(no subject)
Sep. 26th, 2004 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThere are times I think of making filters, but then again, the things I think might be worth filtering are the ones I want everyone in the world to read... so if you think I'm being silly with links, that's just the way it goes.
dtaylor pointed me to this... so I am pointing you to it, and if you like it, perhaps you should point others.
The Ghost of Vice President Wallace
Some snippets
" In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"
Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
...
" 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. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."
...
Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."
The word fascist has been bruised, it gets tossed around by lots of people who merely mean authoritarian... and it gets conflated with Nazism (which was a form, but not purely, of fascist). That watering down of the term has robbed people of seeing the peril it poses, and of seeing, as Wallace did, how tempting that brand of authoritarian government could be to the American people. Henry Ford, with his living wage, and his right to inspect your house; and lower your pay if he didn't like what he found, was a facsist, and people liked working for him.
Conveniently, Orcinus is discussing this topic right now, and has been for years, mostly in light of the Skinheads, et alia, which populate Racism in America today, but also as it is evolving in the mainstream. He points out, from a reader's letter, and with his own analysis, how it is happening. The next installment (this is one of several) is "Next: Pseudo-fascism and the GOP"
Keep track of that too.
It can happen here, as Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
dtaylor pointed me to this... so I am pointing you to it, and if you like it, perhaps you should point others.The Ghost of Vice President Wallace
Some snippets
" In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"
Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
...
" 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. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."
...
Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."
The word fascist has been bruised, it gets tossed around by lots of people who merely mean authoritarian... and it gets conflated with Nazism (which was a form, but not purely, of fascist). That watering down of the term has robbed people of seeing the peril it poses, and of seeing, as Wallace did, how tempting that brand of authoritarian government could be to the American people. Henry Ford, with his living wage, and his right to inspect your house; and lower your pay if he didn't like what he found, was a facsist, and people liked working for him.
Conveniently, Orcinus is discussing this topic right now, and has been for years, mostly in light of the Skinheads, et alia, which populate Racism in America today, but also as it is evolving in the mainstream. He points out, from a reader's letter, and with his own analysis, how it is happening. The next installment (this is one of several) is "Next: Pseudo-fascism and the GOP"
Keep track of that too.
It can happen here, as Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 04:57 pm (UTC)True. What's really scary is the rise of corporations being treated as individuals with individual rights (own property, etc.) and gaining more and more legal ground with their forces of lawyers.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 05:14 pm (UTC)In a corporation this is worse, because the corporation has no moral comapass, only the force of law can rein it in. It also allows, as you point out, the company to use the law to increase it's scope.
My favorite on that score was Nike trying to say laws against false advertising were unconsititutioinal; insofar as they regulated corporations, because they limited the rights of a "person" to speak freely. In other words, making them tell the truth about the way they ran their business was a violation of the First Amendment.
The Courts struck this down... but if the laws I was ranting about were passed... the Legislative could make it so.
TK