The Reactionary Republican Menace, and Not Only to the Economy

by: Norman Markowitz Friday 29 July 2011

As working people are mobilizing  through the country to save social security and medicare, the ultra-right Republicans continue their economic blitzkrieg against the President and the Senate.

Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi has accused the Republicans of leading the nation into chaos, something that any fifth grader and certainly anyone smarter than a fifth grader should be able to grasp. 

But what can be done by the forces of the broad left and by a Democratic president and the Democrats in Congress because they are the only ones with immediate voting power to do anything?

First the danger is not only to the economy immediately but to representative political government, if a thin majority of one house of the national legislature can either impose its will on the whole government or bring about a default whose consequences would at the very best be bad, at the worst a catastrophe. 

While this may seem to some a far out analogy, I am reminded as an historian of Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome.  The Fascist party in Italy really was not that strong, and Mussolini feared that the outcome would be disastrous as he tried to keep his "tea party"(espresso may be better) black shirt thugs who had called the march in line.   Today,  some Republican leaders understand that there is enormous opposition to them and are trying to find some way to keep their far right backlashers in line before they have to pay the political consequences(what happens to the economy and the people doesn't matter too much to them).

But what happens if the Democrats really cave, the way the non fascist government in Italy caved in 1922  when they let Mussolini form a "constitutional government" which was a preludet hree years later to an open dictatorship. 

What happens if the Democrats cave  inseriously, and the Obama administration becomes a hollow shell in realityl(not the way many on the left take perverse  enjoyment in referring to it today) and  there is runaway inflation, sharply increased unemployment and a helpless government  as  the far righti prepares for a complete seizure of power(what the Nazis called machtergreifung over the helpless Weimar government in 1933) in 2012. 

This reads  like a nightmare scenario and it is--a scenario in which the Obama administration will be seen by history not as serious break with the past but like the Weimar Republic, a failed liberal interlude between the German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm and the far more destructive German Empire of Adolf Hitler. 

I asked what can be done now to mobilize effective resistance to the danger now.  Peoples organizations are engaging in demonstrations and bombarding representatives with protests,  But what can be done now.  I have stated my own ideas in previous blog posts.  I invite our readers to come up with their own suggestions and send them in.  What can and should be done now by all of us to prevent both a likely economic disaster and a possible political disaster.

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  • I WROTE TO BERNIE SANDERS;Clausewitz has shown us that habitual aggressors are likely to wind up failures, that politics involve the entire population, that the "fog of war" creates confusion and obscures the way, that the dialectical approach creates clarity, that the enemy, nust be rendered helpless, that one must each moment know where the center of gravity is, that war cannot be waged in a limited way: the rules of competition will force participants to use all means at their disposal (not just some) to achieve victory. Run for president Senator. If not yourself, then gather people around you that will stop the disaster that is upon us. The center of gravity has definitely moved away from Obama and he is providing the wherewithall for the fascists to be shoed in during the next elections.

    Posted by ANTONIO BERNAL, 07/30/2011 2:45pm (13 years ago)

  • For instance of what we can do, now. Fox News has local affiliates -and One Nation,NAACP,SEIU,the AFL-CIO and many other organizations have local chapters on the ground and can lodge copies of all protest letters and electronic messages to Congress with local Fox Networks, demanding that these organizations activities' be reported in the Fox news, and that call back numbers and email addresses be included in all coverage of this protest activity.
    In this way, this would be right wing reportage can be changed and corrected and some people control of monopoly can be practiced-more of what we need also to build the movement to stop the "...thin majority of one house of the national legislature..."from fascistly controlling the total American government, with the help of monopoly.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 07/29/2011 3:07pm (13 years ago)

  • There can be little or no doubt that the debt-ceiling debacle is a fascistic move by the right and far right in synch with the monopoly news networks(especially Fox) and CIA's control over the electronic and print media.
    The "thin slice"of a cabal,(compared to the American people and its people organizations like La Raza, NAACP, AFL-CIO-the whole One Nation Together Movement for instance), abandoning the hungry,homeless jobless, and dispossessed-the growing numbers of pariahs of modern capitalism and imperialism, embracing its anti-women and enfanticidal destructiveness, adorning its anti- Asian,(whether Communist or non-Communist)anti-African, anti-Non-Aligned impetus-more virulent in Republican quarters, but present in almost all quarters of American society-we are no doubt heading for a Nazism disaster.
    History tells us that the people's movement, to answer-this disaster, took up a united front against this fascistic movement-and we have to do this again to beat back and reshape these movements for control by the working people, especially control of the now monopoly controlled communication and transportation industries. In his 1961 letter for membership in the CPUSA, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that the Communist(s)(Party) would have to lead the movement for working class control of transportation and communication. He also wrote there that"These aims are not crimes(eewc-control of transportation and communication, one of a total of ten aims listed to restore democracy to the United States). They are practiced increasingly over the world. No nation can call itself free which does not allow its citiens to work for these ends."
    As we engage in the many, many, street protests, contacting Congress and the President, lets take care of the future of these movements, by broadening and deepening them with greater numbers of people and more strategic goals (to control transportation and communication for unions and people's organizations). In taking care of this future, we may be derailing a new fascism-a World War III. In this fight, forty years later, in 2011, the Internet may be our main weapon.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 07/29/2011 2:39pm (13 years ago)

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