From: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 20:01:30 +0800
To: Bruce Baugh <bruce@aracnet.com>
Subject: Re: whitehouse web incident, viva la web revolution
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On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Bruce Baugh, who usually knows better, wrote:

> 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.
> 
> None of this is secret lore, by the way.

Yes, I'm afraid these ahistorical myths are widespread. What _do_ they teach
in these schools?

Pick up anything by Renzo De Felice to gain a basic historical understanding
of what fascism was about, from someone who was sympathetic to them. 

I'd also recommend a biography of the very influential and gifted American
modernist poet Ezra Pound, who led the Italian fascist propaganda effort
from 1941 to 1943 and spent six months in an American POW camp, followed by
some time in mental hospitals as his rants against jewish conspiracies under
every bed became increasingly incoherent, for his trouble. Like Orwell's
very complicated views towards socialism and Stalinism (see Homage to
Catalonia), e. e. cummings' anti-government pacifism, Whitman's queerness,
and Byron's essential kookiness, this is something your high school english
teacher probably failed to mention.

-rich