[ox-en] at once wedding bells and death
- From: John Bywater <john.bywater appropriatesoftwarefoundation.org>
- Date: 26 Jan 2004 19:23:18 +0000
Dear Niall,
However let's be
clear - his are FAILED views, ones which won't ever return in a form
we would recognise them in.
I heard 'zieg heil' chanted by a group a lads on a dark winter night not
so long ago in my home town of Oldham, England. That summer there were
serious race riots precipitated by outside groups. [Google: race riots
oldham]
Implicit here, within the awareness of a dangerous return, is the need
for vigilance. But in structural terms, what are we looking for?
As that great humanist thinker - who taught much about capitalism to so
many of the 'neo-con' US incumbency - remarks in his pamphlet 'Fascism -
what is it?', "in order to be capable of foreseeing anything with regard
to fascism, it is necessary to have a definition of that idea. What is
fascism? What are its base, its form, and its characteristics? How will
its development take place?"
Putting Trotsky's old pamphlet to one side, perhaps we are more willing
to follow our contemporary Gilles Deleuze, who chooses to follow
Virilio, who "defines facsism not by the notion of the totalitarian
State, but by the notion of the suicidal State: so-called total war
seems less a State undertaking than an undertaking of a war machine that
appropriates the State and channels into it a flow of absolute war whose
only possible outcome is the suicide of the State itself."
[and elsewhere]
"They always contain the 'stupid and repugnent' cry 'Long live death!',
even at the economic level, where the arms expansion replaces growth in
consumption and where investment veers from the means of production to
the means of pure destruction."
[again elsewhere]
"It was in the horror of daily life and its environment that Hitler
finally found his surest means of governing, the legitimation of his
policies and military strategy; and it lasted right up until the end,
for the ruins and horrors and crimes and chaos of total war, far from
discharging the repulsive nature of its power, normally only increase
its scope."
[and again elsewhere]
"A war machine that no londer has anything but war as its object and
would rather annihilate its own servants than stop the destruction. All
the dangers of the other lines pale by comparison."
[and lastly]
"There is in fascism a realised nihilism. Unlike the totalitarian State,
which does its utmost to seal all possible lines of flight, fascism is
constructed on an intense line of flight, which it transforms into a
line of pure destruction and abolition."
The line running from the US military-industrial complex into the US
State appears to many as embryonic fascism.
However, there seems much to suggest that the globalisation of capital,
with the consequent total subsumption of the social and its consequent
reunification, makes the catalysing condition of the opposition of
powerless minorities against other powerless minorities less possible.
In that light, the refusal of the Debian project to embark on a
'Balkanisation' of opinion is distinctly and honourably non-fascist.
But, and absolutely, the fact that an active fascist is 'on the scene'
presents a natural cause for sustained concern amongst those involved in
that scene. It is desirable at such times to indicate to onlookers that
the danger has been noted, and the notification has been appreciated. I
see no difference in form between this and a warning of an impending
tackle in a game a football, or of an unseen road vehicle, or of any
another danger. It is a timeless custom to thank the informer. Not to do
so, appears either as a rejection of the danger as being dangerous, or
as a childish expectation that others will keep you from danger.
Fascism is a danager that we can only guard against in a common way.
That's why we need to tell each other about it, and respond positively
in respectful tones, whilst maintaing ourother practices as much as is
possible. Moaning to the snatching parent about the child's absolute
liberty as it stands in the road and in the path of oncoming vehicles
merely distracts the protective parent and augments to the danger.
To return perhaps to Trotsky, and to gently reject Art McGee's grim
choice, fascism "is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed
by big capitalist powers."
That is, perhaps, to say: capitalism wields fascism against its mortal
enemy: conscious, desirous labour power.
That's you and me, baby.
John Bywater.