From: jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 08:25:35 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Subject: RE: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids
Message-ID: <9606188377.AA837727446@smtplink.alis.ca>
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At 4:13 AM on 96/07/18 Timothy C. May wrote:

>It's a mark of what has gone wrong with this country that >ordinary citizens
actually fear the midnight raids, the no-knock >searches, the "threat
suppression" by ninjas.

I recommend an article sub-titled: Fourteen ways of looking at a blackshirt.
I've excerpted particularily relevant pieces below.

Eternal Fascism
by Umberto Eco
New York Review of Books (June 22, 1995)

In spite of some fuziness regarding the difference between various historical
forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are
typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These
features cannot be organized into a system; any of them contradict each other,
and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough
that one of them to be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
[...]
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake. Action
being beuatiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection.
Thinking is a form of emasculation. [...]

4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of
modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a
way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks
consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The
first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against
the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derive from individual or social frustration. [...]

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every
mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism
is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It
is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte
("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death
is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the
painful way to reach a supernatural hapiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero
craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The
Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends
other people to death. [...]

Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If
American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and
night by *peaceful means* (emphasis mine) to better the lot of our citizens,
fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an
unending task.

----------------------

If you set out to defeat an enemy because you despise what they do or say, make
sure that you are different - not just stronger.

Ciao,
James