<nettime> Re: Fascism in the USA?

[Amy Alexander <plagiari@plagiarist.org>]

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, wade tillett wrote:

> 
> The fact that people tend to side with police, or that they believe Bush's
> lies, it seems to me to be, at this point, still a sort of voluntary
> blindness. It is part of the same myopia that refuses to see that the
> american lifestyle is based on global exploitation and fundamentally
> unsustainable. 

yeah, and the time is right for this... sept. 11th may have lit the
national fuse, but this blind-obedience-to-authority mindset has been
filling the powder keg for about 20 years in american culture.
fundamentalist values reign in religion, education, and everything else.
"reading writing and 'rithmetic" rule; critical thinking skills seem an
outmoded relic of hippy-era educational experiments.  finally, after 20
years or so of national sheep-breeding, we have the conditions in which
the current situation can occur. whether the severity of current events
finally deserves the label 'fascism' or simply 'advanced complacency' may
not be the central issue (if it looks like a duck and smells like a
duck... ) a radical but also broad-based cultural change is needed.

> hold- that major cuts in jobs and services provided by the state are in
> effect. When your job or paycheck is effected, when the change is real to
> you, forced on you, there is a natural awakening. 

yep, and this probably needs to be the impetus for broad cultural change.  
a lot of this may have started 2 decades ago with the question: "are you
better off now than you were four years ago?" (if 'yes' then 'obeyMe!') 
but now of course, this has changed. once people get cranky enough with 
the domestic situation, they
generally stop believing so much in santa claus. but even so, it might
take some time to shake off 20-years of slumber training (not to mention
9/11 of course... )

> seems that the justification for that loss must be made more real. As the
> effects become more real from abstract policy changes, the justification
> must become more real. As the system collapses on itself cannibalizing
> even its own constituents it must produce a real fear, terror and
> scapegoat.  

i wonder about this. unfortunately, it wouldn't be the first system that 
successfully cannibalized its own constituents without much 
justification... 

> healthcare, jobs, decrease in living standards, increase in (busy) work
> have not yet been clearly tied to a (islamic) scapegoat. 

actually, i hear people all the time referring to the fact that the 
economy is so bad "because of sept. 11th" so it might be that in the 
contemporary US  mindset, a "clear" tie is not at all necessary... 


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