BIO
– RONALD D. GLOTTA
Attorney Ronald D. Glotta is a long-time human rights champion who
has turned his passion into an effective and successful law career
defending the rights of workers “ravaged by the excesses of
capitalism.” He has been quoted or featured in numerous progressive
books and publications, including Black Rage by William Grier and
Price Cobbs; Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, by Dan Georgakas and Marvin
Surkin; Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American
City
by Heather Ann Thompson; and Muscle & Blood, by Rachel Scott.
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“How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives
who believed that what was in Iraq was the answer to international
terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government
and rearrange longstanding American priorities and policies with
so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate
the press, mislead the Congress and dominate the military? Is
our democracy that fragile?”
Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command, The Road from 9/11 to Abu
Ghraib
Yes, Seymour,
our democracy IS that fragile. But this didn’t just happen.
It started many years ago. The playing out of it now is writ large
in three of our globe’s most pivotal and revealing events: 9/11,
the Indonesian tsunami, and the twin, back-to-back hurricanes, Katrina
and Rita. This is an examination of how we made the wrong turn, and
how we can get on the right course.
I was driving
down the freeway recently, going westward on Interstate 94 from Detroit
to Battle Creek, Michigan, expecting the peaceful, calm ride of what
I used to know as the “open road.” I was going to listen
to the radio and enjoy an open, winding highway lined with trees and
wildflowers and untouched nature.
What I
got instead was traffic jams, an interminable commute, pollution,
road rage, environmental decay, oil impoverishment, the destruction
of farmland, and urban sprawl: the inevitable result of maximum profit
motive and imperialistic madness at the expense of sustainability.
The highway
for Americans was once a symbol of freedom. From Walt Whitman to Easy
Rider, the open road, with its vast turns and twists, with its very
openness to ground and sky, cleared our minds and helped us refocus
our thoughts. Whether it is the lone biker or the trucker or even
the family sedan, the highway always spoke freedom to our souls.
That’s
what I thought about as I drove, hurriedly and somewhat disappointed,
to my destination. My thoughts refocused, though, in a different direction.
Instead of individual freedom as promised at the beginning of the
20th century, the highway has become the opposite—a place where
we see most clearly the effects of the worst of capitalism.
Now Americans
are on another road, sinister and ominous. It is Bush’s road
to fascism. Having now stolen two elections, the Bush cabal is determined
to consolidate their power at every level and branch of government.
This movement occurs not simply because George W. Bush is an unpardonable
criminal. He certainly is that. He is a war criminal, a thief, a liar,
and a murderer. His crimes are vast, but just beginning. However the
more alarming aspect of this movement is that their construction of
this highway towards fascism is as inevitable as the concentration
of wealth is inevitable under capitalism.
For over
70 years, progressive and conservatives and all those in between have
contended the abuses and crimes of capitalism can be reformed out
of existence. That simply is not true. In fact, as the concentration
of wealth under capitalism increases, the tendency towards fascism
starts—slowly at first, then directly at us so quickly we barely
have time to craft an effective response or put up an even fight.
That’s
what’s happening now. It’s coming at us as suddenly and
with as much devastation as Katrina, or the Indonesian tsunami last
year. Significantly, the Bush cabal intends to change the Supreme
Court so that more crimes can go unchecked. Anytime the multinational
corporations control the state as in our current situation, the social
motion is necessarily toward total control.
We as progressives
know we have to respond. Many of us have. We’ve called out the
Bush Administration. We’ve pointed out the contradictions and
the outright lies. But to really respond effectively, we have to understand
how we got here, and use that knowledge to begin a collective, cohesive
counterpunch against what we can only call a frontal attack on the
very foundations of freedom put in place at the start of this century.
Extreme
statements? I think not. We are living in an extreme era, and we are
hearing a dominant note of anger in all of our political conversations.
Whether liberals, neoconservatives, reactionaries, or conservatives,
instead of political analysis we hear invective, betrayal, and attack
rhetoric. What we do not hear is an honest attempt to seek the truth
or achieve solutions, but that is exactly what we need from all leftists,
from right wing Democrats to socialists: old fashioned truth and problem
solving.
Everyone,
especially in this country, believes there is no solution. We then
decide not to tackle economic and political issues because we feel
impotent, believing that we have absolutely no ability to change or
even affect the global march of capitalism. We revert back to individual
methods of survival rather than demanding a change in the system.
Of course, the media, the educational system and all politicians promote
that view.
That is
the great lie. We can not only affect the system, but help it collapse
under its own weight, and even replace it with something better.
The strategy
of the right wing is constantly to reduce the discussion to the lowest
common denominator in order to impede or prevent such analyses. Of
course, we must fight resolutely against the viciousness of the right
wing cabal represented by Bush II. But we must fight with an analysis
and program that both destroys the premises of the right wing and
establishes a vision for the future. As George Orwell said in his
book 1984: “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act.”
How
DID We Get Here?
We must recapture our history in order to understand what’s
happened here, and in order to craft an effective, progressive response.
In this discussion, let’s go back to the beginning of the 20th
century. With that era’s consolidation of industrial power,
the competition for markets by European powers led to the most destructive
and murderous war in history at that time. But this war, as all wars
have been since, was about making sure that political considerations
remained subservient to the needs and demands of business. That is
the essence of fascism: not totalitarianism or right-wing ideology,
as historians have conveniently tried to argue, but nothing less than
corporate control of government. As an economic unit, the corporation
is totally antidemocratic in concept and application. And that explains
the totalitarian nature of fascism.
Italy’s
Mussolini was the first leader to give a theoretical structure to
fascist political philosophy. He was the first to explicitly conjoin
fascism and corporate control of government. His ability to rise to
power, similar to Hitler’s, can be traced directly to WWI, a
success by capitalist standards.
Capitalists
benefit when there is a destruction of the means of protection. While
millions of workers died and communities were destroyed in Italy,
the concentration of capital meant that those with money would and
could charge the price they desired because governments had no alternative
but to accept. With the working class totally destitute political
control flowed to the worst demigods.
By destroying
the means of production, new sources of wealth could be created. That
millions and millions of workers lost their lives was of little consequence
to the capitalists. Germany, Italy, and Japan were economic powers
that were not allowed any openings and were barred from markets controlled
by other economic powers. As a result, these countries turned to fascism
as a method of mobilizing their working classes in order to open up
new markets.
The creation
of the Soviet Union was the only source of concern. Even though capitalist
imperialism had worldwide control, it had no political means of producing
a structure that could or would lead to peaceful development, and
especially no method of mediating differences between economic powers.
Fascism
in Germany and Italy was a response to the destruction of WWI. It
was considered a necessary antidote to the absence of markets, and
to overproduction by a working class in those countries that had little
or no resources to buy anything. Japan also faced a crisis of overproduction
and a similar need to open new markets. The corporations of those
countries turned to a political system that allowed total control:
of the legislature or parliament, of the courts and of course of the
executive branch. They then added a very important element—control
of the media.
Fascism,
once in control, manifests certain elements:
1) Aggressive
war: The establishment of a war economy; the mobilization of the
populace for war.
2) Deficit spending to justify the restriction of social benefits.
3) Anti-union activity. Actually, fascism attacks all working class
organizations that are independent in any way.
4) The elimination of democracy. In Germany and Italy, it was accomplished
quickly after taking power. In Japan, democracy was not an established
tradition. In Spain, the entire purpose was to eliminate any democratic
structure.
5) Systematic violation of human rights. In fact, as Mussolini said
fascism rejects the concept of human rights. Alberto Gonzalez’s
statement that the Geneva Conventions are “quaint” mirrors
Mussolini’s contemptuous disdain for human rights.
6) Racism as a means of population control. Of course, the Holocaust
was the most dramatic element of fascism. In Japan, similar actions
were carried out against Koreans, Chinese, and in the Philippines.
It is important to remember that the vicious anti-democratic, warmongering,
murderous aspects of fascism are integral to the entire political
structure. These are not simply aberrations of human behavior.
Sound familiar?
While these
are the most salient aspects of fascism, they are not exclusive. For
instance, control of the media and all information are essential to
a fascist political structure. The incredible destruction of WWII,
the loss of life, and the Holocaust completely discredited fascism
as a viable political movement. Even today, no credible party would
adopt the nomenclature or symbols of fascism.
Bait and
Switch – A Change in Nomenclature
With the failure of the name “fascism,” the United States
corporate powers that be knew that they would never continue the process
by which they would control all aspects of society for maximum profit.
So the capitalist apologists began to separate fascism from the concept
of corporate control, changing the definition of fascism to totalitarianism
instead of corporate control. The Holocaust became the identifying
aspect of fascism, even though neither totalitarianism nor the Holocaust
would have been possible without corporate control.
Fascism
and Racism
Just as capitalists had to invent the pseudoscience of the Social
Darwinism to provide an ideological justification for the concentration
of wealth, fascism has created virulent racism as a method of political
control.
Because
racism has no rational or scientific foundation and because it relies
on blind hatred to produce political energy, it is extremely flexible.
The target ethnic group of racism may change, the rationale for blind
hatred may change, but the need for virulent racism under fascism
does not change. Because the United States is an imperialistic power,
the entire world focuses on the political motion of the United States.
People all over the world know more about our political strengths
and weaknesses than do our own people. That is one explanation as
to why styles and culture changes in the black community have worldwide
impact.
Racism is a core ideology of the United States. It was the ideological
justification of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Today, the Republican
Party is founded on the southern strategy. As Bob Herbert, New York
Times columnist puts it:
The Southern
strategy meant much, much more than some members of the G.O.P. simply
giving up on African-American votes. Put into play by Barry Goldwater
and Richard Nixon in the mid-to late 1960’s, it fed like a starving
beast on the resentment of whites who were scornful of blacks and
furious about the demise of segregation and other civil rights advances.
The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic
Party, which had committed such unpardonable sins as enacting the
Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and enforcing desegregation statutes.
The important thing to keep in mind was how deliberate and pernicious
the strategy was. Last month a jury in Philadelphia, Miss., convicted
an 80-year-old man, Edgar Ray Killen, of manslaughter in the slaying
of three civil rights workers—Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
and James Chaney—in the summer of 1964. It was a crime that
made much of the nation tremble, and revolted anyone with a true sense
of justice.
So what did Ronald Reagan do in his first run for the presidency,
16 years after the murder, in the summer of 1980? He chose the site
of the murders, Philadelphia, Miss., as the perfect place to send
an important symbolic message. Mr. Reagan kicked off his general election
campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, an annual gathering
that was famous for its diatribes by segregationist politicians. His
message: “I believe in states’ rights.”
Mr. Reagan’s running mate was George H.W. Bush, who, in his
own run for president in 1988, thought it was a good idea to exploit
racial fears with the notorious Willie Horton ads about a black prisoner
who raped a white woman. Mr. Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater,
said at the time that the Horton case was a “values issue, particularly
in the South—and if we hammer at these over and over, we are
going to win.” Bob Herbert, NYT 7/18/05, p.A23
The Bush fascists have seized power by consolidating a racist base
to their Republican Party. Now, they attack the Democratic Party and
marginalize its activity—expressly the activity of the Party’s
most progressive individuals and groups.
Capitalism
relies on and promotes racism. As the concentration of wealth becomes
more extreme, the racism becomes more extreme and then turns to fascism
as a means of control. In doing that, it demands a response.
Fascism
and Religious Extremism
Whenever there is any discussion of economic issues, most people’s
eyes glass over. That is not because they don’t or can’t
understand. It is because they believe to the very depths of their
souls that there is absolutely nothing they can do to change the system.
They are therefore trained emotionally, psychologically and intellectually
to avoid the subject.
The genuine
spiritual and religious impulse always embodies compassion, altruism,
love and kindness. In certain circumstances, it even includes tolerance.
The spiritual exigency is based upon a vision of transformation taking
the individual beyond humankind’s material senses and base proclivities
of selfishness, self-centeredness, and greed.
But under
capitalism and globalization, the fanatical is the only religious
impulse which is nurtured, supported, and ultimately exploited. It
serves the purpose of the capitalists in all aspects. In the United
States, fanatical religion convinces working class adherents to ignore
their economic self-interest and throughout the world it creates terrorists
who sacrifice their youth without even discussing the economic system
which oppresses their people.
People
turn to the spiritual because that is something over which the individual
has control. That also serves the purposes of the capitalists, and
that is why they always support organized religion. Individuals believe
they have no choice, that they cannot change the political/economic
system so they turn to the spiritual for support and relief from their
suffering.
The political
and economic oppression, however, never lets up and that is the general
source of fanatical right wing ideology. It is not simply that Bush
the First supported, nurtured and developed Osama Bin Laden as a political
force now known as Al Qaeda. It is not simply that Reagan and Bush
sent deadly weapons to organizations that coalesced into the Taliban.
It is that capitalism in the globalized form, that is, at the stage
of imperialism, necessarily promotes the most extreme forms of religion.
Fascism
is the inevitable result of capitalism, which concentrates wealth
in the hands of the fewest possible number, and rewards the most aggressively
greedy, the most control-minded, the most corrupt, the most selfish
people and institutions in society. Money is the repository for value
and therefore power. Once money becomes concentrated in the hands
of the most aggressively corrupt elements of society, it is inevitable
that those individuals and institutions will use that money to gain
political power. When accomplished, they will then necessarily adopt
the same anti-democratic, war mongering, racist institutional structure
that brought them to power in the first place.
Where
Are We Now?
By any other name, the Bush cabal represents one of the most fascist
collaborations we have seen in this country. They tout corporate control.
More importantly, they implement it. They ignore and attack democratic
principles. They attack every institution that might benefit the working
class. The best example is Bush’s attack on Social Security.
Bush & Company are completely unconcerned whether the majority
of people oppose their policies. They will steal any election they
cannot win. Under democratic principles, in 2000, when the Bush cabal
had no mandate, their responsibility was to represent all people and
make no major changes. Instead, they immediately implemented the most
radical attack on working people that we have seen in 135 years.
In both
2000 and 2004, the Bush cabal ran overtly racist campaigns. Sending
Republican goon squads into minority communities to attack the voters,
on more then one occasion the Republican campaign machine openly admitted
that the strategy was to suppress the Black vote. The media, of course,
never took them to task for the racist strategy. That is because the
media is owned by the same corporate structure that supports the Republican
party.
The face
of fascism as represented by the Bush cabal changed from that of German
fascism and not simply because Bush does not have a mustache and Hitler
did. Racist policies are implemented but racist ideology is denied.
Aggressive war to secure natural resources is implemented but the
reason is masked by lies. The Bush cabal pretends to be pro-life while
bombing innocent men, women, and children.
The face
of Bush’s fascism is new with Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas,
Alberto P. Gonzalez. With each revolutionary upsurge by the working
class, the ruling class learns new methods of control. By establishing
an ideological litmus test, the Bush cabal can colorize their fascist
perspective, but uses different faces to accomplish their agendas.
The New
York Times headlines for June 29, 2005 include: “Bush Declares
Sacrifice in Iraq To Be “Worth It”; and “Former
Chief of Health South [Richard M. Scrushy] Acquitted in $2.7 Billion
Fraud”.
Morphing
of the Military-Industrial Complex
After eight years in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower delivered
his farewell address on January 17, 1961. The former general warned
of “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”
He added that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex.”
One way or another, a military-industrial complex now extends to much
of corporate media. In the process, firms with military ties routinely
advertise in news outlets. Often, media magnates and people on the
boards of large media-related corporations enjoy close links—financial
and social—with the military industry and Washington’s
foreign-policy establishment.
Norman Solomon, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Why
war is covered from the warriors’ perspective.” Extra
Magazine, 7/8/05, p. 21.
It is now appropriately termed the military-industrial-media-prison
complex. That is, the corporations control every aspect of our life
and when we disagree or are the wrong color, we go to jail.
Given the
extent of shared sensibilities and financial synergies within what
amounts to a huge military-industrial-media complex, it shouldn’t
be surprising that—whether in the prelude to the Gulf War of
1991 or the Iraq invasion of 2003—the U.S.’s biggest media
institutions did little to illuminate how Washington and business
interests had combined to strengthen and arm Saddam Hussein during
many of his worst crimes. Extra, supra.
Ronald
Reagan said that the problem with government is government. That is
a pithy and accurate summary of their philosophy. We now have 25 years
to experience and to assess this system. What we now see is chaos,
corruption, competition and capitalism.
Absolute
Failure Fails Absolutely
Crashing in the Fast Lane: The Myth of Globalization
Life in the fast lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the fast lane, everything all the time
Life in the fast lane, uh huh
Blowin' and burnin', blinded by thirst
They didn't see the stop sign,
took a turn for the worse.*
*From
“Life in the Fast Lane,” written by Don Henley.
Elektra Records.
All of
these actions from corporate fraud to war crimes are but a part of
an integrated system now called globalization. Chaos, corruption,
competition and capitalism—these words describe but do not fully
encompass the political/economic system of globalization. Other words,
however, are descriptively helpful. Fraud, both corporate and electoral,
war crimes, murder, torture, rampant racism, religious extremism,
intolerance— but most importantly, control. These descriptions
describe our political reality but are not generally applied to globalization.
The reason globalization is only seen as an economic system to describe
the distribution of products is that of media control. Everything
from war to religious fanaticism is controlled by multinational corporations.
It is hard
even to remember that on the eve of World War II, our regular army
was a mere 186,000 men. Now, the 1,400,000-strong “peacetime”
military services, funded by a defense budget larger than most national
budgets, are made up of both men and women living in a closed-off,
self-contained base world that connects outposts from Greenland to
Australia. The Pentagon has deployed a quarter of a million troops
against Iraq while at the same time several thousand soldiers are
engaged in daily skirmishes in Afghanistan, countless Navy crews are
manning ships in the waters off North Korea, a few thousand Marines
are in the southern Philippines assisting local forces in fighting
an Islamic separatist movement with roots a century old, and several
hundred “adviser” are involved in what might someday become
a Vietnam-like insurgency in Colombia (and possibly elsewhere in the
Andean region). We have a military presence in 120 of the 189 member
countries of the United Nations, including large-scale deployments
in twenty-five of them. We have military treaties or binding security
arrangements with at least thirty-six countries.
* * * *
This is the future. When war becomes the most profitable course of
action, we can certainly expect more of it.
Chalmers Johnson, “The War Business,” Harper’s Magazine,
November, 2003, p.58.
In this
report, Chalmers Johnson takes the position that the dominance of
the military industrial complex bears no “relationship to private
enterprise” but, in fact, it is the inevitable result of private
enterprise. We see the results of globalization and all parts of the
world producing chaos, corruption, competition but we never connect
the results of the political economic system which produces it - -
capitalism at the stage of imperialism. Any discussion of these world
problems as caused, dependent upon, or arising out of globalization
is either crushed or marginalized.
The current
doctrine is that globalization distributes goods in a fair and equitable
manner. War, poverty, corporate and electoral fraud, corruption with
rampant racism, religious extremism, and torture are all attributed
to government or to the inherent weaknesses of human beings. The soldiers
are punished, the poor suffer famine, and the crooked executive officers
and government leaders continue to lead comfortable lives.
Corporations destroy competition and capture markets. Opposition is
crushed by any means necessary. Internally, corporations prohibit
all democratic processes and protections.
Where are we now? We are in a place where the political conversation
and terminology is ostensibly democratic, but the corporate conversation
is unashamedly autocratic. Since corporate control of our government
is the order of the day, guess which system wins out, even in the
political arena? We will examine where we should go in Part II. (Click
Here to continue to Part 2).
Yours in Struggle,
Ronald D. Glotta
220 Bagley, Suite 808
Detroit MI 48226-1409
(313) 963-1320 - (313) 963-1325/Fax
rglotta@glottaassociates.com
