Right-Wing Doomed to Revise History
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
[The original has many links.--DC]
http://tinyurl.com/ygqpzdv
Right-wing doomed to revise history
December 8, 4:59 PM
Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner
by Mike Boda
History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
--Voltaire
Perhaps it is the world-view that focuses on conspiracy, as opposed to
history, or just a product of the same half-assed Disney versions of US
history that we are taught in textbooks, but the big-name private-plane
populists seem to enjoy success when they pluck some random figure or
group from the past, strip away any and all context, and "re-branded"
for their purposes. Thus, both the first-strike nuclear weapon and the
vigilantes who "defend" the imaginary line that separates the US from
Mexico are Minutemen. Forget for a moment that many of the original
Minutemen were immigrants themselves and contrary to their name, the
Plymouth Minutemen were unable to muster in time to actually participate
in the slaughter of the Pequot people who were the actual native born
inhabitants of that part of what we call "New England." The historical
requirement that Minutemen be under the age of 30 would also disqualify
the vast majority of xenophobic retirees, too white and cranky for golf
courses, who currently claim the name.
Right-wing entertainers routinely quote life-long, democratic socialist
George Orwell out of context, often confusing his criticism of
totalitarian systems of governance as praise. The extreme-right fascism
of the last century is considered a left-wing ideology by the people who
allow pop culture icons to handle their critical thinking duties for
them. Comedian and talk show host Glenn Beck considers himself to be an
avatar of Thomas Paine, of all people. Never mind that Paine was an
atheist and honorary French citizen who favored estate taxes, public
education, government work programs, progressive taxation to pay for a
welfare state, liberation for women, animal rights, and was a vocal
opponent of capital punishment and torture. All of which are issues
which the Mormon, Beck has made a fortune opposing. Other than those
minor details, Beck and Paine are pretty much the same person. If Beck
and his producers do not consider the consumers of his half-baked
nonsense to be really stupid and gullible, they certainly have a funny
way of showing it. Lacking excuses, right-wing academics are even worse.
Had Massachusetts Colony Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the other
Loyalists to the British Crown, who composed 15-20% of the white-skinned
colonists, managed to convince rank-and-file colonists to help the East
India Company offload the contentious tea from their ships while
babbling "Support the Redcoats," then the choice of "Tea Party" to
describe the efforts by right-wing political operatives and entertainers
to create the impression of a "grassroots political movement" would have
been much more appropriate. The folks who are willing to pose with
firearms for the benefit of corporate lobbyists and reactionary
politicians have at least as much in common with the
tarred-and-feathered Tories who favored the status quo, as any
rebellious advocate of revolution. The religious right who continue to
call for a return to the days of Puritans and Pilgrims would not be
required to make any changes whatsoever.
If anything, the use of disguises and the destruction of private
property that marked the original Boston Tea Party are more in line with
the tactics of the masked anarchists who smashed windows at the 1999
World Trade Organization protests or the recent G-20 actions. This
connection was not lost on the anarchists opposed to the 2004 invasion
of Boston by the Democratic National Committee who dubbed themselves the
Bl(A)ck Tea Society, the color black having long been associated with
anarchists, and identifying with the disguised property destroyers of
yore. Unless of course, you discount the notion that right-wing
political operatives are always on the lookout for new dirty tricks to
oppose the election of Democratic party candidates, one has to wonder if
the GOP political action committees and corporate lobbyists took a cue
from this coalition?
[Also in 2004, Jello Biafra and the Melvins called for people to join
the "new Boston Tea Party" in the song "Dawn of the Locusts".--DC]
The appropriation of Boston Tea Party imagery after it was borrowed by
anarchists, pales in comparison to the outright theft and subsequent
decades spent capitalizing and desecrating the word "libertarian." Given
the right-wing aversion to the historical, it should come as little
surprise that the capital "L" libertarians, those Trekkies of US
electoral politics, the "'anarchists' who want police protection from
their slaves," continue to labor under the impression that they invented
that word. Imagine Joseph Goebbels, fuming with shrill indignation at
the ancient Brahmans who had the nerve to use the swastika symbol for
thousands of years, and that should give you a pretty good idea of the
kinds of rebuking that the Ron Paul cult engages in when reminded that
everywhere but the US, and even here until the early 1970s,
"libertarian" (Wikipedia revisonism aside) meant "anarchist."
Take so-called Dallas Libertarian Examiner Garry Reed's amusing piece of
historical fiction Calling all Stalinist-Jeffersonian-Bozoian Libertarians:
"Apparently it's becoming ever more popular to create crossbred mutant
coercive philosophies and then attempt to smuggle them into unsuspecting
minds by incorporating the 'libertarian' label."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who was the first person to identify as an
anarchist on paper, famously declared that "property is theft" and
anarchist-communist, Joseph Dejauque [sic: D�jacque], could probably not
agree more, as these French anarchists had both used the word
"libertarian" as a synonym for "anarchist," in 1858. Oxymoron
pipe-dreams of 'anarcho-' capitalism were still more than a century away.
"Monday came the announcement that earlier in the month a Danish group
founded Libert�re Socialister, translating literally to 'Libertarian
Socialists' and describes itself as oriented towards 'syndicalist,
anarcho-communist and collectivist anarchist currents.'"
A passing familiarity with 19th century history would have made this
"development" much less surprising. Anarchist ideas and thinkers are and
were present in the social-democratic Scandinavian countries, who were
frequent hosts of exiled revolutionaries. The most prolific of the late
19th century Danish libertarian writers was Jean-Jaques Ipsen, who
collaborated with the Norwegian anarchist, Hans Jaeger, the founder of
Copenhagen's first anarchist social center.
The Freetown of Christiania, an autonomous community in Denmark is
approximately the same age as the US 'Libertarian' party. Folkets Hus
(The House of the People) built in 1897 as a non-sectarian resource for
the labor movement, and was later renamed Ungdomshuset (The Youth House)
functioned as an anarchist social center from 1982 until it was
violently closed and demolished by the Danish state in 2007.
"At its simplest, libertarianism means maximizing freedom for all and
minimizing government intrusions into the affairs of free and sovereign
individuals. The anarchist form of that means total freedom and zero
government. To all libertarians it means uncoerced, voluntary
interactions amongst people. It means free trade, free travel, free
thought. It means capitalism in its individual, non-government
corporatist form."
Actually, that is what 'libertarianism' means to a handful of stoned US
conservatives, who are too high or edgy or something to do the honest
thing and call themselves Goldwater Republicans, otherwise it remains a
synonym for "anarchism." Capitalism remains a form of coercion, backed
by the violence of the State, a violence that is administered by
bureaucrats known as "police" and "military," which are coincidentally
the only parts of the State considered to be worth preserving by the US
Libertarian party. Corporatism? As in that which freedom-loving Benito
Mussolini may or may not have said, �fascism should more appropriately
be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate
power.� Apparently Mr. Reed thinks that the US needs more of this?
"So why can't these people be content with just calling themselves
Socialists or Communists or Syndicalists and quit pretending to be
libertarians?"
Because anarchists came up with the word in the 1850s and some
Republicans took it in the 1970s and decided that it should mean
something else?
"The answer, apparently, is that more and more people are seeing the
spreading popularity of libertarian ideals and want to twist the concept
to further their own ends, which inevitably includes hoodwinking the
unwary."
That is correct, anarchist or libertarian ideas have become more popular
as State and Capital and twisted combinations of the two speed towards
their illogical conclusions. Theocratic showbiz types such as Glenn Beck
and Sean Hannity have further twisted the concept to hoodwink the unwary
in a effort to create plausible deniability of their roles as orthodox,
partisan hand puppets.
"While libertarians will always tolerate voluntary collectivists, those
same collectivists will never tolerate libertarians.
"So c'mon people, if your philosophy is so great why don't you just call
it what it is and stop trying to smuggle it into people's minds by
pretending that it's something else?
"And that goes for American progressives, too. When will you admit that
your beliefs can't possibly work unless they're forced onto everyone by
the power of the government's gun?
"No person can ever legitimately claim the name 'libertarian' without
first curing oneself of the obsessive-compulsive disease of power lust,
commonly known as 'initiation of force.'"
The conservatives who attempt to pretend they are anarchists should
�just call it what it is and stop trying to smuggle it into people's
minds by pretending that it's something else.� They should not be
surprised that anarchists or libertarians would be intolerant of their
desire to steal the fruits of the labor of others and call it �profit.�
Accumulation of capital is impossible without an "initiation of force"
and therefore capitalists and the would-be capitalists in the amen
corner can never legitimately claim the name "libertarian."
Not even when they capitalize the "L."
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"