Otherwise, please refrain from making silly comments about a film you haven’t bothered to watch, or I can pretty much guarantee that said comments will automatically be dismissed.

Pot users do not become aggressive (unlike some drunks). Pot users do not hold up corner stores to get money for their next hit. It’s a bad idea to dive while impaired, but the tendency is for the driver impaired by pot to slow down and become (annoyingly) cautious.

The thing about pot is that, like cigarettes, the only person whose health is at risk is the user (and those in the same room). I would like to know if pot has the same potential for health care costs that cigarette use has, but even with the higher tar content, considering that most people aren’t smoking 12-36 joints in a day (unlike someone smoking 1-3 packs of smokes) I can’t see how it could.

So now we have a substance that does not require refining into an unidentifiable powder that could contain anything from talcum powder to rat poison, that causes no measurable criminal activity (beyond that automatically created by using an illegal substance), that has very few social ills, that is NOT a gateway drug to more powerful narcotics, and that, while not necessarily harmless, does not cause the health risks of many other, legal substances. So why is it illegal? Well, so far as I can make out, it mainly comes down to one man’s (“The” Man?) suspicion of any intoxicating substance and his willingness to spread whatever lies he deemed necessary in order to eliminate a substance that the immigrating Mexican farmhands used after a hard day’s work the way we’d have a beer to relax after work. Study after study has found that the effects of pot are minimal, and study after study has been ignored in favour of personal opinion or political grandstanding.

It’s sad, it really is.

What do you think the States would be like as a society, if, tomorrow, they decriminalized pot (and only pot; drugs like heroin are another kettle of fish entirely and need to be dealt with separately; lumping them in together is a spurious fallacy), and took all that money they’ve been wasting on trying to eradicate pot use, and instead used it to fund a universal health care system such as we have in Canada?

Perhaps something to think about. To dream about, at the very least…

I don’t understand what the deal with Miro is though – you got a link to it there on your sidebar, but no actual channel… I tried Adam Franco’s script but it doesn’t seem to work anymore. Maybe because the videos on the feed when I was trying it are all on googlevideo

anyway, am I missing something or have you given up on Miro / Democracy Player?

Thanks
Fritz

You seem to be knocking down a straw man of me that says “this isn’t fascism, so it’s fine”; that’s not, and never has been, my position. I think the Iraq war was an appalling crime against society, and the product of a political system that I abhor.

I’m under 25, for what it matters, and from the North of England.

[Incidentally, you're misreading what Paxton says about victimhood and humiliation. He's talking about how the fascists complain that they and their "nation" or "community" or whatever is being made a victim. I also think you misunderstand me on class, but since trying to go into these things clearly annoys you so, I won't go into it any further]

On another note you wrote: ‘Fascism only comes to power when the ruling class are so scared of their own people that they need an alliance with the fascists to bring them into line. [...] Franco [...]‘

It might be just me, but I heard that there was a serious war between people of all kinds of political persuasions, funded on all sides by non-Spanish military interests, that brought Franco to power. Maybe Santa Claus told me that too.

Maybe for you the word ‘fascist’ will ‘blind [one]self to what fascism is.’ Personally, I think whether you’re blindfolded by words like ‘democracy’ or ‘communism’ or ‘christianity’ or ‘fascism’ makes little different when you are confronted by the firing squad.

At the risk of getting blogged down in semantics… I mean, seriously. Fascism (Nazism) was a ‘mass movement’ while neoconservatism ‘is a movement confined to a the small ruling elite’?

Please. (I hate to use this rhetorical word: I’m hoping you’ll forgive me).

Fascism became a mass movement because it was imposed on millions of people from vastly different ethnic backgrounds. Now, to get personal, my father (whom, btw, I’ve despised all my life) wore the German military uniform, not for Nazism, not for totalitarian rule, but to defend himself and his country – take your pick which European country he happened to be born in. He didn’t want to fight for fascism or German supremacy, but he did anyway because of his circumstance. He was no fascist (except in a familial way, which I’m sure his war experiences enforced) or Nazi, but he did what he did to survive. I think he saw himself as a patriot, which I think he was in a way. He went out and killed Russians. But he probably also would have tried to kill me if I had been of his generation and wearing an Allied uniform.

If we don’t wake up to what our governments are doing to us now then it doesn’t matter what we call it. War is war, and it’s happening now, whether we wear a uniform or not, or call fascism only something those bad people in the dictionary definition did way back when.

Hitler was brought in by a German ruling class? Pinochet made an alliance with a fascist movement? Bush realized the American dream, proving that ‘anyone’ could be elected President. I suppose that’s true. And I still tell my kids there’s a Santa Claus (I really do, but now at least, we are all old enough to realize it’s a game we play at Yuletide).

To edit your quote from Robert Paxman:
‘A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline (and you wrote: ‘At a time of crisis, when people are looking to solutions outside of the familiar mainstream politics, some variant of fascism raises its head – usually among the middle classes – …’(If you’re saying Bush can’t be a fascist because he isn’t middle class I would say, is there a middle class anymore?), humiliation or victimhood (ethnic profiling, and ‘extreme’ rendition don’t really happen) and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, (‘You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.’ ‘Either support our troops or shut up.’ etc.) in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, (the federalization and out-sourcing of American municipal and state police forces is not happening?) working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites,(the silence of mainstream media, hello? – the ‘I never heard of it’ mentality – The NY Times saying ‘If we had known then what we know now…’ Well, you do know now. What are you whingeing about? I suppose the ‘unease’ comes because some reporters actually tell the truth once in a while) abandons democratic liberties (the US Supreme Court tells Bush he can’t do what he is doing. Bush’s response: ‘National Security Interests’ and anyway ‘We Don’t Torture’) and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints (the Invasion of Iraq called illegal by Kofi Annan, how many more citations does one need to drag up) goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.’ (hmm, ‘internal cleansing…’ only lemon juice and cayenne pepper de-tox programmes do that – ‘external expansion…’ something the Romans only did, right?).

My final point is:
I totally respect anyone who is fighting the powers that be, no matter what they say or their sense of urgency.

((((This is irrelevant, but just as a curiosity: I would guess you are male (no doubt) well over 25 years old (guessing about 32), a university student or graduate, in a good relationship but with no children, English (though your spelling is slightly American), light brown hair, blue eyes, physically fit. Am I far out? Actually, now I’m getting a vibe that you’re over 50, with brown eyes and a Guinness belly. Anyway, speculation is fun!))))

All the best,
Vello

But, at the risk of sounding pretentious, let me offer a word of advice: know your enemy. If you use the word “fascist” for shock value, you blind yourself to what fascism actually is. Hitler isn’t just a more extreme version of Bush, he’s something qualitatively different. The two have different origins, different agendas, different weaknesses.

I’m not saying you have to become an expert before you get active – the opposite, I would say, is true, it’s since I’ve been involved in political activism that I’ve really come to pursue these questions – but that it’s counterproductive to blur the lines between fascism (which is a radical mass movement) and neoconservatism (which is a movement confined to the small ruling elite of a powerful nation losing influence).

(My point about the war and civil liberties still stands too. This isn’t the first time America has gone to war, but nor is it the first time it has clamped down on its own population – and the latter often follows shortly after the former)

By the way, you may have noticed this blog is basically in hibernation – I think I last updated it over a month ago – so I invite you to check out my main blog, “Complex System Of Pipes“.

What is really troubling to me is that we may become accustomed to theoretical definitions of what is right and what is wrong. Maybe fascism is the wrong word. But my honest concern is with spreading the idea that what our governments are telling us is not what is happening. And if words like fascism, and pictures of Hitler in association with images of American/ Canadian/ English / etc. police brutality grab someone’s attention and make them question what they are told, I think the term is appropriate.

In the end I guess I side with my punk roots, and feel instinctively that anyone who tries to tell me what to do or think is a fascist. I see no reason not to listen to instinct.

As for fascism, I would say that it is an organised and militant mass movement, which basically sees the nation as a human body: violently suppressing and intimidating anything it sees as alien to that body, as well as anything it sees as threatening the internal Order of that body. At a time of crisis, when people are looking to solutions outside of the familiar mainstream politics, some variant of fascism raises its head – usually among the middle classes – and draws in those most atomised sections of society who feel least capable of uniting with those of their own class to pursue a common interest. It is the “anti-revolutionary revolution”, something which sweeps through society with immense violence and intimidation to prevent any kind of united workers’ movement arising. This is how Trotsky saw it, and I think it’s been validated by the history. Fascism only comes to power when the ruling class are so scared of their own people that they need an alliance with the fascists to bring them into line. Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, and Pinochet all fit this pattern, more or less; George Bush certainly does not.

Other than Trotsky, I think Robert Paxman gave a good dictionary-style definition in his Anatomy Of Fascism:

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

I suppose a country which [is in many ways quite undemocratic] is still considered a democracy in some circles.

In some circles, I suppose there are only two conceivable political systems, one called “democracy” and the other called “fascism”, and every country must be squeezed into one of these two boxes no matter how ill it fits. I’m not defending the US system of government – I’d love to see it toppled by revolution – but not everything I oppose can be called “fascism”, which means something far more specific.

Incidentally, if you’re really looking at activities of the US of which Hitler would have approved, it’s bizarre that you don’t mention the war.