[Peace] [Peace-discuss] Against hysteria

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Why Le Pen is likely to become next French president: <https://newrepublic.com/article/139500/hope-frances-left>.

Brexit-Trump-Le Pen represent the emergence of an [electorally-]organized working class immiserated by neoliberalism. ("What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”)

“'Will François Hollande be remembered as the Franklin Roosevelt of Europe?' It was with this question that Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and  one of France’s most vocal critics of austerity, began his reflection on Hollande’s electoral victory in 2012. There was undoubtedly a touch of irony in that question—'the comparison can make one chuckle'—but it was nonetheless an honest assessment of the forces that were already impinging on the new president and other major European leaders. In 1932, very little of what became the New Deal was spelled out in Roosevelt’s campaign against Herbert Hoover. [FDR’S 1932 PLATFORM: BALANCE THE BUDGET!] All that Roosevelt knew was that, as Piketty writes, 'the crisis of 1929 and the policies of austerity had brought the United States to its knees and that public power must reassert control over a finance capitalism on the run.' The scale of the crisis pressed Roosevelt into a daring rush of experimentation…. 

—CGE


> On Dec 23, 2016, at 6:36 PM, Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> For what it’s worth I am in agreement with Mort, Carl and Alex on Putin and Europe. 
> 
>> On Dec 23, 2016, at 14:34, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I think Mort is right, on both Putin and Le Pen - although I disagree that “she is far from being an equivalent to Trump.” She resembles him at least in this: if she is elected president of France, her election will I think be part of the movement that includes Brexit and Trump's election.  
>> 
>> I offended Belden recently by quoting Alex Cockburn on race-fakers, so I’ll compound the felony with Alex’ piece on Le Pen from 2012:
>> 
>> =============================================
>> Who are the real fascists: Marine Le Pen - or the United States?
>> May 3, 2012
>> Alexander Cockburn
>> 
>> AMERICAN discussions of Europe swivel between rationality and hysteria. A discussion of Europe's awful unemployment figures and swelling mutiny against austerity suddenly mutates into tremulous wails about the menace of fascism in France, rancid racism in the Netherlands, the anti-Semitic beast unchained in Germany (in the terrifying form of Günter Grass's new poem).
>> 
>> A lot of this has to do with Marine Le Pen, leader of France's National Front. Now and again I'll mention her in something I've written without the obligatory insults about her family heritage and presumed totalitarian agenda. Furious letters pour in, particularly since she made a strong showing in the first round of the French presidential elections.
>> 
>> Marine Le Pen is a nationalist politician, quite reasonably exploiting the intense social discontent in France amid the imposition of the bankers' austerity programs. As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard put it in The Daily Telegraph recently, she "presents herself as a latterday Jeanne d'Arc, openly comparing France's pro-EU camp with the Burgundians who plotted 'English Annexation' in the 1430s - or indeed 'Les Collabos' who bought peace after 1940. 'Let us break the chains of the French people. Bring on the French Spring,' she tells Front National rallies."
>> 
>> Anti-Semitism? Diana Johnstone, an excellent journalist who has been reporting from France for years, writes to me, "There is absolutely nothing attesting to anti-Semitism on the part of Marine Le Pen. She has actually tried to woo the powerful Jewish organisations, and her anti-Islam stance is also a way to woo such groups. The simple fact is that the best way to destroy someone in this country is to call him or her 'anti-Semitic'."
>> 
>> Marine Le Pen certainly has made some unsavoury comments about immigrants and Islamisation. But she has gone to the heart of the matter, asserting that monetary union cannot be fudged, that it is incompatible with the French nation-state. She has won 18 per cent of the vote by campaigning to pull France out of the euro and smash the whole project. As Johnstone explains, a new poll shows only three per cent of French voters consider immigration the main issue. So logically, Le Pen cannot owe her 18 percent to that issue. The number-one issue is employment.
>> 
>> It's true, things could get ugly. Europe's politics are being refashioned before our eyes. Greece has 21 per cent unemployment, and the socialist Pasok party could face near-extinction in the upcoming elections. In Spain, one-in-four is out of work, and the right-wing prime minister insists on maintaining austerity. As Evans-Pritchard points out, "We forget now, but Germany was heavily indebted to foreigners in 1930, like Spain today. It was the refusal of the creditor powers (US and France) to reliquify the system and slow monetary contraction that pushed Germany over a cliff. The parallels are haunting."
>> 
>> But there's another aspect to this habit of flinging the charge of fascism at Europe, and that's the simple matter of national hypocrisy. The mobs who flooded into the streets to revel in the execution of Osama bin Laden a year ago were not exulting in America, land of the free and of constitutional propriety. They were lauding brute, lawless, lethal force. In this year of political conventions we'll be hearing a lot of tub-thumping about American freedoms, but if there's any nation in the world that is well on the way to meriting the admittedly vague label of 'fascist', surely it's the United States.
>> 
>> Fascism, among other things, is a system of extreme, methodical state repression, violent in contour and threat, buttressed by ultra-nationalist mythology, a militarist culture and imperial ambition. In the 1980s America started locking up its poor people. Seven million adults were under correctional supervision in 2009. A fascist system uses constant harassment. Last year there were more than 600,000 stop-and-frisks in New York City, overwhelmingly of blacks and Hispanics. Historically, fascist regimes have been particularly cruel toward what is deemed to be sexual deviancy. US sex offender registries doom three-quarters of a million people - many of them convicted on trumpery charges - to pale simulacra of real life. Others endure castration and open-ended incarceration.
>> 
>> Fascist regimes, ultimately the expression of corporate power, repress labour in all efforts to organise. The onslaught here began with Taft-Hartley in 1947 and continued with methodical ferocity during the Reagan and Clinton years. Obama reneged on pledges to make organising easier, froze the wages of federal workers and advanced free trade across the globe. Attacks on collective bargaining are pervasive. Big money's grip on both parties ensures corporate control no matter who's nominally in charge. Fascist regimes show open contempt for democracy while deifying a leader who embodies the national spirit. We salute democracy while suppressing it.
>> 
>> A fascist regime is the sworn foe of the right to assembly, 'unauthorised' marches and encampments. We're sure to see more signs of this around the Nato summit and the national conventions. America is a network of Swat teams and kindred state-employed thugs on permanent red alert.
>> 
>> A fascist regime spies obsessively on its citizens. Study US laws on secret surveillance since the Patriot Act and you will find procedures that would have been the envy of the East Germans.
>> 
>> Ultimately a fascist state claims the right to imprison its victims without term or hope of redress or legal representation. As the executive power, in the form of the president, it claims the right to kill its enemies, whether citizens (Awlaki) or others (Guantánamo), without judicial review. In other words, rule by decree - which is what Hitler's Enabling Act won him in March 1933.
>> 
>> We live in a fascist country - 'proto-fascist' if you want to allay public disquiet, though there's scant sign that most Americans are disturbed by the trends. So quit beating up on Europe.
>> =============================================
>> 
>> —CGE
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 23, 2016, at 12:41 PM, Fields, A Belden via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Mort,
>>> 
>>> First, I think you misunderstood what I meant by opposition-killing regime.  I was was not referring to what Russia did in Grozny or Aleppo (though I consider both of those war crimes--and I say that as one who has criticized US war crimes from Vietnam to Iraq).  I was talking about the internal practices of Putin, the killing, imprisonment, and financial ruin of those who opposed him publicly or even reporters who just report the misdeeds of his  regime.
>>> 
>>> Second, I too have been following the National Front closely.  Before that, in the 1960s, I had interviewed a leading member of the Action Francaise, its predecessor. Deb is absolutely right. Marine purged her father because he was always being hauled into court over his anti-Semitic statements. It was just bad PR for the Front.
>>> The friend of a French friend of mine was a fellow student of Marine's and reports that she was a rabid anti-Semite.  But now immigrants and the large North African Arab permanent population are more politically  expedient targets.  Don't minimize that Mort.  Bigotry is bigotry.  And it is not just against the newer immigrants.  It  is  against the ghettoized North African-French people as well.  The Front's idolized vision of the true "French" person, is the francais de souche--white, Christian (does not have to be practicing), with long historical roots in France.  Of course, they do not  say this out loud.  They are way too smart now. m They have to use the millions they get from the Russian bank cleverly.
>>> 
>>> Regarding anti-Semitism.  The Jewish population in France, which was the largest in Western  Europe, has been diminishing  rapidly in recent years.  There are two reasons for this.  One is that there have very frequent violent attacks against visibly apparent Jews and Jewish institutions in France by North Africans Moslems.  Second is the growing strength of the National Front.  Just as they do did not fit the Nazi definition of an Aryan, so Jews do not fit the Front's definition of a true French person.  Most of them have been going to Israel for safety.
>>> 
>>> Which brings me to the  saddest irony that someone who contends that Zionism is racism would give the National Front such a free pass on its bigotry, which is directed openly against Arab Moslems and now  covertly against Jews.  Xenophobic bigots should be called out as such.  Putin's willingness to support such ultra-nationalistic, fascistic, and sometimes neo-Nazi (as in Austria) forces brings no credit to him or his regime.
>>> For an older guy like me, it brings back the Hitler-Stalin Pact that so  shook the anti-fascist movements in US and Western Europe.
>>> 
>>> Attached you will find an abridged copy  of an article I  wrote on the National Front in the January 2016 issue of the Public i
>>> 
>>> I wish everyone a peaceful and healthy 2017.
>>> 
>>> Belden
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Brussel, Morton K
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2016 7:55 PM
>>> To: Fields, A Belden
>>> Cc: peace
>>> Subject: Re: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Against hysteria
>>> 
>>> Belden,
>>> 
>>> I might say that you are being too mild with respect to the NATO/U.S moves towards Russian Borders. Yes, those moves are provocative, but more than that, they are militantly aggressive; U.S. leaders would probably not be unhappy to see a proxy conflict arise between Ukraine and Russia, hoping it to be conducive to regime change in Russia. The U.S. is arming Ukraine (and the Baltic states) for that purpose, why else?  
>>> 
>>> On the other hand, I have been following what has been occurring in France closely. Marine Le Pen is not her father, she has not assumed his racist belligerent anti-semitic character, even though she she does espouse anti-immigration policies. Many, and not only from the far-right, are drawn to her, not only because of her relatively benign regard to Russia,  but also due to her  anti-Brussels European federalist  and NATO, policies—causing a loss of French sovereignty. There is something to be said for that. That is why she could win the coming presidential election there. Aside from the fact that both want to be more friendly to Russia, she is far from being an equivalent to Trump. Moreover, I believe Europe (NATO) and the U.S.should  cease their economic and military  cold war policies, policies which could lead to a disastrous conflagration. The U.S. war hawks and their media are acting with respect to Ukraine just as they have in Syria, not so stealthily pushing dangerous provocations. Cohen elaborates this argument well. 
>>> 
>>> Finally, are you not also falling into the trap of demonizing Russia by calling it an “opposition killing state”? Is the USA a less "opposition killing state"? Who has been more killingly destructive in recent decades? My opinion is that Russia under Putin has been a stabilizing influence compared to the U.S., perhaps due in part to her far weaker military capabilities. 
>>> 
>>> Mort
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Dec 22, 2016, at 2:46 PM, Fields, A Belden <a-fields at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Mort,
>>>> 
>>>> I just looked at the piece by Cohen in the Nation. I have always agreed with him that NATO was too provocative vs Russia in Eastern Europe.  But I think Cohen puts it too mildly when he talks about Russia supporting "anti-status quo" movements in Europe.  I  understand Putin's desire to use any tool to fight back, but the movements he is supporting, including the French National Front in Front, are racist, xenophobic groups founded by collaborators in France and former Nazis in Austria.  The combination of these groups coming to power, and allying with the puritanical/authoritarian/opposition killing  state of Russia, is not a result I  look forward to.  Just look at Hungary under Oban.
>>>> 
>>>> I think we should continue to be critical of the neo-cons of either party in the US, but we should also be very wary of the process going on in Europe now that Putin is encouraging--even if we understand why he is doing it.
>>>> 
>>>> Belden
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Brussel, Morton K
>>>> Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2016 12:36 PM
>>>> To: Fields, A Belden
>>>> Subject: Re: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Against hysteria
>>>> 
>>>> I believe that Carl is primarily and justly concerned with US. wars and other depredations, and, in these perilous times, the new cold war—getting increasingly warmer— between the U.S. government and Russia/Putin. In this, he will find some confirmation of his attitude in the fascinating and enlightening podcast of Stephen Cohen on the subject of the demonization of Russia/Putin by the war parties inn D.C. Watch:  https://www.thenation.com/article/american-cold-warriors-want-to-fight-russia-not-terrorism/
>>>> 
>>>> This is not an excuse relating to other mattters here discussed, but I think it is an important issue. 
>>>> 
>>>> —mkb
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Dec 22, 2016, at 12:04 PM, Fields, A Belden via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Carl,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Your quoting from another source (the duran) contending that Trump is a moderate and your extensive quote in today's News-Gazette from Alexander Cockburn (whom you characterize as the "best political reporter in the US in his generation--a dubious contention at best) slamming the Southern Poverty Law Center as money-grabbing, are evasions in which  you accept no responsibility because you are just quoting other sources.  This  is a cowardly way to write. I find your "letter" in the the N-G particularly offensive because it appeals to the generally conservative readers of the N-G to view the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the major stalwarts against bigotry in this country, to be a rotten organization.  We need the Center now more than ever.
>>>>> You present yourself as critically progressive, but have a knack of serving the right.  Your attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center is particularly low and gratuitous, even for you.  It is beneath contemptible.  
>>>>> Belden
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: Peace [peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] on behalf of Debra Schrishuhn via Peace [peace at lists.chambana.net]
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2016 7:13 AM
>>>>> To: Estabrook, Carl G
>>>>> Cc: Peace Discuss; sf-core; Brussel, Morton K; peace; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Occupy CU
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Against hysteria
>>>>> 
>>>>> As Mort writes, we do not know what policies the Trump regime will pursue. From his past words and actions and his Cabinet and staff nominations--including many white supremacists and individuals connected to racism and a disregard for civil rights, science deniers, skeptics of public education, and the potential for graft and corruption--we have ample reason to be concerned about both his character and his policies. To ignore this man's despicable character, as evidenced by his racism and xenophobia and fascist tendencies and his choices in staffing the next administration (regime), is to condone it. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Debra
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Dec 22, 2016, at 6:48 AM, "Carl G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Shouldn’t we pay attention to the policies the Trump administration will follow, more than to his obvious deficiencies of character?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The Obama administration is. They’re so afraid Trump will reverse Obama's warmongering policies, they’re rushing to try to lock the new administration into their lethal practices.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Example: Obama has waved a restriction on providing shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles to the 'rebels’ in Syria (including al-Qaeda) - an obvious threat to the Russian air force (who, unlike the USAF, are in Syria legally). HRC wanted a no-fly zone, which she was told would lead to war with Russia; Obama is trying to use jihadists for that.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The anti-war movement, of which AWARE is a part, should try to give an accurate account of the US government’s war-making, under this administration and the next. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> —CGE
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Dec 22, 2016, at 6:27 AM, Debra Schrishuhn <deb.pdamerica at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Apparently, Trump's racism, xenophobia, and misogyny are true conservative values that you support? His intention to build a wall to keep brown people out of the US and his embrace of torture and extra-judicial killings don't bother you, Carl? His willingness to ignite trade wars and possibly hot wars with that military he plans to build up are OK? His lack of respect for fellow humans, his pathological tendency to lie or say whatever he thinks will advance him, get him attention -- these character traits are acceptable to you? Not to mention his graft, his bullying, his cruelty, his vindictiveness--these trait are acceptable in a US President or in any human being?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> That you embrace these odious qualities in another says a great deal about you. 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Debra
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Dec 21, 2016, at 10:32 PM, "Carl G. Estabrook via Peace" <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I have great respect for Richard Wolff, but I wish he’d button his shirt and give us a transcript.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I’ve gotten too old to listen to lectures.  —CGE
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> On Dec 21, 2016, at 10:04 PM, Brussel, Morton K <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I must say that it remains to be seen what Trump will do/represent. 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Aside from his asserted intention to talk to the Russians and  emphasize domestic over foreign affairs, his statements relative to China and Cuba and…,  with respect to climate change, his coziness with Generals and his expressed intention to increase military spending perhaps by a factor of two, his favoring of “order” (police?) over civil rights, does not lead me to believe the confident remarks of the author who wrote the sentence cited below.This, even leaving aside  the various contradictory and ignorant statements he is prone to make.. But yes, he will be a traditionally conservative Republican in favoring the corporate world which he probably knows best and in diverse retrograde social issues. 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I highly recommend a recent YouTube presentation by economist Richard Wolf on the subject of Trumpenomics:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dut6sPW52Q
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> —mkb
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> On Dec 21, 2016, at 9:09 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> "This is what Trump represents, not radicalism but conservatism in its truest sense, a return to calm after a storm. His policies are amongst the most moderate in recent history. He is anti-interventionist, opposed to the apparatuses that should have been forgotten after the Cold War and his fiscal policies could easily be confused with those of a pre-Goldwater East Coast Republican.”
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> http://theduran.com/putin-trump-new-normalcy/
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> ____
>> 
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