Proto-Facism in America - A Review. Proto-Fascism in America: Neoliberalism and the Demise of Democracy - A Review by Adam Fletcher "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. " - George Orwell in 1984. This book is an intelligent, defining account of our times. Scholar Henry Giroux effectively and concisely exposes the tyranny of the Bush Administration, and indisputably links corporations to the highjacking of American democracy.
Throughout this publication Giroux draws powerful correlations between news accounts and critical analysis, without oversimplifying or patronizing the reader. He offers a necessary guide to how the issues tie together: prisons, police, spies, weapons, soldiers + racial discrimination, demonizing youth, targeting young people of color for the military + defunding public services, defeating the Clean Air Act, Christian conservatism = neoliberal terrorism in our times. "the not-so-hidden curriculum... that kids can't be trusted and that their rights aren't worth protecting. Glastonbury plays host to tax protest at a sort of homecoming for U2. The last time U2 were booked to play Glastonbury a low-flying aircraft towed an anti-CND banner past the newly erected pyramid stage. It was 1982, the first muddy year, and Bono's band didn't turn up. The activist-pilot was later fined £400 for flying without a licence.
On Friday the Dublin-based rock band finally made it to the stage to find a crowd knee-deep in mud, again, and a protest directed closer to home Art Uncut planned to disrupt the performance in protest at the band's 2006 decision to move their tax affairs from Ireland to the Netherlands, and rumours spread of siege towers and stage invasions. But the protest group's efforts, if visible, were shortlived. Two rings of 30 protesters locked arms for half an hour to allow the inflating of a 30ft-tall inflatable balloon inscribed with the words "U pay tax 2? " The festival's founder, 75-year-old Michael Eavis, had earlier told Glastonbury's resurrected radical newspaper the event was about "socialism with a small s".
The Authoritarian Personality by Erich Fromm 1957. Erich Fromm 1957 The Authoritarian Personality First published: in Deutsche Universitätszeitung, Band 12 (Nr. 9, 1957), pp. 3-4;Translated: by Florian Nadge;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2011. What do we mean by “authoritarian personality”?
We usually see a clear difference between the individual who wants to rule, control, or restrain others and the individual who tends to submit, obey, or to be humiliated. To use a somewhat friendlier term, we might talk of the leader and his followers. As natural as the difference between the ruling and the ruled might — in many ways — be, we also have to admit that these two types, or as we can also say, these two forms of authoritarian personality are actually tightly bound together. What they have in common, what defines the essence of the authoritarian personality is an inability: the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom.
Irrational authority is different. Italian Futurism and Fascism. The connection between Italian Futurism and fascism is well known. Alan Woods looks at the psychology of the Italian bourgeois and petit bourgeois intellectuals in the period before and during the First World War that gave rise to this singular phenomenon. It is an object lesson on how art and politics can become inextricably linked, and how this mixture arises from a definite social and class basis. During my recent speaking tour of Austria, I was taken to visit an exhibition of Italian futurist art in Vienna. It was a very revealing experience.
The connection between Italian Futurism and fascism is well known, but here for the first time I was able to see with complete clarity the psychology of the Italian bourgeois and petit bourgeois intellectuals in the period before and during the First World War that gave rise to this singular phenomenon. This is not to say that the two things are the same, or that the relation between them is automatic and direct. Britain and Europe before 1914. New German Critique, No. 17 (Spring, 1979), pp. 120-128. The Social science encyclopedia. Benjamin's Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Richard Kazis. Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction by Richard Kazis from Jump Cut, no. 15, 1977, pp. 23-25 copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1977, 2004 “Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history.
But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.” —Walter Benjamin, fragment from The Arcades In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the work of a little-known German literary and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin. Benjamin, like so many of his contemporaries in the German intellectual circles, grew up in an upper middle class, culturally assimilated, Jewish family in Berlin.
In 1915, Benjamin met Gershom Scholem. In the 1920s, Benjamin developed relationships with both T.W. “discipline himself (sic) until his suffering no longer opens onto the precipitous road of hate, rather onto the ascending path of prayer.” If Lukács constructed his totality horizontally. Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism. Authoritarianism (Personality trait)