Think of this as Volume 15, Number 49 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
It's easy to see when poor people riot. Things get broken. People get killed.
It's not so obvious to see when rich people riot. We tend to think it never happens. Why should they riot – they're rich!
But rich people do riot. They only do it once in a while, when their positions are threatened by their own stupidity. We're in the middle of such a riot right now.
A revolt by the rich doesn't look like one by the poor, because they already have so much power. Especially economic power.
That's the first indication of a rich man's riot. Money goes on strike. Money has been on strike here for a few years, and that strike is now spreading over Europe. There are lots of excuses for money going on strike – debt owed to rich people by rich people is the proximate cause this time – but why else would so many wealthy people, banks and businesses be ignoring the huge opportunities before us, except through a conscious decision?
Another way money goes on strike is by intimating everything is about to get a lot worse. This usually happens after it's gotten a lot worse for the poor. Predictions of apocalypse are a rich man's way of, first, excusing the strike and, second, preparing for the ultimate expression of a rich man's riot.
That's the power grab. Forces representing the tiniest minority try to grab power in the interests of capital. The excuse is order. It's often done in conjunction with other powerful interests – the military, organized religion – who become convinced their interests are also threatened. In any case they say they're going to organize things, make the trains run on time.
We know, from history, what results. The dictatorship of the money-tariat.
We're blinded to all this because the only result of such a successful strike, in our complex global society, became such a byword for unspeakable horror that, while we may speak its name, we refuse to accept it for what it was.
Fascism.
Classical fascism came to power by creating a false, either-or choice, between their dictatorship or that of the other. Democracy was not on the table. With both sides – the far left and the far right – busy undermining democratic processes, democratic structures and democratic leaders at every turn – it worked. Fascism came to power, first in Italy, then in Japan, and finally in Germany, where it was called National Socialism, Nazi-ism.
The chapter of our political history today's conservatives have spent a lifetime blotting out was their acceptance of all this, in fact the eager embrace of it by some. Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Kennedy and Tom Watson Sr. were just a few of the many rich and/or famous Americans who either ignored Hitler during his rise, enabled it, or sought to support it.
Why? To get the trains running. To get the economy moving. To prevent the commies from taking over.
The only way for conservatives to have a chance of power, after Pearl Harbor, was first, by joining the fight, and then by becoming its staunchest advocates, to the point where those in the Democratic Party who had warned against fascism became suspected of communism. McCarthyism emerged from the rubble of World War II, offering the same either-or choice between a dictatorship of the right and of the left. Its defeat was sadly temporary because the link between unspeakable evil and “extremism in the defense of liberty” was never made explicit by liberty's defenders, who had moved on to other things.
The end result of today's rich man's riot is an effort to install fascism in America. This is why Republican Presidential candidates sound so crazy. This is why commenters on financial sites of all kinds seem so apocalyptic. This is why those who cover money are ignoring the strike and sounding a little crazed themselves.
In the past I've called what is happening on the right in America McGovernism. You can argue that, by comparing today's conservatives to a failed revolt of the left 40 years ago, I'm minimizing it too.
Guilty as charged.
But the reason for that guilt is that, in common democratic terms, it's very obvious that the views of the rich are a minority view, a minority no bigger than the electoral coalition George McGovern was able to gather against Nixon. If Americans are given a chance at a free and fair election next year, I have no doubt of the outcome.
My only caveat is that “if.” The successful efforts to restrict voting rights, going on not only in the south but all across the country, concern me. The money being unleashed on our politics by the Citizens United decision, money that never has to be accounted for, and can be used to flood our media with lies from now until November of 2012, concerns me. The impact of the money strike, the possibility that the Euro might fall and the whole world plunge into recession (despite the opportunities before it) concerns me.
Those concerns are, for now, outweighed by my faith in American history and the American people. We live in a sophisticated society, with people who, even if they lack wealth, do have some education. Far more than our grandfathers and great-grandfathers did. Our instincts are right. We are far more likely, on average, to support the goals of the “Occupy” movement than the people they march against.
But the effort will be made. The effort to overthrow democracy on behalf of capital is being made. The first step in beating that effort back is to name the threat.
The second is up to you.
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