[Peace-discuss] Fw: Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’

[Ricky Baldwin]

She also switched because, after serving six terms in the House and several years in the Georgia House before that as a Democrat, she lost her primary in 2006.

Don't get me wrong, McKinney was a very good Democrat - with a good record of anti-war activism (including the FIRST Gulf War), support for the Uwa people in Colombia, Palestinians in the Gaza, an attempt to stop coltan mining in the Congo, and support for Bush's 
impeachment.  

There was also an unfortunate association with the 9/11 Truth 
Movement, her father saying on TV that "Jews have bought everybody - JEWS!" - and a sort of unclear scuffle with a cop at the Capitol.  But mostly she was very good.

Thing is, it's hard enough for a person espousing these views to remain in office - for various reasons, among them the fact that they can easily become a target of massive conservative resources.  She was defeated twice in the Democratic primary by more conservative Dems, and only came back in 2004 when her conservative opponent (who defeated her with a massive crossover of Republicans in the primary) decided to run for Senate.

The Greens had been courting her since 2000 or so I think, but when she finally joined them, she got 0.12 percent of the vote.  There are a lot of reasons for this - funding of corporate interests, coverage by corporate media, etc. - but another big one is the large number of people who simply will not vote Green.  I'm not defending that or criticizing it just now - just saying that's how it is.  

The painful truth is, even considering all the perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Dems as a whole (exempting certain individuals), McKinney was much more effective - had a much wider audience if nothing else - as a Democrat.

Tough, but it's true.

Ricky



"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn

--- On Mon, 3/29/10, unionyes <unionyes at ameritech.net> wrote:

From: unionyes <unionyes at ameritech.net>
Subject: Fw: [Peace-discuss] Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’
To: Undisclosed-Recipient at yahoo.com
Date: Monday, March 29, 2010, 6:32 PM

Cynthia McKinney who is quoted in this article, is an African American former democratic U.S. Congresswoman from Atlanta Georgia, who became so disgusted with the democratic party, ran as a Green for President of the U.S. in 2008.

David J.

----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 9:07 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’


[Chris Hedges has apparently gone off his meds entirely, but if we can get him
to breathe into the paper bag for a while, he has some important things to say.
  The best come from Cynthia McKinney, plus his own observation that "Our
educated elite, wallowing in self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique
activism of political correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their
jobs." And of course his predicted outcomes are not out of the question. --CGE]


Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’
Posted on Mar 29, 2010
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war
from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the
snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and
be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich
and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before
thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen
this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other
tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons,
charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and
despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.

“We are ruled not by two parties but one party,” Cynthia McKinney, who ran for
president on the Green Party ticket, told me. “It is the party of money and war.
Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those
who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded.”

The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound
personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think
offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their
nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a
jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to
an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think
that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to
eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall
Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated
2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this
year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is
clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And
the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and
recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our
anemic democracy die.

The unraveling of America mirrors the unraveling of Yugoslavia. The Balkan war
was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse
of Yugoslavia. The petty criminals and goons who took power harnessed the anger
and despair of the unemployed and the desperate. They singled out convenient
scapegoats from ethnic Croats to Muslims to Albanians to Gypsies. They set in
motion movements that unleashed a feeding frenzy leading to war and
self-immolation. There is little difference between the ludicrous would-be poet
Radovan Karadzic, who was a figure of ridicule in Sarajevo before the war, and
the moronic Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. There is little difference between the
Oath Keepers and the Serbian militias. We can laugh at these people, but they
are not the fools. We are.

The longer we appeal to the Democrats, who are servants of corporate interests,
the more stupid and ineffectual we become. Sixty-one percent of Americans
believe the country is in decline, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll, and they are right. Only 25 percent of those polled said the
government can be trusted to protect the interests of the American people. If we
do not embrace this outrage and distrust as our own it will be expressed through
a terrifying right-wing backlash.

“It is time for us to stop talking about right and left,” McKinney told me. “The
old political paradigm that serves the interests of the people who put us in
this predicament will not be the paradigm that gets us out of this. I am a child
of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are
labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not
afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The
Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White
House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it
came from the Supreme Court. Our problem is a problem of governance. I am
willing to reach across traditional barriers that have been skillfully
constructed by people who benefit from the way the system is organized.”

We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse,
from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy, to a demand
for quality and affordable public education, to a concern for the jobs of the
working class. And the hatred expressed within right-wing movements for the
college-educated elite, who created or at least did nothing to halt the
financial debacle, is not misplaced. Our educated elite, wallowing in
self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique activism of political
correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their jobs. The shouting of
racist and bigoted words at black and gay members of Congress, the spitting on a
black member of the House, the tossing of bricks through the windows of
legislators’ offices, are part of the language of rebellion. It is as much a
revolt against the educated elite as it is against the government. The blame
lies with us. We created the monster.

When someone like Palin posts a map with cross hairs on the districts of
Democrats, when she says “Don’t Retreat, Instead—RELOAD!” there are desperate
people cleaning their weapons who listen. When Christian fascists stand in the
pulpits of megachurches and denounce Barack Obama as the Antichrist, there are
messianic believers who listen. When a Republican lawmaker shouts “baby killer”
at Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, there are violent extremists who see the
mission of saving the unborn as a sacred duty. They have little left to lose. We
made sure of that. And the violence they inflict is an expression of the
violence they endure.

These movements are not yet full-blown fascist movements. They do not openly
call for the extermination of ethnic or religious groups. They do not openly
advocate violence. But, as I was told by Fritz Stern, a scholar of fascism who
has written about the origins of Nazism, “In Germany there was a yearning for
fascism before fascism was invented.” It is the yearning that we now see, and it
is dangerous. If we do not immediately reincorporate the unemployed and the poor
back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the
nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American
society will become a full-blown conflagration.

Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred
for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for
Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely
white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans.
The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic
institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our
continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and
stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us
swept aside for an age of terror and blood.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/is_america_yearning_for_fascism_20100329/




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