The Essence of Fascism!

Had I wished to be more dramatic, I might have used a picture of a swastika or of Hitler, or Mussoulini, Mao, or even Stalin. Why I didn't do so, I shall, perhaps, never know. I suppose I just don't like being provocative.

Now then, what is fascism?

A definition I like a lot comes from the independent, investigative political researcher and co-founder of COPA (Coalition on Political Assassinations), John Judge. In one of his talks, which I watched on YouTube, he explained fascism like this.....

According to Mr. Judge, Mussoulini, the Italian fascist leader, once said that fascism should really be called CORPORATISM. The idea is that when the corporate business structure and the state merge as one you have fascism; to say it with more precision, corporatism plus a government dominated by reactionary politics equals fascism.

Corporatism + reactionary politics = FASCISM!

But wait there's more!

John Judge says that when you have a situation whereby the currency is devalued, and you move from a production-based economy to a financialized, paper-shuffling, "economy of theft," Mr. Judge calls it, and you have a great leap forward in technological capacity, you find yourself (if you are the "Masters of Mankind") with a lot of surplus people lying around, masses of uneeded labor, who do not contribute to profit-making, and therefore, apparently, have no other human value.

John Judge says that this combination of circumstances creates a pressure for genocide. Then, depending on the biases of a given society, x, y, z population clusters will be targeted (in one way or another) for annihilation. Some countries engage in what Noam Chomsky says is called "social cleansing," where they just shoot 'em. Here, in the United States, where we're more civilized, we just imprison more of our citizens in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population than all other industrialized nations certainly, but still more than just about anywhere else, even China which is supposed to be so "repressive." The issue, here, of course, is the "War on Drugs" which has yet to be called off. And so on and so forth.

Here's another interesting little detail. John Judge says that during the 1930s, in the United States, when a mine collapsed, the miners were told to PUSH THE MULE OUT IN FRONT OF THEM! Nice, hunh?

Okay, this explanation will do very nicely for our purpose. We should all have a good idea of what fascism is all about.

Now then, I may have mentioned once or twice before that there is a wonderful radio program that comes out WBEZ public radio in Chicago called This American Life hosted by Ira Glass. It airs on weekends. Each week the show focuses on a theme, and presents.... one, two, three, or four stories concerning that theme over the space of one hour.

There was one story featured on a recent show I found particularly provocative. And not to put too fine a point on it, but I think the following story is emblematic of the state of decay of corporate capitalism today.

Anyway, let me invite you to check out the program for yourself. The episode is called "Million Dollar Idea." Here's the link.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea

This episode is about people who think they have or actually have come up with the idea for THE NEXT BIG THING! You know how it is, right? One of the segments of the show is called "Get Rich Or Die Trying." This segment is literally about the attempt of a multinational corporation that makes and sells cigarettes trying to take credit (yes, credit!) for the deaths (yes, deaths!) due to smoking -- tha's right, they literally make this one-hundred-eighty degree turn. Obviously, this was a disastrous public relations catastrophe and it was somewhat corrected but....

The story is set in Prague, the Czech Republic 1999. A proposal was being considered to raise taxes on cigarettes. Man-in-the-street interviews were taken with smokers, to try to ascertain what would be the personal effects. Most said that this tax would cause them to either quit or dramatically cut back. Now, upon learning of this, the tobacco companies panicked, the largest of these organizations was Phillip Morris.

Let me back up a step. The government of the Czech Republic was making the argument that smoking is really expensive for the public treasury. People smoke and get sick, and with their full coverage health insurance program, the government has to pay for all of those preventable, smoking-related illnesses. Therefore, taxes on cigarettes needed to be raised sharply to discourage smoking.

This is very similar to what some environmentalists say about oil. They say that the only way we, in the United States, for example, can begin to ween ourselves off oil, is by sharply raising prices at the pump.

Anyway, the result of this was that Phillip Morris commissioned a twenty-eight page research study that said that smoking was actually a net gain for the Czech state, to the tune of $147 million dollars a year. How so?

1. Well, there's savings on housing for the elderly, -- BECAUSE THEY DIE!

2. You pay less out in pensions and other social benefits. You pay less for non-smoking health issues that afflict the elderly.

In other words, smoking causes you to have less old people to support from the public treasury. I'm not making this up. Please go listen to the fifteen minute segment for yourself!.

What more is there to say? The corporation funded a study that showed that smoking causes burdensome people to die, thus saving the state money -- and they expected to get an economic reward for this. Remember this, a lot of the Nazis during WWII were antiseptic, technical bureaucrats "just doing their job," technocrats.

Okay, we'll leave it there. There really is nothing more to say!

Ta-Ta!