From aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu  Mon Apr  7 05:15:47 1997
From: aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu (Andrew Wayne Austin)
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 00:15:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: M-TH: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFT 5: CYBERFASCISM
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970406154717.10757A-100000@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.970406172816.184A-100000@utkux4.utcc.utk.edu>


1. If "panic" is irony, then I apologize for my post comparing your
arguments to the confusion of hypermodernism. Perhaps I read too quickly. 
Difficult to be patient with such a barrage. However, your post on
"cyberfascism" eerily approximates the wreckless use of the term by
post/hypermodernists. You appear to want to appropriate the language for
your polemics, but then feign sarcasm when this style is revealed. 

2. If the purpose is to alienate in the sense that Mills discussed, i.e.,
thinking ourselves away from the immediate context to behold the world as
it is, then this is a noble exercise. But I did not mean alienation in
this sense. I meant alienation in that general mood of e-mail
communication where all civility breaks down and people see how they can
diss each other the hardest and the fastest. On this score, these posts
are still very alienating. There is talk of making lists like classrooms.
But those who are making such suggestions flame about quite unlike they
would in a classroom. One of the main impediments to this list being
useful is the almost complete lack of civility. Respecting one another
might be a very useful beginning point, not fragmenting or moderating, or
whatever else the guilty parties may holler for. This is perhaps the
greatest irony of this and other lists; those who complain about the lack
of quality in contributions contribute posts with a minimum of quality; 
those who complain about the flames flame the most. Maybe you ought to
focus your contributions on cyberhypocrisy (you make some good points in
this regard). 

3. Fascism is an authoritarian form of corporatism that is instigated by
the most powerful capitalist actors--monopoly and finance capitalists--and
is a response both to capitalist crisis and to imperial envy (that is,
those nations, Germany and Italy, came to the game of world capitalism
late and found the world already carved up, and repeatedly thwarted
attempts at imperialism thought the world, e.g., Africa, turned capital
expansion inward through internal colonization, hence the push for
territorial expansion of national boundaries). Fascism also has a
cultural-ideological side, from the nationalist/sexist attitude of Italian
fascism, to the virulent eliminationist/exterminationist anti-Semitism of
the Nazis. The neofascism that we now see is the nationalists/sexist/
racist component of the New Right, an amalgam of neoconservative,
neoliberal, neofascist fractions. The game being played is to use
nationalist and racists sentiments to dismantle worker programs, shift
social control from consensual to coercive domination, and to radically
restructure the social structure of accumulation, all to facilitate
greater integration of the U.S. labor force into the global economy and
nascent world political apparatus. Neofascism plays a significant role in
the transnational project by transforming national structures that impede
global capitalism. It would, therefore, be nice if we could stay on target
regarding what is and what isn't fascism. The confusion of specific
political economic structures, or their excessive generalization, whether
material, social, or ideological in character, serves to obfuscate social
reality. 

Brian, it is important that you understand two things. First, Doug Henwood
and others on this list are not "cyberfascists." Whether Henwood is right
or wrong about your texts, or about anything at all, it only delegitimates
your argument to use such terminology so wrecklessly. Second, screw
critiques of your writing style, etc.--your theoretical understanding of
political forms is very weak. You need to understand more fully what
fascism is and what political forms are not fascist. I am not the type to
direct you to this or that work in the context of a polemic; I tire of the
belittling that goes on in this, and in other, lists. But I assure you
that applying the term fascism to anybody on this list, unless I have yet
to read a post by somebody who actually is a fascist on this list, is to
display ignorance, and I mean this most respectfully.

4. You have in your analysis, however, nailed one point that needs to be
brought out explicitly. In your characterization of Louis Proyect as
somebody who raises up the "FLAME WAR aesthetic" and then uses its
existence as justification for more authoritarianism from the top, more
"moderation" in democracy and freedom of expression, you have hit the nail
right on the head. Bravo! In the 1970s, reactionaries like Samuel
Huntington were calling for more "moderation in democracy," citing an
"excess in democracy" as the central problem facing Western nations. All
of the economic measures advocated by the global elite that were bringing
social instability were obscured and then used as an excuse to roll back
freedom and democracy. Here you have made conscious something that has
been going on for quite some time (perhaps this has been unconscious for
Proyect). Proyect is, in fact, guilty, of the very thing that he is using
as an excuse to call for restrictions on speech. He might do well to
censor himself, rather than worrying about those who defend themselves
against his abusive posts. Again, bravo--point well made!

Sincerely,
Andrew Austin






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