FIGHTING THE LAST WAR

As we prepare to launch the final assault on the corporatocracy, it is worth considering the lessons of the last war on worldwide fascism. We were told that the great corporatist war known as WWI would end all war. Just in case that proved not to be the case, French generals decided that the best way to defend the Republic from future attacks on France by the German Empire was to build a trench to stop the primitive WWI tanks that were used in that war. As we learned when Panzer divisions rolled into France early in WWII, it is poor strategy to prepare to fight the next war using strategies designed for the last one. The Maginot line presented an illusion of safety much as the bulwarks of fascism in the Mideast have proven to be.

We are facing unique challenges in preparing to dismantle the fascist New World Order the self-styled Masters of the Universe have been preparing for us since before the end of WWII. The battle lines were being drawn even as Nazi power reached its peak, before America awakened for the first time to the danger fascism posed to democracy in America as well as the world. Senator Prescott Bush was a known Nazi collaborator who spawned a future CIA Director and President and whose grandson merrily led us further down the path of fascism than any other President after WWII. To any thinking person aware of this history, this is no coincidence. 

As in any situation of asymmetric warfare, we are battling superior forces with our wits more than weapons. When senators, CIA directors and Presidents collude with the international corporate terrorists descended from the very corporate criminals who brought us WWI and WWII, we have a real job on our hands to overwhelm them despite their advantages in wealth and power. Fortunately, history has proven time and again that when a country is invaded there will always arise resistance to enslavement by the People who are under attack. Alexander the “Great” and the USSR learned this in Afghanistan, as the international corporate terrorists who control the United States government will learn soon enough. 

Just as the French resistance never gave up and inspired resistance in other nations to fascism, the people of the United States who are under assault by foreign invaders masquerading as American business leaders fight for their hard won freedoms. The French resistance also received material and moral support from other nations for its determined fight to eradicate fascism from its soil. Ultimately, the United States repaid its historic debt to France for their assistance in the American Revolution by using its military might to defeat the Nazis. In this war to stop the imposition of a fascist New World Order, the Peoples of the various nations must build a united front against fascism and war itself.

In this war to truly end all war, we must not make the mistake of planning to fight the last war in this, the final war on fascism. Many lessons were learned from the resistance to the Imperial war in Vietnam, but not all of the lessons apply to today’s situation. At that time, an entire generation of American men faced the prospect of going to war, prison or Canada if they did not resist. This forced our youth to develop strategies for peaceful resistance to the war, some of which would be useful today if there was more cooperative effort to advance the cause of ending war on behalf not only of the members of the military and their families on behalf of all living Americans born and those as yet unborn.

It was easy to get crowds of young men and women in the street to fight the Imperial war in Vietnam when young men were being forced to wage war for corporate profit. Every young man faced this threat of that generation faced this danger. Their girlfriends, wives and mothers faced losing them and many would not do so without a fight. In this day of a pseudo-volunteer military composed largely of economic conscripts, massive marches are not materializing and the rallies, protests and marches that are mobilized get little attention from the corporate media. Even many so-called progressives seem content to regard the war as a problem of “volunteers” who they are convinced do not deserve our support because they are fighting the wars of Empire that we are trying to end.

In the buildup to the Nazi attempt to make the world submit to Hitler’s mad vision communists, socialists, social democratic parties and workers made common cause in the struggle against fascism. They formed national and international alliances to forge political build a united front to fight the first war on world fascism. Without the internet and with a corporate media and politicians propagandizing of the dangers of communism and socialism, the effort was doomed to failure despite the brilliance of its leaders. Among these, no one stood taller than George Dimitrov, the author of the speeches that became the book Against Fascism and War.

While Dimitrov was utterly committed to a world Soviet despite the murderous excesses of Stalin, he saw as few do now that the only way to build a united front against war and fascism was to lay aside political ideology and fight together in the common cause of freedom for all. He had a dream that in an ideal world, communism would operate democratically for the good of all. I

n his wisdom, Dimitrov argued that communists must lay aside this ultimate aim as one that could only be chosen by free Peoples in a world where democracy was the norm. His strategy was to let each nation create a movement fitting their own society and stage of political evolution and for these national movements to work together to counter the plans of the several nations that first conspired to impose a fascist world order. He saw youth as having a special role in organizing among each other their own coalitions to bring the fight to those most threatened by the prospect of world fascism.

We face a situation today that is in many respects identical to that of freedom fighters in 1936, the year that Dimitrov gave his famous speech before the Seventh International Communist Congress. He was a respected figure for having fought and defeated the Nazi government in the court of world opinion. He was able to generate the international support that forced the Nazi government to drop the false charges that he was responsible for the burning of the Reichstag. It was his bravery that awakened the world to the fact that the Nazis themselves started as a pretext for the creation of a police state in Germany.  

The modern parallel is the thousands of engineers and others demanding a true accounting of the events of 9/11. President Obama quickly abandoned those in the government who like Van Jones joined the call to challenge the whitewashed report of the 9/11 commision. The corporate media did its part by smearing such patriots as paranoid conspiracy theorists. The nation is awakening to the fact that the United States government is continuing a pattern of covering up acts of treason that have been endemic in the US government and the intelligence agencies for decades. When the full extent of government and media collusion with fascists is widely recognized, the system of corporate control of the American government will inevitably fall like a house of cards built on quicksand.

The parallels with the modern “war” on terror with the war on communism are striking. Support for the Vietnam war was provided by a manufactured act of war by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was much easier to make the American people dance to the drums of war after allowing an attack  that killed 3,000 Americans despite abundant evidence that the FBI and the office of the President had a great deal of advance warning of the plot. Today, Americans are too exhausted from the struggle to survive in an increasingly heartless economy and society that they cannot sort through the lies. They are only too ready to accept the simple “explanation” provided by a government clearly committed to war in the Mideast of corporate conquest. 

Corporate politicians with the deliberate complicity of a corporate media continue to pump out the propaganda that keeps Americans fighting themselves instead of the Puppetmasters of the American government. We can and must turn the tide of American opinion by reaching out to our confused countrymen as fellow Americans rather than adversaries. We all desperately want our children to live in a free, safe and happy future. We all know that today’s government is so corrupted by corporate money that it cannot and will not address the threats confronting America. 

When these problems are caused by the very Puppetmasters who control the United States government, the craven politicians who do not recognize their duty to all Americans will not risk their comfortable jobs by challenging their corporate patrons. They depend on corporate money to pay for outrageously expensive propaganda campaigns that keep them in office instead of trusting the People to reward them for their courage in challenging these interests. 

Only when American voters demand that their Congressional leaders put their interests over those of corporations will we see an end to fascism and a return to a government of, by and for the People.  This requires that voters in the United States begin to reject the phony distinctions between two parties that as a whole have been thoroughly corrupted by corporate money, as Dimitrov argued. In 2012 we must vote in every Congressional race for the best candidate, not simply for anyone who wins the endorsement of the party of the duopoly we have traditionally supported.

The fragmentation of the progressive community is legendary. The task of trying to organize them is often compared to the problem of herding cats. Many of the leaders of the Left are still fighting the last war and are reluctant to listen to the younger officers with new strategies and tactics who are itching to get into the fight but cannot do so without support from the Old Guard. The most hopeful of these are those youths who have grown up never knowing real democracy but who have from childhood been inculcated in the belief that all men and women are created equal. They are thus the natural leaders to build a movement where all voices are heard and every effort to build alliances are respected and supported.

Those of us who came of age in the turmoil of the 60s and 70s have developed the habit of viewing the struggle for democracy in America as a battle between the Left and the Right. We must abandon this notion if we are to accomplish our mission of ending fascism in America and the world. There will always be self-deluded Democrats, Greens and other political partisans who refuse to accept that the two-party duopoly must end and can only do so if these artificial distinctions are abandoned in favor of mutual assistance to any candidates who will put the interests of We the People over those of the corporate patrons of most of our current Congress.

There is a simple way to build a united front in the United States to end fascism in America and the world. It requires that all those working in their own way to further the goal of freedom in America rally around a central unifying issue. Every American knows that the government is in the hands of corrupt politicians put in place by propaganda campaigns paid for by the corporate Puppetmasters to whom they are then beholden. This is a direct result of corporate personhood, a concept with which millions of Americans became familiar in the wake of the Citizens United decision. This was such obvious overreach by the fascists on the Supreme Court that it was angrily opposed by nearly 80% of both self-identified conservatives and liberals.

If 80% of Americans agree that corporate control of government is the reason that our government does not work for us, then it should be obvious that this is the issue to build bridges between the Left and the Right to fight this fascistic marriage of corporations and government in the United States. The first order of business is to get progressives to understand that this is not just another issue but THE issue that must be addressed before Americans can move forward together to a future of the choosing of We the People and not the corporate Puppets and the Puppetmasters who run the government.

If leaders in the antiwar, pro-health care, pro-choice, environmental and other movements can be made to realize that there is a way to create a united progressive front, then they will soon see the necessity for reaching across ideological boundaries.  Building a united front against fascism will require focusing on the one issue that is attractive to all but the most self-deluded Americans. No one supports fascism but fascist and those who unwittingly support fascism but who stubbornly refuse to admit the fact. We can reach them if we offer our hands in a spirit of mutual concern for the well being of our children.

Once we have the attention of a critical mass of Americans across the political spectrum, we can all be part of a national effort to abolish corporate personhood through Constitutional amendment. If we are willing to work together, we can put forth candidates to introduce such an amendment into Congress while making a parallel effort to continue to educate the public by bringing petitions out on the street and to our neighbors’ homes calling for a Constitutional Convention. Although it is unlikely to happen and arguably unwise that it should, the educational value of such a national effort led by student groups is incalculable.

The biggest obstacle we face is the belief that passing a Constitutional amendment is too difficult to even attempt. This defeatist attitude is a slap in the face of every soldier that has ever died in defense of what he or she believed was liberty. Worse, it is a betrayal of our own children and every generation that follows them. If we can get enough people to reject the idea that war is inevitable, it will inevitably become unthinkable.

If we win this war on fascism, this will be the last war the world will know.