PART’s Perspective: Will the Real Fascist Please Stand Up? Seizing the Initiative Against the Empire by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles/People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART) During much of the Bush regime’s hold on power, many on the left were convinced it represented an It reflects the acceptance and internalization of the incipient fascism, as its use of the Big Lie technique, glorification of militarism and trampling of rights Empire’s legitimacy on its own terms, and defers the full hearkened back to the Third Reich. Simultaneously, Bush’s neo-con allies propagandized about the threat possibility of uncompromising struggle until some future of Islamo-fascism. Now, the Tea Party claims to see an identity between Obama and Hitler and to equate date when the system crosses the line to fascism. health insurance reform with fascism. Conversely, many on the left see Tea Party reactionary populism and But as George Jackson said, “Fascism is already here.” white nationalism as a form of proto-fascism. He understood that fascism brought the methods of rule in the colonies into the metropole, and in the US, the Why the fixation on fascism? The enormous crimes of Hitler and the nazis, along with decades of colonies are a part of the domestic empire itself. Here, propaganda and the general perception of World War II as the last “good” (and unifying) war, make fascism corporatism in both its senses – rule of corporations, and the prototype of evil that people across the political spectrum (apart from self-proclaimed fascists) can all incorporation of organized masses into the Imperial state claim to oppose. via white supremacy and neo-colonialism – have always been the rule. But there is a deeper reason why so many seek to identify political opponents as fascists – it strips the target of legitimacy, while at the same time justifying the use of extreme measures, up to and including war, to The crimes of this Empire don’t require the development eliminate the threat the fascist represents. It’s clear, in the event, why Bush compared Saddam to Hitler, and of an explicitly fascist dictatorship to justify building why Al Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups were designated as Islamo-fascists. Baseless as they were, a revolutionary opposition. Genocide, environmental such characterizations served to win public approval for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as to link devastation, the constant extraction of wealth and power from the exploited and oppressed, are daily realities Saddam and bin-Laden in the minds of many). right now. This democratic republican system condemns Liberals and leftists, who found Hitler’s moustache schools and attacks on public unions. Is it both who are billions of people to lives of intense and grinding poverty on George W. Bush’s “what-me-worry” visage to be fascist, or neither? for the enrichment of a few billionaires. accurate and biting political satire, consider the right Without the SS, it operates a police state that requires wing use of the same iconography on Barack Obama’s Some who accept fascism’s self-definition as an anti- capitalist and ‘revolutionary’ current believe that white racial profiling, gang injunctions and mass incarceration. “hope/change” face to be the height of absurd racism. Colonialism means a constant state of war against the Yet the continuities between Bush and Obama are nationalists, open nazis and reactionary populists pose a true fascist threat, especially when combined colonized people to maintain control over land and labor. undeniable (on the subsidies and bailouts to Wall Street, These realities require of us the self-critical examination on the privatization of military, espionage and counter- with Christian fundamentalism, Reconstructionism or more heretical racial Identity sects. Others see statist of the strengths and weaknesses of all previous efforts at insurgency forces, on the use of troop ‘surges’ in pursuit liberation to develop a strategy to win this time. of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan). The Department of authoritarianism or totalitarianism, emerging from Homeland Security, the USA PATRIOT Act, ICE raids, corporate domination of all the levers of increasingly Waiting for full-blown fascism to justify the development TSA x-rays, indefinite detention of enemy combatants repressive power, glorification of the military and of a clandestine mentality, or the full capacity for self- without trial have all been normalized under Obama. militarization of the police and other aspects of domestic defense, is not only unnecessary morally or politically, society, as the main threat. it is suicidal. The Empire is already on the defensive, To these crimes of the Empire under Bush, Obama has Anti-Racist Action has always held that fascism is built already beyond parasitic to necrotic, dead on its feet and added a record increase in detentions and deportations injecting its death into its surroundings. of the undocumented. He has further militarized US from above and below. Certainly the multi-million dollar engagement with Latin America, including acceptance of subsidies of Tea Parties by billionaires shows that the two The Empire is a system of class and colonial war against the military coup in Honduras and the implantation of US tendencies interlock. the population and the planet. The war goes on whether bases in Colombia. Obama eliminated single-payer health But the real reason for the search for a definition of we recognize it or not, so we cannot afford to fight with care, or even a public option, in favor of a pro-corporate fascism that applies to current realities exposes an one hand behind our back or half-heartedly. Humanity, coverage system that mandates individuals to buy private unfortunate truth – fear and avoidance of the need for the earth itself and all the species that inhabit it, cry out health insurance. He has intensified privatization of revolution to deal with the Empire as it is right now. for our best effort to uproot and overturn this system now. Editorial Retraction and Self-Criticism The Portland chapter of Anti-Racist Action, Rose City Antifa, brought to our attention centuries, Jewish bankers bought for themselves some real reputations of backers and that Turning the Tide has published several pieces from authors and sources that promote financers of wars and even one communist revolution.” (Atzmon’s article was pulled anti-Semitism, denial of Hitler’s genocide of the Jews, and “left-right collaboration.” from Palestine Think Tank but remains on his personal site.) A particularly disturbing We regret the error in publishing, without sufficiently investigating the sources and aspect of Palestine Think Tank is its promotion of “Israeli organ harvesting” allegations, associations, what purported to be simply pro-Palestinian articles. As anti-fascists, we a modern-day variant of the earlier Blood Libel that alleged that Jewish people killed should have been more familiar with these anti-Semitic sources and narratives so as to Christian and Muslim children to use their blood in religious rituals. Yousef Abudayyeh, oppose them effectively and counter the corrosive effect they have on anti-racism and whose article appeared in TTT, signed on to Palestine Think Tank’s promotion of the true solidarity with Palestinians. TTT has long opposed a “red-brown” alliance. “organ harvesting” libel. In TTT Vol 22, #3, Fall 2009, we published “Boycotts as a Legitimate Means of Although the two articles we published do not contain this kind of material, we did Resistance As Determined by the Oppressed People” by Kim Petersen. It originally not exercise due editorial diligence regarding the sources, connections and strategies appeared on the Dissident Voice web site, of which Petersen is a co-editor. We ran the of the authors and their associates. We continue to believe in the campaign to boycott piece, which we came across on an email discussion list concerning the campaign of Israel until its occupation and blockade of the territories occupied in the 1967 war ends, boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (a tactic which we continue to support). it recognizes the right of return for Palestinians in the refugee camps and diaspora, The BDS campaign in LA and internationally specifically unites around barring racist and Arab citizens in Israel have full equality and rights. We also continue to support and anti-Semitic forces. But it turns out that while Dissident Voice portrays itself as left freedom for Palestinian political prisoners (and all political prisoners). The long-term wing and “a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and justice,” it promotes anti- anti-colonial, anti-imperialist perspective of ARA-LA/PART is in favor of a “no-state” Semitism that operates under only the barest cover of “anti-Zionism,” while defending solution. We have always identified anti-Semitism and Zionism, as well as Arab reaction, neo-Nazis. It also promotes “left-right crossover,” which ARA-LA/PART and TTT have as enemies not only of the Jewish and Arab people but all people. However, we apologize always opposed. Perhaps the clearest example of this is Dissident Voice’s publication of to our readers for inadvertently promoting sources and authors whose politics diverge several articles by Daniel A. McGowan, executive director of Deir Yassin Remembered from such authentically anti-imperialist views and in fact promote or front for right-wing, (not to be confused with US eco-radical and political prisoner Daniel G. McGowan.) In racist and anti-Semitic views. a December 30, 2006 article for Dissident Voice, McGowan recounts a prison visit with Ernst Zündel, the notorious neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denier, who McGowan presents Many years ago, in TTT Vol. 14, #2, Summer 2001, we printed the article “Ode to as “a man with strong convictions and the courage to express them.” McGowan’s Farris” by Israel Shamir.