Fascism is back on the agenda with a vengeance. Not merely because two Canadian ‘alt-right’ activists want to spread their message in Aotearoa. Of course ‘alt-right’ is a euphemism for fascism. But when someone actively attempts to stop refugees from Africa and the Middle East from reaching Europe by attacking their boats there is no denying fascism as ‘alt-right’.
Today, capitalism is dying and is thrashing about destroying everything it touches. It deserves to die, but not to take us with it. Fascism is the political response of last resort against the overthrow of capitalism by the working class. It will not give up its fight peacefully, logically, rationally, resorting to undemocratic and illegal actions, wars and genocide.
Yet it wants its class enemy to fight peacefully and respect bourgeois human rights – including ‘free speech’. Never mind the right to life of African refugees. It wants fascism to be normalized as just another ideology that deserves equality before the law. Meanwhile it builds and organizes a reactionary social movement against refugee rights, workers’ rights and socialist revolution.
The denial of a platform to fascists is a longstanding question, first raised with the rise of the fascist movement in Germany in 1920, rapidly followed by Italy and then Spain. If you look at these movements its clear that they took advantage of the pacifism and disorganization of the workers to put up resistance to its armed shock troops.
Remember Visconti’s film, The Leopard, set in Italy during the 1920s. The communists were a powerful political force but no match for armed fascist bands that attacked their union halls and murdered labour leaders defeating their movement. In Germany the same methods were used to weaken, divide and destroy the labour movement. Revolutionary leaders like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were assassinated and workers armed uprisings put down.
The fascists succeeded because workers were divided along ideological lines. Social Democracy was committed to parliamentary socialism and the rule of law. It looked to the state to protect them from fascists, denying the fact that the state supports fascism in defending capitalism against socialist revolution. Since social democracy prefers fascism to communism the Communists were isolated. Fascists even appealed to workers and declassed petty bourgeois as ‘socialist’ to deceive them.
Fascism is the militant, violent, undemocratic and unlawful instrument of brutal bourgeois class rule. It doesn’t defend bourgeois freedoms even while it attempts to hide behind them. Its main purpose is to smash the working class as the only class that can overthrow capitalism and build a new society free from exploitation and oppression.
Therefore, since we must learn from history or die, it is stupid to ignore that lesson and fall for the ploy that fascism is somehow an aberration that is equally at home on the ‘alt-right’ and ‘alt- left’ against the law-abiding, pacifist, moderate middle. That is to separate the symptoms of fascism from its cause.
The only language that fascists understand is that of force – class force. Either they use that force against us and win the class war, or we organize our own class force and defeat fascism in its embryo before it gains the upper hand.
Marxists do not call on the bourgeois state to ban fascists because we have learned that historically the state sides with fascism to smash the working class. We organize as a class to use every bourgeois freedom that advances our class interests in socialism. That is why we do not fetishize ‘freedom of speech’ when it disarms us in the face of the rise of fascism.
Those who want to survive capitalism’s decline and fall need to work out where their class allegiance lies now before it is too late, and build a working class anti-fascist movement to defeat fascism on the streets.
Dave Brownz is TDBs guest Marxist blogger, because every left wing blog needs a guest Marxist.
How one group of supporters of murderous totalitarian dictatorship could fight another group of supporters of murderous totalitarian dictatorship in Aotearoa? Oh, great. Could we maybe not have totalitarians fighting each other in Aotearoa? That would be my preferred option.
Not sure I’d want to be entering armed struggle any time soon but i’ll choose to otherwise fully agree with the piece that fascism needs pointing out and shutting down, not encouraging.
Contrast Mr Trotter, who has a phenomenal grasp of political history to have overlooked what is staring us in the face.
That’s a bit of a straw man isn’t it? Yes the Soviet Union communist uprising got taken over by those bent on dictatorship but the point about the other side fighting dirty is surely important!
History never repeats and the future is hard to predict but we should never forget that we’re up against a ruthless bunch of sociopaths.
At the same time we should be building relationships with the people who tend to get swept up in fascist further instead of sneering at them the way the progressive left currently does.
Wtf. I agree capitalism is a repressive cage. But you can’t change communism from with in. The only way to defeat a one party government is by revolution. I’m always skiprical of people proclaiming the virtues of communism. I’d like to see them try 1 week in a northern Syrian town in the middle of an ISIS recruitment drive.
Aaron, in the case of Marxism it has repeated itself so many times, without exception that I think we have a fair idea where it inevitably leads. 😉
Oh but nice try anyway. You get a participation medal.
Aaron you profoundly misunderstand revolutionary Marxism if you think it got take over by authoritarianism. It began that way with the avowed intention of destroying all class enemies. Do you think that means giving them a lollipop and saying, “You are now a proletarian?” Think bullets and gulags, and lethal purges to ensure ideological purity.
Of course nice NZ Marxists wouldn’t do that, it would be all cuddly and soft.
My position, I’ll fight both fascists and communists because left to their Will we all die.
It isn’t a straw man. Marxist revolutionaries have created murderous totalitarian dictatorships every time they’ve succeeded in taking over. Some people may be inclined to avoid lumping them in with fascists due to them having good intentions (unlike fascists), but I prefer to judge on results rather than intentions, and based on results you can only conclude communism is worse than fascism.
“ruthless bunch of sociopaths” = Lenin, Stalin and their comrades.
Everyone seems to have missed my point in favour of a bit of communist bashing 🙂
I was trying to say that Dave’s comment that historically, fascists have only understood force is worth taking on board.
Trying to dismiss anything he says because he’s a Marxist and Marxism inevitably leads to totalitarianism is not very logical. It’s also based on a false assumption.
The Soviet Union came about as a result of a popular uprising which Lenin then co-opted for his own power. Everything that happened after that was Marxist in name only. Here’s a talk by Chomsy that explains the basics; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI
Everyone seems to have ignored the point I was trying to make in favour of a bit of Communist-bashing.
I was trying to say that Dave had a good point about fascists only really understanding force.
I was also saying that dismissing anything he had to say because he’s a Marxist and Marxism always leads to totalitarianism is not really logical.
It also shows a misunderstanding of history. The Soviet Union came about through a popular uprising which was co-opted by Lenin. Everything that happened after that was Marxist in name only. I suggest listening to Chomsky on this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI.
For the record I am not marxist/communist, in favour of the ideology or even vaguely interested. I am interested in how we deal with the fascists that have turned up on our doorstep and absolutely staggered at the way they have trolled the left on this country and how we have dissolved into a clusterfuck of heated debate about side-issues. This mini-thread being a case in point.
Gidday Aaron, thanks for your comments.
However, I don’t think Chomsky is right on the Russian Revolution.
Lenin has been called a dictator by the enemies of the revolution for a century. Yet his role is the opposite, almost singlehandedly preventing the revolution from being defeated and Russia becoming a Tsarist colony of Britain and France.
He couldn’t do this alone, he had to win over the ranks of the party from its backsliding leadership that preferred the social democratic parliamentary road to socialism; impossible to achieve, with the Tsarist and imperialist armies ganging up to destroy any vestige of even bourgeois democracy.
This meant opposing the party leadership and going directly to all the mass meetings of the soviets and workplaces to convince them that the only way to avoid a Tsarist/imperialist counter-revolution was to go all out for ‘soviet power’ i.e. workers and poor peasants and a ‘workers’ state’ defended by the Red Army.
Unfortunately there was no Lenin in Germany, and Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed at the hands of social democracy and the fascist guards. Armed workers and soldiers were ready to take power, but there was no Lenin to rally the masses to successful revolution.
Therefore the degeneration of the Russian revolution was not the responsibility of Lenin, but the isolation and invasion of Russia by imperialist troops that laid waste to the economy, creating crisis conditions which allowed the party to succumb to the Stalin led bureaucracy.
In summary, the degeneration of the revolution was caused not Lenin’s dictatorship but his death in 1924 which prevented him from waging a ruthless war against the Stalinist bureaucracy. In that sense the revolution was mortally wounded when Lenin died.
The left opposition under Trotsky fought a losing battle to restore party democracy and plan the economy to get the revolution back on course. All the old Bolsheviks devoted to the revolution ended up dead at the hands of Stalin.
On the question of whether Fascism and Communism are both equally totalitarian, Trotsky rejected this comparison as superficial. He argued that fascism is specific to capitalism because it is devoted to smashing the proletarian revolution.
Stalinism, while resembling fascism as a dictatorship, was incapable of smashing the working class because it claimed to be the leadership of that class and was dependent on privileges from managing state property as ‘workers’ property’. And it was that working class, and not Stalin, that defeated German fascism in WW2.
Not only that, Russia was not yet even socialist let alone communist. But Stalin misrepresented Marxism to proclaim it was possible to build ‘socialism in one country’ and that it was finally realized in 1936! And the alt-right in its ignorance talks about ‘communism’ rather than the actually existing fake ‘socialism’ of Stalinism.
A selection of marxists giving another selection of marxists a get of jail free card on the 120 million slaughtered by their disgusting ideology. The very definition of a circle jerk.
Nobody is buying it.
The worst thing about what you did there, writing off a well articulated, detailed account of how Soviet communism actually played out, is that that cynical oversimplifying tactic is, as John Oliver puts it Depressingly Effective.
I am further affronted by your blanket ‘no-one is buying it’ assertion. That is patent Emporers-New-Clothes gaslighting, implying anyone who takes this reasoned approach to deconstructing history is some kind of idiot.
People who choose knee-jerk smack talk over intelligent debate are the idiots.
“Unfortunately there was no Lenin in Germany, and Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed at the hands of social democracy and the fascist guards. Armed workers and soldiers were ready to take power, but there was no Lenin to rally the masses to successful revolution”
This really tells us where the Marxist will always be coming from: “See, those workers and soldiers in Weimar Germany were armed and ready for revolution … but there was nobody on hand to lead them; nobody like meeeeeeee to be in charge and tell them who to kill. The Social Democratic cowards won’t point to an enemy and tell them to kill. They’ll insist on the rule of law instead like a bunch of cissy class-cucks afraid of spilling a little blood!”
Everyone get why the Marxist will always end up presiding over a clusterfuck wrapped in a collapse wrapped in a bloodbath yet? It’s not just how revealing it is that they genuinely believe that working class people don’t have the initiative to lead themselves, or that the failure of Social Democracy will be it’s failure to hungrily kill. It’s their utter conviction that history is dependent on the actions of an intellectual vanguard of people like themselves, who will tell these willing workers and soldiers who they need to kill to get this merry utopia happening.
The Soviet Union, and *every single other* attempt at a Marxist revolution ‘got taken over by those bent on dictatorship’. Kinda like it’s the perfect system for such people to rise to the top…
Been there done this before back in the future. Marxism was created by the banksters for the banksters to control the workers with their own delusions. Thats why only psychopaths were ever allowed to run the “communist” worker paradises which were actually hell on earth. Check out Pawns In The Game by William Guy Carr:
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/07/11/essential-reading-pawns-in-the-game-by-william-guy-carr-part-4/
We are in the final stages of the banksters take down of humanity whereby they will implement their final solution which can be seen already being rolled out in China with full spectrum control of the population through AI. They need class war to bring about this cataclysm so the public will swallow their total control solutions willingly. Play their game of class warfare and we are dead as a species as we will be reduced to puppets controlled by the few through high tech mind/body control systems they are just beginning to roll out.
This plan has been initiated by off-world forces to control and harvest humanity for it own ends. We are the biological software they want for their own ends to operate in the physical realm of the universe. And yes the real puppet masters beyond the banksters operate in the non-physical realm as this is ultimately what is colloquially referred to as “satanic” forces at work. Sorry plebs Jesus aint coming to save our sorry arses its up to us and us alone to make the evolutionary leap to stand on our our 2 feet and say we aint gonna be bossed around by no alien and satanic forces.
We need to take our own evolution into our own hands and free ourselves from the banksters who control both the fascist and the marxist movements. Peaceful resistance is the only solution by stating quite clearly and loudly that one is a free human soul beholden to no external force or ideology but guided by the light of ones own soul (higher power) and universal love and love alone.
Nice and succinct Dave.
Now just sit back and watch the left smash itself to pieces on the great pudding of bourgeois sensibilities…
Who are these “fascists” that you will be fighting?
Fascism is underground in NZ. It masquerades as ‘whites rights’ and as the defender of ‘democracy’ from the extreme right and extreme left. The National Front in NZ has a public profile but struggles to get support. One of its main leaders, Kyle Chapman, found it impossible to rally without meeting opposition on the streets and is now in California organizing the alt-right and getting arrested in confrontations with antifa.
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/04/12/based-stickman-arrested-berkeley-fight-skateboarder-man-knife
The reason that fascism is largely undercover in NZ is not because it has been banned by Govt or Councils, but because it has been kicked off the streets by leftwing opponents who clearly understand its objectives. It is attempting to revive itself as more mainstream in defence of “freedom of speech”.
The election of Trump has provided the alt-right a new claim to political legitimacy that is winning it support. That is why we have to be on our guard against any resurgence of the alt-right in Aotearoa.
http://www.nationalfront.org.nz/?p=10974#more-10974
Different Kyle Chapman that one, the American one is younger and not overweight, the name confused me for a bit too.
That’s a different Kyle Chapman – look at some photos . The NZ one couldn’t organise a ride to the airport if his Mum was a taxi driver.
Fascism in NZ hasn’t been suppressed by the equally fringe groups opposed to it, but by mainstream society turning its back on any Nazi wannabe. That the far left are some bulwark against fascism is just Marxists and their ilk engaging in wishing thinking about being relevant.
Hahaha, you thought Based Stickman was the NZ Kyle Chapman? Good to know how much research of non-Marxist canon goes into your work…
Today fascists are people who claim they’re superior to Muslims. Palastinians have become the “modern day” oppressed and we must stand and help them. Just like we did the Jews last century.
I don’t know anyone who claims that they are superior to Muslims
I know Muslims who are very fine people
However, there are legitimate criticisms of political Islam that are being suppressed
100% correct ANDY.
This is just going to be my opinion so please don’t every one hate on me but there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be said so with out further ado.
Because conservatives mistake “being against persecuting them” with “supporting their ideology.” Most left support religious freedom. Some people think that it means supporting everything religion does but it doesn’t. A person has a right to believe anything they want, their rights ends when it affects other people who doesn’t. Discriminating Muslims are wrong, discriminating people who kill gays for Johnny’s sake aren’t wrong. Big difference. But these are the kinds of ideological trigger traps alt-right/left like to lay.
So POTUS Trump has massively increased military spending not just in America from $420bln sequester levels to over $700bln, but NATO allies and non-NATO military spending is also going up. To divest or not to divest, that is the question. I think the goal will be similar to the whole Hillary discussion where people where like “hey is she disliked because she’s female” or is she disliked because she’s a shit leader / commander so it’s about why people disliked her in general and not really why she wasn’t suited to the role. It’s got nothing to do with anatomy or anything like that and nothing to do with this discussion but Trump is an interesting topic because he is a strong Johnny Bravo bad ass. I’m not even saying Trump won because he’s a better choice I’m saying Trump shows how qualified Hillary actually was that she couldn’t beat Trump in an unfair contest that was in Hillary’s favour.
The White House has its really deep moments and it’s got it’s really chatty moments but one thing that’s over rated is the depth of talented Presidents who holds office, I’m not going to go into all of that but we have Mike Pence, Dick Chaney, I think you get the picture, big Bravos (Google the cartoon “Johnny Bravo” might be coming back). The depth is not as deep as people think and I think Trump as a character is what Americans want to see. They want to see presidents with strong character who has a vocabulary on par with Johnny Bravo and at the end of it they want to see the American Military finish off a few lose ends like not a recreation of D-Day more a recreation of Saving Private Ryan and then becomes this neutral force that’s not good or evil. So it’s basically breaking down that soldiers do bad things because bad Muslims existed but once they learn that that trauma got the death they get over it like immediately. But POTUS has these sudo intricacies that Trump kind of lost like Obama was far more cynical and verbal but that trauma was gone immediately. And Obamas like this Scooby Doo villain.
I think also we should question people who’ve debated for the last 2 years whether Russia did it or not. These people are a laughing stock, they got turned into memes, and they don’t even know how irrelevant they actually are. But back to the point Trump wants to make money and the Federal Reserve is the, and I mean THE money maker and why do people demonise money, money never did anything to you and it’s a really good aspect of capitalism because it doesn’t care what identity you are every ones got a shot at making some and America does it better than any other country when it comes to this sort of hype. And then you get people trying to convince people that capitalism is bad, and when ever I see things that’s really dumb I’m not going to say whether it’s right or wrong I’ll say yup, that happened, I’m not going to say it’s good or bad I’ll defend it because we’re still Kiwis and I’ll try and explain to the best of my abilities but I won’t say aurgh New Zealand is shit, how dare you, not like Rogernomics or Metiria levels of writing. That’s just dumb because Trumps never been on that level.
All I’m saying is do not listen to these other influences trying to get you to hate on Muslims just for liking something simple. That’s all I’m saying. Like like Trump because you like him, don’t hate him because other people tell you to. Equally like Muslims because you like them don’t hate them because some one told you to. For every one saying hate this thing to make them less popular just don’t listen to them because that shits just fucken annoying. It’s terrible, silly. Another point is there’s 5 million of us and we do like New Zealand and we don’t like no it alls coming over telling us to shit on some one because they’ve got Johnny levels of narrative. This people just don’t want you to be happy. They’re the same people who freaked out over gay cakes and kids running with scissors and it’s like well people kind of like Muslims and they like that simplistic cake too. Some people will like Muslims over time, a lot of people didn’t like Māori, a lot of people didn’t like woman, a lot of people didn’t like circular planets. Even with Trump I feel like every one hated him at first and them more and more intricacies came out about him and more and more people liked him and through some hard struggles we can come to appreciate Muslims like that too.
Yawns then; Trump grrrrr? A glove puppet being enlivened by the hand that animates him from within & without, as are pretty much all figureheads.
Not a Trump fan but do like the way he goes off script, shoots from the hip, very in the moment, human & real. An good example of how charismatic personality shapes reality. Simply the ‘will to power’ being channeled through or being expressed by a unique/inspired individual. Chill out, enjoy the show.
Pure information ~ inspired iconic personality effect ~ cultural formation ~ societal routinisation ~ behavioural indoctrination ~ biochemical signaling ~ quantum physics.
Dave Brownz and his comrades, bashing the fash and showing up social democrats, Munich, 1929 (colourized):
https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1018602948362825728
From wikipedia on fascism, “Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.[12] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[12] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[13][14][15][16] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[17].”
Reads pretty much like the old Soviet Union doesn’t it?
“Protectionist and interventionist economic policies ” doesn’t sound like free market globalised capitalism.
Are you calling for a violent revolution Dave ? If so what happens next? The same as in Soviet Russia? If not do you have some other plan of action?
D J S
A Semi-Revolution
I advocate a semi-revolution.
The trouble with a total revolution
(Ask any reputable Rosicrucian)
Is that it brings the same class up on top.
Executives of skilful execution
Will therefore plan to go half way and stop.
Yes, revolutions are the only salves,
But they’re one thing that should be done by halves.
Robert Frost
.
In order to have the Fascists you appear so eager to fight you must first create them ….what better way than to act like them.
Jesus dude……chill. You’re trying too hard.
I tend to think you’re not trying enough.
So….you think (based on what he’s actually asking us to do) that I need to – right now – pick a side and be prepared to literally fight the other side in the streets in violent battle to determine the winner of the collapse of capitalism…???
That’s your idea of me trying harder..??
This is some guy indulging in a fantasyland of attention-seeking hyperbole. It does the progressive cause and liberal-minded no favours at all.
Some people like to work smarter, not harder.
I totally agree with you. This guy is indeed a try-hard, and not smart.
And if i were a deeply devout Christian your taking of the the Lords name in vain would be deeply offensive,,,as it happens Im not so w’ll put it down to a lack of thought and consideration….not so simple eh?
So you domt like hyperbole?…guess you’ll be dismissing such phrasesas “Fascism is back on the agenda with a vengeance.”
or”Therefore, since we must learn from history or die, it is stupid to ignore that lesson and fall for the ploy that fascism is somehow an aberration that is equally at home on the ‘alt-right’ and ‘alt- left’ against the law-abiding, pacifist, moderate middle. That is to separate the symptoms of fascism from its cause.”
You muppet
Jesus dude….you’re trying too hard to be offended.
I tend to think you’re not trying enough.
Oh believe me, he is very trying…
First up, what is “Alt-Right”? The speakers are not Alt Right. They are not fascist. If you are going to put up pictures of Dad’s Army who are “going to fight them on the beaches”, at least get your facts right, otherwise you’ll end up looking like a bunch of plonkers.
I must say, it’s not often that a post on the DB has me rolling on the floor, laughing. But you succeeded this time. Good times! 🙂
The photo of those pathetic individuals at the masthead is worthy of a fail compilation. It is truly hilarious! Comedy gold.
I have sent the link to several of mates so they can have a good laugh too. It so happens they’re all keen shooters who own assault style rifles and have military training. So if you’re ever keen for the real thing, I’m sure they’ll oblige, but really, you wouldn’t last until smoko on the first day.
[Andrew, be very careful what you post here about your mates “who own assault style rifles”. This is a public form and open to be viewed by anyone including law enforcement officials. Upon production of a valid Warrant, TDB must provide IP details of any poster to law enforcement. – Scarletmod]
I roll around laughing when I read you too Andrew.
Then I laugh a bit more, pull a few weeds from the garden,clean my shoes, make some magnificent multi-coloured Russian jellies, dip into Lao Tzu, wave happily to the neighbour(s), watch the last leaves fall from my maple, and all the time chuckling – silently – it can be done – at you and your friends with guns – with military training – keen to shoot people at which point I stop laughing at you, and I groan – again silently – I quite like the sound of silence you know.
You make perfect sense and offer up some sound advice. Which will be immediately lost on the proliferation of idiotic cannon fodder oozing out of every bank on cut price lending day. And here, at TDB of course.
For every lunatic ‘uprising’ there’s a catalyst. And in capitalism, the Banks are the catalyst.
And chillingly, there’s no real solution that my humble self can see, to these most destructive elements of human nature. We’re without reason and compromise. We think we’re the best and we think we’re the righteous owners of our biosphere. We’ll war until we’re gone. That’s what we do. The solution to our problems is complete annihilation dumbasses.
Dopy, Right Wing linear thinking dick wits who can’t draw a stick figure, much less paint a picture, crave being creative like a teenage crack whore craves a hit. They replace those creative cravings with money/wealth/stuff and things accruing so they can drive down Ponsonby Rd with their car-dicks sticking out.
The socialist minded middle class, they are those without Class Dahlings are equally dopy. They tie die their hankies and eat only vegetables that’ve been eaten previously and sneer down at the above as vulgar cave dwellers with a club and a spear who are, it is clearly feared, not afraid to use them.
The Idiot Class. The ‘Worker’. The Hole diggers and spade brandishers. The sheep shearers and cow mutilators are a mean lot with a gossip on their thin lips and a deep desire for a burn out and back seat root. They’re the least culpable in the hurtling shit fight that is Earth. As we career along in a careless orbit around a decent bonfire, they, the Idiot Class think that journeying to the letter box must surely need a pass port. Their stupidity rescues them from blame. Unless you take into account their breeding like flies which must make them fly-like. To be swatted and sprayed and abused and used them swept away once they’re dead.
The rest of us? Those elite few. Those few of us who know a thing of two about a thing or two must be either dragged into the above’s shit storms of their own making or are pushed head first. We must go along with their Grey and Suffering sponge that sits up there, like a lonely lighthouse keeper watching and waiting for an idea to complete it’s long and perilous journey into the craniums of the archaic fools and their simple ideas to bear some kind of fruit of value. At this stage? Our best bet is an orange mafioso, a Russian tough guy with a short man’s complex, a ferret faced misandrist freak show who believes isolationism is better than getting on with neighbours, and any Southlander will know how well that works for all.
In our NZ politics, we have no real Art or intellectual wealth banked to lean against as the bourgeois, faux stage-set, city streets are about to run with blood. We have no real leadership sporting Class, honour, style or elegance. We’re in free fall and we have morons at steerage.
I say, every person for themselves. Sell that Wank-sion and buy a cottage in the country with an acre or two and learn to grow spuds quick smart. And don’t worry about the Masses. They’ll be culled. Bit of a stink for a few weeks. That will be all.
Is below what you’re getting at? Written way back in 1993. Go write a funny book or a stormy political manifesto & make something of your zest for words, as the wilderness voices among us expect much more from ‘the elite few’. Bukowski, a boozer, womanizer & scrapper knew a lot about what makes us humans tick & was honest about his/our failings, which is more than I can say for most of those who comment on this blog site. This country is too fuckin nice (such a non-committal word) say’s it all – too bloody weak, naive, privileged, mediocre, insular, sick, sycophantic & the thread continues; on into the open arms of oblivion, that is fast becoming an inevitable end game & a welcoming sight.
Dinosauria, We by Charles Bukowski,
Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.
After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution has progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, I believe is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
Bertrand Russell
100% CB the banks are at the heart of our problem.
I was living in FtvLauderdale in 1990’s when the real estate slump was going on so we asked the bank to advance some money to send us hoome to NZ and they sent a valuer around who doubled the price for our two bad duplex to 56K from 34k when we had bought it 7yrs ago.
We got back here and let the house to tenants and in 2005 I asked a real estate company to sell it, and it sold for 120k so we did o/k but in 2006 along came the beginning of the global crash with the crash of the infamous Enron Scandal: The Fall of a Wall Street Darling.
https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/
then this;
http://www.cityam.com/269810/global-financial-crisis-10-years-timeline-global-events
What a lot of dribble
Test us they will.
Quite right Brownz. My generation (51) understands if they were interested.
So many of you who recognise that MSM is mainly lies, are totally beholden to the lies they spin about communism. Marx thought capitalism was initially progressive, but progressed on the basis of exploitation of workers that would be intensified. We are moving into a crisis of capitalism. As it intensifies we could end up in a fascist society but to some of you this would be a better alternative than communism. You couldn’t tolerate the thought of armed conflict in NZ (leave that to the Palestinians) or totalitarian rule which is (apparently) inevitable under communism.
I visited Nicaragua as part of a workers fact finding tour not long after the revolution. The USA were using armed contras to attack the country from within. We saw the evidence of bombings in the countryside. But already there were land reforms,reforms in education & health, improvements for women. It was a hopeful time and inspiring to see how people in their neighbourhoods were working together for the changes. These were undermined by those who promoted a ‘mixed economy’ to appease the US. A reality foisted on Nicaragua by Chris Trotter types. The reforms slowed down, the country is now in a mess. It is not as bad as it was under the former dictators like Somoza who the US supported, but a mess nevertheless.
To me, what I saw in Nicaragua, was the possibility of a communist society where people could actively control their own lives. The communist film maker, Ken Loach, depicts scenes in some of his films (like the one about the Spanish civil war) which show this optimism. They are scenes where people debate what should be done. We should feel confident that we can fight for change and we can work together to make and maintain the change.
Thanks for your comment Janio!
I think communism is an appealing idea. how to bring about a situation where it can be tried out without the totalitarian rule that so far seems to have accompanied it is the challenge.
The signs are everywhere that the neoliberal extreme of present day capitalism are likely to soon come to a self – created chaos. This will create a climate nationally and internationally where people will seriously look for alternative ways of running society. I personally think that a better fairer model of capitalism, under control of society with sovereign banking systems would work best for humanity. But if a majority can be persuaded that a communist system could work better for the majority, and fairer for all, without a net loss of living standards ( save what might be needed to save the planet) then I would be fine with that. But the structure would need to be explained to the public with a clarity and thoroughness that is not being remotely addressed here . All we are getting is vitriolic but incoherent lambasting of “capitalism ” as if there was no possible variation of it but neoliberal capitalism. Without more constructive argument from the proponents of marxism (whatever that would be) the discussion serves only to convince people that there is indeed no alternative to what we have now. It’s doing more harm than good.
D J S
Yes, DS, and thank you for starting the explanation.
Fascism is an ideology built on Marxism. So Marxists fighting ex Marxists.
Leave the conservatives out of it, thanks
Lmao at the Pic of the Airsoft Summer Camp.
I notice the Short bus behind them And I bet
they know what the windows Taste like.
there are always the ones pushing the envelope on peaceful assembly, until they get what’s coming to them. In case you’ve always wondered what happened to the kids in kindergarten who ate the craft paste.
The minute those involved perform even one criminal act, they graduate instantly from political speech, to insurrection, and they’re going to get mowed down with extreme prejudice. That won’t be just a laugh, it’ll be hilarious.
They’ve lost at peaceful change.
They’re losing at violent protest.
And now, disregarding experience in favor of their eternal optimism, they want to escalate to test-driving armed violent protest.
Okay, snowflakes. Good luck with that strategy.
Comments are closed.