From: Bruce Baugh <bruce@aracnet.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 21:42:49 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: whitehouse web incident, viva la web revolution
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960606051847.006e9b18@mail.aracnet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 01:17 PM 6/5/96 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:

>rather than reasoned argument. His dislike for the Clinton is 
>well known - he recently accused the administration of being
>fascist. I know of no evidence that the Clinton administration
>has a genocide policy, it is an insult to the 10 million civilians
>murdered by Hitler to use the term facist simply as a term of abuse,
>especialy if it is being used as a substitute for an argument.

Fascism has no intrinsic link to genocide. It is a theory of economics,
basically, in which the state has ultimate authority over production and
distribution without (as in socialism) actually _owning_ the means of
production or distribution. This is generally accomplished through
cartelization, the creatin of industry-wide councils in which the
representatives of the most powerful firms set policy in conjunction with
the representatives of the government.

The US has been at least moderately fascist since the 1920s (Hoover was a
big fan of cartelization, and pushed it actively). While the mechanisms of
the modern regulatory state aren't those of classic fascist theory, in
practice most strongly regulated industries in this country operate
_exactly_ the way fascist theory says they should.

And various of Clinton's policies have, in fact, been fascist in this sense.
The man has no doctrinal commitment to fascism (under that name or any
other), but in practical terms virtually all modern Western politics are
either fascist or socialist.

None of this is secret lore, by the way.

--
Bruce Baugh
bruce@aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce