Sunday, October 30, 2005

A response to RepBast1984 on Fascism

This response got too big for the comments section:

“why was fascism considered right wing? Because they opposed socialism?”

True, it’s not enough to simply point out that the fascists dismantled unions or opposed socialism. There are many reasons why Fascism is understood to be right-wing. They actively opposed liberalism and communism while forming coalition government with conservatives. Fascists (like Mussolini) were financially supported by wealthy industrialists and landowners. They did so for the same reason that they supported other conservatives: because fascists made were against progressive reforms and were better for the bottom line. The Fascists often had support from the religious community. They did so for the same reasons religious groups support other conservatives: Fascists believed in “traditional values”, and in strengthening the role of faith in the public sphere. Mussolini in particular had the support of the Vatican (which was even more conservatives at the time).

On a more basic level, if you look at the Lakoffian “frames” used by fascists, it’s clear that they were using a “strict father” frame in governing. The believed in strongly in reward and punishment to the exclusion of nurturance. They believed that strength came from the strong leader at the top (one of the more obvious trait of fascism). They idealized the past and framed their goals in those terms. I could go on but I think the analysis is clear.

“If you want to talk Italy, yes Italy was not industrialized untilt he 1930's”

Italy was industrialized as of 1930 at least in the north which is where the fascists had more power. Though it was still poor, industry and trade unions were a powerful political force. In the south (where my family lives) there was little industry and little support for fascism since the rich needed no protection against socialists.

“Italian Fascism is different from Nazism because of the focus on national unity as opposed to racial unity. Racial unity is not Fascism.”

This is just weird. Why is racial unity/ national unity a meaningful distinction when the nations in question are mostly racially homogenous? The Italian fascists were also against Jews and Roma, even the ones that had lived in Italy all their lives. German fascists identified a “greater Germany” which included places like Austria where ethnic Germans lived. Italy identified a “greater Italy” which included lands outside Italy where ethnic Italians lived. This is a distinction without a difference - and I don’t see why you are trying to make it.

“Stability was destroyed, their businesses were confiscated by the state and the fascists brought wars to their countries.”

True, but they hardly campaigned on this. I mean, by that standard, communism is right wing since it didn’t really help the poor.

“Interesting, communism was supposed to be a movement that did not include the agricultural poor.”

You are right in a sense. It is a great historical irony that Marx (and most other communists) assumed that their system would come about because industrialized workers would become exploited and overthrow the existing order. Instead, Communism took hold only in unindustrialized countries like Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam through agricultural peasant revolts.

“As we've found out from this year's electiont he agricultural poor are conservative reactionaries guided by religion.”

This is wrong on a couple levels. 1. Due to mechanization, the US doesn’t really have an agricultural poor anymore. 2. The poor vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. 3. Are you seriously trying to extrapolating the mindset of Chinese peasants from modern day election results? 4. Read a history book, bud. The communists came to power in Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam with a powerbase of peasants. Not being industrialized, there was no other political base to launch a revolution from.

“The communists knew that no peasants were going to be involved in a revolution that would provide equity and abolish capital. Peasants who were poor (petty bourgeoisie), just wanted more money. this is why communist regimes fell. They never adhered to Marxist theory, mainly because Marxist theory would work nowhere.”

I have no idea what you are arguing here. Let’s get back to the Fascism.

Update: David Neiwert hits this issue hard in this post:

Of course, as I just got done explaining a little bit ago, the conservative charge that fascism was a leftist phenomenon is a rightist attempt at David Irvingesque historical revisionism. There is not a single serious historian of either fascism or World War II who does not consider it a right-wing phenomenon: its anti-liberalism and anti-socialism were its defining characteristics, regardless of the rhetoric adopted by early adherents and leaders.

This quote really doesn't do him justice though. Read the whole thing.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 7:46 AM
(24) comments

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Liberal Fascism... as opposed to the regular kind

The conservative writer Jonah Goldberg has come out with a new "book" called Liberal Fascism. To me it indicates the lack of ideas on the right, but more importantly, the lack of intellectual seriousness more than anything else. I mean, how divorced from reality do you have to be to compare Fascism – the international enemy of left-of-center movements of all types, from liberal to socialist to communist, universal friend of conservative movements (for that is who they invariably formed coalition governments with) – to liberalism, the ideology of pluralism? Answer: all the way divorced. That’s how much.

Author David Neiwert explains:

Mussolini was indeed an active socialist at the beginning of his political career. But he was remarkable for shifting his alliances and adjusting his ideology accordingly as he climbed the ladder of power; and by the time he had completed his climb, he was an outspoken and lethal anti-socialist.

Hitler's fascists, somewhat in contrast, only adopted a limited socialist rhetoric as a sop to its efforts to recruit from the working class. Hitler quickly jettisoned these aspects of the party as he obtained power, particularly in forming a ruling coalition with conservative corporatists. There was little doubt that Hitler and the Nazis were devoutly anti-leftist: their Brownshirts made a career of physically attacking socialists and communists wherever they gathered, and the first people sent to the concentration camp at Dachau in 1933-34 were socialist and communist political leaders.

Structurally, the fascists had to be anti-left. Their base was not the unionized workers and intellectual middle class. The Nazis disbanded unions the second they got the chance. They terrorized universities and destroyed the modern art and modern science that they gave rise to. Politically, their reason for being was that the left was a dual threat to society: Communists and Socialists were attacking society, and the flabby liberal government couldn’t keep people safe. This same line played itself out over and over again; in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and even the US (though thankfully the silver shirts didn’t get far in the US). Again and again the fascists came to power in coalition governments with other conservatives. Again and again they were bankrolled by the same corporatists that bankrolled other conservative movements. Again and again they instituted the same policies which left the rich richer and the poor poorer. Again and again they attacked liberal pluralism as “relativism” and tried to replace it with one true faith.

The left has often been accused of comparing Republicans to Fascists. Besides a few stoned out radicals from the 60s, I'm happy to say this is generally false. What’s true is that no respected liberal thinkers have made this accusation seriously (although of course we keep an open mind on the subject if new facts come to light). With this book, Jonah Goldberg, nationally syndicated columnist and an editor-at-large for the National Review, has stepped over the line. If he earnestly made this accusation, then he - and the conservative movement that backs him - is intellectually bankrupt; if he made it dishonestly, then he guilty of the worst kind of smear-campaign. Either way it does not bode well for the seriousness of the conservative movement.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 8:02 AM
(5) comments

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Why are feminists so hot?

I like to read the feminists blogs becuase well... because I like lefty blogs in general, but also becuase it's great fun to read their rightous ire at popular right-wing mysogynists. Case in point, Amanda Marcotte riffing on Leon Kaas and Harvey Mansfield:

The first and most obvious bit of misogyny is the assertion that the only reason men would get married is because they can't get sex otherwise. In other words, women better fall down on our knees and thank the lord for the pussy or else we'd have no bargaining chip to keep our social superiors from ignoring our foul, disgusting selves completely. To put it bluntly. Truly, the argument that a man has to be bribed into marriage assumes that men cannot find anything else about women to like enough to want to be with women, and on the flip side, it assumes that women are so debased and lowly that we are dying to touch the robes of the sex that would kick us out in the snow if we didn't bribe them with pussy. How the hell love factors into the cold transaction of men tolerating the presence of debased females in their lives in exchange for sex, I couldn't tell you.

The Mansfield/Kass argument is misogynistic on another level as well. O'Rourke characterizes their supposed concern for the well-being of young women as a cover story for them to wring their hands about the evil sluttitude out there, and I definitely think she's right but I also think there's something else going on there, something more sincere. I think on a certain level, these two men cannot conceive that women might have subjective inner lives that would create conflict between them snapping easily into the Mansfield/Kass sexual fantasy of the virginal bride and living their own lives. In other words, since they tend to think of women as objects to project their fantasies onto and nothing much else, they don't see why it would actually be unfulfilling for a woman to live out the fantasies being projected on her.

What's really weird is that men like Kaas and Mansfield manage to exist in our culture at all. I know that there are some pretty conservative areas out there but honestly, who hasn't internalized the idea that premarital sex should be a personal choice for women just like it has always been for men?

I realize that conservatives have been working on vilifying feminists since they started this whole "equality" thing but seriously, who can argue with the basic tenets of Feminism today? Who can argue with equal work for equal pay? Who can argue against sharing parenting duties (or dividing them in some other mutually agreed upon way)? Who can argue against letting women have control over their own sexuality? Who can argue against the idea that guys are responsible for their own sexual behavior and that they don't have to be tricked into marriage with promises of sex? The basic idea of feminism has already been absorbed into our culture (except in parts of Utah), the best conservatives have managed is to try and disassociate feminist social progress from the feminists who made it happen and co-opt it with idiotic anti-feminists like Ann Coulter.

Feminism isn't some PC crap foisted upon America by big brother, it's a choice made by our culture at large by men and women everywhere. Those who think themselves part of some anti-feminist cultural elite vanguard, well... They're free to argue their case if they want, but we've been there, done that, and we've decided we like this much better.

Also, check out the bloggers at Feministe and Feministing. They are very entertaining... and also
hot.

Update: Bonus story! Last time I was in San Diego I was driving somewhere with my little old aunt who grew up in Sicily and immigrated to the US in the 1950's (with two kids in tow). We were talking about women and divorce and she was lamenting her daughter's divorce years earlier. She said something like the following:

You know, in my day, we didn't have divorce... but you know… women also got treated pretty badly too. I hear people complain today saying "Oh I'm tired I've been doing the laundry today". Tired? The machine did it! When I was a girl we had to do it by hand and you had to take the clothes to the town fountain to do it. My dad and brother worked hard every day. Every single day. But when they got home, they were treated like kings! We had to keep working. No, things are better today...

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 7:14 AM
(26) comments

Harriet Miers Withdraws

Like a mormon having unprotected sex, Harrient Miers has prematurly withdrawn today leaving room for bush to nominate someone else to have a go. I want to write more but really I just wanted to use that metephor.

So will bush nominate a far-right crazy or play the safe course?

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 6:57 AM
(5) comments

Saturday, October 22, 2005

John Edwards at UC Berkeley

From a e-mail by MoveOn.org:

This Tuesday, Senator John Edwards will be at University of Californoa—Berkeley continuing his whirlwind national tour to galvanize young people in the fight against poverty. The last few events have been smash hits, and momentum continues to build.

The Senator has asked us to invite MoveOn members to join him when the "Opportunity Rocks" tour hits Berkeley. Here are the details:

WHO: John Edwards, UC Berkeley students, and MoveOn members from the community
WHERE: UC Berkeley -, Union Ballroom, Pauley Ballroom, Martin Luther King Student Union
WHEN: Tuesday, October 25th. Doors open at 5:30 pm
Seating is limited, so please reserve tickets today at:

http://www.opportunityrocks.org/tour-2005/tickets/moveon/

I have my tickets. See ya there.

Update: Just got back from the speach. John Edwards is certainly a good speaker and what he had to say about poverty in America was very insightful. I may have more thoughts on it later.

Update:I was certainly a good speach. I didn't have a good seat so I couldn't see his face most of the time but I feel like that let me concentrate on his words more.

What was interesting to me was that the whole speech was about increasing opportunity and the idea that we could help. But when he went to list the ways we could alleviate poverty his solutions were things like extending the EITC, mixed income housing, extending Medicare and Medicaid benefits (presumably leading the way for some kind of universal healthcare) and other things which are pretty much things politicians can only do.

Personally I think this is correct. But then that means the best we can do is work in the Democratic party to get people elected *and* try to convince people to join our cause through things like liberal blogs and think tanks. (Hey, like this one!) I don’t know what groups were there after the speech to recruit, but I’m glad liberals are getting away from the hippy-dippy flower power idea that we can fix systematic problems with what basically amounts to non-governmental charity programs.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 6:05 PM
(7) comments

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Blogging spree! (DDT Lies)

Via Crooked Timber I find this link to a page debunking yet another common anti-liberal myth. This one claims that liberals and environmentalists made DDT illegal and thus contributed to malaria world-wide.

What about the ban on using DDT to fight malaria? There is no such ban. DDT is banned from agricultural use (and rightly so because of environmental damage) but can still be used for disease prevention. JTFCSS pretends that there is a ban so they can hang malaria deaths around the neck of environmentalists.

…

Yes, the mosquitoes in Sri Lanka have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn’t work any more. In fact, that is the reason why they stopped using DDT in Sri Lanka. It wasn’t because of any ban—it was because it stopped being effective. [Members of The World Health Organization] are sending malathion, which will actually be able to kill the mosquitoes there.

This slur plays right to the biases that conservatives have. Namely, it’s the common conservative belief that environmentalists want us to choose between the environment and man. As this story proves, the opposite is true: Environmentalists (like me) want to use our resources wisely so as to not squander long term economic health for short term gain. Environmentalists helped phase out the use of DDT as an agricultural pesticide in the developing world because the environmental damage it caused was unnecessary and so its use as an anti-malarial pesticide could be maintained.

It’s a pity that, having failed to find true arguments, anti-environmentalists have to resort to fake ones. Or maybe it’s not.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 5:22 PM
(0) comments

Friday, October 14, 2005

Hack

You know, I don't ussually double post like this but jesus: Could Glenn McCoy be any more of a hack? Look, if you think that Bush is so awesome that he can do no wrong, fine. Ignore the wrong he does. But does this comic even make sense if you think about it? Yes, newscasters also use scripts. Newscaster's however, generally write their own scripts since they *do* report.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 8:32 PM
(11) comments

Hate Crime laws: Anti-Terror legislation, not Thought Crimes

Consider the following scenarios:

1. A man you do not know kills you just to watch you die.
2. A man you do not know kills you for your money.
3. A man you do not know kills you accidentally while in a drug-induced haze.
4. A person kills you accidentally because they a knife slipped from their hand and flew across the room.
5. A person assists your suicide.
6. A person kills you with the intent of intimidating people who are like you.

The outcomes of each of these cases are the same: you are dead. And yet because the motivation is different, our criminal justice system recognizes them as different and may assign different punishments to each. This is why we have first and second degree manslaughter. This is why lawyers spend months proving intent and premeditation. The idea, as floated by some conservative writers, that a law that judges intent is equal to the legislation of a “thought crime” is unserious. Intent is obviously important.

So what of the hate crime? Does it actually warrant different treatment from the criminal justice system? I say it does. A person who commits a regular crime does not necessarily intend to terrorize the general population. A hate criminal doesn’t just commit a crime against a specific person – he commits the extra crime of purposely terrorizing a specific population.

Terror *is* what we’re talking about here. To commit a hate crime it’s not sufficient to merely kill a gay person or other minority. You have to pick out that group in your mind, go to where you can find members of that group, and purposefully bypass others as you head toward your goal. (That's the thing about minorities. They're harder to find.) Oh sure, some criminals may have decided to commit a crime already and figure that while they’re at it they might as well pick a member of some group they hate. Call it “killing two birds with one stone”. Well then, I say let them serve time for both birds when they come home to roost.

Of course we shouldn’t let recognizing the extra terror component of hate crimes lead us to extra penalties on just any crime against a minority. If someone beats up a lesbian without caring about her orientation that person would be an asshole, but I wouldn't call him a homophobe asshole without other information.

Update: changed "knowing" to "caring about" becuase that's what I really meant.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 7:14 PM
(31) comments

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Conservative tax plans

While engaging in all this artsy fartsy talk about taxes and all it's good to keep in mind what representatives voted in by actual real life conservatives do with tax code. Via Daily Kos we find a report that Republicans are eliminating the AMT, a tax that the rich can never get out of paying no matter how many lawyers they have. Granted, this tax will start affecting regular people (re: people who *earn* their money) soon so it should be reformed so it goes back to working how it should. But I guess Republicans know that they can use this opportunity to help the rich sneak out of their taxes yet again and the conservatives back home will keep voting for them. Aren’t conservatives grand!

But wait. Its gets better.

Apparently, the Republican congress has been reading DTI’s posts here on Caljunket because they’re going to offset the money lost from the AMT by simplifying the tax code! That’s right; they’re getting rid of deductions on mortgage interest and health insurance! You know, deductions that are small for rich people but which are a godsend for the middle class. Thank god conservatives managed to get their congressmen elected so that they could cut taxes on the wealthy and raise them on the middle class – oh wait – did I say that? I meant to say “get us closer to a flat tax”.

Congrats, DTI!

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 9:56 AM
(25) comments

Monday, October 10, 2005

Nowhere to go but up

Linked to from Andrew Sullivan today is this startling news: Adopting a flat tax (i.e. raising taxes on regular people and lowering them on the rich) leads to explosive growth!

I believe this is one of the biggest pieces of economic news ever. Milton Friedman's single-postcard flat-tax idea has finally started catching on (ten Eastern European countries, with four more in Europe close to adoption). 2004 GDP growth rates there averaged a staggering 8%, well over twice the industrialized nations' average of 3.4%. Of course these flat-tax rates vary widely, from 12-33%. Among the six lowest-taxed countries, growth rates are the highest: 8.6%. The lowest-taxed three have 9.5% growth.

Wow, that really is amazing! Clearly this person has not only discovered something about economics but he has also discovered that correlation equals causation. How else to explain the wild leaps of faith required to come to his conclusion. Poor countries, especially those joining the capitalist world for the first time, are due for high growth regardless of what silly tax policies they adopt. Just look at India and China.

Ah the flat tax. You know, the rich are always the eternal enemies of capitalism. They not only stand to gain personally from its disruption, but unlike stoned-out hippies, they have the means to affect it. The flat tax is the latest attack on the American capitalistic system. It’s yet another way to shift tax responsibilities from the rich onto regular folk while simultaneously eroding the funding for the governmental structures which keep capitalism alive. Sometimes I wish the flat tax would actually be implemented for a month. The public revulsion would be so strong and so immediate that whole elitist Libertarian structure would be overturned in a fortnight like shaking off a bad dream.

Now I’m just getting dark.

Update: Via Brad Plumber comes more information on the "Flat Earth Flat Tax". I think he's being unfair: Flat Earthers' beliefs are inconsequential. Flat Taxer's would pretty much ruin America.

Update: The orignal poster has retracted a bit of what he said here. Hat's off to him I say. If his tax preferences are a little eccentric, he is at least honest about the facts on the ground.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 1:16 PM
(16) comments

Friday, October 07, 2005

It's not his fault if he's overrated

Berkeley's own George Lakoff pens this piece in my favorite Magazine today. It does a lot to cut through the mumbo-jumbo framing crap people keep misunderstanding Lakoff as saying and applies his ideas to the real life case of Hurricane Katrina: A tragedy that proves the necessity of effective liberal government and the bankruptcy of the conservative governing ideology.

The tragedy of Katrina was a matter of values and principles. The heart of progressive values is straightforward and clear: empathy (caring about and for people), responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy), and fairness (providing opportunities for all and a level playing field from which to start). These values translate into a simple proposition: The common wealth of all Americans should be used for the common good and betterment of all Americans. In short, promoting the common good so that we can all benefit -- and focusing on the public interest rather than narrow individual gain -- is the central role of government. These are not just progressive values. They are America’s values.

Katrina shines a light not only on the failure of conservative values but especially on their fundamentally un-American character. Since the days of the colonies, when the commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia were formed, Americans have pooled their common wealth for individual aspirations.

Lakoff's framing ideas will only take us so far but it's important for liberals and progressives to recognize that the failures of the recent congress and administration are *not* caused by personal incompetence. Rather, a fundamentally unworkable hard-right governing ideology is setting us up for failure regardless of how competent any individual Republican is.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 9:21 AM
(5) comments

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

You Could Have it Moderately Better

The new Franz Ferdinand EP (released today!) is more enjoyable than their debut album from last year, which is a significant accomplishment. You should go listen to it. Then, if you like it, you should buy it. Help the brothers out. The Scottish economy needs it.

Goddamn those guys are good.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:21 AM
(0) comments