Rising Fascism – Part 2

In my last post, I touched on how fascism appears to be rising in western countries worldwide. My focus was on censorship, comparing 'book burning' in Nazi Germany in 1939. This extreme censorship was also described beautifully in Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451. In this tale, fire stations do not exist to put out fires but to seek out and set fire to books around the city. My point is to illuminate the censorship that is happening in the present time. We no longer burn books (in most cases) but digitally erase or cancel those online voices that hold a different point of view, contrary to the mainstream narrative. This modern-day “book burning” is the central tool of fascism.

The coup attempt on the US Capital on January 6, 2021, set off a frighting chain of government and law enforcement agencies' events. Citizens were working with the FBI, snitching on their neighbors and family members for taking part in the coup attempt. On the surface, this was a “stop the steal' protest against the 2020 election because it was claimed that President Trump won the election but was stolen by the Democratic establishment; from a much wider sense, it was a protest against the US government overall.

The US people have been sick and tired with a corporate-owned Congress, doing nothing to make their lives easier, particularly during COVID 19. Despite being the richest country globally, the people have no medicare, a paltry minimum wage, and spend garish amounts of money on the US war machine. Add to unfair tax relief for the top 1% (in most cases, the rich hardly pay any tax), most people in the middle class and below simply have had enough. However, similar to the Patriot Act after 9/11, destroying the people's basic rights under the constitution, January 6^th is being used as an excuse to take away all dissenting voices around the country.

There have been two 'policies' that have manifested as a result of January 6^th. Although on the surface, this is a crackdown on extreme right-wing groups who desire total insurrection, when you read further into the document, however, the crackdown goes much further, punishing animal rights activists and, really, any group that disagrees with the establishment narrative. This is a blatant attack on the US Constitution, and the MSM, tools of the State, are for the most part silent on this matter. Indeed, they're part of the problem. The second 'policy' or action taken by the US government was to take down major news outlets around the globe. Any news outlet considered to be an “enemy” of the US, like Russia and Iran, has been canceled from the internet. I'm not going to name these outlets, but they include any left-wing publication that criticizes capitalism. This is fascism.

It has also been revealed in a Navel document that Socialists are deemed enemies of the State and must be oppressed. For certain, when I read this piece of news, the hairs on my neck flared to attention.

Since the Biden administration came to power, censorship on social media has gone into full swing: suspending accounts, demonetizing content, and shadow banning or pushing YouTube channels to the bottom of the algorithm. It must be emphasized that these content providers are right-wing extremists; this includes any content that criticizes the mainstream narrative. What is disturbing personally is many antiwar voices on the internet are being canceled or shadowbanned as well. This is unacceptable and anti-democratic in the extreme.

When a government begins to censor opposing voices or critical comments of the powerful, we no longer have a democracy but a totalitarian regime. When freedom of the press and freedom of speech is punished or canceled because the powerful find it a threat to their ideology and stranglehold on the economy, in a word, we are in deep shit.

Let's be truthful, the mainstream press isn't journalism but pure propaganda. When real journalism is done, it is attacked, not for its prudent factual content. The journalist is smeared, called some nonsense like a Russian agent, a friend to dictators, or a crazy conspiracy theorist. For certain, when real journalism is attacked, it's never about the issues but all about propaganda supporting the mainstream narrative. This should be revealed to anyone with any common sense. 

Oppressing news and information, including opinions about certain stories or issues that counter the government position is the central tool of fascism.

History has shown that the rich capitalists, corporations, militarist governments will do anything to quash any opposition to their hegemony from censorship to outright violence. Unfortunately, at the moment, we see both.

Fascism is Rising in the West

 

When one pays attention to geopolitics, one can detect governments in the west, so-called democratic societies, pulling towards authoritarian rule. As established by the US Constitution, this movement to the far right, where our fundamental human rights have been significantly eroding over the last 20 years. In "protection," our Rights have been incrementally taken away in the guise of protection. At first, these authoritarian actions were somewhat hidden, whereas now they are playing out in plain sight.

Currently, in the UK, laws are being passed that give the police the authority to imprison citizens without due process: rape, murder, and generally commit crimes in the guise of 'keeping order.' In other terms, like the Nazi SS in WWII, it can create mayhem in our society without any oversight. I mean, really, what are they thinking?

One of the salient aspects of fascism is the forcible suppression of any opposition, either ideologically or politically. What we have seen over a few years is violent suppression of the political left. This comes from censorship to any ideology that criticizes the mainstream narrative. Mainly, Left voices have been de-platformed on social media because of criticism of the reigning power. These giant private corporations act as judges and juries for what they deem appropriate information. At first, created as a public forum to express one's point of view, social media has become the tool of the powerful to snub out dissenting voices against them. One can agree about stopping voices of hate and violence, as the US Supreme Court doesn't consider hate speech to be protected under the Constitution. But to censor voices who simply call out the power is anathema to the First Amendment.

Since the actions of January 6^th in the US capitol, rather than relying on the already overfunded and all too powerful National Security apparatus are framing new laws to recognize through surveillance and otherwise, extreme groups such as far-right organizations and potential "terrorists." But when one reads the fine print, the administration goes much further, targeting any group that opposes Capitalism, the National Security State, or questions the government currently holding office. Specifically, left-wing voices are being targeted, reminiscent of the post-WWII hysteria against communism.

Censorship is the central tool of fascism.

I remember making a short film at university echoing the famous Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451. Books are banned in this society because any contrary idea to the state is the enemy. In the short film, I showed the famous book burning news footage in Berlin in 1939. An action to silence any free thought and ensure all adhere to a single idea... that of the state. This is unadulterated fascism. Through extreme censorship and targeting dissenting voices with these new "laws," the UK and the US practice nothing less than full-blown totalitarianism.

When a peaceful climate change demonstration is met with violence and potential imprisonment, what are we to think?

The most disheartening is to see and hear once leftist voices cheering on censorship. Don't they realize that censorship applies to their voices as well?

When hearing about the UK's move towards SS tactics in their police force and the US's new laws to silence any dissenting voice, but for the States, I honestly wonder what will be next? From my point of view, nothing is good.

The Fallacy of Neo liberalism

 

After watching the coverage of the G7 summit in the UK this week, a single thought dawned on me, and that is, our western leaders are all puppets of neoliberalism. For the most part, their rhetoric to the public is the same old same old: building back better, future lucrative trade between nations, and generally patting themselves on the back for handling the COVID 19 pandemic. But that's just it. Nothing will change for the common people around the planet. As many of us know, the entire system is rigged.

It should be quite obvious that nothing of any substantial value will occur in preventing further climate change. The Biden administration can make all the targets for fewer coal emissions and superficial nods at electric cars. Still, the biggest producer of air pollution and pollution in general around the planet is the US military. The amount of bombs, for example, dropped by the US on countries around the planet is beyond measure. But hey, that's modern warfare, plenty of bombs, and economic sanctions with the least amount of 'boots on the ground' as feasibly possible.

In Australia, our illustrious prime minister, Scott Morrison, was banned from the last worldwide climate accord because of his reluctance to meet certain emission targets and his renowned love of coal. Morrison's last electoral win was financially backed by the coal industry. This included the lies that jobs in this sector would be lost if the Labour party came to power. I'm getting at that our current western governments do not care about people, only their donors and economic masters, who are international corporations and banks.

Most people of any compassion would desire the entire world to be vaccinated for COVID 19. However, the oligarchs, the corporate masters, will have nothing of that. Making the vaccine free to developing countries might see a significant drop in COVID cases worldwide. The 1% would not make a profit. These poor countries need to pay for it. Some countries at the G7 summit boasted of vaccines they would give as charity around the world. They claim it would be around 1 billion, but the real number is around 650 million on closer examination. Remember, there are almost 8 billion people on the planet, so this PR gesture doesn't even come close to fixing the problem. Neo-liberalism is about taking care of the wealthy and privatizing the public domain. It's about getting the rich richer and to hell with everybody else.

Poverty and homelessness is on the rise, and particularly so since the beginning of the pandemic. To a certain extent, it is understandable, but governments around the world mismanaged the entire shit show. Certain governments and media have politicized COVID 19 and are continuing to do so in the present time. Some governments have out right lied about it, causing thousands of undeserved deaths. Now they've turned COVID 19 into a profit exercise where only the have nots will lose out.

The conservative party in Australia have a famous catch-cry, and that is, “Private is Better.” Capitalism rules; thus, the government must sell off all public works to private persons, and society will be much better off. As history has shown time and again, this is not the case. With privatization, quality suffers for the sake of pure profit. In this system, only the bottom line takes priority, while people come last. A good example of this was during the first outbreak of COVID 19. In Melbourne, the aged-care facilities had been sold off by the government. In private hands, the quality of care plummeted, resulting in unneeded deaths. When officials finally got off their bureaucratic asses and inspected these facilities, what was revealed was a Pandora box of abuse, hunger, and pitiful conditions. In neoliberal societies, spending more money for better care affects the bottom line, so a few neglected and starving old people didn't matter. In capitalism, profit reigns supreme, and to hell with the peasants.

In a neoliberal society, the middle class and poor are taxed, while the wealthy are not. In fact, lawmakers write legislation creating tax loopholes for the rich, so they can get away from paying any tax at all. For example, during the US Trump administration, the biggest tax law transferred trillions of dollars to the top 5%. It seems the new administration under the democratic party will make these unfair tax laws permanent. I don't understand why there is no more debate about taxing the rich. It should be a natural and logical state of affairs, but our politicians work for them and certainly not for us, the people.

If you want to get a good image in your mind showing the fallacy of neoliberalism, picture a big fat man with a villain mustache stepping on a crowd of poor people. Of course, he is sucking on a big cigar. This is exactly what is happening in real-time and has been more revealed by COVID 19.

So when I watched our world leaders spouting the same old platitudes about how they are making the world a better place, my body cringed, and I knew they were lying.

Neo-liberalism is a fallacy.

Jeffery Archer – A Prison Diary - Review

 

At the time Archer’s A Prison Diary topped the bestseller list in two countries, I had just begun teaching elementary school, and later high school and as many consummate reader’s understand one has a list of books to read, a backlog in a sense, and Archer, to my great loss wallowed somewhere at the bottom. Add a teacher’s schedule, and attempting to write a novel as well, as said, my loss. 'Diary' is an irresistible piece of literary work. A work that not only politicians should read, but the general public; gaining an insight into the prison system, which is, in most countries, vile, corrupt and sorely lacking.

Jeffery Archer was sentenced to a term of four years. (He was released in two.) The man’s crime: obstructing the course of justice and perjury. After reading this book, I researched his trial, and the whole situation, from start to finish, rang of bias and political subterfuge. Concerning this book, however, his “crime” and sentencing are irrelevant. Instead, the man’s experience in prison is the central subject of the book.

Archer is a man of wealth, an internationally renowned author, a member of the House of Lords, once a parliamentarian, a noted philanthropist, all that said and done; however, there is a bit of the scoundrel in his nature. (He did not go to jail as an innocent man.) Once again, this is all irrelevant to the books’ central premise or message. 

Jeffery Archer truly changed in prison.

Once arriving in a class “A” prison, a lock-up reserved only for hard-core criminals: killers, rapists, pedophiles, and drug dealers, this was a reality check for the author in the most merciless form. He spent a total of 22 days in Belmarsh Prison and learned the ropes of prison culture quickly. After just under three weeks in this ‘Hell”, Archer made a few meaningful friends, relationships that would change his life.

This diary immerses the reader inside the four walls of Archer’s prison cell. The one thing that maintains the man’s sanity is writing: two hours on, two hours off, and so on. This writer’s discipline in inspiring to say the least – now I understand why he has published so many books that have turned to best sellers.

Apart from some of the lost through extraordinary prison mates, he develops relationships within this short amount of time, more than anything else he writes about is his daily meals. Jeffery cannot bring himself to eat the prison food. He loses weight, however, compensates with bartering and guile. A quote that humbled me in a big way:

Back in my cell, I tuck into the other half of my tin of Prince’s Ham, two more McVitie’s digestive biscuits, and a mug of water, I try to convince me that Del Boy is the man, and he will deliver – in the nick of time – because there are only two inches left in the bottle. Have you ever had to measure how much water is left in a bottle?

Here is a successful man, a millionaire, one of the wealthy upper class, and ironically, because of life circumstances, reserves two inches of bottled water.

A good read.

Thoughts on Melbourne's recent LOCKDOWN

When the Victorian government announced another stringent lockdown some weeks ago; one could actually hear a collective groan across the Australian state. As has been the case across the planet, especially right-wing governments, and their news media, politicians, and their media goons turned it once again into a political issue. When the media do this obvious party maneuvering, assigning blame, coming close to pushing conspiracy theories, one can bet that it will come from some lobotomized journalist from News Corp. COVID 19 is a reality; masks are necessary and containing COVID through lock-downs is absolutely vital to prevent the spread of this highly contagious virus. Politicizing the epidemic is a distraction and, in some cases, can be dangerous. But when have politicians and their media cronies ever cared about people or the truth?

When the government introduced 'contact tracing,' that is checking-in electronically by I-phone or simply signing your name and phone number on a list as you enter an establishment, to be sure, I was in two minds. Personally, I own a cheap phone for the single purpose of receiving and making calls. So checking in electronically by way of my phone was out of the question. There's always some form of guard at the grocery store entrance to ensure you 'check-in' before walking into the building. On the one hand, this method of 'tracing' of potential carriers of the virus or a possible forming 'cluster' is a good tool of control and containment. Then again, informing the government, 24/7, of your whereabouts while entering any building hugely rings of Big Brother.

In all reality, the surveillance powers of western governments around the globe go beyond even the technology of Star Wars. Law enforcement use cell phones now to solve crimes. Let's face it if the government needs to find you and track your movements, they just do. Indeed, privacy is a luxury of the past, and confronting this fact and accepting it, is just the way things are now. So when the Victorian government announced 'contact tracing' as part of a lockdown, accepting it was a no-brainer.

A few weeks before the latest lockdown announcement, I experienced an interesting confrontation with a fellow citizen. Out of sheer habit, I wore a mask into the grocery store. Most people were not wearing masks, but a few people, like myself, were wearing one, mostly elderly folk. Exiting the store, a young man in his late 20's got up in my face and screamed, “You don't have to wear a mask right now! Take it off!” The young man was hostile, to say the least. I merely stared him in the eyes with my mask in place. He eventually walked away in a huff, screaming, "idiot” at the top of his lungs. Those who believe wearing a mask violate their given freedoms really have no idea what their actual freedoms are. I believe the right-wing Murdoch media have a lot to answer for by politicizing COVID 19.

The Victorian government once again came to the party. After announcing lockdown, they ensured that businesses forced to close would be subsidized to remain in business. The majority, aside from a few wing nuts, Melburnians are following lockdown protocols, and it seems the lockdown is currently coming to an end.

COVID 19 is a slippery snake that can mutate and rear its head at any time. We appear to be on top of the virus, but we are still wandering around in the dark to a great extent.

Like my personal life, it's a good idea to take it one day at a time.

John Pilger – The New Rulers of the World - Review

John Pilger has had a long and infamous journalistic career in Australia and the United Kingdom. In one of his most popular texts, A Secret Country (1989) revealed the history of the systematic genocide of Australia's indigenous people. Aboriginal "deaths in custody" had reached epidemic proportions (Aboriginal "suicides" in prison) and this widely read book pushed those in government to investigate and form laws to prevent further deaths. Pilger also pointed out Australia's two-sided nature, that is, its multicultural diversity and tolerant people, but also its entrenched unspoken racism. He is an investigative journalist concerned about revealing the truth, which seems to be a rare attribute in our highly influenced mainstream media these days. In the New Rulers of the World, Pilger reveals American and British imperialism through economic and military actions in the guise of the "war on terror." 

 Pilger discusses the US invasions of Panama, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the killing of thousands of civilians either by bombing, starvation, or disease, due to the sanctions imposed by the government under the flag of the United Nations, and the mainstream media conveniently failing to report these massive deaths. The theme of this book, in Pilger's own words, is to "...compare the actions of politicians in western democracies with those of criminal tyrants." He writes that the central difference between the two is the "distance from the carnage," and the propaganda imposed to make it not a crime if "we." commit it. He goes on to write:

"It is not a crime to murder more than half a million peasants with bombs dropped secretly and illegally on Cambodia, igniting an Asian holocaust. It is not a crime for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Tony Blair and his Tory predecessors to have caused the deaths in Iraq of `more people than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history', to quote the conclusion of the American study." (P.8)

Pilger points out our glaring "double standard" where the deaths of the "unpeople," that is, innocent citizens in other countries is somehow not a crime but most certainly is when our own people die. As a result of the sanctions on Iraq in the '90s, for example, up to 6000 children per month died as a result of the blockade. This was the obstruction of $4 billion of humanitarian supplies by the US and British governments, not the actions of Saddam Hussein.

These wars, specifically Afghanistan and Iraq, are about dominance over the richest regions in the world, controlling its gas and oil reserves. Studies have shown that Western nations will be without oil in ten years without these reserves, plummeting the American economy into a third-world country. The American government would never permit this to happen, thus the "war on terror," occupying sovereign states, and the loss of so many innocent lives.

The text covers a lot of ground and exposes the intention of governments in their strategy to dominate the world stage economically and by force. Interestingly, the geopolitical and military-strategic importance of Iraq and Afghanistan, in terms of natural resources, (Caspian sea) is paramount in the control of the entire Middle East.

According to neoconservatives and the then and now US administrations, the blueprint for the new imperialism is already mapped out and well underway. Pilger cites Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to several presidents, and his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, as the bible for the past and present US administrations.

In the last chapter of this book, Pilger reveals the hypocrisy of the Australian government and their treatment and utter "denial." of the plight of the Aboriginal people. While other countries like Canada and the US have reconciled with their own indigenous peoples, land grants, etc., the Australian government refuses to even make a formal apology, as did the Canadian and American governments to the Indians. This is to point out the enduring legacy of imperialism left over from the 19th century in our treatment of the indigenous people.

This is an illuminating book and one all people should read to gain a greater understanding of the intentions behind the war and unending deaths around us. 

Gore Vidal – Point to Point Navigation – Review

It has been many years since reading volume one of Vidal's memoir, Palimpsest. In part two, Vidal writes of his past as recalling events taken from photographs lying sprawled across his writing desk. Memory is recalled in fragments of a full life once lived, a word or phrase that prompts a single frame of a film reel or an ancient conversation in passing, spoken amongst the chaos of an individual's personal history. Vidal best describes this process when choosing the memoir's title:

“In World War Two, I served as the first mate of an army freight supply ship based in the Aleutian Islands, where the weather was so bad that we seldom saw the sun, much less the moon and stars; this made it nearly impossible to use the compass to chart a course. Instead, we relied upon maps where we had memorized various points or landmarks as guides, a process is known a “point to point navigation,” a process with obvious dangers (we had no radar). As I was writing Palimpsest... I felt as if I were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering A sea that we had to navigate so often with a compass made inoperable by weather.”(Author's Note)

The memoir does not proceed linearly, though much similar to memory jumps forward and backward on the timeline, sprinkled with entertaining anecdotes about famous people, historical events, and the author's relationships.

I distinctly remember staying up late with my father watching black and white television. On one evening, during the democratic convention in Chicago, seeing William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal doing the commentary, when at one point both men became hostile: Buckley calling Vidal a “queer” and Vidal calling Buckley a “Nazi.” I recall my father laughing and asking him the meaning of the word “queer.” As a child, seeing Vidal on television was a common event.

Gore Vidal seemed to know anyone of any consequence in the 20^th century. For example, Orson Welles, JFK, Francis Ford Coppola, Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt including royalty in foreign lands. Out of all these friends and acquaintances, his life-long partner, Howard Auster, was the closest human being to Vidal. When he writes about Howard and his eventual passing away, it is done with a pure heart without a hint of sentimentality. I found these passages about Howard very moving.

Personally I enjoyed Vidal's commentary on his friend Paul Bowles. For certain, I find Bowles to be one of the more interesting American artists, as he was an accomplished composer, musician, and novelist. In fact, it was Vidal, who pushed to get Bowles' first novel, The Sheltering Sky to publishers in the United States because they felt it really wasn't a novel! Both men admired each other work.

As a reader, my first exposure to Vidal's writings were his many essays about his beloved Republic. Combine these essays with his many historical novels about the United States, one's education concerning the relatively young “democracy” is almost complete.

The main concerns or themes in this text is the notion of time passing and growing old. At the end of my father's life, after a few beers, he would say, “All my contemporaries are gone.” Vidal refers to his phone book and notices that the vast majority had passed out of his many contacts. This is both sad and a reality that the elderly experience at the end of their lives.

When Gore Vidal passed in 2006, there is no doubt that one of the great American men of letters in the 20^th century would be dearly missed, not only for his educational and literary novels, but his essays describing the current debilitating state of the United States of America.

Reading Point to Point Navigation after Palimpsest was worth the effort and gave me a feeling of completion regarding the great writer, his work and as a human being overall.