planet, and the only way to save the species itself, is to dismantle the capitalist order we all live under today. Unfortunately, that capitalist order intends to fight back even if it kills billions; and as any marginalized person can tell you, the front lines of any state push-back against those advocating for equality, will be manned by openly fascist cops. These relationships between state power, the capitalist class, and fascist murderpigs then ultimately render the battle against police violence, a central role in the battle against both capitalism, and its reactionary footman, fascism.

In today’s Quickshot Quotation, I’d like to turn to anarchist analyst Kristian Williams and the important excerpt above, from his excellent book “Our Enemies In Blue: Police and Power in America.” In order to understand why police act in the way they do, it becomes necessary to understand their obvious but unspoken purpose in our society; to maintain the supremacy of the propertied class, over the exploited classes – a relationship that in much of the Pig Empire, is also justified by the inherently racialized nature of the repression. Thus there really is no tension between the statements that “police brutalized poor people” and “police enforce white supremacy” as these two purposes typically work hand in hand on behalf of the ruling classes.

At the end of the day and from a leftist perspective, abolishing or otherwise disempowering the police cannot be a “side issue” because those same police stand in the way of our efforts to obtain equality, abolish capitalism, and literally save all life on Earth. The fascist reaction, which has clearly already begun across much of the Pig Empire, will ultimately be represented in the streets by the police; and right now the laws of our police states largely empower them to commit outrageous acts of violence against anyone they don’t much like; for reasons political, or otherwise. Calling that a niche problem is sort of like saying the sleeping dragon is a minor inconvenience when you’re planning a trip up The Lonely Mountain.

Murderpigs, Class War, and Abolition Over Reform

Diversifying the Police Force Won’t End Police Violence

At this point, I don't think it will surprise anyone to hear that I am not a fan of ongoing efforts to "reform" policing; or for that matter, a so-called American justice system that grinds civil rights protesters and antifascists to paste, while letting nazi murderers walk with a pat on the head. As I discussed in a recent Quickshot Quotation, the plain truth is that most folks, particularly Americans, have no idea what the real role of policing is in our society. Indeed, a careful study of American history, such as that found in books like "Badges Without Borders" by Stuart Schrader, or "Our Enemies in Blue" by Kristian Williams, reveals that pretty much every prior round of "police reform" has only further empowered police to repress protestors, activists, and anyone who would harm the objectively fascist socioeconomic order in the United States.

Unfortunately, and despite these objective truths, even some folks on the left continue to insist that cosmetic reform measures will make a measurable difference in the behavior of fascist murderpigs whose job is basically to conduct class warfare on behalf of capital. Today on Nina-Bytes then, I'd like to turn your attention to a November 17th, 2021 Op-Ed written by abolitionist Reina Sultan over on Truthout, to provide a concrete example of why this approach is doomed to failure.

While the author's main focus is debunking the ridiculous notion that you can reform police by ensuring more brown faces are doing the actual racialized oppression, the fact is that virtually every argument she puts forward to do so, speaks to the larger misjudgment of the police's function that beleaguers most Americans. As Sultan notes, the funny thing about hiring more diverse police officers is at the end of the day, you're still hiring more police officers and those officers are still the enforcement arm of a brutal, white supremacist, openly neofeudalist socioeconomic order that currently dominates life throughout the Pig Empire. More importantly however, the author hits the nail on the head by noting you really can't "reform" a system that's working exactly as it was designed to function:

"Because policing and incarceration are inherently violent and racist institutions, prison-industrial complex abolitionists have been working to dismantle them in the hopes of creating a safer and more just world. Without the prison-industrial complex, abolitionists argue that we can divert resources to life-giving resources and services, rather than death-making institutions.

Prison-industrial complex reformers and preservationists generally argue that the system is “broken” — that it has problems that are ultimately solvable, but that maintaining its existence is imperative for public safety. The truth is that the prison-industrial complex is functioning exactly as it is meant to; its creation was never intended to provide justice, but instead it was born of the desire to maintain white supremacy and racial capitalism. When we reframe our understanding of the prison-industrial complex, it becomes clear that it is accomplishing its intended purpose."

Obviously, you don't really need me to tell you that American policing is out of control; anyone who tuned on the nightly news during the George Floyd protests knows that. I fear however that the real scope of the policing problem, and its role in the ongoing class war being conducted by billionaire supervillains against, well essentially the rest of us, is being lost in the noise. In the war against neofeudalist mass murderers, and an oncoming Pig Empire slide into overt fascism, violent reactionary murderpigs will be the machine's first and favorite response to anyone who doesn't want to go gently into that good night so Elon Musk can escape to Mars.

Not only is it impossible to reform police, but if we intended to dismantle capitalism and save all life on earth, abolishing them as quickly as possible is imperative; the survival of the species might just depend on it.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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Capitalism Doesn’t Create Wealth

“Factually, capitalism has never created even one shiny dime of wealth because that’s not how capitalism works. Capitalism merely transfers wealth from one group of people, usually the poor and marginalized, to another; the wealthy ruling classes.”

- Nina Illingworth, November 2021

Although ruling class propaganda typically implies that capitalism is eternal, the truth is that it is a relatively recent invention; having been born primarily out of a series of European bourgeoisie revolutions against the noble aristocracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, if you dig a little deeper into capitalism’s origins, you’ll find that the institution was not built on can-do ingenuity, but rather genocide, slavery, and the “primitive accumulation of wealth” by force. Expressed simply, the existence of capitalism required colonialism and forced labor, both of which in turn, required outrageous acts of genocidal violence. Of course, while these truths are rarely discussed in Pig Empire society, they are in fact occasionally discussed. What will absolutely never be examined in polite company however, is the reality that the bloodthirsty violence, abuse, and criminality that underpinned the birth of capitalism, remains necessary for its function to this day. Capitalism simply doesn’t work without someone to exploit, that exploitation must be enforced through some form of coercion (whether it be starvation, or bodily violence,) and the surplus value extracted through this process amounts to funneling money upward from the exploited classes, and into the pockets of the capitalists. In other words, capitalism is not only a form of long-term armed robbery, but that is quite literally the way it’s designed to work. Keep that in mind the next time some billionaire muppet starts droning on about how hard they work while pretending the Pig Empire is some kind of meritocracy.

If Money Could Talk It Would File Charges

“If one looks into the genealogies of many “old families,” one discovers episodes of slave trafficking, bootlegging, gun running, opium trading, falsified land claims, violent acquisition of water and mineral rights, the extermination of Indigenous peoples, salves of shoddy and unsafe goods, public funds used for private speculations, crooked deals in government bonds and vouchers, and payoffs for political favors. One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. “Old money” is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.”

- Michael Parenti

In the above post from Instagram, I briefly delved into the violent criminal origins of capitalism. Today, I’d like to return to that subject here in Quickshot Quotations, with another quote from one of my favorite Marxist academics, professor Michael Parenti.

Obviously if capitalism doesn’t produce wealth, so much as it loots it, and the origins of capitalism lie in barbarous forms of primitive accumulation, it’s only fair to say that it is very hard indeed to be a rich person in the Pig Empire without ultimately benefiting from the proceeds of crime, slavery, and genocide. This is particularly true of rich families in America, whose wealth tends to stretch back to one of three places; the genocidal theft of Indigenous land, the brutal practice of chattel slavery, or straight up war profiteering. Thus, and as Parenti notes, old money in the United States tends to come with old bloodstains attached.

Of course, given that our modern neofeudalist order is still based on coercion, exploitation, and the primitive accumulation of resources at gunpoint, even “new money” in America is almost certainly amoral at best, and actively malfeasant under most circumstances. You might be thinking "wait Nina, the billionaires, capitalists, and bosses aren’t necessarily the ones enforcing this violent extraction;" but the people who do work for them, so it’s largely irrelevant. In a society that criminalizes poverty, and will happily starve you to death if you refuse to sell your labor at whatever cost the capitalists offer, it’s naïve to pretend it really matters who holds the truncheon for the bosses.

In other words, rich people are robbers; and really rich people, are just good enough at robbing that they can afford to make their stick up game legal. And none of this is the result of some new, particularly malevolent form of capitalism; this is quite literally how it has always worked, and how capitalism will always work until we dismantle it, or we all boil to death on a dying planet.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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canchewread · 2 years

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Fascism Doesn’t Happen By Accident

“The truth is that most people have absolutely no idea how much time Pig Empire nazis spend trying to push fascist ideology and political practices into the mainstream discourse. What you’re witnessing in America now is no accident, it’s a political psyop funded by fascist billionaire maggots and propagated by white supremacists across all forms of media. It’s a cracker plot against democratic life.”

Nina Illingworth, Nov 10th, 2021

I don’t know about you folks, but at this point I have pretty much had it with a mainstream media that low-key acknowledges we’re in a pitched battle against fascism, but still finds time to give white supremacists and fascist coup plotters the benefit of the doubt while debating what’s “in their hearts.” Can you hear me in the back? Literally nothing fascists do to inject reactionary ideas and the threat of violence into political discourse is by accident. Nothing. There is a reason billionaire nazis are trying to control the curriculum in schools, there is a reason they’re funding reactionary shitposting influencers online, there is a reason they're giving money to neo-confederates and winger militias; this is not all some sort of unfortunate tragedy. It literally doesn’t matter if Paul Gosar understood what he was doing when he retweeted clips of an anime popular with fascists, showing him slicing AOC’s throat. Paul Gosar might be an idiot, but he’s surrounded by smart young nazis-for-hire and they certainly know what they’re doing. Fascist political techniques work by injecting intimidation and violence into everyday political practices; and relying on liberal democratic systems to have no answer when they do. Sound familiar? It should if you’ve been watching the news in Weimar America for the last six years.

Private Power and the Essence of Fascism

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

In today’s Quickshot Quotation, I’d like to briefly return to yesterday’s discussion about the relationship between capitalists and fascism because I think understanding this concept is basically a prerequisite for grasping why the Pig Empire as a whole is succumbing to overt fascism right now.

In my last QQ post, we examined a quote from none other than Leon Trotsky that effectively described fascism as a defensive mechanism against justice and equality, for a reactionary capitalist ruling class in a liberal democratic society. Obviously then, fascism as a threat, is intrinsically tied to the existence of capitalism, a capitalist ruling order, and yes, a liberal democratic political structure that grants ultimate authority and power to that same order.

Given that American society has been poisoned by the reactionary fruits of Hooverism and anti-communism for generations at this point however, it’s possible that some readers out there won’t be inclined to take Trotsky’s word for it. So today then, let’s turn to the voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the 32nd President of the United States, and a man only frothing wingers would deny was a capitalist (and imperialist) through and through.

Does it surprise you to see an American President acknowledging that unchecked power in the hands of the private sector is a recipe for fascism? If so, don’t worry about it too much, all that means is that you’re not an octogenarian. With the rise of both anti-communism, and neoliberalism, the ruling class in America has spent my entire lifetime doing the exact thing FDR warns will produce fascism in this quote. It’s not a coincidence that the rise of European fascism immediately followed the era we know as “the Gilded Age,” so why should it be surprising that a “New Gilded Age” has brought its old friend to dinner again in our society?

Look, I’m not out here to gloss over American history, or pretend that Roosevelt was a leftist; but really, that’s precisely the point isn’t it? Whether you’re asking Trotsky, an avowed communist, or FDR, a man who fought tirelessly to preserve capitalism and capitalist power, they both acknowledge that fascism is intrinsically tied to both a capitalist order, and the application of private sector power; despite its nationalist trappings and state systems of monopolizing violence.

This is how fascism works; they just never told you this in school because the ruling class, capitalist order in Pig Empire society isn’t in the business of telling on itself.

Stochastically Yours in Weimar America

Rep. Paul Gosar shared an anime video of himself killing AOC. This was her response.

As a socialist writer trapped in a capitalist dystopia, I spend a lot of my time pointing out the links between the study of political economy, and events occurring in the news of the day; you might call it an educational commitment to exploring both theory, and praxis. Earlier today on Instagram, I published a Pinko Postcard discussion that briefly touched on the organized efforts of American fascists to mainstream reactionary ideology and political practices. Here on Nina-Bytes then, I'd like to explore what this normalization and weaponization of fascist political techniques looks like in real time; with an assist from everyone's favorite coup plotter and white supremacist in Congress, Paul Gosar.

Given the uniformly atrocious coverage this event has garnered in the mainstream media, I decided to use this November 9th, 2021 post by Rachel Treisman on npr.org as our primary anchor because while it still misses the mark, she at least provides some context on the reactionary nature of Gosar's actions. In case you missed it, Congressman Gosar published an explicitly fascist anti-immigration video that featured modified anime footage of himself murdering Congresswoman, and noted target of reactionary ire, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While much of the media has inexplicably chosen to cover this event as inter-personal drama between rival factions on the Hill, students of fascist propaganda techniques will recognize immediately that this is no laughing matter. Let's fill in that context, shall we?

The first thing you need to remember is that Paul Gosar is absolutely a fascist; you can call him a Trumpist if you prefer, but because the terms are largely synonymous, it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference. He's spoken at white nationalist conferences, raised money with fascist influencers, and oh yeah, there's that small matter of Gosar's intimate involvement with the January 6th fascist coup plot to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election; which reportedly included the Congressman promising blanket pardons to participants in the event of a successful coup. Even this guy's own family says he's a white supremacist.

The second bit of largely-missing context here, comes from the nature of the video Gosar shared, and how it has been edited. The video explicitly employs fascist political propaganda about an "attack of immigrants" and shows multiple elected GOP nazis committing acts of outrageous violence in response, through edited anime clips. Furthermore, given the fact that the anime chosen, Attack on Titan, has strong fascist overtones and has already been coopted by reactionary extremists in the Pig Empire, I don't think the stench of neonazism involved here is any sort of accident. In other words, even if Gosar's staff hadn't depicted him slashing AOC's throat, this would still be a fascist video tweeted out by a sitting Congressman in America.

Finally of course, there's the context of the violence depicted in its own right, and Gosar's predictable keyboard reactionary response to being criticized for it. While crackers and collaborators absurdly pretend that folks are accusing Gosar of literally threatening to cut Ocasio-Cortez's head off with a sword, the specter of stochastic terrorism and the usefulness (for the fascists) of injecting the threat of violence into standard political discourse, is largely ignored. Even the bizarre insistence from the Congressman's office that folks "relax" because it's just "a cartoon" echoes the standard playbook of f*ckboi "ironic" nazis online.

Frankly the truly alarming thing about this story is that we as a society, and mainstream American media as an institution, already know all of this because we've collectively seen it all before. Sara Palin taught the media that right wing politicians are fine with stochastic terrorism as long as their rhetoric fires up the base. Andrew Anglin's leaked style guide for the Daily Stormer makes it clear that nazis are actively trying to mainstream fascist ideology every waking moment of the day. We know ironic nazism, is really just nazism. And as of last week, we can no longer deny the fact that these folks are fascists, actively plotting an authoritarian takeover of America, and the larger Pig empire.

It would be nice if an American media establishment that claims to be defending democracy from the fascist creep, deemed all that worth mentioning in between blow by blow coverage of the back and forth between Gosar and the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, it's just not in their nature.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

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