Internationalism, Freedom, Fascism, and Dark History

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Thu Jun-24-10 10:58 PM
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Internationalism, Freedom, Fascism, and Dark History

The world desperately needs a strong, effective, and just international legal framework � for the same reason that nations need a strong, effective and just national legal framework: History has long shown that in the absence of such a legal framework the powerful prey upon the vulnerable, which results in mass suffering.

There are many Americans who belittle such an idea by calling it �world government�, pointing to the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, or saying that it would impinge on the �freedom� of our country. The term �world government� is fine with me. The United Nations has a long history of ineffectiveness not because it was based on faulty ideals, but because the powerful nations exert too much power within it, while the weak nations have too little power to exert. With regard to the accusation that a world government would impinge upon the �freedom� of the United States, a discussion of the meaning of �freedom� is in order:

The ambiguities of �freedom�

Almost all Americans makes a big deal over the word �freedom� � too frequently without due consideration of its implications or without awareness that freedom is a relative concept and must have limits.

Freedom has been defined as �the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints� � and that�s how most people use it. Another way of saying that is �the power to do whatever one wants to do�.

As an absolute concept, it is not plausible or reasonable or even possible for a functioning society to allow its members such powers � for a very simple reason. The freedom of the powerful to do whatever they want tends to impinge tragically on the freedom of the vulnerable members of society. Some men for example like to rape women. But enabling them to do that whenever they want would impinge on the freedom of women not to be raped. The vast majority of people realize that giving men the freedom to rape at will would be a very bad idea.

At the societal level, powerful corporations often dump vast quantities of poisons into the air, soil, and water without having to bear the costs or other consequences of their activities. Most Americans agree that such activities should be prohibited or otherwise strongly regulated, or that corporations that engage in such activities should be made to bear the costs or other consequences � in other words, that the �freedom� of corporations to pollute and ruin our environment should be strictly controlled.

The concept of freedom at the international level

At the international level, powerful nations invade, plunder, and destroy weaker nations with impunity. This is precisely the kind of activity that should be strictly limited by international law. And indeed, that was a major reason for which the United Nations was created. From the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations:

We the people of the United Nations determined:

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

Note that the phrase �justice and respect for the obligations�� and the intent to prohibit and prevent aggressive war are ideals that impinge upon the �freedom� of the powerful nations, while preserving the rights of the mass of ordinary people and nations to be free of violence and the whims of the powerful.

George Lakoff discusses the nuances and frequent contradictions of the word �freedom� in great detail in his book, �Whose Freedom � The Battle over America�s Most Important Ideal�. Here is an excerpt from that book directed against American war hawks:

The focus of (George Bush�s) presidency is defending and spreading freedom. Yet, progressives see in Bush�s policies not freedom but outrages against freedom. They are indeed outrages against the traditional American ideal of freedom� It is not the American ideal of freedom to invade countries that don�t threaten us, to torture people and defend the practice, to jail people indefinitely without due process, and to spy on our own citizens without warrant�

Fascism as a major threat to freedom

The United States and the other Allied Nations fought World War II against the Fascist nations of the world, which posed a severe and imminent danger to world-wide freedom and livelihood. The United Nations was conceived by President Roosevelt and brought to fruition largely by the efforts of President Truman with an eye towards identifying future fascist threats to world freedom and imposing a barrier against them.

Many have talked about the warning signs of Fascism � which tend to be similar or identical to definitions of fascism. The warning signs (and many definitions) include:

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
2. Disdain for human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. Supremacy of the military
5. Rampant sexism
6. Controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Interweaving of religion with government
9. The combining of government and corporate power (corporatism)
10. Suppression of labor
11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

Barry Lynn discusses in his book �Cornered � The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction� � how the monopolization of so much industry in the United States, which began under the Reagan Presidency, has led us towards a corporatist state that has vastly limited the freedom of so many Americans:

The structural monopolization of so many systems has resulted in a set of political arrangements similar to what we used to call corporatism. This means that our political economy is run by a compact elite that is able to fuse the power of our public government with the power of private corporate governments in ways that enable members of the elite not merely to offload their risk onto us but also to determine with almost complete freedom who wins, who loses, and who pays. Then suddenly there was Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson� using our tax money to fix his bank and the banks of all his friends�

The Bush and Obama administrations and� Congress all responded to the collapse of our financial system in most instances by accelerating consolidation� The effects are clear� the derangement not merely of our financial systems but also of our industrial systems and political systems. Most terrifying of all is that this consolidation of power � and the political actions taken to achieve it � appears to have impaired our ability to comprehend the dangers we face and to react in an organized and coherent manner.

The bottom line: Too much freedom for the powerful impinges greatly upon the freedom of everyone else.

The relationship between corporatism and scapegoating of enemies

I see the warning signs of fascism as combining two major groups of characteristics: corporatism (# 9) and scapegoating alleged enemies as a unifying cause (# 3).

Nationalism (# 1) is the ultimate unifying cause that fascists aim to produce. The �nation� takes precedence over all else, and anyone who doesn�t fall in line is an �enemy� of the state. Disdain for human rights (# 2) follows, as the �enemy� is dehumanized, thus rationalizing its brutal repression. Disdain for intellectuals (# 11) is necessary because they are among the most likely to speak out against the state � and they make a convenient enemy.

Corporatism requires corruption (# 13) because governments are supposed to serve their people; therefore, when they decide to serve corporate power instead, that by definition constitutes corruption. Suppression of labor (# 10) is necessary for the corporatist state because labor is the natural enemy of excessive corporate power.

Why the connection between the scapegoating of enemies as a unifying cause and corporatism? In a corporatist state, the corrupt alliance between government and corporate power means that power and wealth are concentrated among a small elite few at the top, which leads to corresponding lack of power and wealth among the vast majority of the population, with corresponding great potential for mass suffering. The corporatist state must find a way to convince these great masses of people to happily accept their fate. The scapegoating of alleged enemies has been found to be one of the best ways to do this. Item #s 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, and 14 in the warning list are just more methods that the corporatist state uses to keep its subjects in line.

The need for awareness and honest assessment of dark history

In the first paragraph of this post I noted that history is inundated with examples of the powerful preying upon the vulnerable. Imperialism, slavery, wars of aggression, and genocide are the fruits of this kind of behavior. I call this �dark history�, for reasons that I hope are obvious.

Almost all long lived nations have their dark histories. But to a very large extent they tend to go to great lengths to deny their dark histories. Turkey continues to deny their early 20th Century genocide of their country�s Armenian population. Many Christian organizations deny the atrocities carried out at many points throughout history in the name of their religion.

There is a reason for this. National governments (and religions) need the support of their citizens. They want their younger generation to enthusiastically volunteer to fight in their wars � or at least feel pressured into doing so. Recitation of a nation�s dark history is not likely to cause most people to feel pride in their country.

The United States is no exception to this rule. Yes, our nation has admitted that its history of slavery and its brutal treatment of our country�s original human inhabitants were shameful. But those things happened a long time ago. Our government has been much less willing to admit to more recent misdeeds. To get an idea of how reluctant our government has been face up to its misdeeds, ask yourself how many Americans know:

1) that a military coup was attempted against President Franklin Roosevelt in response to his combative stance against corporate power? 2) that our military and/or CIA has conducted at least a hundred violent interventions against foreign nations � almost all of them much weaker than us � since 1890? 3) that notwithstanding our strident claims that we fought the Vietnam War to extend �freedom� to Southeast Asia, the whole basis for that war was grounded in the fact that we prevented the country from uniting itself with free elections, as mandated by the Geneva Conference Agreements of 1954, because we were afraid of the results of those elections; or 4) that prior to our invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban agreed to extradite Osama bin Laden to Pakistan for trial, but that George Bush refused to negotiate with them?

To belabor this issue a little more, our overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 was kept secret for many years or decades. If someone during that time had alleged what had happened, our nation�s leaders and much of our press would have lambasted that person with the pejorative term �conspiracy theorist� � end of argument.

Most citizens will become outraged when presented with vivid descriptions of their nation�s worst atrocities. That can motivate people to take steps to devise ways to prevent future occurrences. But when a nation refuses to acknowledge its dark history, it loses the opportunity to learn from that history � and thereby becomes all the more likely to repeat it. For example, we were told repeatedly by right wing war hawks that our mistake in Vietnam was that we not aggressive enough � not the immorality of invading a nation that posed no threat to us and killing two million of its citizens. The result: our 2003 invasion of Iraq, which posed no threat to us.

The need for international cooperation in solving our greatest mutual problems

Today more than ever we need a strong, effective and just framework of international law. We need this not just for the prevention of war. Our world is facing challenges that threaten to destroy our planet if not adequately met. Yet the corporate elite of the most powerful nation in the world have for many years successfully blocked us from working with the rest of the world to solve our common problems.

Our world�s foremost climate scientists have painted a bleak picture of what is currently happening to our planet, and what we can expect in the future if we don�t show a great commitment to reversing global warming. In 2006, British Home Secretary John Reid pointed out the relationship between global warming and the Darfur genocide, saying that environmental changes:

Make the emergence of violent conflict more likely. The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur.

Bill McKibben, in his book �Eaarth � Making a Life on a Tough New Planet�, adds:

As rainfall has decreased for the last five decades and the Sahara advanced, smothering grazing land with sand, the competition is intensifying. In Darfur, there are too many people in a hot, poor, shrinking land� Eight years of drought have also accelerated fighting in Somalia, while crop failures have made the misery in Zimbabwe ever worse. In Syria, 160 villages were abandoned after a 2008 drought� A one meter rise in sea level would obliterate at least a fifth of the Nile delta� In Kashmir, Indian and Pakistani troops have long faced off over the Siachen Glacier� But now the glacier is melting fast, leaving� millions of Pakistanis who will be affected by a severe water crisis when it disappears�

Four major studies in the last two years from centrist organizations in the U.S. and Europe have concluded that �a warmer planet could find itself more often at war.� Each report �predicted starkly similar problems: gunfire over land and natural resources as ounce � bountiful soil turns to desert and coastlines slip below the sea.� The experts also expected violent storms to topple weak governments� The directors of climate research for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington predicted recently that as �climate induced migrations� increased the number of �weak and failing states,� terrorism would likely grow. By midcentury, according to some recent models, as many as 700 million of the world�s 9 billion people will be climate change refugees�

The most lurid account of all came from a Pentagon-sponsored report forecasting possible scenarios a decade or two away, when the pressures of climate change have become �irresistible � history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid� As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.�

Corporate elites and the politicians who support them continue to whine about the consequences of limiting their freedom through regulating their activities. Governments that fail to stand up to these sociopaths need to be replaced by more democratic, less corporatist political structures that work on behalf of ordinary people.