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UID:Indybay-18774144
SEQUENCE:18896858
CREATED:20150628T162600Z
DESCRIPTION:Announcing a class\non the \nUS Form of Fascism\n\nIn recent years, the 
 growing epidemic of police killings of mostly people of color, the 
 obsessions with "war" (a misnomer for massacre at a distance), the desire 
 to destroy social infrastructures as opposed to conquering territory in 
 these "wars,"  the impunity assumed by government, corporations, and 
 police, the supreme court decisions that legitimize this impunity – all 
 these aspects of a growing violence and extremism by institutions of power, 
 suggest that both human concerns and civil society itself are becoming 
 irrelevant to those power institutions. And this, in turn, strongly 
 suggests a system whose name is "fascism." \n\nThere are other names, and 
 other explanations for these phenomena. Police violence can be seen as 
 defending society, or a new Jim Crow. War can be seen as defending the US, 
 or a new globalized imperialism. The technological destruction of social 
 infrastructures by military means can be seen as targetting militants, or 
 preparing invasions. And so on. But the bias toward corporations on the 
 part of institutionalities like courts and administrations brings with it 
 the suspicion (at least) that humans have been becoming irrelevant to the 
 socio-political systems of power. And that makes reference to extreme 
 contortions in the relations of people to power institutions – relations 
 that have to do with structures of violence, structures of acquiescence, 
 and an economy run by corporate structures. \n\nFor that reason, we need an 
 understanding of "fascism" in its US context. Many people make the 
 assumption that there is a concrete definition of fascism, that sets forth 
 characteristics and criteria of evaluation. But even using the European 
 experiences of the 1930s, one finds that different countries (Germany, 
 Italy, Spain) produced different forms of fascism. The real question would 
 be, are the political developments occurring around us simply the emergence 
 of new forms of repression, some being carried to extreme, or are we 
 witnessing something more fundamental, namely, the surfacing or resurfacing 
 of a profound cultural and political structure in the US? \n\nFor instance, 
 can we actually say that Dylan Roof was simply a lone (white supremacist) 
 assassin committing his carefully premeditated massacre, or was he 
 performing in terms of norms and exigencies of an underlying cultural 
 structure, a part of whose operations has been to racialize not only the 
 social environment, and US global militarism, but class relations as well? 
 \n\nThe thesis of this class will be that there is an underlying structure 
 – economic, political, and cultural – that has operated throughout US 
 history, and which can truly be called fascist. The purpose of the class 
 will be to investigate this thesis, to plumb the historical depths of what 
 is signified and revealed by contemporary events, and to see if we can 
 develop an interpretive description of an underlying structure, if it truly 
 exists. \n\nSome of the structures we shall examine in this class are those 
 of racialization, the police-prison nexus, the corporation and 
 corporatization of the economy and the political structure, and the 
 cultural notions of membership in whiteness and white supremacy (for which 
 racism can be seen as an instrumentality). For this purpose, we shall also 
 discuss a critique of white skin privilege, the notion of cultural 
 identity, what it means that class relations are racialized, and other 
 allied topics. \n\nFacilitator: Steve Martinot\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/06/28/18774144.php
SUMMARY:A Free Class on the US form of fascism
LOCATION:The Bay Area Public School at the Omni \n4799 Shattuck Ave. \nOakland 
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/06/28/18774144.php
DTSTART:20150707T013000Z
DTEND:20150707T033000Z
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