[Nettime-bold] Re: totalitarianism in cyberspace?

[Nmherman@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/18/2001 4:48:35 AM Central Daylight Time, 
PGalaxy@compuserve.com writes:

> It is becoming clear that the internet is brining people and information
>  together
>  in real time, and do occasionally fear that forces opposed to change may
>  try to take that
>  away, but that shall not happen I dont think

Chomsky has often made the claim that we in the US have a totalitarian state, 
one in which the consent of the governed (democracy) is manufactured and does 
not actually occur by any normal criteria.  The hecklers at Chomsky's 
lectures often stand up in a rage and say "if we were totalitarian you would 
be in jail for saying what you just said" and Chomsky always answers "no, our 
totalitarianism works just fine without jailing all dissenters.  They are 
just kept out of the corporate media, so that the information people get is 
propaganda."

Totalitarian states don't have to persecute every dissenter, they just have 
to make sure the dissent is largely unheard and deniable.  If facts like East 
Timor ever come to be, that's when the New York Times is really in trouble.  
Then they have to bend over backward not to report it, and this is where they 
leave fingerprints.  East Timor was a non-issue for ten years at least, just 
a few conscientious nobodies writing their congresspeople et cetera.  

It's not just website-makers who are affected.  For example, the corporate 
annihilation of any chance of environmental recovery goes on muy rapido every 
day that goes by.  They don't need to kill or torture every sane 
environmentalist because they would merely get in trouble for it and since 
their policies are going along fine, why bother?  It's why the big newspapers 
here (all the newspapers are big here, owned by say three conglomerates) only 
have to say "the protesters were shabbily dressed and lacked a coherent new 
plan to replace corporate fascism".

Recently in Cinncinnati an African-American youth was shot to death while 
running away from police who wanted him to pay some traffic tickets.  Now the 
Supreme court says it's OK to put you in handcuffs and take you to the 
station even if your crime was only punishable by fine, like not wearing your 
seatbelt.  Once you're in the cuffs, watch out, because a lot of cops have 
extracurricular justice projects such as shoving painful objects up your ass, 
mace, kicks in the face, you name it.

If Chomsky doesn't think it's wrong to use the word fascism, I tend to agree. 
 When a Supreme Justice says that the court has lost its credibility as a 
protector of the constitution, I agree.  

What interests me is, why is it so painful or uncomfortable to use the word 
fascism?  Perhaps guilt feelings, feelings one should be doing more, or the 
sense that one's material comforts are the products of a slave economy.  
Maybe the idea that there is no powerful nation fighting against fascism 
anymore is the scariest thing.  Or that it snuck in under our hyper-vigilant 
intellectual gaze?  That's a bitter pill too.  I could add that fascism is 
rarely overthrown except by military defeat only reached at the outer limit 
of expansionism, a limit that no longer exists to trouble the American 
Empire.  

Civil disobedience isn't state fascism, it's intellectual fascism at worst.  
It's being stubborn and closed-minded:  meat is murder.  And if you think 
about it, intellectual fascism ought to be called "academic fascism" because 
fascism without an apparatus of coercion is merely coercion.  I am disgusted 
by the ease with which the US media dismiss all dissent by calling it 
"intellectually fascist" because the protestors aren't content just to mail 
unprintable letters to the editor.

Civil disobedience is not fascism.  As for the freedom of the internet being 
lost, isn't it more constructive and fair to talk of huge conglomerates 
controlling the bulk of content while the police implement powerful, sweeping 
new monitoring policies?  What the fascists hate is opportunities for 
dissent.  If they are succeeding in killing as many opportunities for dissent 
as they need to to stay in power, then we have fascism.

Please remember that I rarely if ever use the word fascist to describe 
anything but governments.  If I don't like a curator, I call him a shit-faced 
cockmaster, not a fascist.  George Bush, well I call him both.

Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Network
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/icannottellalie.html


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