From owner-marxism-international  Fri Apr  4 17:44:23 1997
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 17:44:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Brian M Ganter <bmganter@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: PANIC LEFT, Pt.2
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970404144645.29174A-100000@autarch.acsu.buffalo.edu>




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

Revolutionary Marxist Collective at U of Buffalo


PANIC LEFT, Pt. 2

	It is strange--isn't it--that on the one hand the RMC/Buffalo is
accused of writing impenetrable prose that no one can read and that no one
would read ("beyond the first sentence"--to quote Doug Henwood) and on the
other hand we are discovering that all of our texts are not only "read"
but "studied" and responded to!  How is that for a "contradiction"!  How
the "un-readable" is at the same time the most read!  Which shows that
"readability", "stalinism", etc. are little more than ideological alibis
deployed as devices of resistance against thoughtfulness and difficult
thinking.  The sentimental left of Ralph Dumain that lives on anecdotes
justifies itself by accusing rigorous thought of being stalinist.
Stalinism is, for Ralph, to put it another way, a cover up for the fascism
that his brand of leftism (as the paid agent of capital) advocates.  He
shares his strategies of fascist propaganda with not only Stanley Crouch
but also Laura Ingraham and others who also have made a habit of deploying
stalinism to defend a triumphalist capitalism.  Since Ralph Dumain is
clearly a "fan" of "Comrade Zavarzadeh", we publish here a short and very
accessable text by the "the comrade" (appropriate salute for the stalinist
in residence) that might make clear why Ralph is so mad at him!  
Here we go:   
        


        THE FRESH FACE OF POSTMODERN FASCISM ON TV POLITICAL ANALYSIS

			By Mas'ud Zavarzadeh


        
     The retirement of David Brinkley as the commentator on ABC's talk show 
("This Week with David Brinkley") and the subsequent lowering of George Will's 
profile on that show, signal the arrival of a new era in television political 
analysis. The Brinkley-Will brand of conservative commentary has become rather 
embarrassing. They speak the old languages of the cold war and show how out of 
touch they are with the emerging global capitalism and its post-national 
politics so important to big business. Their commentary is mired in nostalgia 
for a dying nationalist capitalism and its fading nation-state. 

     The TV networks are now scrambling to find fresh voices that are tuned to 
the new globalization of capital and can defend the interests of transnational 
big business in hipper, more cosmopolitan tones. They are looking (to 
paraphrase one network executive) for young, smart, image-savvy political 
analysts who can cut against the nationalist conservative cliches of Brinkley-
Will-Novak. 

     In Laura Ingraham--the new analyst on the 
CBS's Weekend News who also has a spot on Microsoft-NBC's world-wide MSNBC--
the networks have found the new postmodern political commentator for the post-
cold war. She is not simply another "far-rite" (as her Porsche vanity-plate 
proclaimed) conservative. She is a postmodern analyst whose "fresh voice" is 
the voice of transnational postmodern fascism. Like her Italian counter-parts 
(the "post-fascists"), she packages fascism as a transnational ideology with 
wit, humor, irony and an image-savviness for mass consumption. She makes 
postmodern fascism look cutting-edge--a hip politics. 

     Ingraham's commentary is aggressively postmodern, irreverent and--unlike 
the old modernist fascism--postnational. Her main interest is in a foreign 
policy that protects transnational business. She believes that the model for 
US foreign policy should be one based on the "desire to promote democracy 
abroad." But "democracy aboard" is a code word, in her commentary, for the 
free market. She is, therefore, upset about the lack of trade balance between 
the US and China and wants human rights issues be used as a lever to correct 
that imbalance by opening up more of the Chinese market to US business. 
Similarly, Milosevic's regime, which is still based on state supervision of 
business, should be replaced by a "pro-democratic" government that accepts the 
free market and offers favorable business terms for foreign capitalists. 

     Her defense of transnational business avoids the old nationalist fascist 
"argument" against "liberalism." Instead, like other postmodern fascists 
steeped in the culture of MTV, she bypasses "argument" and simply presents her 
audience with an image, an ironic play of wit. When she showed up for lunch 
interview with David Shribman of The Boston Globe, she wore a full-length fur 
which, she assured him, was made from "baby squealing foxes." In one image 
she condenses her case for big business; her contempt for animal rights,
and her ironic pleasure in the  individual rewards of capitalism. And she
does this fearlessly (in John MacLaughlins word on whose show, The McLaughlin 
Group, she also appears). 

     "Fearlessness" is the trade mark of all fascist militaristic aggressions 
against the people's democracy. Ingraham's postmodern fascism is born out of 
the current crisis of U.S. capitalism. Fascism is the outcome of the 
tremendous economic hardship facing the petty bourgeoisie. Like other 
postmodern Fascists, Ingraham persuades the petty bourgeoisie that its 
economic hardship is caused not by the exploitation of workers, which has 
resulted in the rising profits of transnational business, but by liberal 
cultural policies, which favor the working class,  the poor, the African-
American and women. More specifically, her commentaries manipulate the fears 
of the middle class in order to attack liberal social policies that, she says, 
support homosexuality abortion, secular school curriculum, feminism, welfare 
mothers and a whole host of other things that scare the white middle class. 
She has, for example, called the Gay Students Association at Dartmouth, where 
she was an undergraduate, "cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites." However, 
for her, the main beneficiaries of shameful liberalism, which robs people of 
their rights of free competition (by affirmative action, for example), are 
labor unions. 

     Unions have become the symbol of liberal and anti-business regulations 
that restrict free enterprise and limit individual freedom and prosperity. 
Ingraham thinks, like another postmodern fascist, Arianna Huffington, that we 
should abandon social programs that provide a safety net (because they 
increase taxes on big business) and susbstitute for them compassion and moral 
responsibility.  

     In the guise of debating cultural issues, Ingraham's comments alienate 
people from working class movements and thus weaken the unions. Weakened 
unions leave transnational big business free to increase its exploitation of 
workers all over the world--from sweatshops making designer clothes in New 
York to child labor in Bangladesh making soccer balls and carpets for Western 
consumers. 

     What is just as dangerous as Ingraham's postmodern fascism is the way in 
which she is received by the media. Her views are being accommodated and made 
familiar not just by entertainment magazines like Vanity Fair but by the 
"serious"media, notably Sixty Minutes and The New York Times. For instance, 
The New York Times, which put her on the cover of its Sunday Magazine, has 
treated her postmodern fascism as the charming views of an outspoken, bold 
and hip performance artist and not as the dangerous political ideology that 
it is. Her anti-gay comments, for example, are not seen by the media as an 
ingredient of fascism but as an ironic performance since, after all, her own 
brother is gay. 

     By personalizing her views and representing her politics as pure style 
and image, the media has taken her fascist views as a refreshing new voice. 
Network executives argue that such a hot new voice should be heard as part of 
larger pluralism of voices on TV. But this is, of course, a very selective 
pluralism: when was the last time network executives allowed a socialist voice 
to be heard as a part of a pluralist commentary? 
     Ingraham's views, far from being "personal" and eccentric expressions of 
a hip postmodern conservative, are symptoms of a new transnational fascism 
marked by the increasing violence of big business against workers: lay-offs 
and outsourcing to maximize profits; the rise of white militias in the U.S. 
and ethnic cleansing abroad; the trafficking in child prostitution and slave 
labor, and more and more sweatshops--whether in U.S. cities or free trade 
zones. Ingraham's postmodern fascism is the symptom of the latest crisis of 
transnational capitalism. One should look beyond its slick veneer and fight it 
on all fronts. 























































     --- from list marxism-international@lists.village.virginia.edu ---