Walks Like A Fascist

I was just perusing some of the branded products available over at Disinfo.com, and came across this mousepad design (which you can also get on a variety of shirts, thongs and other objects):

Now, I think Disinfo has some cool stuff as far as books go, and they certainly broke all kinds of ground getting alternative thinking out to a mass audience. But to me, this just goes too far. It doesn’t just ask us to question the reality we’ve always blithely accepted. It seems to instead feed on the desire to question by providing a simple answer. It seems like sort of a dishonest bait and switch technique to me. Like what are we as consumers and fans of independent media supposed to take away from this? That Republicans are “evil” and Democrats are “radical”? Oh boy! I had no idea everything was so simple! I know this is just a slogan, just a throwaway product, but it really doesn’t sit well with me. How does it sit with you?

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39 Reader Responses

zacharius Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
sadly I haven’t had much time for disinfo, since they’ve changed themselves into another kind of news filter, which purports to not be a news filter. the old archive remains pure gold nevetheless.

unfortunately, I think when they resolved to ‘become the media’ there was some baggage hidden in that decision. Not that I’m opposed to the occasional bit of high handed polemic, mind you. It just seems a little beneath where they used to aim their efforts.
Haeresis Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Not that Democrats smell too great anymore, but there are definite links between republicans and fascism, which get whitewashed. When you look back at the folks who tried to have Roosevelt overthrown, or who supported Hitler financially (and otherwise), you’re going to find relatives of the same people who call themselves republicans now. It’s not entirely a coincidence that “kinder, kuche, and kirche” sounds like a repub. party slogan. Facism is just the far right of a right-wing that is moving increasingly toward its own fringe.
alistair Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
true colours? to use thier trypich; if it walks like a socialist and talks like a socialist then it`s probably a socialist. i heard a hippy say, the other day, that ideas were more sustaining than food………his girlfriend asked if he wanted to eat or go sit and talk. just kids with dyed and dreadlocked hair. they could be planning to overthrow the government or trying to get a bag of dope………disinformation resonates with that reactionary type of ethos. very political. when i was a kid i had long hair and listened to loud music. politics didn`t enter into the equation. today i have no hair and i listen to loud music and politics still doesn`t come into the equation.
politics radicalises both sides of the fence. reps. wear suits and want to climb the corporate ladder and dems. want to raise consciousness for seal hunting and storm the parliament.
nothing has changed.
alistair Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
hitler was a socialist. clinton was a socialist. so was mao, krushchev, stalin and so is castro. in like a sheep, offering reforms, money stripped from the wealthy and handed to the poor, blah, blah, blah. then dissenters rounded up and shot, thier homes burned and hundreds of laws passed, rights removed and the state takes control of everything. oh, and by the way, hillary is still here and ready to have another kick at the can.
precisely what some are suggesting the republicans are doing……..and actually haven`t.
look up the psychological definition of transference.
alistair Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
www.usasurvival.org/ck061903.shtml
nico Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
i’m neither fond of the democrats nor the republicans, the left wingers or the right wingers. i am sick of them all. they are two sides of the same u.s. coin. both extreme ends of the parties fight each other like cats and dogs….every day it’s even more sturm und drang. but getting back to your post - you’re right. how is labeling ALL republicans fascist helpful? it’s incendiary, more propaganda and is very, very, stupid s***.

but, haeresis is right with the connection of fascism. how ironic it is that senator prescott bush indirectly funded the nazi war machine back then.
Tim Boucher Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
sure there are family and business connections. but the names of the parties are interchangeable
nico Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
if you mean aren’t interchangeable, i totally agree with you. that’s just like labeling all christians crazy, abortion-clinic bombing radicals, or practicing muslims as terrorists. it’s just another type of character assasinating propaganda.
if that’s not what you meant, then i would have to respectfully disagree
hebrides Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
the disinfo mouse pad, you’ll note still has a question mark on it–it’s a provocation; granted, a very easy one and, as stated earlier, far beneath what they did in the old days when they actually produced and encouraged contributions of original content. the assumption inherent in the way you framed the question is that if they are bashing the replutocrats, then they must be supporting the demi-crats. certainly, that’s the same assumption a lot of people are gonna make (it’s the nature of the political conditioning in the so-called u.s.), but that don’t necessarily mean that’s what they’re implying by the mousepad slogan, though eye’m sure they’re playing with it. who gnos. eye didn’t write it. in the end, eye think it’s on the pad because it will appeal to a certain segment of lifestyle radicals (still just consumers) and thus, sell. Or not.

fascism appears to be a very interesting and amorphous beast. they were a reaction against socialism (specifically, communism) from the start, but also used the some of the same rhetoric (re: the masses and the exploitation of said masses by the monied classes)–there seems to be evidence in this if you’re really willing to look for it; so in that respect, the rhetoric could be put under “socialist”, whatever that exactly means. however, at the same time, they (being classic fascism in italy, spain and the national socialists in germany) cozied up to and were beholden to industry and part of the game plan was to increase the interdependence and the fuzziness of boundaries between government, corporate business concerns and the popular religious sentiment of the host nation. Mussolini even stated that fascism, more accurately could be called “corporatism” and there’s the theocratic element in that, both in italy (with the support and compromising of the catholic church and the twisting of german protestant belief towards a covertly anti-christian political messiah-cult centering around herr hitler). that aspect would seem, at least given, current-day usage, to put fascism in the right-wing camp.

In the end, whatever the hell you call it, it’s a form of statism and that’s what connects the replutocrats and the loyal opposition: their belief in lording it over others, the fostering of the belief that so-called government (whether in the form of unnacountable beaurocrats or ultimately unaccountable corporate heads in the so-called “private sector”) provides the answer to the problems. What they both provide are means to subtly coerce, to create false dependencies in the majority of people so that they can be accomplices to their own exploitation and psychological (if not physical and economic) enslavement in the service of crazy-acting mere mortals who are far, far removed from the way we are meant to live in harmony with each other and the ol’ planet. or not.

but pay no mind, eye’m just a self-righteous, individualist from the lysander spooner/max stirner sensibility with Luddite tendencies and mystical affinities.
or not.

Skidoo.
Gina Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
all it looks like to me is a crappy mousepad, which costs 20 cents to manufacture in some small impoverished country, emblazoned with a slogan, that will guarantee sales via identification with its sentiments. So who are the bad guys again?
Emerson Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
I really wish I could figure out why it’s so hard to just get people to look at voting records. There’s summeries before any election, people nearly shove them into ones face. But for some reason, hardly any Americans ever seem to, and just keep doing as the mousepad suggests - turning a process that can destroy peoples lives into a giant “us Vs. them” game.
james Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
I don’t see anything wrong with this. It preaches to the converted.

All’s fair in love and war, and right now there’s a lot of people who feel like there is a cultural language war going on between those who use the word “liberal” with contempt and those who use the word “Republican” with contempt.

btw: Alistair, Hitler was National Socialist. That puts him closer to Stalin or Lenin than Bill Clinton… and I don’t think it’s accurate to call Clinton a Socialist– his Health Care reform plan failed and he signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the rise in popularity of fascists such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage.
Rev max Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Oh brother. Clinton was a neoliberal centrist who cut spending and social entitlements and generated a budget surplus, in the mold of Blair - hardly a Marxist.

Now Bush does fit the mold of classical fascism which is really nothing more than incompetent crony capitalism sustained by a veneer of ardent nationalism and propped by the promotion of a hysterical reaction to threat of the swarthy “Other.”

Clinton at least DID something - strengthened the infrastructure of the US. Bush seems like a tough guy but its holoow to the core - it will decades to undo the damage his policies have caused, eg. borrowing $1.5 billion a day just so that we can turn around and pour it down some Middle Eastern rathole.

Deficit spending is OK when the population is underemployed an all it will take is education and infrastructure renewal to bring people into the labor market. The problem we are having now is that the US pop is already work AT capacity, the infrastructure is crumbling, and all of these billions we are borrowing is being “invested” in a strategic disaster that will never have ANY sort of economic upside for us.

The “good news” if you can call it that is that fascism typically centers around cults of personality and has no fixed principles or organixing ideas beyond the desire for poer and thus burns out quickly once the honeymoon period ends. There is every sign that this is now what is happening to Bush as well, and not a moment too soon.
landruc Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects’ brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results were announced today.

“We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. “What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.”

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

“None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,” Westen said. “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.

The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other. The test subjects were asked to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.

The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

“The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,” Westen said.

Other relatively neutral candidates were introduced into the mix, such as the actor Tom Hanks. Importantly, both the Democrats and Republicans reacted to the contradictions of these characters in the same manner.

The findings could prove useful beyond the campaign trail.

“Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret ‘the facts,’” Westen said.

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060124_political_decisions.html
Haeresis Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Hitler was not a socialist byh any definition of socialist. Stalin, Mao, et al were Communists. Bill Clinton was a centrist.
d Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
It was not the Democratic Party that is concentrating wealth in the hands of an uber minoriry, nor was it they who waged an immoral war in Iraq in which has killed over 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of iraqis, nor was it the Democrats who are weakening environmental regulations by appointing corporate lobbyists to federal postions in the government, and lastly it is not Democrats who have constitutional scholars essentially claiming the 4th ammendment is dead. Republicans are constantly equating criticism of the President with supporting terrorism, while they also seek to weaken the line between religion and state. It is not hip to be either a D or an R but neither is being an apolitical apathetic citizen. Right now the Republican party scares the fucking shit out of me. They are incompetent look how they dealt with the aftermath in New Orleans, somehow I doubt the government’s reaction would have been the same if it was the Hampdens.
Howard the Fuck Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
I look at some of the liberal blogs like Daily Kos, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars, America Blog, This Modern World, they seem to be an articulate in their criticism of the President. It is an odd thing, basically only that makes a person ‘left’ today is by expressing opposition to the President. Like being critical of Bush’s breaking the FISA law.
a funny site http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
andrew Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
well, personally, i like just about everything Disinfo does.

be mindful that they placard didnt mention anything about democrates.

that wasnt the message.

its always popular to be against the winning party in a democracy, however thin the u.s.a. remains one. most people consider democrats benign pets like they are, they complain A LOT and do don’t really do anything they say they’re going to do other than appease the throw up called public opinion. take the iraqi war for piece of evidence number one. the near complete lack of decriminalizing drugs as evidence number two.

i still feel that the message is accurate and i have far more fear of republicans running the show than democrats. but i dont support government at all as a priori enforcer of compliance for property and international trade. but thats just an old radical’s point of view that has no basis in politcal reality.

you may dislike republicans, but you cant escape them. if you vote you give legal legitimacy to those who win (or sneak in). congratulations voters: you paid for it.
human? Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 6:08 am
all it looks like to me is a crappy mousepad, which costs 20 cents to manufacture in some small impoverished country, emblazoned with a slogan, that will guarantee sales via identification with its sentiments. So who are the bad guys again?

bingo.

except…… is it bad? i mean…… they do call themselves disinfo….

gotta hustle

one
human?
alistair Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 8:41 am
there are no communists. the very nature of the concept of communism is theory at best. what we have in it`s place is socialism, of which bill and hillary are one. bill on his own is a sort of benign centrist bobble-head with poon on his mind, but we didn`t get him on his own. we got a package. hillary is a socialist…. a big global government bureaucrat with fascist leanings who`s not done with her run for the gold.
whenever people use the term communist, they generally mean socialism. communism, as marx wrote it, was an attempt to give the workers control of the means of production, with the government withering away over time. what we`ve got in it`s place is social engineering (read; intellectual fiddling.) big bureacracy and entitlements. what we almost had with bill and hillary was a socialist forever home in america. once you have enough voters getting a cheque then the political game is over.
and clinton did something alright. he interfered in middle eastern politics in his benign centrist fashion and prompted the first terrorist act on u.s. soil and the attack on the u.s.s. cole as a direct result of trying to force the jews and muslims to reconcile. these fuckers despise eachother and bill the bobble head thought he could waltz in and, with a stroke of a pen, get a nobel peace prize. instead he triggered a cleric war that bush has been blamed for. oh yeah and the rocket attack on tripoli to distract from his trial over monica…….
and the population is working at full capacity……..and wages aren`t rising with energy costs. this has been true for about fifteen years. it`s a direct predictor of war. we have not only completely employed our own country, but we`re busily hiring in india, mexico, china, etc.
prnsqlr Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 10:04 am
if you want to follow American politics and the NSA spying scandal in particular, I highly recommend Glenn Greenwald’s blog: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com
Mr. Poop Head Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Alistair is a guy who dislikes Noam Chomsky. And to say Hillary Clinton has fascist leanings is absurd and reeks of poop.

The reasons Osama gave for attacking America http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html
Tim Boucher Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Boy, if I had known this was going to turn into a political argument, I wouldn’t have brought it up. For me the more interesting issue was not “Are republicans fascists?” but had to do with Disinfo posing as an alternative media outlet, and what kind of intentions and effects a message like this spreads among its audience.
hebrides Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Again, eye just point to the question mark–it’s a provocation and they’re happy to lead you to assume a certain point of view (if it sells mousepads) by the implication one draws from the wording of said mousepad, but they ain’t thereby supporting democrats or anyone else…and their not necessarily calling republicans fascists, their posing the question in a certain way that gets a reaction, which is entirely up to the reader. it’s a rorschach and the folks that designed the pad are quite good marketeers, which is to say tricksters, which is to say disinfonauts. in retrospect, even though eye still feel its below the level of what disinfo once did, we live in unsubtle times.
and in part, yes, they are preaching to the converted–as is nike when somebody buys a swoosh t-shirt–or Coke, when somebody stocks their party fridge full of that shit–but also they’re seeding a meme, b/c a non-Nike convert will eventually see that t-shirt on the street and ziz subconscious will take it in (whether it makes any dent before ze see’s the millionth swoosh is another question–hypnosis requires reinforcement), a non-convert will see the Coke wave in your fridge when looking for the water pitcher in your fridge; and an apolitical person or someone ignorant of such territorial ape-noises may see the mousepad on your desk–and if ze has an imprint vulnerability, it may get through and cause zem to ask questions or to look something up or to react in someway. or not…but the subconscious will most likely take it in, as a seed of thought processes for the future.

skidoo.
alistair Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 3:30 pm
i actually like chomskey`s ideas about linguistics. i just think his one trick shtick about republicans is tiresome and polarising. he is a careerist. nothing really wrong with that but for the fact that he`s at the impressionable minds of the youth in a disingenuous fashion. we are given gifts to be leaders and help people to grow as people. this political wrangling doesn`t nurture much.
hillary? the body of her own history spells her leanings better than my ramblings. i just don`t like her, period. she has the fragrance of the will to power about her. dangerous. like a shark. the dead guy in the park………..hubble?
alistair Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 3:38 pm
www.brookesnews.com/032808hillary.html
with my apologies tim. one does have to think deeply about the fact that some of the deepest comment threads tend to be about politics.
my favorite political issue is the trend toward confusng communism with socialism. the professors of political science, economics and history know full well the difference and yet grads still fail to make the distinction. i tend to think they do it deliberately.
Rev max Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Don’t get me wrong, Hilary! sucks and a fella like Joe Lieberman could potentially be even more dangerous than Bush.

what we almost had with bill and hillary was a socialist forever home in america. once you have enough voters getting a cheque then the political game is over.

We didn’t almost have a “socialist forever home in america” in America, Hil made her pitch, Americans decided that universal health care was too scary frightening and demaning (don’t want to wind up some 3rd world hellhole like Canada or Germany!) and the whole thing fell flat.

Meanwhile, huge budget surpluses, investment in education and infrastructure, and very limited winnable engagements in various hotspots. SOme ill-advised but to compare any of this in any way with the near total castration of the 4th amendment under W, a trillion dollar war manipulated into as a matter of choice, record deficits, record borrowing from China…. well, sheesh, the lesser of two evils was in this case WAY less evil… hard to even compare.
prnsqlr Says:
March 31st, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Something conservatives seem to have forgotten is that war, funded exclusively by taxes, is always a socialist endeavor.
Haeresis Says:
April 1st, 2006 at 3:36 am
Boy, if I had known this was going to turn into a political argument((((

You said “republican” first! LOL
alistair Says:
April 1st, 2006 at 4:05 pm
i think the socialist forever home is always on the cards, no matter who`s in power. i don`t know how close to it we were with the clintons but it`s always a threat. that`s what orwell saw in his sweat soaked nightmares…………………..hey, maybe it`s bushes game too. i will say this now for the record. i make some strong statements at times, but i`m always open to points of disagreement and i`m not on a team when it comes to games like politics. i want to work toward insight.
Kylark Says:
April 1st, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Alistair, I can’t believe you are blaming 9/11 on Bill Clinton.
alistair Says:
April 1st, 2006 at 7:55 pm
i`m not blaming it on clinton. this position has been brewing for 900 years. clinton`s meddling in middle-eastern affairs was a minor contribution.the camp david stuff was embarrassing. 9/11 was going to happen in spite of who was in power then. muslim extremists haven`t all of a sudden decided to hate infidels……………they don`t like democrats, republicans, rosicrucians, mensans, catholics, anthony robbins, tim robbins, brittany spears or your grandmother.
and i find it daft that people are comfortable blaming gwb for 9/11 either. it`s an ideological war. my dad fought in ww2, korea, egypt and cyprus. he said egypt and cyprus was the worst because they weren`t clearly military. they were the predecesor to the modern peace-keeper. side arms holstered and rifles to the ground. like boxing with your hands in your pockets. in cyprus the greeks and the turks were trying to kill eachother and them 24/7. the same atmosphere as in afganistan. a barely understood culture with a blood lust for infidels. better to fight them there than here though……………
Haeresis Says:
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:56 pm
better to fight them there than here though((

Sure, much better to “fight them there,” where they have them in INFINITE supply.

Daft.
Anonymous Says:
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Alistair: Are you for real, or some kind of broad satire?
alistair Says:
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:07 pm
well, precisely. fighting them there is the only conventional way to fight them. there are covert actions afoot also, buuuuut. it takes time. now, to clarify what we are fighting; our new enemy is a borderless, countryless idiological enemy that has gone to africa and into europe and beyond allowed by “liberal” governments and those who are powerless to defend against it. the enemy isn`t so much people but those who take radical islam as faith. it is a virus of the most destructive kind. it empowers people to steer planes full of screaming people into buildings full of even more screaming people. there is nothing in mind of liberal society to comprehend or fight or defend against it. the soft, comfortable middle income consumer cannot understand why anyone would hate good old us……..so the conspiracy types come forward with convenient explenations. gwb did it. everyone go home. there is no plot from 10,000 miles away. just bad politicians. easy simple consumer sound-bite sized info.
lets look for good warm political solutions. the u.n. will type up some paper and everything will be o.k. bureaucrats like bureaucratic process and accountability from a legal standpoint but don`t want people scrapping. terribly disorganised and unpredictable.
and to anonymous…………. satire ;-D
Scherzo Says:
April 2nd, 2006 at 9:57 pm
zacharius summed it up:

“sadly I haven’t had much time for disinfo, since they’ve changed themselves into another kind of news filter, which purports to not be a news filter. the old archive remains pure gold nevetheless.”

Disinfo sold its soul faster than a heroin-addicted whore.

Personally, I think fascism has a lot that recommends it. If you want to talk about real thought suppression talk about how just about nothing positive is ever said about fascism. Why? I doubt that it’s for the reasons society has been programmed to accept.
Scherzo Says:
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:00 pm
BTW, the line “Walk like a Republican” has got the song “Walk like an Egyptian” stuck in my head.
albion Says:
April 3rd, 2006 at 12:34 pm
gee, i’m sorry i got to this party so late.

-i don’t read disinfo, so no comment on that

-although the term ‘fascist’ has been pretty much drained of meaning by over-use, and should certainly not be applied to all republicans, if one examines the history of post-WW2 fascism, one is likely to find that the term is an extaordinarily precise descriptor for BUSHWORLD.

-it’s true that the nazis shared some of the same proto-socialist roots as the communists, but that doesn’t mean that hitler was a leftist. in europe in particular the far right has been as steeped in the revolutionary tradition as the far left. while the left evolved along rational-materialistic lines, conservative revolutionaries have traditionally had a more mystical bent. that’s an oversimplification, but perhaps a useful one.
alistair Says:
April 3rd, 2006 at 2:00 pm
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18739
this socialist is a fuckhead. maybe he`s not a fascist by definition…..but maybe a special case.

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