Most of you will have seen recent news media reports of an Hamas attack on Israel, resulting in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issuing a formal declaration of war:
The government led by Netanyahu was recently described as;
"...widely hostile to any substantial concessions to the Palestinians."
It recently passed laws revoking the independence of the courts, giving;
"... almost untrammeled power to the governing majority, and clear the path for an array of radical far-right and ultra-Orthodox policies and legislation."
Predictably, there have been suggestions that the attacks attributed to Hamas are a false flag attack. Just as predictably, there have been attempts to paint such theories as inherently anti-Semitic, by right-wing PR fronts sympathetic to Likud's ultranationalist politics:
But there is at least one historical precedent for Israeli military intelligence carrying out false flag operations, intended to demonize their Islamist opponents:
@strypey there are dozens of videos that Hamas proudly posted on their telegram channels that show the murders, the abducted children and elderly, the rape victims, the parading of a half-naked corpse of a woman that went to a trance music festival where she was murdered like 260 others, the attempt to decapitate a south asian agricultural worker with a shovel and so on. They even had a press conference where they openly thanked Iran for their military aid. And you go full-on 9/11 truther?? Ffs
@dsfgs
> The war on the people of Palestine appears to have reached a sort of boiling point
I think the US is mainly to blame. Israel is a very convenient military ally for them, in a strategically important region where they have few natural allies. Without their interference, a lasting peace could probably have been negotiated, just as it was in Northern Ireland, which was in many was a similar situation.
@strypey
Yes, the escalatory nature of #USA foreign policy seems to go back quite far, and we see it repeated over and over because it serves the #weaponsIndustry
Adam Curtis' documentary, #Hypernormalisation (which we don't agree with the innuendo aimed at Russia in) seemed to put a lot of the blame on #HenryKissinger, which is probably correct, but we wonder if every president since #JFK has been a meat puppet.
@strypey
He neglected to mention that #Russia was invited into #Syria post 2015 and instead questioned what Russia might be doing there. It was a #suggestive part of the film where it was implied with an audio/visual aid of an explosion, that Russia were probably hurting the Syrians, with false flags.
It fine to be skeptical but if Russia were invited in in response to the #USA invasion then that should have been mentioned.
@strypey
Yes, they did try to make fascism, overtly. In some ways they had already won with the Federal Reserve 1914. So part of us thinks the "Plot to storm the White House 1930s Edition" was a rouse, but its hard to know for sure.
@strypey
One of the most damning quotes comes out of the mouth of the #ukGovernor of the #BankOfEngland, a "Sir" #MontaguNorman who in the late 1930s said "We must lend #Germany 230,000,000 DM, it may never be repaid but such a loss it would be less of a loss than the fall of #nazism."
@dsfgs
> One of the most damning quotes comes out of the mouth of the uk Governor of the Bank Of England, a "Sir" Montagu Norman who in the late 1930s said
This is hardly specific to bankers. Prior to WW2 it was common for capitalists of all kinds to openly support fascism, as a hedge against the risk of anti-capitalist revolutions inspired by bolshevism. The only difference since WW2 is they don't do it openly, eg covert support for Pinochet in Chile.
More and more I'm just calling the ruling class of capitalism what they are; capitalists. I'm more than willing to argue the toss with people who think "capitalism" is a good thing, including the confused propertarians who think they're "libertarians".
@strypey
It is easy to spent too much time in those arguments also.
We use 'corporatist' because we think its the most descriptive word to use. We think saying 'capitalist' is too reductionist. It discards the inherent nuances.
Saying 'capitalist class', 'plutocrats', 'corporatists' or 'oligarchs' brings the nuance back in our view.
When its said "people who rule" then one takes that down to the micro level with the potential for workers to control a small amount of capital, the problem dissipates. It then becomes about the size of the capital being controlled. Ie. anti-trust, monopoly etc. That's the nuance.
Given the worst and biggest atrocities in capitalism are performed by larger corporations, we say #corporatism. If large corporation is tied to govt, we say #fascism.
@dsfgs
Capitalists = people who rule by virtue of controlling capital.
> workers to control a small amount of capital
What do they get to rule with that? Nothing. So they're not capitalists.
> If large corporation is tied to govt
All corporations are creations of the state. There's no other kind. But not all capitalism is fascist. Neoliberalism is many things, but it's not fascism.
The rise of fascism at present is a response to the failure of neoliberalism and the rise in anti-capitalism.
@dsfgs
> Ideological control of corporate media narratives is fascistic
> The Silent War on progressives is fascistic,
Totalitarian? Absolutely. But if you think all capitalist ideology and all their nobbling of opponents is fascist, then that word doesn't mean what you think it means.
FYI by definition, all corporations are run by and for capitalists. Blaming corporations for what capitalists use them for, is like having someone punch you and blaming their fist.
@dsfgs
> We will always repeat the definition of #fascism; when govt and big-business come together
That's not what that word means. Although it is John Ralston Saul's definition of corporatism, that's quite a different political animal than fascism. It has a coherent ideology, which fascism doesn't; but you can see it by its roots and fruits.
Umberto Eco explores all this and more in his classic essay on "Ur Fascism", or as it's usually called now, crypto-fascism;
Thanks, good resource + story! We see #UmbertoEco lists characteristics and #corporatism is high in the list.
> "#Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism".
It doesn't change much on our side. The #dotcons stoke division, manipulate democratic discourse, suppress #democraticMovements and #antiwar voices etc, but we wonder whether it is possible to consolidate corporate power without #politics of #division and #repressing democratic processes.
@dsfgs
> From everything we can surmise, corporatism is fundamental
There are forms of fascism that identify as "anarchist" (eg Third Positionism, National Anarchism). They completely reject the state, so they can't be corporatist.
@strypey
We go by definitions as we know them. We have read and seen corporatism in all definitions and none have mentioned anarchists. There are definitions that go weirdly soft, ie. #Wikipedia, last we cared to check, but we have our own qualms with the militarisation/weaponisation of that platform.
We think soft definitions are purposefully made soft to hide the corporatist element.
At some point one must draw boundaries. If it a word can mean many things it means nothing.
@strypey
The title says "Green Reactionaries" but the term #ecoFascist to us implies a govt aligning with #bigTech, maybe also to repress and marginise those who are not aligned with a policy.
Its so possible to have corporatist, environmentalist #technocrats that over the past decade we've seen them advertising unrealistic #technofixes on #Fakebook, to attract govt backing. We could all be living on the ocean, or in "#smartCities" or whatever nonsense.
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