AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Friday, December 30, 2005

DOES THE HISTORIAN CHARLES BEARD MAKE THE LIES SOUND FAMILIAR?

Charles Beard’s book, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities, [1] positions Beard both as an historian with an acutely enquiring mind and as a critic of Roosevelt’s war dealings specifically and of America’s role in war generally. However, for a reader to fully appreciate Beard’s white-knuckled mood and firmly grounded perspective one must, at least, be familiar with Beard’s prior works on these and other related issues.
Beard was astute enough to see another great war looming on Europe’s horizon by 1936 and to be moved enough to write The Devil Theory of War: An Inquiry into the Nature of History and the Possibility of Keeping Out of War[2], in which he argued that the prime motivation of America’s involvement in the Great War was for the benefit of capital and big business eager to cash in on the many new opportunities that war provided. He saw the embryonic imperialist dreams of American empire that Theodore Roosevelt, Admiral Mahan, Henry Cabot Lodge, Albert Beverage and others were espousing as simply a “plain capitalist racket” that utterly appalled him.[3] By 1936, Beard could see America heading in exactly the same direction, yet again, having paid no heed whatsoever to the lessons he believed should have been learnt from the First War. It is not until the penultimate paragraph in the Devil Theory of War that Beard offers a meek, almost passing, but nonetheless important insight into the conditions by which America might entangle itself in war, where he suggests that:

"It might so happen that participation by the United States in the next or following war would be desirable “in the national interest” or for some great good. If so, the case could be discussed openly on its merits by the Congress of the United States, as advised by the President and the State Department openly. If we go to war, let us go to war for some grand national and human advantage openly discussed and deliberately arrived at, and not to bail out farmers, bankers and capitalists or to save politicians from the pain of dealing with a domestic crisis."[4]

It is difficult to judge exactly what Beard had in mind with regard to the words “grand national and human advantage” and the offering this paper makes can only be speculative, but it may well be that Beard foresaw some overwhelming catastrophic threat to America’s existence as being the only situation that would require America to entangle itself in war – not just the war to come but, he carefully notes, any future war. That, however, was in 1936.
In President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941, Beard’s reflections on the reasons for FDR taking America into the Second World War, he certainly does not entertain the notion that the attack on Pearl Harbour provided such threat to America’s existence and, indeed, implies that, while America then had no choice but to prosecute the war, its provocation was engineered and could have been avoided.[5] He immerses himself in the task of proving his argument and making his point. The extent of the research alone demonstrates the drive he has found for the purpose and the passionate search for the truth borders on a kind of controllable obsession that seems to fuel that drive. One wonders if Beard senses or is aware of his approaching demise, (he dies in 1948, the year of the book’s publication) and whether this too projects his sense of urgency needed to once and for all resolve and reveal the truth of it. Not just of FDR’s complicity in political manipulation, but also to vindicate what Beard believed and had expressed in 1936 in The Devil Theory of War as an all embracing truth and that the ensuing war was stark proof of it. This paper, apparently, is not the first to discuss the validity of such argument.[6]
But then one arrives at the last chapter of President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War and, after reading it carefully, one wonders if there is not some paradoxical conundrum lurking between all the previous lines. If only Beard were still alive. He could be asked if, in 1948 and with the benefit of hindsight and having full knowledge of the absolute atrociousness of the war, (which he actually would not have had in 1948)[7] whether he would still have been the isolationist that he was before the war. Beard concedes to the obscenity of Hitler’s Nazism and the impossibility of a neutral America being forced to trade with a victorious Hitler throughout Europe and a Japanese empire through Asia. In questioning FDR’s reasoning for doing what he had done, Beard asks if “the means justified the ends”.[8] If, at the end of it all, two monstrous tyrannies were beaten into non-existence at such a terrible price only to be replaced by a huge monolithic tyranny that now swept not just through much of Eastern Europe but across to those regions that were once part of the previous Pacific tyranny, then was it all worth it?[9] If Beard were President, one might ask, what would he have done? The answer, one suspects, is that he would rather have told of what he would not have done. For Beard, the question was not what he would or would not have done; it was the question of political morality that was important. A matter of political honesty and integrity, he may say, and since neither were present according to Beard, there could, he implies, only be left dishonesty, deceit and hypocrisy. For Beard, the hypocrisy of the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, from that meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill where, incidentally, Beard implies, the plans for America’s incursion in to war were hatched,[10] was the betrayal of all that was noble in the Charter. It demonstrated perfectly his contention that the end did not justify the means. The victorious Allied leaders determined a post-war way of life for millions of Europeans who would have no say at all about their future.[11] What now of that ‘noble Charter’, Beard demands to know.
And what of the future? It may well have been Beard’s next question. He does not ask it in Roosevelt and the Coming of the War - the book ends before it is asked. But throughout the entire book one senses that this is really what Beard is leading up to. If the reasons for America’s part in the war are revealed to be wholly for ulterior motives and the outcome of the war so contrary to the rhetoric of great cause and noble righteousness, then how can the people of America and, indeed, the world, ever again trust unrestrained governments to collude with others of the same ilk in the name of the common interest of humanity?[12] As an historian, always trying to find that fine balance between the objectivity of truth and the subjectivity of the righteousness of the true great cause, Beard, in the end, finds himself struggling between calm analysis, frustration at a world unwilling or incapable of ‘seeing’ that which he has laid before them, and an intangible despair that seems to prevent him from asking that question - what of the future?
Beard ensures the reader of Roosevelt and the Coming of the War that it is a sequel to the 1946 publication[13] of his work, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940,[14] a work that demonstrates the historians art almost classically, yet, at the same time, gives insight as to what his next book will be. One is struck by Beard’s growing sense of frustration in Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, the seeds of which are sown in the (almost) calm analyses and research that went into American Foreign Policy, to the extent that one needs to ask if it was the emergence of truth, the shedding of light that research exposes, that prompted the need for a sequel. While using the trained historians methods, Beard puts so much feeling into Roosevelt and the Coming of the War as to expose himself as a man who wants to have his life again, or at least a bit more than what is left of this one, so that he can have the ultimate word in his struggle against the hypocrisy of an America going to war without some “grand national and human advantage”. With Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, Beard goes to the edge of scholarly history and pushes right to the boundary of social criticism.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beard, Charles A., The Devil Theory of War: An Inquiry into the Nature of History and the Possibilities of Keeping Out of War, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969 reprint ed.)

Beard, Charles A., American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940: A Study in Responsibilities, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946.)

Beard, Charles A., President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Reality, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948).

Kennedy, Thomas C., Charles A. Beard and American Foreign Policy, (Gainesville, Fl: The University Presses of Florida, 1975).


ENDNOTES

[1] Charles Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Reality, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948).
[2] Charles Beard, The Devil Theory of War: An Inquiry into the Nature of History and the Possibilities of Keeping Out of War, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969 reprint ed.)
[3] Beard, The Devil Theory of War. pp. 119-121.
[4] Beard, The Devil Theory of War. p. 124.
[5] Beard devotes an entire chapter entitled ‘Manoeuvring the Japanese into Firing the first Shot’ in his effort to prove that America went to great effort to manipulate a situation that would bring it into war with Japan and thence Germany. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. Chapter XVII.
[6] Thomas C. Kennedy, Charles A. Beard and American Foreign Policy, (Gainesville, Fl: The University Presses of Florida, 1975). p. 151.
[7] Much of what we know today about the history of the Second World War has been derived from resources made available since 1948 though Beard would have been aware of the criminal extent of the war from the revelations of the Nuremberg trials of the major war criminals and the trials of the Japanese war criminals.
[8] Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. p. 575.
[9] Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. p. 577.
[10] Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. Ch. XV generally and p. 457 specifically.
[11] Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. pp. 576-577.
[12] Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. pp. 582-583.
[13] Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. Prefatory Note.
[14] Charles Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940: A Study in Responsibilities, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946.

Friday, December 23, 2005

PEACE ON OUR PLANET FOR 2006?

May the entire planet, with all its myriad of deities, begin to learn by the mistakes of history that a better world may be had for all that exist upon it.

Peace.
Shalom.
Salaam.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

THE ILLUSION OF IRAQI DEMOCRACY

As some early numbers come in from last Thursday’s poll in Iraq, it seems that the Iraqi people have shown exactly what they think of the man that the US initially tried to foist on their nation as their new leader – the same man that the neoconservatives in the Bush administration used to reinforce the lies that got the war started in the first place – the secular Ahmed Chalabi, looks like he now won’t even be getting a seat in the new Iraqi parliament after getting less than half of one percent of the vote in Baghdad.

It also seems that that other Iraqi criminal and accused murderer of captured insurgents and ex-prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has not fared much better. His coalition party, the Iraqi List, has so far shown only about 14% of the poll.

The US, however, will no doubt be delighted to learn that the religious parties, particularly the Shiite groups, are doing very well in early counting. And, of course, in the appropriate regions, the Sunnis aren’t doing too badly either. Problem is, though, the Shiites are going to be reluctant to let the Sunnis in on the new government, especially if it’s the religious Shiites that get up. This means more insurgency, which means the US will be in no rush to drawdown too many troops thus maintaining their hold on the region.

Democracy running rampant through the region? I think not! The only thing running rampant through the region are American troops.

Friday, December 16, 2005

IRAQ HAS ITS ONE DAY OF DEMOCRACY!

The election in Iraq yesterday is being hailed a success. That is the actual election, at least in terms of turnout – apparently around 70% – may well have been a success as elections go, but so far that’s all there has been. So far the only thing that as been successful is the management of the actual election. The results, however, will be the real telling of whether or not the election was a success.

All parties involved in this election have encouraged their respective voter blocs to turn out for the election – which, of course, is why the turnout has been high. However a closer look at the leaders of the various factions contending for power soon reveals that ‘democracy’ per se is of little or no interest to any of them.

The two secular Shiite contenders, ex-Ba’ath Party activist, hard-man and accused murderer of resistance fighters, Ayad Allawi, and convicted fraudster and proven liar who fed the lies to the Pentagon neoconservatives in order to start the war in the first place, Ahmad Chalabi, are both men who in the past have shown no respect whatsoever for ‘democracy’. The two Shiite religious contenders, Moktada al-Sadr and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, apart from being fierce rivals of each other, also have shown little interest in ‘democracy’. Al-Sadr’s main interests are ridding the nation of the invaders and creating a ‘strong’ central government, while al-Hakim would prefer a theocratic Islamic government with close ties to Iran; not very much interest here in ‘democracy’.

The Sunnis are represented by Tarik al-Hashemi, who heads up a Sunni alliance that believes that Iraq should stay as one and, again, has little or no interest in democracy.

Finally the Kurds are represented by Jalal Talabani, the current Iraqi President, and Massoud Barzani, an avid Kurdish nationalist. Both are more interested in Kurdish independence than Iraqi democracy.

The election is merely a tool for all of the contenders to get their respective feet under the table in order to jockey for political power and leverage. The new government, if and when it is able to sort itself out, will not last its allotted four years. The factions alone within each grouping will not allow any form of Western style ‘democracy’ to prevail, and that’s before we start talking about any parliamentary groupings or coalition. Without strong alliances, alliances built without US assistance which will otherwise be seen as serving America’s self interest, there cannot even be any sustainable government, let alone ‘democracy’.

The bottom line is: there may be a period of relative quiet while the sides sort themselves out but it will soon descend into a chaotic free-for-all battle again as temporary coalitions break down and each side demands more of what they consider is their share of power.

In the end there will simply be more of what there is now; insurgents wanting to get rid of the occupiers and plunderers, militias and warlords with their death squads wanting their piece of the corruption action, and the US getting exactly what they wanted in the first place, a nation in turmoil that they can use as an excuse to stay there while they control the region, the oil and protect Israel.

Democracy? Election day is about the only day the Iraqi people will get to see ‘democracy’. They’ve had their day. Now it’s back to more of the same

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

THE BLOGSITES OF HOWARD’S NEW FASCISTS GO INTO DENIAL MODE.

The blogsites of John Howard’s New Fascists, eg., Tim Blair and David Davis (aka Harry Heidelberg) have gone into complete denial and, quite predictably, refuse to accept that John Howard’s policies have caused the current outbursts of blatant racism in Sydney.

It may have escaped their attention but virtually all of the participants in the demonstrations and rioting are aged around seventeen to twenty-five – in other words they were between seven and fifteen years old, their most impressionable years, when Howard first became Prime Minister and began taking Australia down the road to his new fascist Australia. Those intervening ten years have been all it has taken to bring Australia to this.

Of course Howard will deny responsibility; to do otherwise would be an admission to the failure of his refugee, Iraqi War, anti-terrorism and other policies. The racists and fascists that have been running wild in Sydney’s streets have for the last ten years been brought up on a diet of fear of Middle Eastern and Central Asian immigrants and a loathing of Islam and Muslims. They have listened to and taken up his call of ‘We shall decide who comes to Australia’. This coupled with ten years of Howard pushing Australia’s nationalistic barrow and non-stop evocation of Australia’s past military glories and Gallipoli heritage and his frequent visits to the troops on ANZAC days have all served to bolster his image of a Greater Australia and has served to propel that image to the hearts and minds of the young ‘White Aussies’ that now terrorise Sydney.

Howard’s Fascist Australia is a step closer. His supporters, the New Fascists with their blogsites that deny the reality of racism, are the real enemies of peace-loving egalitarian Australians.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

HOWARD’S FASCIST MEDIA ALLIES FUELLING RACIST TENSIONS.

John Howard, as Prime Minister of Australia, must take full responsibility for the current racial tensions which have come to a head recently in Sydney. Howard’s deliberate policy of creating fear and distrust in the community has resulted in hatreds bubbling to the surface of Australia’s social structures.

Much of the violence in Sydney over last weekend was helped along by Howard’s friend and radio talkback host, the racist and fascist Alan Jones who proudly concedes that it was he “…who led this charge here.” Howard himself, while condemning the violence and the actions of all the participants, has pulled up short of condemning it as racism
saying “…but I'm not going to put a general tag of racism on the Australian community”.

Gerard Henderson, Howard’s knee jerk apologist, tries desperately to endorse the Prime Minister’s denials by downplaying the obvious racism by saying: “This is not so much a clash of civilisations but, rather, a series of disputes between some aggressive Australians of Lebanese Muslim background and a group of aggressive (and drunk) Australians of Anglo-Celtic background,” as if the fact that the belligerents are polarised by their racial background is just incidental and that too much should not be construed by this fact.

Howard supporter Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, The Australian, filled its editorial pages with opinion and commentary that tried to shift the blame for the troubles away from the racism Howard has promoted by his stance against home-grown ‘terrorism’ and his refugee policies. Tim Priest, for example, blames the police for neglecting to control the crowds while Paul Comrie-Thomson blames the Lebanese gangs for causing the trouble in the first place and the police for not nipping the problem in the bud. Meanwhile, the cartoon on the Opinion page depicts that 90% of the crowd on the ‘Aussies’ side are just ‘piss-heads’ and only 10% are ‘Aussie racists’ sums up the extent to which Murdoch’s media wish to lie and mislead.

The reality is Howard and his fascist supporters in the media have succeeded in polarising a nation. One more step down the road to a Fascist Australia.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

THE ROAD TO HOWARD’S FASCIST AUSTRALIA.

Howard supporters are desperately trying to fend off accusations that he is insidiously remaking Australia into a fascist state. For most, including right-wing blogsites whose posters are simply a frothing-at-the-mouth assortment of racists, Islamaphobics and warmongering Arab-hating Howard supporters, this involves simple outright denials without any attempt or even ability to attempt to justify or qualify their denial. Those other supporters that do attempt to qualify their denial, mainly right-wing commentators in the mainstream press, do so by attempting to show that there are no parallels with Howard’s government and policies with the fascism of the 1920s and 1930s. Such denials are usually accompanied by scoffing and mocking of the accusers by pointing to the obvious lack of parallels.

However, the only parallels made are the obvious ones; the visual images of 1920s and 1930s fascism naturally do not bear any resemblance to the Australia of today, nor indeed, does Howard himself fit the conjured-up image of a ‘fascist dictator’. Such images truly would be laughable. But there is more to fascism than the mere imagery that Howard’s supporters wish to distract the Australian people with in their attempt to belittle the notion of Howard’s new fascism. Typical of this distractive nonsense is this piece of not-so-subtle muddleheaded rubbish from Gerard Henderson at ‘The Age’:

“In Australia in recent years it has become almost a fashion to make reference to Fascism/Nazism and/or communism to score political points. In his book The Right Road, historian Andrew Moore wrote that "it is not so very far from the truth" to "suggest that in 1951 Australian Fascism's headquarters were in the Lodge, Canberra". In other words, Moore maintains that the long-serving prime minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, was really a Fascist. This despite the fact that he declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939.”

The obvious distraction attempt here is Henderson’s reference to a piece from a book that is not about Howard at all but of Howard’s hero, Menzies. And the inference, of course, is, if Menzies is not a fascist (on account of having declared war on Nazi Germany) then how can Howard be? For many this may be enough to convince them that Howard is not a fascist. The historical trappings and imagery of fascism do not fit, it would seem, with the image of Howard being a fascist or at least from the way Henderson portrays it.

But, as I have said before, the new fascism bears no physical resemblance at all to the fascism of yesteryear. The ‘old’ fascism is gone. It can never be resurrected. The ‘new’ fascism disowns the ‘old’ fascism. The new fascism has evolved not from nostalgia for the ‘old’ fascism but instead has morphed from the values and ideals of US neoconservatism which has been embraced by US President George W. Bush. The ‘war against terrorism’ and the neoconservatives’ crusade against Islam has given what was ‘White-Australia’ racist conservatism a new impetus that is transforming itself into the new fascism.

Howard’s opportunity came via his lies at the last election and the resultant influence the government has gained in the Senate. With control of both houses Howard has had a relatively easy time of pushing through his welfare reforms, industrial reforms, anti-sedition laws and voluntary student union laws, all of which have been designed to disempower ordinary everyday working Australians and to diminish their right to dissent, protest and industrial action against both the government and employers. The anti-terrorism laws that are associated with the anti-sedition laws have also served to inspire suspicion and hatred among Australians toward the Muslim, Middle Eastern and Central Asian communities within Australia.

As well as punitive legislative changes being a characteristic of Howard’s agenda of taking us down the road to Australia’s new fascism, the more traditional fascist characteristic of national re-armament is also quietly taking place under the auspices of Howard’s servile Minister for Defence, Robert Hill. Passing almost unnoticed has been his recent remarks about Australia being ready in 2012 for possible conflict in SE Asia. Such conflict, needless to say, would be against China over Taiwan in which Australia would be expected to play a part allied to the US.

Next, it seems, Howard will be pushing for tax changes. He says that he believes tax cuts should be across the board; in other words the super-rich will be getting massive cuts while low income earners will receive a relative pittance and will be continuing to contribute to the bulk of personal tax that’s paid into the government’s coffers in order to pay for the wealthy people’s tax cuts.

2006 will be a decisive year for Australians as we continue to witness Howard’s march to an Australian fascist state.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

ARE RUMOURS OF WEBDIARY’S DEMISE A LITTLE PREMATURE?

Those that consider themselves ‘mainstream Australia’, all five or six dozen of them that gather daily at Tim Blair’s foul-mouthed fascist blog, have been having a field day over Margo Kingston’s decision to close Webdiary. However, their frothing-at-the-mouth back-slapping seems to be a little premature. Hamish Alcorn, Margo Kingston’s brother, together with some other volunteers, are keen to take up the challenge and keep Webdiary going.

Meanwhile, David Davis and his mob of right-wing hangers-on at the ‘Harry Heidelberg’ blog seem to be a little more subdued. Some of the other self-styled ‘mainstream Australia’ fascists that gather there seemed to have been disappointed that Margo had closed down; mainly because some of them, particularly the obnoxious foul-mouthed and barely literate, Jay White, used Webdiary to peddle their right-wing warmongering nonsense.

Interesting times ahead.

MARGO KINGSTON CALLS IT A DAY AT WEBDIARY.

The big news today in Australian current affairs Blogworld is the demise of Australia’s biggest and best blog, Margo Kingston’s Webdiary.

Its demise is a blow for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that there essentially is now no independent voice left specifically for everyday Australians to vent their feelings. There are a lot of blogs around that individuals have set up but none come anywhere near Margo Kingston’s attempt to bridge that gap between the professional commentator, amateur commentator, political activist and professional journalist.

The news of Webdiary’s demise came all the more of a shock because it was only a few days ago that Webdiary had introduced its plans for advertising and told Webdiarists it was looking forward to moving to its new permanent website. However, in closing Webdiary Margo remarked: “Unfortunately I couldn't get funding in time to stop me going broke, and certain events have proved to me that my skin is not thick enough to survive in this game.”

It would be a shame if those ‘certain events’ were the vile and disgusting remarks that came from the extreme right-winger David Davis and a few of his foul-mouthed hangers-on at his so-called ‘Harry Heidelberg’ blog. As I write I haven’t had a squiz yet at what he has to say about it but I’m willing to bet it’ll be a mixture of gloating and patronising sorrow with a few crocodile tears thrown in.

It can only be hoped that someone has the courage to take up where Margo has left off. Australia desperately needs a voice to counter the coming fascism.

Monday, December 05, 2005

MORE ON THE SMALL WORLD OF AUSTRALIAN FASCIST BLOGS AND THE PEOPLE THAT FREQUENT THEM.

I note that the pathological liar and lunatic fascist Craig Warton, (who has a rather telling and obsessive interest in the history of the SS), has shown his head in the sad and somewhat subdued blog of David Davis (a pathetic fascist loser with an inferiority complex who prefers to use the rather grander and more Germanic sounding name of Harry Heidelberg, a style far more in keeping with his fantasy of being ‘leader’).

This is the same Craig Warton that insisted that he personally witnessed a person successfully fly a light aircraft with no training other than some hours in a flight simulator. At first he implied that this person flew the aircraft by himself. Fortunately, he didn’t actually say that; he merely implied it. After much prompting from me he eventually conceded that there was a qualified pilot with him and in doing so saved what was left of his totally tattered credibility. Nonetheless, Warton became quite pathological about his insistence that the event had occurred prior to me prompting a way out of his pathetic predicament by suggesting that such a feat could never be done without a qualified person being there. He took the hint and conceded.

Warton is another of those warmongering fascist Howard supporters who likes to hide behind the façade of ‘mainstream Australia’.

He’s in good company with the other hapless and ignorant fascists that gather at the so-called “Harry Heidelberg” blog to cheer each other up and let off some steam, mixed with some foul-language abuse, about the left.

I also note that some of the same people are appearing at Tim Blair’s fascist blog. They live in a very small world.

Friday, December 02, 2005

FASCISM OLD, FASCISM NEW – IMAGE AND REALITY

It’s an intriguing phenomenon that, while capitalism can exist without fascism, fascism cannot exist without capitalism. It’s a concept that some, including Howard supporter Harry Heidelberg, a fascist blogger hiding under the cloak of ‘mainstream Australia’, apparently is incapable of understanding.

Fascism comes in all shapes and guises but it never comes without the embrace of capitalism. It also rarely comes without the embrace of any given nation’s upper classes. Old money would not like to be directly associated with fascism but will nonetheless support it. New money, as we see with Gerard, openly supports it.

Of course, these days it’s not called fascism. Very few will openly concede that they actually are fascists, indeed, most will vehemently deny it; they will simply laugh at the notion. They say that they don’t like dictatorships per se but they do like strong leaders that have a firm grip on things and they will ensure that that strong leader will stick around for as long as possible within the bounds of not going the full hog of having a real full-on dictatorship. Today’s fascist, in short, would never actually want to be seen as a fascist.

How things have changed. Between the wars in Europe, including Britain, when fascism was on the rise, most people that were fascists were quite happy to call themselves ‘Fascists’. They joined this or that Fascist Party. In fact it was really quite fashionable to be a ‘Fascist’ in the 1930s. Since they lost the war however, it has never been fashionable again. In fact to be called a fascist was – and still is – something of an insult. But that doesn’t mean that the concept has gone away. Every now and then it raises its head again. Several Latin American nations experienced fascist style governments including Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and, of course, who can forget Chile. Spain went on for decades under Franco and Portugal didn’t fare much better under António Salazar. The Greeks had their juntas in the 1960s and the Croatians had Franjo Tudjman (yet another fascist that came from the left) in the 1990s. All, every one of them, were supported by their nation’s wealthiest people.

All, in the main, also had the support of their respective armed forces and security services whose upper ranks are usually filled with those who, just by the very nature of their chosen profession, have right-wing leanings generally even when the government of the day is left-wing.

When Webdiary’s Margo Kingston drew the analogy between what is happening today in Australia with what Fascism was about in Mussolini’s Italy with regard to fascism and its alliance with corporatism, poor old Harry blew the anger fuse and found it necessary to resort to plain foul language in order to help express his denial of the facts. In his rush to defend his hero Howard he actually thinks that every capitalist country must therefore be heading to fascism if Margo Kingston’s logic, which I share, is used. What nonsense Harry! Let me repeat what I said at the beginning. ‘…while capitalism can exist without fascism, fascism cannot exist without capitalism.’ Because you deny Howard being a fascist you seem to think that corporatist Australia getting into bed with him is just plain old corruption. What rubbish.

Many people’s idea of fascism, including Harry’s, seems to revolve around merely the images of fascism past; endless ranks of black uniforms, jack boots, great symbolic nationalistic banners, mesmerised hordes of cheering admirers – all the populist imaginings of fascism which made it so attractive between the wars. The reality is far more prosaic than that. It’s about control, power, wealth and the new racism of culture and religion. The dumb and gullible of Australia should wake up to this new reality.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

THE FASCIST JAY WHITE’S MENTOR THINKS HE’S HIS ‘LEADER’!

When I let loose at Jay White in my last post I said: (See below) “The fascist Jay White… has followed in his hero’s footsteps and come up with what he refers to as the ‘final solution’ to the drug problem,” The vanity-struck Harry Heidelberg, in all his vainglory, actually thought I was talking about him as Jay White’s hero! Now, just how far up ones self can one get?!

Wrong Harry! I don’t think even you are as sick as Jay White’s real hero – the architect of the other ‘Final Solution’ of the ‘40s.

SS-Mistführer White has it all over you Harry!